by Terah Edun
Margaret snorted. “So...you better get out of here. His men are coming. Castile’s, I mean. They didn’t know about this throw down, but you can be sure Lester will tell him.”
Sara looked thoughtful. “Will Castile take immediate action?”
“Against a lone woman?” Margaret asked. “Probably not. Would look bad for his image, after all. Like his little empire preys on the women of the armed forces.”
The last sentence was said with heavy sarcasm.
Sara cocked her head thoughtfully. “Does it?”
It was an honest question. Some despots in the mercenary field did prey on women, armed or not, but others were just greedy shmucks who wanted an equal-opportunity hand in the pot.
Margaret gave her a wry look. “Depends on who you ask. The helpless, the ones who can’t fight, like the administrators and runners like me, then yes. The majority of us are women. But don’t think Castile doesn’t have a bunch of dumb female brutes in his personal head-knocking force.”
Sara nodded. “Good to know.”
Margaret shrugged in resignation. “He’d probably recruit you.”
Her voice was hesitant, as if she wasn’t sure how Sara would feel about the proposition. If Sara wanted to be recruited, then it was a good thing; if she didn’t, the suggestion was an insult. But she didn’t have to worry. Sara didn’t really feel like taking out any sort of condemnation on someone innocent. Margaret was just trying to be helpful.
With deadly calm, Sara replied, “He could try.”
And that was all she needed to say. Her intent was clear. If Castile came up against her, he would leave limping with his balls in his hands or on a stretcher bound for a pyre.
Margaret looked at her with wider eyes. “You know...I believe you. I believe you when you say you’d take Castile on. I don’t know if you’d win. But I think you’d try.”
Sara bowed with a grin. “Thanks for the vote of confidence.”
Margaret laughed. Sara noticed that the noises outside were getting closer.
Time for me to go.
She turned and began to walk out of the small enclosure, hoping she didn’t get lost on the way.
Behind her, she heard a voice call out, “I’ll take you to your tent.”
Sara turned from the edge where she stood and frowned. “What about Lester?”
Margaret walked over the bodies and said, “Looks like he’ll be out for a while.”
“And Castile?”
Margaret shrugged. “I did what Lester asked, Castile can’t fault me for that. When I get back, I’ll tell him I ran away scared from the big, bad woman warrior.”
This time Sara didn’t smile. It saddened her that Margaret was going back.
“So you’re still going back?” Sara confirmed unhappily.
Margaret shot her a sarcastic look. “Of course, sweetcheeks. I got to survive somehow.”
Sara pursed her lips, but she didn’t chastise her. She couldn’t. If they had been in Sandrin, Sara would have done something about it. But they weren’t. They were on the battlefield and at war. She needed to get in and out as fast as she could, not herd every sheep from wandering too close to the wolves.
At least, that’s what she told herself as she followed Margaret Verhaas between the tents again. This time, she was on her way to find the next person she needed to talk to: Ezekiel Crane. After him, she would search for Matteas Hillan.
This time, it didn’t take them long to get to the destination Sara had intended to go to in the first place. Margaret didn’t lead her on a circuitous route or try to weave through the residential sections of the camp. Instead, they walked through the cooks’ side, past the armaments sections, and in no less than ten minutes Sara saw the small triangles that marked the two-person bunks of the lower-rung soldiers. Her people.
For now, she thought. She kept the bloody side of her small knife hidden from casual view. She didn’t want anyone spotting the blood and calling attention to it. The last thing she needed was to be brought up on charges for mutiny. As if this week could get any worse.
When they came to a stop in front of one particular tent, identical in color and shape to the hundreds around them, Margaret bowed with a flourish and said, “Your tent, milady.”
Sara had to hide a smile as she watched Margaret grin at her own joke. The mirth in her eyes actually matched what her lips were showing. Sara knew then that it had been worth it. The aches and pains of today’s fight were all worth it for that single genuine smile.
Then Margaret stepped back and said, “I guess I’ll leave you to it.”
Her tone was hesitant, but her look was firm as she stepped around Sara and went to head back to her side of camp.
Or rather, Castile’s, Sara thought miserably.
Before her companion could leave, though, Sara reached out and grabbed her arm, holding her steady. “I thought you were going to help me break someone out of prison.” She felt the young woman flinch at both the touch and her words.
Margaret shifted warily on her feet. “I know I said that.”
“Did you mean it?” asked Sara.
“Not really.”
Sara shrugged and turned to duck into the tent as she said, “Alright, then.”
“But!” said Margaret in a hitching tone.
“But?”
“But why would you even trust me now?”
Sara flashed a smile. “Everyone deserves a second chance.”
Margaret waved away the excuse. “Horse dung. Besides, I betrayed you.”
Sara twisted her lips as she tried to think of an excuse that Margaret would believe. The truth of the matter was that she didn’t want her to go back to Castile, but she also didn’t want to make herself responsible for Margaret’s continued safety. How could she keep Margaret away from Castile while also keeping Castile away from Margaret?”
Sara whistled and then said, “You want the truth?”
Margaret crossed her arms with a stubborn look on her face. “Yes.”
Sara shrugged. “Keep your friends close and your enemies closer. You’re the only one who knows what I plan to do, and I’d prefer you not tell anyone about that plan before it happens.”
Margaret eyebrows rose. “Now that’s an excuse I can believe. But why wouldn’t you just kill me to keep your secret?”
Sara grinned. “A murder is harder to hide than you think. Especially with thousands of roaming pairs of eyes around.”
Margaret nodded. “Alright, why not threaten me?”
“What could I threaten you with that would trump Castile’s hold on you?” Sara asked frankly.
Margaret chuckled, as if talking about threats and death with Sara was a lot less frightening than the prospect of what Castile would do to her.
And maybe it is, Sara thought sadly.
Finally, Margaret asked, “What’s to stop me from squealing the moment your back is turned?”
This time Sara smiled. “Your sense of adventure.”
“That’s all?”
“That, and the fact that you can tell Castile that you were continuing to trail me for information, just in case Lester woke and needed to know what I was up to,” Sara said affably. “Revenge, and all that.”
“Now that sounds like a plan,” Margaret said as mirth lit her eyes.
“Thank you. Thank you very much,” Sara said jokingly, bowing in a mockery of Margaret’s earlier formal behavior.
Silence fell over them, and a serious expression overtook Margaret’s face.
“Now what do we do?” she asked.
“Now,” Sara said guiltily, “we give them something that they can’t resist. And gain entrance at the same time.”
Sara ducked into her tent.
She heard Margaret complaining as she followed her inside. “I thought you said we were breaking someone out of prison.”
“We are,” said Sara flatly.
“So?” asked Margaret pointedly. “A present does not equal prison.”
&nbs
p; Sara smiled and said, “It does if we’re disguising a very tall woman as a very small little person.”
She pulled out a bracer made of long leather straps and fitted together with bits of iron. It looked like a human version of a horse’s bridle. She turned around with a wicked smile on her face.
Margaret blinked. “Run that by me one more time?”
Chapter 25
Sara began to pull on the straps and buckles that made up the strange contraption. She wanted to be sure that it still held the elasticity needed to stretch to twice its original size limits and was rust-free enough that the metal bits wouldn’t break easily. As silly as it was, this funny piece of leather and metal was the key to her plan.
Sara hadn’t been the one to bring it on their journey—that had been Ezekiel’s doing. It was one of the first things he had disclosed, the fact that he’d pilfered it from Cormar’s warehouse.
Well, pilfered is the word we’d agreed to use to describe whatever he’d done, Sara thought dryly.
She’d referred to it as outright stealing once she had seen the rest of Ezekiel’s loot. Ezekiel had winced and pushed his glasses up on his noses, snootily saying, “I’d prefer to call it re-appropriating.”
Sara had glared and said, “And when he strings you up by a noose, what are you going to call that?”
Ezekiel had sniffed, stuck his nose in the air, and said, “He won’t. I made sure of that.”
“He won’t what?” Sara remembered responding sarcastically. “Find out you stole his things, or hang you by your neck?”
Ezekiel had nearly tripped over a fallen log in the mud, only managing to keep his balance by latching onto her shoulder. When he’d righted himself, he had coughed and said, “Thank you. Both.”
Sara had then rolled her eyes and proceeded forward in the march.
“Sara,” he’d called out plaintively. Ezekiel was walking a slower pace, and his voice carried from some distance behind her.
Sara had shook her head and kept walking, but she had called out to him and said, “I don’t want to see anymore. I don’t want to hear about things. I want nothing to do with your pilfered artifacts.”
Ezekiel had run up to her and huffed, “Fine. But this one is special.”
“Nope,” Sara had said firmly, determined to keep her word and not hear another word.
“It can help you find Matteas,” he had said cleverly.
Sara had slowed her pace. Useful was different.
“How so?” she’d hissed out of the side of her mouth. At the time, Sara had still been a trifle upset that he’d snuck out of the city and followed her without her knowing. His choice to steal from Cormar, or whatever he’d called it, had made Sara an unhappy friend stuck between a rock and a hard place. She couldn’t send him back to Cormar’s gentle mercies, but bringing him to war didn’t seem the smartest idea, either.
But Sara knew, despite her worry, that Ezekiel was a grown man. He’d chosen his bed, and he would lie in it.
Sighing internally, she tried not to let doubt plague her as she thought, He only did what he did in order to help you.
In hindsight, Sara now wondered if that was all true. There were layers upon layers of mysteries involving her trek here, and Ezekiel Crane seemed to be one of the more mysterious ones.
When Ezekiel had unraveled the cloth covering and brandished the object in his hand, she’d been unimpressed.
When he explained that it could change a person’s appearance, she’d been even less impressed.
“So can any mage with a half-decent concealment spell. With a really good one, you could fool your own mother,” Sara recalled saying. “And you don’t have to look like a horse to do it.”
Ezekiel had issued a long-suffering sigh. “A concealment spell is different. Just like the retraction orb I have in a trunk somewhere.”
Sara’s eyes had narrowed. “You took that, too? What else did you ‘procure’, Ezekiel Crane?”
“Enough to get us in and out of trouble a few times,” he admitted. “But that’s not the point.”
Sara had raised an eyebrow at that, ready to argue that it was the entirely the point if Cormar figured it out and brought an army down on their heads.
Ezekiel had continued, oblivious to her simmering anger. “The refraction orb does more than an illusion could ever do. Concealment spells only provide an optical illusion to change the bearer’s appearance in another person’s eyes. This...this is a completely revolutionary device.”
“Really?” Sara had said flatly. Revolutionary sounded expensive. What’s more, revolutionary sounded like something Cormar would miss from his warehouse. He kept a meticulous catalog of the artifacts stored within his personal collection.
Sara had had a worse feeling about the contraption as the minutes wore on.
“Really,” Ezekiel had said in excitement, enthused that she actually seemed to be displaying interest, or at least less outright skepticism. “It doesn’t rely on tricking an individual’s visual perception of a bearer,” he had said while avoiding a pair of low-hanging swamp branches. “Instead, it can completely change a person’s physical bone structure and appearance to mimic another person.”
Sara had hummed. “Alright, so you can use it to impersonate the Empress of Algardis?”
“Well...no,” Ezekiel had said slowly.
Sara had raised an eyebrow and asked, “The largest banker in Meren?”
“Not exactly.”
Sara had stopped and held out a constraining hand straight across Ezekiel’s chest, forcing him to halt mid-stride.
“What exactly can it mimic?”
Ezekiel had looked up at the sky, or where he approximated the sky would be since they’d been walking under a heavy canopy since that morning, and had started to say something before his voice had caught in his throat.
Sara had glared at him. “What was that? I didn’t quite catch what you said.”
Ezekiel had sighed and rubbed a hand through his already ruffled hair. “A little person, alright? The contraption can change any human who puts it on into a little person.”
Sara had stared at him for a long moment. “You mean it turns you into a child?”
“No,” Ezekiel had said, exasperated. “It turns absolutely anyone, from a six-foot-tall buxom blonde to a spindly bookkeeper like myself, into a Florien.”
“A...Florien?” Sara had echoed. “What’s that?”
“Hey, get a move on!” one of the mercenaries had snapped.
Ezekiel had shuffled his feet and motioned to the path in front of them. “If we could keep moving, madam, I will explain.”
Sara had blinked and dropped the arm that held him back. “Yes, let’s,” Sara had said.
Ezekiel had started walking and talking then. “Floriens are a species of human, not kith, that disappeared from the realm right around ten years after the empire was founded.” He had looked over at her as if that should have rung a bell.
Sara had shrugged—dumbfounded.
Ezekiel had continued. “Right, well. They were a species without magic, but they possessed an extraordinary gift for metalwork and a fierce loyalty to the land. It was said they were the only other creatures aside from the royal family to commune with the earth and its representatives so frequently.”
“And?”
“And they were about three-feet tall, furry all over, and didn’t wear clothes.”
“Oh.”
“Just ‘oh’?” Ezekiel had asked, amused.
“Well, yeah,” she had replied. Those details hadn’t seemed particularly important at the time.
Ezekiel’s spirit had not been broken, though, and he had continued undeterred. “Anyway, they all disappeared, and the only thing that’s left is some of their metalwork and some curious objects.”
“Including this,” Sara had guessed.
“Something like that,” Ezekiel had said vaguely as he turned the contraption this way and that in his hands. “I have some theories about thi
s, though.”
“Does it involve getting it submerged in water?”
“What?” Ezekiel had asked in a shocked tone. “No!” From the outrage in his voice, it had been as if she’d offered to drown his only child.
“Relax,” Sara had said while pointing ahead. “We’ll be needing to cross that deep pool of water ahead, so I suggest you put your precious contraption away.”
He had promptly obeyed, and that had been the last she had heard of the thing until now.
“So what now?” Margaret asked, staring at the strange instrument.
“Now,” said Sara with a hopeful light in her eyes, “we sneak into wherever they’re keeping Nissa Sardonien and leave again with a little person in tow. We’ll put an enchanted item in her place to avoid detection for at least a little while.”
Margaret smiled. “Now that’s a plan.”
“Really?” asked Sara skeptically. “It sounded incredibly stupid to me.”
“I know,” Margaret deadpanned. “I was humoring you. But at least we’ll get some adventure out of this.”
Sara rolled her eyes. “Yeah, at least there’s that.”
And if this doesn’t work, Sara thought wryly, we’ll get some prison time as well.
Aloud, she said, “Let’s go find us a sun mage.”
As they came around the corner and eyed the two very alert guards standing in front of the large tent, Margaret whispered nervously, “Remind me again. Why are we breaking the sun mage out?”
“We’re not breaking her out,” Sara said, forcing calm into her own voice. “We’re just taking her with us to the healers’ tent and then bringing her back again.”
“Why?” Margaret repeated. She sounded like an irritated child, and it was all Sara could do not to snap at her to hush.
“Because,” Sara said simply. And who said she couldn’t be a great debater?
Margaret grounded her teeth audibly. “Please tell me something.”
Sara sighed and rubbed her forehead in frustration. “I believe Nissa knows information about my father and on top of that I need to get that information before I find a mercenary named Matteas Hillan. Satisfied?”
“Not nearly,” grumbled Margaret.
