by Terah Edun
Although, Sara had yet to see Nissa’s magic in action. Quite frankly, she hoped she never would.
“I’m not here to fight you, Fairchild,” Nissa said with a lowered head.
Anyone else would have taken a person at their word. Just not in this situation and not facing an enemy mage of formidable power. Least of all not Sara Fairchild. Nissa Sardonien was a criminal of the highest order, and she would treat her as such. She had to wonder what idiot of a jailor had freed her or been killed by her as she escaped. Either option was a direct strike against the jailor’s character; it was just that the latter was slightly redeemable in the fact that he or she had died in the attempt.
It reminded me of her father’s tales of his mother actually. When her father first started out as an arena gladiator, he had been nothing. Financially destitute, unknown to the spectators, and without a benefactor to fund his training or his weapons. He’d walked onto the field with a simple sword of shoddy make and a shield that shattered with the first blow of his opponent.
Sara thought of her father leaning over her tired body. Sara had been lying flat on her back on the hot sands of the training grounds, sweat pouring down her face, her lungs wheezing for air. Her arms were aching from blocking attack after attack from the restrained, but still fierce, onslaught of her father.
He had eventually sat down next to her splayed body and said, “Do you know what my mother told me the morning I walked out of the door for my first arena fight?”
Sara had painfully turned a weary head to look over at him and blinked—or at least, she had tried to. She had already been able to feel her left eye swelling closed from a blow she had blocked a little too slowly.
“What?” she had managed to wheeze out.
Her father’s eyes had twinkled as he carefully put a finger on her face and traced the swelling under her eye. “You’re going to have a hell of a bruise tomorrow.”
Sara had sat up and leaned over on one arm. “She said that?” Her voice had risen in disbelief.
Her father had laughed. “No. She said this: Come back with your shield or on it.”
Sara was silent for a moment and then she frowned. “What does it mean?” she had asked him.
He had cleared his throat and said, “It means you either come back with your shield in victory, or come back dead on top of your shield with an honorable death.”
“Because your shield is big enough for you to lay in!” Sara had said in excitement as she forgot the painful aches on her body and her swelling eye. “At least, one of your shields can do that.”
“Yes, yes it is,” her father had responded.
With a pout, Sara’s mood had changed as she said, “But I’m not dead, and I lost my shield.”
Her father had shook his head. “In your case, it’s not a literal translation.” He had stopped, looked up at the sky, and back down at her while Sara had waited patiently for him to speak. “You did well, my fierce little girl,” her father had finally said. “Very well. You didn’t give up. You didn’t surrender, and you’ll grow stronger as you get older. You’ll be a force to be reckoned with one day.”
Sara had perked up at the praise. “Even against you?”
“Especially against me,” her father had promised as he stood and scooped her up from the sands.
“Father, put me down!” a young Sara had screamed with laughter.
“Soon, my daughter, soon!” her father had promised with his own booming laughter as he swept her around and around like a bird in flight. By the time he was through, they had both been dizzy, and Sara had been so happy that many of her aches and pains were just dull thoughts in the back of her mind.
Now as she stared at an enemy before her, Sara wondered what her father would say now. Whatever it was, she couldn’t think of it, so she approached the situation in the same way she would have in Sandrin. Cautiously. Carefully.
“Raise your face so I can see you, and back away slowly,” Sara demanded.
Nissa said nothing. She kept her head bowed and bunched up her legs, as if to stand.
“Stay on your knees,” Sara ordered.
Nissa shuffled back and raised her head defiantly.
Sara flinched when Nissa’s visage was visible to her eyes. The sight didn’t just scare her—it horrified her. Three parallels scars bore grooves in the cheeks on either side of her nose, marring the pale skin that reminded Sara of winter’s roses.
Tough as nails, Nissa said, “This is what your people do to prisoners of war. To mark all those who see us.”
Sara swallowed hard. “It keeps you from running off, I take it.”
Nissa smiled grimly. “Only because it puts a bounty on my head. Any person with these markings outside of imperial custody or the Algardis encampment has standing orders to be killed on sight.”
Sara grimaced, but she couldn’t really see the fault in that. “So what do you want me to do about it?”
The question was entirely rhetorical in her mind.
“I want you to take me back to the Kade mages,” Nissa said simply.
Sara laughed so loud that the conversations around them died off into stares and hushed whispers. “You’re a hilarious woman, Sardonien,” Sara said. “Now go be amusing somewhere else.”
Nissa shook her head. “You don’t understand. Do you really think these shackles can hold me?”
Sara glanced down at them and settled more calmly in the water. She didn’t turn her back on Nissa. She didn’t relax, but she didn’t think she would be having much of a problem anymore.
“They’re mage shackles. Unbreakable and inviolable,” Sara said. “So, yes, I think they will hold you.”
A small tic appeared in Nissa’s face. “Only for a time.”
Sara shook her head slowly. “Even if you could free yourself from your restraints, why would I help you? We don’t have the greatest history, if you remember, and you’re an enemy of the crown.”
Nissa rolled her eyes. “Let’s not overstate things. I was captured by your empress, and yet she didn’t kill me. Why do you think that is?”
“She wants information from you, clearly,” Sara said. “And she’s given the field-deployed commanders the leeway to do it. It’s a simple case. Torture the prisoner. Get the evidence needed to bring down their sect. In your case, the Kades.”
Nissa frowned. “Then tell me why I’m free to wander around this compound. Until they decide that it’s close to time to torture me, that is.”
“That makes no sense,” Sara said flatly.
Nissa smiled and raised up her cuffed hands. “See these? They’re triggered to the boundaries. In addition to restraining my powers now, they’ve reconfigured them so I couldn’t leave even if I tried.”
Sara said, “Now that I believe.”
“Not without help that is,” Nissa said. “Which is why I wasted precious moments of freedom from my guards by seeking you out.”
Sara shrugged. “If they let you go anywhere alone they’re bigger imbeciles than I thought.”
Nissa shook her head. “I don’t have time for this.”
“Neither do I,” said Sara flatly.
Nissa bared her teeth in a grimace. “What if I said I could help your cause?”
Sara sighed and shrugged. “Tell the mercenary commander or the supreme mage. You need not come to me.”
“I’m coming to you because you were right,” Nissa said urgently.
“Right?” asked Sara as she began to unbraid her hair. This conversation clearly wasn’t going anywhere too fast.
“Right not to trust your battle mage captain,” Nissa said bluntly.
Sara grabbed a comb as she continued to watch Nissa carefully. “Tell me something I don’t know.”
Nissa replied, “How about the fact that the Algardis imperial courts started this war.”
Sara didn’t pause attending to her hair. “In response to your belligerence and destruction of the countryside.”
“What proof do you have o
f that?” hissed Nissa.
“What proof do you have of your accusations?” Sara shot back. “Whatever it is you’re getting at, I do not want to hear it. I have enough on my plate.”
Nissa leaned back on her legs. “You mean your father’s death.”
Sara stiffened and lowered the comb slowly. “How did you know about that?”
Nissa cocked her head slowly to the right. “I know about a lot of things, little warrior.”
“Such as?”
Sensing an opening, Nissa looked at her hopefully. “Such as the fact that you don’t want to be here anymore than I do. But you’re searching for something. Or someone.”
So she doesn’t know about Hillan, Sara thought to herself in relief. As for my father, he was well-known. She could have heard about his death in any tavern in any city from here to Sandrin.”
Nissa narrowed her eyes and continued. “You don’t believe me.”
“Believe what?” Sara asked in exasperation. “You’ve told me nothing except for the fact that you want me to break you out of the largest fortified camp in the world and take you to my enemy’s doorstep in direct violation of the law.”
“The empress’s law,” Nissa firmly declared.
“The empress’s law is my law. From her mouth speeds justice by my hand,” Sara replied automatically, quoting the arena trainees’ motto that had been engrained from day one of training.
Nissa clutched her hands into balled fists and snarled in frustration. “What if I told you that the laws you follow, the regulations that brought you here, and even the war you’re fighting, were the very things your father was fighting against?” Nissa cried.
“Then I would say you’re lying,” Sara said.
Nissa shook her head. “I knew of your father. I—we trusted him.”
“We who?” Sara asked suspiciously.
“Who do you think?” Nissa cried out before hushing her tone once more. Strange eyes were watching their interaction with interest.
Sara’s face went blank as her eyes filled rage. This time, her hand curled into a fist, and the comb she was holding snapped in two, its crack clearly audible in the silence. She didn’t drop it. She couldn’t, since she was thinking of stabbing Nissa in the eye with the broken pieces.
“I’d ask you what you thought you’d gain by this foolish discussion,” Sara said coldly, “but I think it’s clear. You’ve clearly gone mad.”
“I have proof,” Nissa said.
“Lies,” Sara hissed. “If you knew my father so well, why did you try to kill me on the way here?”
“Because I didn’t think I’d need you,” Nissa lashed back. “And if I didn’t need you now, I’d put a blade through your belly without a second thought.”
Sara snorted. Well, that was honest.
Outwardly, Sara said, “It’s precisely that desire to escape that makes me not trust your word. That, and the fact that you were captured for crimes against the empress.”
“I’m not the only one accused of being a criminal,” Nissa said. “So was your father. Do you believe he did what they said he did?”
Sara responded slowly. “Whether or not he was arrested for an indiscretion means nothing. He certainly wasn’t allied with the likes of you.”
Even to Sara’s ears the protest sounded hollow.
“He was arrested for treason, you foolish girl,” Nissa cried mockingly. “What other indiscretion could you possibly think was the cause?”
“He was arrested for desertion,” Sara spluttered, “not for aiding the cause of convicts and rebels like yourself.”
Nissa eyed her coldly before starting to respond. “Sara—”
Sara’s mouth curled into a sneer. “Speaking of your current status, your keepers are here.” She nodded to two approaching soldiers walking the long route down the rows between the bathing pools. Unlike the bathers, these men were armed to the teeth.
Alarm flashed over Nissa’s face as she looked over her shoulder and back at Sara again.
“Listen, if you don’t believe me, you have to believe your bespectacled friend,” she hissed urgently.
“What?” asked Sara, exasperated as she flashed back on the conversation in the clearing about Ezekiel’s true identity and history. “You know who he is as well?”
Nissa looked more distracted than smug.
Sara pressed the point home. “Do you know who Ezekiel Crane really is?”
She wasn’t ready to bargain for the information with a prison break, but right about now she was damned tired of being the only one in the dark about her ‘bespectacled friend’.
“What? No,” Nissa said distractedly. “But I’ve heard of him, and I’ve heard of his exploits. If anyone really knows what got Commander Fairchild into harm’s way—and I’m telling you it was his alliance with our cause—then it’ll be Crane.”
Sara looked away, and Nissa’s hands shot out before they fell useless to the ground, unable to grab Sara’s hand as the linked chains of her shackles brought her up short.
“Please, Sara Fairchild, at least ask your friend,” Nissa pleaded, the guards only steps away now. “Ask Ezekiel Crane what happened to Vincent Fairchild the night before his arrest and summary execution. If you don’t want to do this for me, then do it for your father’s memory. Do it for the truth.”
“The truth,” Sara hissed at her in disgust. “You know nothing about the truth.”
There was nothing more to say.
One of the guards put a heavy hand on Nissa’s shoulders. “You said you came here for a bath.”
From the look of reprimand in his eyes, nothing more needed to be said. Nissa wasn’t going to get a bath and she would be lucky if she was still walking by the time this day was through.
Nissa shrugged off his grip and stood up on steady feet, keeping her gaze locked on Sara Fairchild all the while.
She walked away in silence, with the guards following closely.
Sara was all too aware of the inquisitive stares around her. Careful to keep any emotions from showing on her face, she eased back into the pool and resumed combing her hair, taking the opportunity to think everything over.
For her part, Sara decided to finish her bath and truly scrub herself clean before she made any rash decisions. She knew the moment she turned to sink into the bath what she planned to do, but it didn’t hurt to think it over again. The plan wasn’t necessarily rash. Rash would be running after Nissa, killing her guards, and finding exactly what she knew about her father’s last days—through torture, if necessary. No, she was going to methodically find out if Nissa was telling the truth about her father. Of course, the primary way to do that would be to go to the source of information—or rather, a source of information.
It always comes back to Ezekiel Crane, Sara mused to herself as she dried herself off. She put on the full set of fresh clothes, including sheathes in the boots and wrist-guards for weapons she didn’t even have. She liked the way the imperial armed forces thought, though. A girl couldn’t have too many places to store weapons.
Standing and straightening her clothes, Sara looked up to see what time of day it was but noticed that the entire sky was blocked by the rising steam that hovered in a dense fog a few feet above everyone’s head, milled about and drifted down again to encase the entire bath compound in a shroud of dark mist.
I guess that’s one way to keep the place warm, Sara thought to herself as she made her way back to the entrance, collected her now cleaned and polished weapons, and asked for directions to the healers’ compound.
Getting what sounded like five minutes of ‘turn this way, go around that compound, and cut through this field’ from the rather enthusiastically helpful attendant, she walked off and promptly got lost.
Seeing a farrier, who would surely know where everything in the camp was located—if only because he had to shoe horses for all sides—she calmly walked over and asked, “Where’s the healers’ encampment?”
The man looked over his shoulde
r with a bunch of nails clasped between his teeth and stayed bent over the horse’s hoof that she could now see he was shoeing. He glared at her, and the message was clear. Not now.
Sara held up her hands in surrender and backed off. “Alright, alright, I’m leaving.”
She turned around and walked some more until she ended up right back where she had started, in front of the older gentleman’s lopsided table. This time, it was a young woman who sat on an overturned barrel beside the desk.
She beamed up at Sara with fiery red curls framing her face. “Looking for Miles?”
“Umm, I guess so,” Sara said.
The girl leaned back so far on the barrel that for a moment Sara wondered if she would tumble off, but she didn’t. Then the girl asked, “Greying? Pretty chipper guy?”
The irony dripping from her voice told Sara she was laughing inside. Whether at Sara or at herself, she didn’t know.
“Sounds like my guy,” Sara said. She sheepishly admitted, “I’m sort of lost.”
“I can see that, sheepcakes,” said the woman drily. “Except for the crew, no one comes back to the airships without first checking with their captains.”
Confusion crossed Sara’s face. “Why not?”
“Desertion’s a crime, that’s why,” the girl said drolly. “Hop aboard one of these ships and head home. Or at least, that’s what most soldiers think. They’ll be heading home alright. In body bags.”
Sara blinked and looked around. The encampment seemed calm, structured and orderly. The bathing facility would be at home in any guild in Sandrin.
“It must be a real nightmare here, huh?”, she remarked drily.
The girl looked at her somberly. “You have no idea, do you?”
Sara opened her mouth and closed it, unable to answer.
