Blades Of Illusion: Crown Service #2

by Terah Edun

  The last part didn’t bother Sara Fairchild so much. Pirate was better than fishmonger, in her opinion, and it was even legalized under imperial codes, although it went by another name.

  What was it?

  The administrative official behind her stood stammering, “Thank you, Corsair Alena.”

  Ah, yes. ‘Corsair’, Sara repeated privately. It was never a term she would have associated with the fabled woman, nor with any of the few members of her father’s inner circle. But it made sense. Outside the main cities, there were very few ways for a seasoned warrior to make money, and even fewer more profitable than becoming some noble’s hired muscle. The civil war hadn’t started until a few months ago, which left privateering. Bureaucratically-controlled privateering was a way for the imperial armada to harness the ready fleet of small and medium-sized ships that terrorized the islands and disrupted commerce. Instead of pillaging for themselves, they pillaged for the empire and kept pressure on the allies of the hated dragons across the seas. The money looted from the captured enemy traders and vessels was then split between imperial coffers, officers, and the crew.

  Judging by Corsair Alena’s stance, she was an officer.

  Alena spared the annoying man one narrowed, piercing glance. “Captain Alena.”

  Sara’s eye twitched as she remained immobile. Of course she is. She had dropped the title of ‘Corsair’ when she rejoined the imperial army.

  Then Alena spoke again, “Captain Alena of the Empress’s First Mounted Regiment.”

  Her tone was like weathered stone. Unbreakable. Unamused.

  Sara sucked in a surprised breath. The fact that Sara felt shocked didn’t cover the matter. The last time Sara had seen Alena approach a horse, let alone ride one, was when the manor stables for her father’s prized stallions had been burning to the ground. Alena had picked Sara up, planted her firmly out of the way, and raced to help in to the effort to battle the flames. Sara had watched from a distance as Alena had broken through the door to let the horses run free and escape the blaze. Otherwise, Sara had never seen her more than glance at the hoofed creatures. Alena loathed horses as much as some people detested spiders or lizards. As far as Sara could tell, the feeling was absolutely mutual.

  Out of the corner of her eye, Sara saw the stupid man go pale as he quickly amended his statement.

  “Captain Alena, I apologize,” he said breathily, “This...this...she-heathen has been completely uncooperative—”

  “Did I ask for your opinion?” Alena asked, her icy tone easily overriding him.

  “No,” he said, wilting.

  “Then sit,” she commanded.

  He sat.

  “Captain Alena,” Sara stammered as she belatedly clicked her heels together and saluted. At one point, Sara had been destined to outrank Captain Alena as the head of her own household, but in her father and mother’s eyes, experience and age always triumphed the circumstances of birth. They had treated Alena as a member of their own family, and so had Sara. She didn’t know how her relationship with the woman compared to the bond that had existed between Alena and her father.

  After all, Alena had trained Sara, but she had served beside Sara’s father in combat.

  Gulping, Sara watched as Alena Moonsetter strode forward. She was just as Sara remembered her. Short. Stout. Built like an ox. Fierce. Frigid, grey eyes and silver hair cropped so short that it barely brushed the nape of her neck.

  Sara waited for her elder to speak. Nervousness and excitement coiled in her belly like twin snakes fighting for dominance. Nervous at what Alena would say. Excitement at why Alena was here.

  Part of her thought Alena had come especially for her. Why else would her father’s captain of the guard be present? Part of her thought Alena had a special message from her father. A different part just wanted to collapse at the woman’s feet and have the world be made whole again, to have a heart and a family to call home again—and make no mistake, Alena was family. Or rather she, had been. Not by blood, but by connection.

  Still, Sara fought a shiver as the silver-haired female warrior opened her mouth and addressed her directly. “Sara Fairchild, you disgrace your family name with these actions.”

  Shock flowed over Sara like a dose of icy cold water. Whatever she had expected Alena to say, it wasn’t that. She had expected her to laugh, dismiss the man, and take Sara to her lodging. She had expected her to at least hear her side. Perhaps, instead, Sara should have been expecting no such things.

  Sara rallied her pride, dropped her hands to a soldier’s ready stance at her waist, straightened her spine, and said, “With apologies, Alena, I’ve done nothing wrong.”

  Alena raised a silvered eyebrow. “Captain Alena, Mercenary Fairchild. And my eyes tell me differently.”

  Sara licked her lips and tried to speak again. She didn’t know what had changed.

  A dark part of her mind whispered the truth. Everything has, she realized. I just didn’t think our relationship would sour. I didn’t think she would turn her back on me like so many others have—

  Sara quieted the thoughts and stilled her face. She let her eyes deaden, her shoulders straighten, and her chin firmly rise. She was through being disappointed. Whatever this woman had to say, she would take it as she always had—with her pride intact.

  She watched as surprise showed on Alena’s face. Sara could see it in her eyes, although she very much doubted anyone else could. She had been as close as a daughter to Alena, so reading the emotions in her stone-like features was second-nature.

  Sara licked her lips and tried to speak again. “Captain Alena, then. I have done nothing wrong—”

  “Ha!” scoffed the administrative official seated behind her.

  Alena held up a silencing hand. “I did not approach to argue with you.”

  “If he had only listened,” Sara said in a frustrated growl.

  “It wasn’t worth my time to hear your lies, because you’re wrong, Mercenary Fairchild,” the ensign crowed.

  It was all Sara could do not to turn around and lay him into the dirt.

  Instead, Alena cut him off, just as she had done to Sara. “Or you, young man. So be silent.”

  The man was mercifully quiet once more.

  “The girl is right,” Captain Alena said, vindicating Sara. “She’s first division. Assign her as such.”

  At that moment, Sara felt like a childish exclamation of glee would have been appropriate. But she held it in. Instead, she raised her head proudly and let satisfaction flow through her. Finally, someone at least didn’t think she was lying. Her joy was tinged with wariness, though. Alena had always couched her truths in lessons, for both the aggressor and the opponent. That meant that with each victory Sara enjoyed, a defeat of some kind also followed. Whether it was a large or small defeat remained to be seen.

  “Nevertheless, Mercenary Fairchild,” Alena said. Sara flinched at the title she used for her. Sara felt the words ‘mercenary’ and ‘Fairchild’ like barbs under her skin. Each one deep and deadly. Captain Alena had never referred to her as Fairchild on or off the training field for as long as she could remember. It has always been Sara-girl after her father or little warrior after her tenacity in bouts with youths bigger and stronger than her. Now they were reduced to the formalities of ‘captain’ and ‘Fairchild’ after a decade and a half of familiarity. The woman had watched her grow up, for heaven’s sake!

  Alena continued in a dispassionate tone, “You’ll be digging latrine pits all day tomorrow for manhandling an administrator. Report to the pits at two hours past dawn for assignment.”

  Sara’s jaw dropped as she watched Alena swiftly turn and disappear without another word.

  When she heard a snicker erupt from the administrator behind her, Sara lost her cool. It wasn’t enough that she had been slapped down without a kind word by the last woman in the world she had clung to when thrown from her home, but to have the cause of that censure find amusement in her predicament was too much. Sara raised h
er hand and slammed the flat of it down on the table. She didn’t say a word. She didn’t have to.

  She let some of her magic enter her body, giving her aura a powerful boost in visibility to anyone who had half the skills of a hedge witch. And this man, despite his cross nature, was a magic user. A poor one, but even a house cat could recognize the ferocity of a tiger in its midst.

  His eyes grew wide as her aura grew with her anger. She had no doubt it was sparking. Since human mages couldn’t see their own auras, she had once asked her cousin to describe what hers looked like. He had said she looked like a bad-tempered fire serpent ready to strike whenever she got angry, and her aura was like the hood of a cobra, as it glowed in a blazing red and orange pattern. Unmistakable was the word he had ended with in admiration before he had tipped her head over heels into the nearest fountain and took off yelling, “Gotcha good, Sara!”

  Sara was fairly sure his amusement had been because he managed to surprise her in a sneak attack. She knew her aura was fearsome, at least from bouts with other mages and their comments. So Sara had taken it as a compliment. Anything to get an edge on any of the other cadets in the arena was a plus, and frightening mage opponents out of their socks was a definite plus.

  Now when she stood in full magical view of another mage, no matter how small, and didn’t bother to hide her gifts or what she was—a killing machine in human form—it got the attention it deserved.

  He closed his mouth with an audible clack of his teeth, and Sara purred, “That’s better. Now, as I was saying: I want my assignment, my script, my supplies and to be out of here.”

  He swallowed nervously and pushed forward a piece of paper. Once she had picked it up, he raised a shaky arm and pointed to the table a few yards away that sat perpendicular to his own.

  “Ov-over there. They’ll get your assignment.”

  Sara frowned at him, and he started quaking. “None of your other recruits had to go over there.”

  He shook his head fiercely. “No, no. But as your captain said, ch-change in rank. Means paperwork. Always more paperwork in the imperial army.”

  He blinked nervously and tugged on his collar.

  Sara gave him a dubious look, but picked up the slip and walked over without another word. She didn’t think this was over. He scared too easily and acted too brashly. People like that were a bad combination and when she looked over her shoulder she saw him sitting at his desk giving her a look so cold, it put a shiver down her spine.

  Chapter 18

  She walked over to the table set off to the side of the long line. ‘To the side’ was being generous actually. It was no less than a twenty yard hike away from where she had started off but still in sight of her landing airship. By the time she reached the next station she was almost in the shade of a second airship it was so far away from gangplank she had descended.

  “Oh well,” Sara muttered to herself. “Can’t help that. And besides I actually prefer it. Means I’m far enough from that odious toad that I can’t swing back and knock some sense into him without a very good reason.”

  Knocking the sense out of the ensign was a luxury she couldn’t afford. Not only would it take up precious time, but it would invite more punishment from Captain Alena. Sara sighed, pasted a fake smile on her face, and tried to at least start out congenially with the man standing behind the desk. It hadn’t worked with the last desk jockey, but she hoped the second time was the charm. She didn’t have the patience for a third time.

  She took in his station with a very real quirk of her mouth which almost turned into a grin. The station was a lap desk on a box, really, but she couldn’t fault the man behind it for that. She would even praise him for his ingenuity.

  She stood waiting, and five seconds stretched into ten, and then twenty. He really hadn’t heard or seen her come up.

  It’s a weird way to exist in the world, she thought to herself. Blind as a bat and as deaf as a doorknob.

  She cleared her throat, since the method of waiting and hoping he would notice her was obviously not working. The sense of self-preservation in this one was extremely low. How else could you explain not knowing that someone with weapons and the skills to kill you in twenty-five different ways in less than five minutes stood right in front of you?

  Although, he must be used to those types of people by now, she thought grudgingly. It wasn’t like Sandrin, where a former arena gladiator could live next door to a fletcher who lived on top of a milliner. The sheer size of the city meant people of all walks of life—killers and pacifists alike—companionably walked the streets. But here, in the Algardis camp, every person was a killer, or would soon be one. Even the strategists planned death right down to the very second, calculating the death tolls of friends and foes alike when hatching their devious schemes.

  She cleared her throat louder, wondering if she would actually have to tap him on the shoulder to get his attention. She hoped it wouldn’t come to that. She didn’t have any aversion to touch, although she wasn’t used to it. She did, however, have an aversion to filth, and she herself was as filthy as it was possible to be without calling herself a pig and wallowing in a trough. Sara extended the same courtesy of a desire to be clean—and stay clean—to all those around her. Hence her hesitation at besmirching his attire. Then again, her perceptions of clean and her standards for what counted as a wash-up had drastically changed in the days and weeks since leaving Sandrin. She had received a crash course in survival outside of the pristine walls of the arena barracks on tough terrain, and she had to admit with pride that she hadn’t found herself wanting. But it didn’t mean she didn’t know that she stunk to high heaven and looked even worse, if such a thing were possible.

  So, when he finally looked up at her from the papers he was studying so diligently, she sighed in relief.

  He bowed slightly to her, and she felt her mouth drop in abject shock.

  “Young ma’am,” the older gentleman said formally.

  Pleasant wonder rocketed through her. It was like seeing a rabbit sitting in a foxhole, coming across an imperial solder with manners. You didn’t see that every day, and as quickly established before, it wasn’t a requirement of the job. Not of any rank, let alone a man assigned to a forgotten position in the shadow of a ship—a clearly undersupplied position, judging by the unsteady way his makeshift table was swaying from side to side in the wind.

  Holding out a hand for her to shake, he said, “Miles. Miles Forlon.”

  She raised a surprised eyebrow. Couldn’t he see how filthy she was? Still shocked that he even wanted contact with her grimy body, she stretched out her hand and shook his with a firm grip. “Sara Fairchild. Your—”

  She stopped mid-sentence. She had planned on calling the odious man across the way an ‘asshole of a friend’, but that was assuming too much. It assumed that he had friends and that, even if he didn’t, that his associates would not stand up for him in some way. Sometimes it was just the principle of the matter. Mercenaries versus soldiers versus mages and all that. She knew that there was a deep rivalry that went back generations for all three, which is why the imperial family was forced to have commanding generals over all three sectors of the imperial armed forces. A general for the armed soldiers who composed sixty-percent of imperial fighting power, a lord captain in charge of all the mercenaries, and she’d heard—a supreme mage who reigned over all the mages that worked only in one capacity- as healers, crafters, and siege mechanics. But Sara knew the lines were not so carefully drawn in the dirt as they seemed.

  Even though there was tension between the soldiers, mercenaries, and mages, the lines were not always so clear between divisions. Sometimes it was just the principle of the matter; on the front lines, you had to trust the person standing beside you, regardless of their division. They were all equally valuable targets to the enemy.

  As far as cross-division camaraderie went outside the front lines, Sara knew for a fact that the supreme mage kept a careful eye on the magic folk assigned
to the mercenaries and soldiers. Just because they didn’t fall under his jurisdiction didn’t mean he couldn’t oversee them, or so she had been told. For herself, she planned to avoid all senior mages with an air to stick a nose in her business. As long as she wasn’t on the front lines and in the midst of battle, she’d be fine. There was no way she’d go berserk, because she wouldn’t be here long enough to do so.

  In addition to the supreme mage’s presence, the commander of the soldiers in the imperial forces was also in charge of the spies, the torturers, and basically anything that didn’t fall under the purview of the mercenaries and mages, which was a lot. The commander’s purview also included overall provisions and supplies, which was why the minute she’d gotten off the ship, she’d been accosted by an incendiary man who worked for the soldiers and not the mercenaries.

  And not to forget the mercenaries, she thought to herself. That’s a whole other kettle of fish to deal with.

  She knew—and she figured all the other mercenaries knew—that Kansid wouldn’t be happy giving up his command over all mercenary forces, especially to a Corcoran guard leader who Sara knew from experience he would despise within an hour of their meeting.

  That is, if the commander has any sense.

  But she wasn’t on the side of Kansid. She couldn’t be. He was in charge of this deployment of the Red Lion Guard. He might have had nothing to do with the attack on her family or the search for the missing pages in her father’s journal, but there’s no way she could know that without meeting the man and questioning him. And even then, it depended on whether or not she believed him...and whether he believed her. She had to admit—it was an insane story.

  Hello, my name is Sara Fairchild. I’m the daughter of disgraced commander Vincent Fairchild. I snuck my way into the Mercenaries’ Guild to get into the archives and steal my father’s dossier, in the process setting off a series of events that got my mother killed and has me on the run for my life. Straight into a war.

  She had to admit it was a bit far-fetched, even for her. Who ran away from killers straight into the front lines of a civil war, for heaven’s sake?