Blades Of Illusion: Crown Service #2

by Terah Edun

  Sara had the presence of mind to yell at the cowering girl in the corner before she started in on each one. “Margaret, stay back!”

  After that, all she could feel was the simmering rage of battle magic below the surface, the roar of the fight as man after man came at her, and the serene calm of doing what she did best. She even held back a bit. But just a bit.

  As she rode the man’s back down to the ground, Sara ignored the knives at her waist and decided to have some real fun. She grabbed the man’s outstretched hand, with the chain rattling in the air like a snake, and snapped back his arm, breaking his wrist in the process. It induced so much pain to his nerves that his fingers loosened and the chain flew from his grasp, over his back, and straight toward Sara. Just as she had intended. With a satisfied grunt, Sara grabbed the steel links in mid-air, snapped the heavy metal down on the back of his head, and let him fall to the ground with a bleeding wound for his troubles.

  She had the weapon she needed now. Flexible, formidable, and light of weight. To top it off, she’d snatched it right from the hands of her foe. Still smiling, Sara stood up with an exaggerated stretch and faced the remaining six men. “Well, that was fun. Now who’s ready to give me a real challenge?”

  Her tone was mocking. Even gleeful. She was a battle mage; it was in her nature to enjoy a fight, even if decorum said it was wrong to gloat in the middle of one. But the six men said not a word, and they stood frozen in a ring of witless stares around her as they realized just what they were in for at that moment. She wasn’t just some fresh recruit learning the ropes. She had been training all her life for down-and-dirty fights, and it had been a long time since she lost. Unfortunately for them, they didn’t waver, and even if they had, Sara knew she wouldn’t have shown mercy. She was ready to crack some skulls.

  The second brute that came for her was more of a challenge; he was a charging bull of a man, with his head lowered and fist jabbing forward like a bareback fighter in the ring. She took him to his knees with swift, jarring kicks at his kneecaps, one of which gave a satisfying pop as it twisted out of place. He went down to the floor, and she whipped the chain out with a satisfying snap at his face. Once. Twice. And he was out cold.

  She had planned not to kill them, but when the third man jumped on her back like a stinking monkey and howled with the same sound, all bets were off. She had just gotten clean in the baths for the gods’ sake. She didn’t need him and his grimy hands clinging to her body like a bad lover.

  Sara fell to the ground and rolled. She brought her elbow up in a sharp jab right at his throat. That didn’t stop him from pinning one of her arms to her side with a vice-like grip as he hugged her from behind. With one arm still free, it wasn’t a very effective offensive tactic.

  But she soon realized he didn’t need it to be. He had pinned the arm with the chain, which kept her from launching her own formidable offensive. It also opened the opportunity for another one of the men to bring his fist down with the force of a falling brick. Before Sara knew it, he’d managed to punch her twice in the face while his buddy kicked at her from behind. She barely heard the men’s taunts over the pounding pulse in her skull. Soon, the roaring in her ears overcame her, and she screamed aloud.

  Sara was screaming in pain and fury. She screamed for a reason. Whatever she did was a tactic in her arsenal. Screaming allowed her to lurch forward and clamp her teeth down on the hand of the unsuspecting man who had landed two free blows on her face, and it kept his attention away from her free hand. He howled in horror as he jerked his hand back, she clamped down and his flesh came off in her mouth. She grabbed a small knife from his waist, still determined not to kill them, and stabbed him as hard as she could near the thigh. She deliberately missed the femoral artery, but the knife still managed to tear a long and painful gash down his thigh. He fell away from her with a renewed wail and laid out on his back, clasping his leg with agony written all over his face.

  Before his partner realized it, Sara had twisted out from his grasp, turned around, and punched him so hard in the face that he was out cold immediately.

  Breathing hard and staggering to her feet, Sara secured the loose chain in intertwined loops between her fingers. “Who’s next?”

  A man with the sneering face of a lizard step forward. He came at her with a running leap and Sara made quick work of him by slamming the linked chain straight up into his ballsack, watched him fall down to the ground howling and silenced him with a quick kick to the head.

  “Like I said,” Sara said dryly, “Who’s next?”

  Every remaining man’s face was as pale as the moon.

  When they hesitated, she said tauntingly, “Lester, what about you?”

  “You’re about to get what you deserve,” he said while stepping forward and waving the others back. “She’s mine.”

  Instead of coming up against her with more chains or even a knife, he approached with a martial arts stance, his bare fists raised and his legs spread evenly.

  Sara hummed in approval. She had to give it to Lester, she didn’t think he’d had it in him. Doing a semi-honorable thing, that is.

  It’s probably his manly pride, though, not honor, she thought uncharitably. Can’t let a woman beat you, and you certainly can’t take her out of the fight by stabbing her. That wouldn’t seem right.

  “Well, then,” Sara said with a delighted smile, “it’s you and me. I hope this has been worth your little vendetta.”

  Lester hissed like a snake and did some false, quick jabs in the air. “It’ll be worth it when I wipe that smug smile off your face, woman.”

  Sara shrugged. “Since it’s you and me now, and you’ve kindly left your two remaining goons behind, I can only do the same.”

  Lester looked confused as he looked back at his men and then again at her, standing alone in the ring.

  Then he looked over at Margaret, who sat huddled in the corner as close to a tent as possible, as if the billowing fabric would protect her. Sara didn’t know if Margaret was cowering near the tent for protection from Lester, or protection from her, but it didn’t really matter. The young woman looked equally scared of them both.

  But that didn’t mean Sara didn’t feel protective of her, and she definitely didn’t care for Lester’s dark look in Margaret’s direction.

  “Don’t look at her, look at me!” Sara called out fiercely.

  Lester turned his eyes back on Sara with a smile. “If you think that cowardly guttersnipe can help you, you’re crazier than I thought.”

  Sara smiled as she deliberately dropped the looped chains from her hand. “Who said anything about her?”

  His eyes widened as he watched the links fall to the ground in a clinking pile. He flicked his eyes up to her. Now she had his full attention, and Sara aimed to keep it.

  Slowly, she reached down to her waist and unsheathed her knife. Lester flinched and changed his stance warily, waiting for her to grip it tightly and move in. Instead, Sara held the knife outward with a light grip. She could see that he grew less and less worried that she would throw it at him as she extended her arm to its full length, straight out from her side, and dropped the knife to the ground.

  “Now we’re even.”

  Lester looked up at her in wonder and raised an eyebrow.

  Sara deliberately misunderstood his gesture and said, “Sorry, I don’t take off my sword for just anybody. You have to get to know me first.”

  Lester caught the sarcasm and gave her a dark smile of his own. “Fair enough,” he said.

  Sara shrugged as she ignored the sting of the cuts on her face and the soreness in her legs from the kicks of the monkey-man, cracked her knuckles, and said, “Shall we?”

  Lester chose that moment to come at her with a flying kick, which she dodged with a leap back. She dodged jab after jab, and while she had to admit that his technique was good, her was still better. Sara hadn’t just trained in swordplay, knife fighting, and battle magic; she was also very familiar with hand-to-hand c
ombat. And what was mixed martial arts but the basis of hand-to-hand fighting?

  Soon, Sara became bored with avoiding his attacks and decided to go on the offensive. Using the collective tips of her fingers, she hit him at key points in his upper and lower chest, triggering painful flares and forcing him back. When he briefly lowered his head for a gasping breath, she rushed forward and around him. Sara swung up around him as she came from the side, secured a chokehold around his neck, and brought him down to the ground, using gravity and her own momentum to put him down quickly. She kept her chokehold until several seconds after he stopped struggling.

  She stood and kicked the knocked-out Lester a few times for good measure. She smiled and put her hands on her hips as she looked over at the two remaining men in the ring.

  One of them called out, “We surrender.”

  Sara raised an eyebrow and looked at the other man. “You too?”

  He nodded swiftly, although she didn’t trust the look in his eyes.

  “Too bad,” Sara Fairchild said in a sing-song voice. “I’m in a pissed off mood.”

  They barely had time for their pallid faces to go lily-pale in fear before she was on top of them. Sara swiped the feet out from under both of the men before she set about pounding them into the ground with her fists. Each blow satisfied her baser desire for revenge. Revenge for her father, revenge for her mother, revenge for all the dead mercenaries left on the trail behind them. Revenge for Kaitlin, a woman brought down by the greed of nobles, and revenge for Margaret, a girl who cowered before the thugs sworn to uphold the law.

  Sara was breathing hard by the time she finished. She felt immensely satisfied, and all seven men were down for the count.

  Quickly, she spit out a wad of blood and saliva from her mouth, a gift from the man who had gotten two lucky punches on her face before she’d bitten the flesh straight off his hand. Then she stood up. Directly across from her, huddled on the ground, was Margaret Verhaas, and she didn’t look the least bit happy...or scared.

  In fact, she looked horrified.

  Sara frowned and wondered why. She had just defeated the men who had had a chokehold around Margaret’s life.

  She should be happy. Shouldn’t she? Sara wondered.

  Determined to reassure the girl that the fight was over, she took a step towards her.

  As she walks backward, Sara noted with some irritation. We’re in the middle of an armed encampment. She should be able to recognize when a fight is over.

  But for every step she took forward, Margaret, who had stumbled up from the ground, took another step back.

  Sara tried reading her face, but she couldn’t really get a feel for what the girl was thinking. Maybe she could talk her down.

  Her mouth sore from the punches, Sara tried not to wince as she said, “They’re down.”

  “I know,” Margaret said. She was visibly shaking.

  Sara switched to reassurances, then, thinking she was just scared. “They won’t bother you again.”

  Margaret laughed. Sara studied her, wondering if the girl had just gone crazy...or if she had already been nuts.

  Sara sighed in frustration, trying yet another tactic to lure the girl out of her corner. “I know you were scared, and you didn’t want to lure me into a trap. They forced you. I get it. It’s over. Okay?”

  Margaret shook her head slowly.

  Lovely, thought Sara. I’m not sure if I should classify that as progress or not.

  Whatever it was, she didn’t have time for it. “Look, I have to go. Having them tell the authorities I did this is one thing. Having other soldiers discover me here red-handed is another. You understand?”

  Margaret stood mute.

  Sara muttered a curse under her breath. “If they find me here, they’ll charge me for insubordination and mutiny. If they find me later and can’t tie me to this, I’ll get off with a stiff warning. That’s the way it has always been. At least, if none of them die,” she added, going to retrieve the knife she had dropped before fighting Lester. “And none of them are mortally wounded. Except thigh-guy over there,” she noted. “Now where is my small knife?”

  She couldn’t remember where it had gone to after she’d cut thigh-guy from groin to knee.

  Margaret pointed a trembling finger to the ground where a few dark stains of blood surrounded the knife.

  “Oh, thanks!” Sara said gratefully as she went over and reached down for it.

  He must have pulled it out when I wasn’t looking, she thought, deliberately avoiding looking at Margaret. In Sara’s opinion, it was a good thing that Margaret had at least had the initiative to respond to her question. Which meant that her stiff movements and refusal to say more than a few words could just be shock.

  “So,” Sara said as she stayed bent over, “I’ll just be going.”

  When Margaret made a sound mid-point between a growl and a wail, Sara looked up at her in confusion.

  “What?” Sara asked.

  Margaret shook her head, horrified. “What have you done?”

  Guess she’s not in shock anymore.

  Sara frowned, unsatisfied. “I freed you.”

  Margaret yelled at her, “You didn’t free me! Those are Castile’s men! When he finds out what you’ve done, he’ll skin my hide and tan yours.”

  Chapter 24

  Sara finished wiping her hands and the small knife on the back of moaning man’s shirt and asked, “Whose Castile?”

  Margaret whimpered and shook her head as some tears glimmered on the edge of her eyelids. “You don’t even know anything, do you?”

  Sara was getting heartily tired of the girl saying that, so she stood up and went over. “Why don’t you explain?” she suggested coolly as she looked at her, waiting for the girl to flinch or cower.

  To her surprise, the tall girl glared at her with something-akin to fire in her eyes. It wasn’t true fire, though, and it looked so small that Sara got the feeling that a beating or a wrong word would douse its flames, and once more she’d see the cowering female from moments before.

  Still, Sara thought, that’s good. It looks like whoever this Castile is, he or she hasn’t beaten the spirit out of her. Yet.

  Or ever, if Sara Fairchild had anything to say about it.

  Aloud, she asked, “So why don’t you tell me, who is this Castile?”

  Margaret frowned, wiped away her tears with a frustrated hand, and sighed.

  Sara, for one, didn’t see what she had to be frustrated about. It was she who had been ambushed and had to beat up over half a dozen men in the process. But she let it go. She had more important things to worry about.

  She reached up a hand and grabbed Margaret’s chin lightly. With just enough force, she turned the redhead’s face so that she was looking down into Sara’s orange eyes.

  Quietly, Sara said, “Tell me.”

  Margaret sniffed, sucked in her left cheek, and said sullenly, “Castile is the ruler of this camp.” Sara cocked her head, silently encouraging her to continue. “He’s a mid-ranking mercenary with the protection of both the mages and imperial soldier commanders.”

  “Kansid, then,” Sara said softly, very much aware of how this worked. Some officers ruled over their regiments and platoons like little fief-lords. Usually, that officer was the head honcho, the person-in-charge. Not a lackey. Someone like Kansid, not his third officer. She didn’t know what rank this Castile held; he could very well be high up the ladder. But she knew that regardless of his status or position, he would be just the same as any other false ‘ruler’ who took it upon themselves to use their power to maintain hegemony above the rest of the crowd.

  Anything was fair as long as they were happy and in charge. They protected their cronies, and their cronies protected them. If Sara hadn’t been standing in the middle of the largest outpost of imperial armed soldiers, she would have called it what it was: the biggest gang of thieves on this side of the empire. But she didn’t...because she wasn’t stupid.

  Margaret
nodded and sucked in a breath. “That’s what they say.”

  “And the supreme mage?”

  Margaret confirmed. “Magpie, they call her.”

  Sara’s brow creased in confusion. “Why?”

  “Apparently she’s got an affinity for birds, or something like that,” Margaret said with a shrug. “But it doesn’t matter.”

  She clammed up.

  “Why not?” Sara asked gently, releasing her hold on the girl’s chin.

  Margaret sniffed and relented. “Because those two, Kansid and Magpie, are so far up the ranks that a beating here or there doesn’t grasp their attention. This is the doldrums, girl. We’re at the very bottom of the ladder, which makes us fodder for any who have a mind to beat us.” Margaret looked around at the moaning men on the ground, only some of whom were still conscious, before glancing back at Sara. “Or at least I am,” she amended with a shiver.

  Sara looked around at all her opponents laid out on the ground, and then her ears perked as she heard shouts. People were coming closer. Not at a fast pace, judging by the voices she could hear, but they would be here soon enough. Sara needed to be elsewhere before then.

  She held out her hand and said to Margaret urgently, “Not anymore.”

  “Not anymore what?” Margaret asked while folding her arms crossly.

  “I pledge to protect you against Castile, but you have to help me first,” Sara said.

  Margaret scoffed. “You against Castile? No way.”

  Sara gestured to Lester and his crew. “I did this, didn’t I?”

  “Banging around a couple men is way different than taking on the biggest non-ranking officer in the imperial army,” Margaret pointed out.

  “Trust me. I can handle Castile.”

  I’ve certainly handled enough thief lords in my time, Sara thought wearily.

  Margaret stared at her. “It’s not that I don’t believe you. But I don’t know if I can trust you.”

  A smile cracked Sara’s face. “I was thinking the same thing.”