by Terah Edun
Reaching around, Sara grabbed the soft dream blankets closer and hunkered down some more in her makeshift shelter, secure that, at least in her fantasies, she was safe.
That thought didn’t last long, however. Because the irritating voice would not stop harassing her. She was almost mad enough to do something about it, too. Almost. But not quite yet. Instead, she rolled back over, determined to not let the voice harass her into submission, and tried to will herself into a deeper sleep. One that would erase all of her mistakes and all her bad judgments.
One that would give her peace.
Five minutes later, as a hand shook her awake with harshness, Sara knew that peace was for cravens and she was once more ready to start breaking jaws.
Starting with the asshole who sounded so much like her captain that even if he hadn’t been trying to shake her awake, she still would have wanted to punch his lights out.
Giving in to his insistent urges, she threw back the covers and sat up with a look on her face that said blood would be shed.
They should have left her alone.
She had only seconds to process going from the deep, comforting darkness of being curled up under the covers to the bright, open light of an unclouded sky and about a hundred different faces staring down at her with expressions that varied from indignant fury to disdain. No one seemed to be happy waiting around for her to wake up.
“I’m glad to see you’re finally up.” This time the voice dripped with disgust, and that was all Sara needed to hear to realize that this wasn’t a dream or a nightmare. It was all too real.
She would have been happy if her warrior’s instinct had kicked in and she’d punched her way out of the crowd of probing eyes surrounding her, but Sara just felt like a child who had done something horribly wrong and would now be scolded in public. So she did what a child did: she closed her eyes and counted to ten, waiting for the dream vision to go away. When her eyes opened back up and everyone was still there, including Captain Barthis glaring down at her from above, she gulped harshly.
And then she tried not to flinch as she glanced from face to face. What seemed like half the imperial court stood waiting in the wings behind him. At least, she assumed that was where they had all come from. They were certainly wearing enough finery—some even had jewels—to make her think they couldn’t be anything else.
Of course, she’d never seen a courtier as close as she was now, so it was really just a guess, and one that wasn’t relevant at the moment anyway. It didn’t matter who they were—it mattered who she was and who the captain she served under was. And right now, he looked mad enough to order her whipped in the streets. Or, in this case, an open field. Sara didn’t think he really wanted to hear that she’d had nothing to do with whatever it was that had gotten stuck in his craw this time. Still, she wouldn’t be a Fairchild if she didn’t face up to the crimes she had been accused of and was guilty of.
So, pursing her lips and stiffening her spine, Sara did what she should have done in the first place: she sat up and threw back the covers. With an extra push, she even managed to clear off the blankets covering her legs. Standing on shaky feet, she rose to attention and saluted her captain with her eyes firmly pinned on his face.
The least she could do was look him in the eye as she explained why she’d maimed an innocent horse and killed the empress’s representative.
Sara didn’t remember much about her trip back to the encampment of the Imperial Armed Forces, but it only made sense that they’d brought her back here. And she did remember the horse coming down and all thousand-plus pounds landing on her.
Someone had healed her of a grievous injury, but probably only so they could make sure to kill her themselves. After all, such a fall had been enough to kill its rider, as well as the person it landed on. Sara happened to have the constitution of a feral dog and was hard to kill. But that dainty representative of the empress, she probably hadn’t known enough to throw her feet from the stirrups and clear the horse. She could have just have easily broken her back as had her head crushed.
Sara was betting on the former, judging by the sour looks on the faces around her.
After swallowing harshly, Sara spoke aloud for the first time since waking. “Lieutenant Commander Sara Fairchild reporting for duty, Captain!”
Barthis continued glaring at her with a malevolent look, but he accepted her salute with a stiff one of his own before moving on.
“Do you know where you are, Lieutenant Commander?”
Sara paused and glanced around again, trying to see part of the landscape, but she was surrounded in a circle by curious eyes and strange faces. None of which looked friendly, and there were no tents in the distance to indicate that she had landed back into the encampment of the Imperial Armed Forces, as she had first surmised.
It was all just a guess from there.
“No, sir?” she said.
He nodded and said, “Smart answer. You shouldn’t anyway.”
Sara held back the caustic comment, well, why’d you ask, then? Instead, she kept her body at parade rest and tried to mask the emotions threatening to show on her face.
Apparently, she didn’t do a very good job of it, because then he gave a short, brutal laugh and said dryly, “There’s the firecracker I know. I just needed to see if you were still you.”
Sara wondered what that meant.
But he continued before she could ask. “In fact, if I hadn’t dragged half of my remaining regiments behind me in a forced march myself, I wouldn’t believe it either.”
Sara kept her gaze pinned on his face. That didn’t seem to be a request for comment on her part, though she did notice some disdainful murmurs coming from the crowd surrounding them.
Barthis noticed them, too, judging by the twitch of his eyes when they whispered. For the first time, she wondered where his guards and her fellow soldiers under his command were. Why was he here alone?
“Where is here, sir?”
He disdainfully looked around as he answered her, almost as an afterthought, “The ass-crack of nowhere.”
Sara didn’t know what to make of that.
So she opted to give him her truth instead. At the very least, it would allow her to do something about the dark cloud of regret that was riding over her ribcage like a ghoul that she desperately wanted to snap off and hurl to the farthest reaches of the empire. Perhaps by speaking her truth, she could do that in her own way.
Then he waved a hand impatiently and said, “But never mind where we are at the moment—where have you been?”
Seeing her chance, Sara didn’t hesitate. She just spoke. Starting with how she’d been watching for enemy encroachments as the Kade sent waves of arrows into the command area, and then her disbelieving realization that the Kade onslaught wasn’t done—in fact, it had just begun when the blast went off.
Stumbling a bit to describe Gabriel, Sara did her best to explain that she had been imprisoned by some kind of Illusions Mage. It surprised her that the captain didn’t interrupt her for more information about Gabriel—if anything, he rushed her past the subject.
Thinking that he was merely furious at the fact that she’d managed to kill an important person by mistake, Sara took a deep breath and squared her shoulders.
“Sir, I regret to inform you that upon re-entry to this…area, I accidentally fatally injured a good samaritan, a person who tried only to aid me—the member of the empress’s entourage,” Sara said, stumbling over the words.
She wasn’t quite sure if she’d been imprisoned in another realm or just a different geographic area, because Gabriel’s illusions had been so damned thorough, so she’d had to guess at her wording.
“Accidentally?” barked her captain in amazement. “How does a battle mage just mistakenly kill someone? Your control, our control, should be paramount.”
Sara cringed and ducked her head in shame. She didn’t even bother correcting him on the fact that she was a War Mage now. It hardly mattered, and besides, he
was right. She’d had no excuse, even with a broken leg.
Still, she stammered on, “It might also have been a person of…some esteem.” Barthis raised an eyebrow as Sara squirmed and blurted, “I killed the empress’s representative, sir!”
There. She’d said it. Now at least she could cringe in peace. The dark cloud of regret slowly unlocked from where it had managed to lodge itself above her heart, and she could actually breathe easier for the moment. It had taken a lot of courage, surrounded by disapproving eyes, to keep her head held high while she explained what even a novice trainee would be ashamed of.
So it could be understood why Sara was actually offended when she heard chuckles go around in the group. Confused, Sara turned and saw some courtiers were actually mocking her. Hands twitching to the weapons that were missing from her side, Sara had to wonder what in the heck was going on.
She jumped nearly two feet in the air when Barthis clasped her roughly on the shoulder and said, “I informed the courtiers here that you were brash, reckless, and more honorable than the gods’ own teeth. I told them you wouldn’t mince your words or hide behind falsehoods. It looks like I was right.”
Sara blinked and stared at him in some surprise. She was a little too relieved that he wasn’t furious, but as the chuckles grew, she had to say it was harder to not give in to resentment. What did they have to laugh about?
“Sir?” she said in a weak voice, not quite sure what he was getting at.
Her captain turned her slightly to the side, and a woman walked forward as people politely stepped aside in a wave.
“I’m not dead,” the woman Sara had met once before said as she came to Barthis’s side. “You, however, Fairchild, have a fair bit of explaining to do.”
13
Sara stiffened and snapped a salute. She didn’t even have time to be surprised or give the chuckling crowd around her a piece of her mind. Primarily because the woman in front of her was eyeing Sara as if she possessed the secrets of the universe, and would do anything in order to pry them out of her.
Nervously, but at least grateful the woman she had thought she’d killed was alive, Sara said weakly, “Of course, my lady. What is it that you wish to question me about, my lady?”
Her words were polite but perfunctory, because she really didn’t know. What did this woman want from her? Any information about the Kade attack before the field of battle was split in two by a massive bombardment could have easily been told by her captain. Sara had also relayed everything she knew about why the Kades had done what they had done before she’d disappeared.
Then Sara gritted her teeth as a sharp realization went through her—perhaps they were here for the Kade invasion leader’s testimony, which she hadn’t been able to give before. Well, that was easy enough to correct.
Launching into her narrative, Sara told them what he had told her—namely, how to get the drop on the Kades before their leadership decided to attack again.
Mid-explanation, the empress’s representative waved her hand. “We know a good majority of that, thanks to a few keen sets of ears present before you beat that poor prisoner to death.”
Sara stiffened. She didn’t know what she was more insulted by—the implication that the Kade invasion leader hadn’t committed plenty of atrocities of his own, or that she couldn’t be trusted enough to report honestly what she had heard, and therefore had to be spied on.
Either way, it was water under the bridge now, as Sara listened to the empress’s representative clarify her position.
The woman said self-importantly, “We have been told that, in direct contravention of the laws of the empire, you have met with the head of the enemy faction, and we hereby charge you, Sara Fairchild, with collusion against the Empress of Algardis.”
Eyeing the woman askance, Sara stilled for a moment.
Then she said the first thing that came to her: “Say what now?”
She would have to be forgiven if the words were said with hot outrage—after all, it wasn’t the most diplomatic way of questioning the representative’s words—but right now, Sara was more concerned about the fact that the woman who had just met her was practically accusing her, the daughter of a traitor, of treason.
And as she eyed the contemptuous faces around her, Sara realized it didn’t look good. At all.
There were murmurs as people began to get bolder and bolder. Sara saw one or two soldiers from the Imperial Armed Forces join the courtiers. They looked disapproving of the talk, but none of them were speaking up to defend her. Uneasily, she stepped away from the makeshift bed someone had made for her on the ground, consisting of a lump of blankets and pillows and not much else—she only checked because she needed a weapon now, and none was available.
As she began to shake, in what they all would probably interpret as fear but was agitated fury, she looked around and tried to decide if she was going to run or if she should fight. They were closing in, and she wasn’t against a good brawl, but lashing out at the assembled courtiers, nasty gossips though they were, didn’t feel right. Not least because they’d probably never been in a proper fight in their lives, let alone one with an elite warrior.
No, she just needed to clear the way, and as she prepared to do just that with clenched fists, Barthis stepped forward before a contentious situation could turn into a cleared pathway of broken noses and strained egos.
“Lieutenant commander, perhaps it’s best if we speak of this in private.”
There were mutters all around, as the courtiers didn’t want to leave, but the empress’s representative had the final word on whether they stayed or went, and she wasted no time in dismissing them all with a wave of her hand.
As the crowd around the three of them disintegrated, and the individuals and pairs went off in all directions, Sara was reminded of a flock of pheasants startled into the air after a hunter encroached on their territory. But this time, she was the prey and still very much grounded. That, however, didn’t mean that she was defenseless; she wouldn’t be a War Mage of any caliber if she was.
Taking stock of the solemnity of the two faces before her, Sara asked gruffly, “How serious is this?”
It was a blunt and untamed request—just like her.
“Excuse me?” the empress’s representative asked.
Sara licked her lips, but she was unsure about how to clarify without sounding ruder than before, and what was more, she was beginning not to care.
Fortunately, the captain saw her inner barriers coming down, the ones that determined just how much she was willing to put up with at any point, and he stepped in before Sara could say something that landed them both in hot water.
“Sara, we wouldn’t be standing here talking to you directly if we thought you had truly done anything wrong,” he said. “We just want to confirm that you met with him.”
The way he said ‘him’ in hushed and reverential tones made Sara even more confused.
Shifting her feet, she looked between the expectant faces of the two until she finally couldn’t take it anymore. “Him who?”
“Who else, child?” said the empress’s representative. “The man you called Gabriel.”
Sara choked back a startled laugh. But for a moment, her concentration was broken.
“Frankly, if you’re going to be charging me with treason for a conversation with a fool of a man, then at the very least we can dispense with the absurd formalities.”
“Meaning what?” the empress’s representative snapped. “You want to sit down and eat bonbons and drink tea?”
Sara let out a startled laugh but didn’t back down. “Not that I would turn down food right about now, but I was thinking more of on a shared-name basis. As in…I have no idea what yours is.”
Sara wondered for a second if she had managed to insult the woman more than she had by throwing her from her horse in front of a crowd…if that was possible.
But finally, the woman actually agreed.
“Fine. If you can get us this inform
ation when no one else could…fine. Lady Chatteris is how you can refer to me, and even in the field, my household will be known.”
Sara nodded. “Great, then. Back to your other request. Are you sure you meant Gabriel? Because to be honest, he seems to be a pest, but he’s no enemy of the state.”
They both stared at her, stupefied.
“I mean…right?” Sara said. “He’s just a mage with the ability to do a few tricks. Nothing like the legendary Kades. That is who you’re referring to by ‘our enemy’, yes?”
Finally, Lady Chatteris muttered, “Perhaps we’ve done the empire a disservice by keeping so much knowledge about the Kades secret. Especially when our own soldiers don’t recognize the key operatives in the flesh.”
Barthis flinched as if the words had been a direct reprimand of his own training, and in a way, they were—Sara came from under his command, and she hadn’t recognized the man they seemed quite sure was a member of the highest echelons of the uprising’s leadership. It was an understatement to say all the Kades were wanted for their crimes throughout the empire, but to think that Gabriel was one of them was ludicrous. He was a bumbling idiot, and he was certainly no mastermind. Not in Sara’s eyes. The Kades were feared throughout the land, and she just couldn’t see him being a part of them.
But apparently she was just in the dark, because the captain elected to clarify things to her then, and his strangled tone spoke volumes about what she was missing out on.
“The Kade leadership are elusive, and only a few have been in their presence and have the magical signature in their auras to verify that meeting,” he said. “Some who met them before they broke off from the empire. Others, even fewer, after. You number within those miniscule few.”