*******
I tendered my resignation directly to Matthew when he returned from his meeting with Ben’thra. The loss, the pain, was bad enough; I figured the guild could get me a nice safe job somewhere else doing, well, something else. Anything else, really. Maybe I could go teach, live a life of transience just like my father.
He refused to accept it, as I knew he would. “Quit if you must,” he said, “but you’re staying right here. I’m not going to find a once-in-a-lifetime woman only to have her run off and teach or empty trash cans for a living. Sorry, Stacy.”
He finished with one of those half-smiles that I’ve come to know means that he really isn’t sorry in the slightest.
Oh, we married, of course. The surprising part was that nobody—none of my fellow mortals, anyway—seemed to mind the breach of chain-of-command etiquette. I guess my reputation had followed me to the station after all, and so everybody there was happy to see me finally settle down. At the same time, while as far as I could see the Governor didn’t change in the slightest, in taking a wife he became much more approachable, accessible, and downright normal to everyone else.
Sorscha was at the wedding. She glared at me the entire time. She, apparently, minded. Oh, well.
Also at the wedding were the other twelve members of the council, and them only; apparently the gods prefer their private ceremonies to remain private.
Ben’thra was there. He avoided me. Poor fool. Someday, somehow, I’ll get him back.
Some day.
Undercover Lies
Renna stood her post, scanning the horizon for flying shapes with wings and tails. A sigh escaped her lips. She’d been a borderlands guard for several months, and the promise of action and adventure had only been satisfied if you called cooking over an open campfire an adventure. It wasn’t, to her way of seeing things, at least so long as anyone other than Mitchie was cooking. If the young boy from central Cenna, the capital city of Amiotria, was cooking on an open flame then all bets were off, which was why the company didn’t let him do that anymore.
Renna snorted—city folk and their reliance on magic. Stupid, all of it. Yes, their nation boasted some of the most powerful mages in the world, but that was no reason to pretend the old ways didn’t exist. The gods, curse them all, had provided metal to make weapons and flint to make fire. Besides, out on the borders it was especially important to do things by hand because a single flow of elemental power woven in the vicinity of the guard shacks Renna and her fellows manned would set alarms ringing throughout a system connected all the way back into the core of the Amiotrites’ intelligence office.
Renna had no idea when or why the war with the gods had started. She doubted that anyone did. It had been going for ten long years, though, with no end in sight. The dragons were tough enough to deal with, their fire and claws having taken a number of lives including those of Renna’s parents. They were somehow immune to the magical flows of energy but not to grappling hooks, nets, and spears, which was why Renna always kept a net and a few spears close by. She’d lost her parents to dragons, yes, but she would avenge their death.
The dragon flights, then, were the reason the human sentries stood guard beside the magic detectors. The alarms could be surrounded by an entire flight of dragons and never peep, but let a rider cast a single spell and they’d be instantly pinpointed. A whole company of mages would pour from the keep’s portal ready to overwhelm the dragon rider before he caused serious damage. It worked; she’d participated in a defense once a few months ago. A dragon dove out of the sun, surprising the sentry who’d been on duty for a bit too long. As the dragon, a glistening green drake, had closed in on the kill its rider had fashioned what might have been a mighty fireball, and that had been the pair’s undoing. Instantly the entire complex had been alerted, and a dozen trained battle mages had taken the boy down from the dragon’s back and given him a heroic death while Renna and the rest of the guards had attempted to net the dragon. They’d failed, but the dragon had flown away with one of Renna’s spears dangling from its side, keening in what Renna had assumed was intense pain.
That spear throw had earned her a mark that she wore proudly.
She was ready for another attack by dragons and dragon riders. They were solid opponents, tough but capable of being beaten. It was the Green Witch that she feared, even more than the gods themselves. They all did, Amiotrite mages and foot soldiers alike. The witch was said to ride a green-scaled dragon, verdant robes and auburn hair flowing in the wind behind. She wasn’t one of the gods, the mages were convinced, but she was every bit as powerful. The chief difference, according to the legends, was that when the gods attacked they would kill you if you stood in their way. The witch, on the other hand, would kill you for the sheer joy of it. If she had time, she’d kill you painfully, drinking in every scream as she consumed your soul.
Renna snorted again. She didn’t believe all that. She was sure that the witch was powerful. She was certain that the witch had wreaked havoc. But to possess the power of the gods? To drink souls on purpose? Renna doubted it.
Her eyes swept the horizon again. She was due another vacation; her new stripes afforded her that much. Where to take it, though? That was the problem. The war had cut the Amiotrite lands off from all of the fabled tropical spots. Her parents were long gone now, and so there wasn’t any draw back to her home village of Snatholm. She supposed that she could go drink in the main garrison in Cenna, but….
The sound of a cleared throat behind her interrupted Renna’s mental vacation planning; she spun around. The tower’s top floor was open except for the magic detector that rested on a table in the middle. A man lowered his hood to reveal metallic green hair and leaned against the table while a redheaded woman walked toward Renna.
“I was told this was where my guard duty was to be,” the woman was saying. “Is that true?” Her walk was sinuous, her smile disarming. Renna felt terror rush through her chest, but couldn’t immediately determine why.
The woman moved the yards between them at a pace that seemed impossibly fast. It dawned on Renna, moments too late, what the metallic sparkle in the woman’s companion’s hair meant. He was a dragon, in humanoid form. A green dragon, then, with a red-haired companion, which could only mean that it was none other than the Green Witch who was in the process of smoothly inserted her dagger into Renna’s chest and slicing sideways, her hand over Renna’s mouth to ensure that the murder happened in total silence. Renna felt her heart flutter its final failing beats as she slid to the floor.
“It’s done,” the witch said, Renna’s vision fading as she wished she’d taken one of the new alert buttons. “Let’s take it and be gone.” The witch plucked the detector off the table and teleported out, vanishing as her green-haired companion also disappeared. Renna heard quiet pops of teleportation as the battle mages, who would normally be her cavalry, arrived to answer the alarm, but Renna knew none of them possessed either the healing power to save her life or the tracking power to follow the witch to her lair. It was indeed done, in more ways than one.
Undercover Truths - Undercover Lies Page 2