Blades Of Destiny (Crown Service Book 4)

by Terah Edun

  “The roadway?” she asked, stunned. “That was planned? But we swept out and killed your men.”

  He shrugged. “An acceptable loss to ensure the capture of the person who is rapidly becoming one of the empire’s most notable soldiers.”

  Sara glared at him. “You Kades—you’re all the same. Life means nothing to you, and I hope you don’t mean me, because like I told you before, I’m just a simple soldier.”

  “With a famous father and a penchant for trouble,” he said dryly.

  “Half of that is your fault.”

  “And such witty banter,” Gabriel teased, eyes flashing purple. “Now you see why I couldn’t wait to get in here.”

  “Look, crazy, I’m not a toy for your…your amusement,” Sara said.

  She had known he was a bit…reckless, but sorting out that the Illusions Mage was flat-out crazy hadn’t crossed her mind. Until now.

  He had to be, to be this fascinated with her.

  Struggling with her bonds and finding that the reinforced rope had no intentions of giving in, Sara looked up at Gabriel with a huff.

  “Now what?” she said.

  He scratched his cheek below his eye and looked up at the quarry walls.

  “To tell you the truth, I hadn’t really thought that through,” the Kade leader said. “You see, I’ve already managed to kill or maim a good portion of your Imperial Armed Forces. By any measure of the matter, I’m winning. But going back and finishing them off would just feel so…anticlimactic.”

  Sara wasn’t sure if it was his disinterested tone or the matter-of-factness of his report, but he set off the fury of the people behind her this time.

  “You son of a bitch! My friends died in there—” Karn yelled before his voice was snuffed out with a snap of Gabriel’s fingers.

  It wasn’t magic, however, that silenced Karn, but the quick work of someone stuffing a dirty cloth in his mouth and tying the end around the back of his head to ensure he couldn’t spit it out.

  If the fury in his eyes and the outraged muffles coming from his mouth were any indication, though, he was liberally cursing Gabriel’s name despite the impediment.

  Trying to think of a way out of this, Sara asked quietly, “What do you want?”

  Gabriel crouched before her—in an awkward echo of his actions from earlier—cocked his head, and said slowly, “I told you—you.”

  Sara stiffened and leaned forward. “And I told you it’s never going to happen. I’m loyal to the crown.”

  “And what have they done to earn this loyalty?”

  Sara leaned back and narrowed her eyes. “I don’t have to justify my beliefs to you.”

  “And I, unfortunately, don’t have time to go around in circles arguing with you.”

  He motioned for someone to come forward.

  It was with bitter surprise that Sara looked up and met the gaze of someone she had been looking for all along—the Sun Mage.

  Sara took a deep breath then let out an ear-splitting giggle. As her people hushed behind her, she was just barely able to get control of herself and tamp down the instinct to laugh more.

  Straightening her shoulders and raising her head once she had control over her face, Sara said, “Well, Nissa Sardonien, as I live and breathe—I certainly didn’t expect to see you here.”

  Nissa came before her, robed and garbed in a belted dress and cloak appropriate to her station, and said smugly, “Where else would I be but beside my fellow leader—the one who overturned every stone to find me and free me?”

  Sara flicked a cool glance to Gabriel and didn’t say anything.

  “Cat got your tongue, War Mage?” Gabriel said. “You never pouted this much when we met before.”

  “Don’t act like you know me,” Sara snapped. “You kidnapped me and I got away—that’s the extent of your knowledge.”

  “Rather like my time with your own Imperial Armed Forces,” Nissa said. “Tell me, did Gabriel torture you like they did me?”

  Sara narrowed her eyes and didn’t answer. It was a trick, it had to be.

  Fortunately, Nissa didn’t bother waiting for her to speak. “Of course he didn’t. We aren’t animals like the lot of you.”

  “Say that to my face!” came a voice from behind Sara, and she flinched because it had come from Reben. Sara could take whatever the Kades threw at her, whether it was physical or verbal abuse, but she feared for the scout in the same way she would have feared for one of the Cams. It just didn’t seem right to put her in harm’s way—no matter that she was a soldier, just like the rest of them.

  Nissa, however, looked interested in this outburst. Too interested.

  Before Sara could intervene, the Sun Mage crooked a finger and beckoned for Reben. “Come forward and let me see who speaks with such brazenness.”

  Sara saw out of the corner of her eye that the Kade guards surrounding them were moving forward to grab the scout and drag her along, but to Sara’s semi-relief, they noted they didn’t have to. Reben stood on shaky legs and walked forward under her own power.

  Nissa pushed back Reben’s lanky blonde hair almost gently.

  Sara could see Reben trembling under even that touch. Since the scout’s face was turned away from her, she couldn’t tell if that tremble was from fear or anger. Either wasn’t good.

  Then Reben spoke, and her words were strong, even if her tone was shaky. “We’re the empress’s elite armed forces. We will crush you and all the Kades for what you have done.”

  Nissa gave her an indulgent smile, which Sara could see didn’t spread to her eyes even from where she knelt.

  “And what is it that we’ve done, chickadee?” the Sun Mage cooed.

  Reben replied, “You’ve broken apart the empire and killed your own blood brethren, that’s what.”

  Gabriel snorted and crossed his arms. Nissa asked, “Is that the lies the empire spread these days?”

  “They aren’t lies!” someone else said hotly from behind Sara and Reben, one of the other cohort members, and he quickly got a fist to his stomach for the trouble.

  Nissa’s eyes didn’t stray from Reben’s. “Answer me, girl.”

  Reben replied stonily, “It’s what we’re told, aye.”

  Nissa nodded in satisfaction. “Then what you’ve been told is wrong.”

  “The empress’s r—” Reben began.

  “Don’t speak that name in my presence ever,” Nissa said as emotion finally flashed in her eyes—hatred.

  She switched her gentle finger to a clenching grip as she brought the scout’s chin up. Reben voiced a sound in complaint, and Sara almost surged up to stop it, only to feel the weight of weapons and hands upon her back.

  When Nissa released Reben’s chin, the scout didn’t hesitate to yell, “I’m not afraid of you, and the crown, the empress, will see that you burn for this!”

  Nissa began to laugh until she cried. But when she stopped laughing, Sara saw a coldness in her eyes that chilled her to the bone.

  25

  “She didn’t mean it!” Sara cried out, but Nissa ignored her, and Gabriel clicked his tongue.

  He shook his head, a warning that, should she interfere, this would get much worse, quickly.

  So Sara licked her dry lips and watched as the Sun Mage taught the impudent scout a lesson. At least this time it wouldn’t be fatal, though she wasn’t nearly as gentle as she could have been. She put her hand to Reben’s cheeks lightly again. But it was a deceptive touch. It wasn’t Reben’s cry of pain and fury that really alerted Sara to the Sun Mage’s trickery. No, it was the smell of burning flesh that wafted over like lightly grilled meat.

  As Sara’s nose twitched and the scout howled as she sank to her knees, Nissa’s hot touch followed her all the way down.

  When Reben was on the ground with tears running down her face, the Sun Mage released her and said, “That’s how I’d hurt you if I so chose. Thank your precious gods that I have more mercy in my fingertips than your new field commander has in his entir
e brain. You’ll soon see when he turns his depraved attentions on you.”

  Reben shuddered and cried as she rolled over, and Sara saw the brand Nissa had given the girl. Her nail had burned hot as molten lava, trailing down Reben’s cheek in a crescent shape.

  Reben might be crying, but the anger in her eyes spoke of a spirit that was unbroken, a spirit that would get her killed if she didn’t bow and scrape fast enough.

  Nissa stepped forward. “Now, what was it that you were saying about the empire seeing me burn?”

  Reben kept her mouth shut this time, but that wasn’t satisfactory for Nissa. She raised her finger in warning again, and Sara called out, “Enough! Just enough.”

  Her words were for the actions Nissa was committing and the memories of Barthis, she had summoned into Sara’s mind. It didn’t take long for them to surface, after all—the sound of a whip cracking over stinging flesh, the vacant face of a man lobotomized for information, and the bodies, oh the bodies, of so many slain and forgotten.

  But she wasn’t here to question her field commander’s ways, and neither were they.

  “Leave her alone. Do what you have to do, but do it to me instead. I’m the leader here, the one you should hate.”

  Nissa turned an irritated gaze onto Sara, but she stopped poking Reben’s shuddering side with her booted foot.

  Nissa finally said, “It certainly is good to see you kneeling while I stand here whole.”

  Sara’s brow furrowed. “It was not I who rendered your back so broken. You know this. In fact, I saved you not too long ago.”

  “And brought me straight back into the hands of my captors,” Nissa said. “Brava.”

  “We’re at war and there are regulations to follow. I only did what I was commanded to do.”

  Nissa leaned over her until their faces were practically touching, and Sara could bite her nose off…if she so chose.

  “But you see, Field Commander,” Nissa said, “you chose the wrong side to support, and now that the tables are turned and you lie at my mercy, you shall know it.”

  Sara was beginning to regret every moment of sympathy she’d had for Nissa.

  As she was about to start negotiating for the freedom of her cohort, much like the Kade invasion leader had done—only to be marched to his death—Sara thought about what she could offer them to end her life quickly. Obviously there were only some things that could be said; others, she would take to her grave.

  As she opened her mouth to speak, cognizant of the moaning Reben beside her, she heard Gabriel say, “As the Fairchild said, enough. Let us show them the compassion they would never show us, as they’ve proven time and again.”

  Nissa reared back like a struck snake. “And why would I do that?”

  “Because,” Gabriel said as he studied his nails, “you know we can’t continue this war in solitude forever. They will just keep sending their whelps against us, and we will keep killing them off.”

  “And if I don’t agree?” Nissa said as she walked away and he followed.

  Gabriel gave Sara a smile and turned his back to her. “Then you will do it because it is what I bid, and I am first among equals here.”

  “Yet at times you take that position too—” Nissa said, lowering her voice so much that Sara didn’t catch the last part.

  Sara could barely hear them now, but she had heard that part, which was interesting. She’d always been told the Kades’ decisions were made jointly. Could this hint that the eight Kades were less equal than first surmised?

  Before long, however, what she had managed to overhear was a moot point, because they both came back and stood together side by side, their unity clear, even if the decision they had come to wasn’t quite so clear yet.

  Taking a deep breath, Sara looked from face to face anxiously.

  With a serious expression on his face, Gabriel said, “Tilt your head back so we can see your eyes clearly.”

  Sara did so.

  “Now raise your right hand.” Sara tried to do what he asked, but she was bound hand to foot. As she struggled to show her situation, he said, “Oh, right.”

  Reaching down as Nissa watched him with an annoyed look on her face, he cut the rope binding Sara’s right hand. Her arms were still tightly bound to her sides and she couldn’t stand, but she could wiggle her fingers and partially move her palm now.

  Apparently that movement was enough for him. “Good. At least we know you’re trainable.”

  Sara stiffened and wondered if she should bite him like a dog, but she settled back on her heels at the warning look in the mage’s purple eyes. He might be having a bit of levity at her expense, but he could rapidly turn this situation into one where she would not want to play at all, and she knew that.

  Deciding to see if she could play to their emotions, if they had any, Sara said, “Nissa, I tried to help you when no one else would. Even if I didn’t free you, I did halt the torture you received for some time.”

  The Sun Mage watched Sara on her knees as dispassionately as if Sara was a bug under a glass. She crouched in front of Sara so that she could see the three parallel rows of scars on Nissa, grooves on her cheekbone that were still healing.

  As Nissa noticed Sara tracking the grooves on her face, she said, “They almost never show at first glance. You have to really lean in and the sun has to hit just right, but when you do find them, they look like a row of claws, don’t they?”

  Sara’s eyes flickered from the scars to Nissa’s gaze before she said, “They do.”

  They reminded Sara of winter’s roses, so they stood out all the more.

  Nissa nodded solemnly. “Gifts from your field commander.”

  “And none of those here participated,” Sara replied softly with a shift of her eyes to indicate those who had come in behind her. The people who had trusted her to lead them into the battle—the people she had failed.

  As she thought on that, Nissa replied, “But I’m sure one or two or even ten of you were in that crowd watching my humiliation.”

  Sara was silent. She thought about telling Nissa that she had been on her way back to free her when the Kade attack, which had brought down the “impenetrable” shield domes, had happened, but she didn’t think Nissa would believe her. Sara wouldn’t have believed it herself, especially after receiving a commendation and promotion from her captain just after that.

  So Sara waited it out. Nissa cocked her head and asked, “Did it ever occur to you that I didn’t need your help? That I was precisely where I wanted to be?”

  Sara looked Nissa up and down in confusion, eyes tracking from the wounds on her cheek to what Sara was sure were even more numerous, but unseen, scars on her back and sides.

  Nissa didn’t acknowledge Sara’s questing gaze. “Yes, this is what your people do to prisoners of war. Get used to it. It’s not going away.”

  Sara shook her head and tersely said, “I didn’t mean to make you uncomfortable.”

  Nissa smiled. “It’d take a lot more than your gaze to make me uncomfortable. In fact, these marks give me a source of pride.”

  Karn began making muffled sounds of protest into his wad of dirty cloth.

  With a sigh, Nissa pointed. “Untie the lout so at least I can hear what he’s saying.”

  A Kade guard behind Karn rapidly did so.

  “What pride would that be?” Karn said. “That of the lost and depraved?”

  Nissa’s mouth curved into a sneer. Gabriel said, “Gag him again. He has nothing useful to add.”

  Sara swallowed hard and tried not to say something that would make them initiate actions any worse than gagging them.

  “I can’t say I would have the same courage as you in the face of such…torture, but I ask, not for myself this time but for my cohort, what are your intentions for us?” Sara said.

  “What if I said we’ll do the same to you that you have done to us all?” Nissa asked.

  “And what would that be?”

  Gabriel was silent as he looked f
rom face to face in the crowds, but after a moment he said, “Mark you so that all who see you know you were bested by the Kades, and then put a bounty on your head so that all our allies know the price that will be paid for your death.”

  “What allies?” Karn said snidely.

  They all turned to see that his mouth was still free, which was rapidly fixed by the pale guard behind them.

  Gabriel chuckled. “‘What allies,’ he says. How do you think we’ve come so far and held off the empire’s boot at our throat for so long?” His eyes pierced Sara’s.

  Sara swallowed hard. “Magic?”

  “Ha!” Nissa said. “Yes, we’re powerful, but we alone are not enough to kill off the entire Imperial Armed Forces.”

  Sara gave her a sour look. “I would have said I agree with you if this was months ago and we were still in Sandrin, but after seeing what I’ve seen, experiencing the deaths of friends and comrades by my side, I’d say your reputation of skills and abilities equal unto the gods is not a falsehood.”

  “Well, aren’t you sweet,” Nissa snapped at Sara so hard that you would have thought Sara had insulted Nissa’s firstborn instead of giving her a compliment. “But no, we have sacrificed our souls and our prides to both grow our magic and ally ourselves with those who win.”

  Her side glance at a drooling dragon currently dragging three guards holding a neck chain behind him spoke volumes. At least, it spoke to what sort of allies Nissa could have meant.

  From her end, though, Sara was getting more and more confused.

  “Those stumpy beasts are your allies?” Sara said, wishing she could cross her arms in disbelief. “They couldn’t have shared more…intelligent comrades with you?”

  Nissa snapped her fingers, and fire burst in the void. “We do well enough with those idiots and our own tactics.”

  “I’m sure you do,” Sara muttered, trying not to get into an argument with the woman carrying living fire in her hand.

  Gabriel held up a hand and then put a finger to his pursed lips. “I think you’re confusing her more than not, dear,” he said. “Why don’t we skip that part until we can show her exactly what we mean?”