by Terah Edun
It was appalling.
And as word spread from the first row of soldiers to the second and further back to the third and fourth, Sara had the feeling she wasn’t the only person among the common ranks who noticed.
Of course, being up on the platform, Barthis noticed, too, and he was not pleased.
“Silence!” he roared, and the murmurs immediately ceased.
Sara saw a small smile grace the representative’s lips before it quickly disappeared. She probably thought the whispers from the common ranks spoke of their awe of her. That her display of privilege, both magical and tactual, was something that inspired them. It was the opposite, but no one could get to her to explain that, and Sara had the feeling that even if they could, not one of those who stood beside her on the platform would be jumping to carry out the task.
Let her continue to think that, she thought. It won’t be long before an ‘accident’ befalls her and the empire loses one more soul in service to the crown.
Of course, if they lost this one, there would be hell to pay from the imperial courts, and Sara wondered if that was just what they needed: blood spilled that would make the imperial courts put skin in the game instead of haphazardly throwing mercenary companies, a few regiments of their own soldiers, and half-trained orphans in the mix. Maybe if the empress came to the field, they’d actually have a chance at winning.
But Sara quickly banished that line of thought, because it wasn’t just heresy to think it—it was completely outside of her stated purview to even dream of it. What the empress commanded, they carried out. What the empress willed was law. And if she willed that they throw themselves at the Kades again and again, and served as nothing more than cannon fodder for their magical attacks—well, it must be so.
Taking a deep breath, Sara calmed herself and listened as the one person who knew the empress’s will today spoke before them all.
The empress’s representative didn’t step up onto the platform.
She didn’t have to.
As she turned so that her back was to the six up on the stage, and she was looking at the now-solemn members before her, her voice carried through magic to all of their ears.
“I am proud to stand before you today in the place of my cousin as we embark on a new offensive against these wretched hellions—the Kades,” Chatteris proclaimed loudly to an audience so silent you could hear a bridle jingle from off the road.
“We stand together now—the remaining few who have not fallen before their onslaughts,” she continued. “And now I ask you to prepare once more for battle, but this time, under a new command. Fresh leadership and fresh blood alongside the level heads of those who have led you before.”
Sara shifted her shoulders a bit. She believed that she was the fresh leadership being referred to. But fresh blood? It was never a good idea to be described like a piece of meat. Of course, Chatteris hadn’t asked her, and Sara didn’t volunteer that opinion. She just kept silent and her eyes trained on the horizon above the heads of the rank and file standing before as well as below her.
“My cousin has great faith in you all,” the empress’s representative said. “I have great faith in you all. Elsewise, I would not have come, and I would not stand here before you today.”
Covered in enough spells to outfit an army, Sara thought in disgust. No wonder you survived the latest Kade bombardment unharmed.
“Now take that faith and clothe yourself in it as we use our strengths to bring the Kades down,” Chatteris continued. “May the imperial crown’s divine blessing fall upon you all.”
That must have been the captain’s signal to proceed, because he stepped forward and saluted, and Sara watched with a faint air of unease as the true ceremony commenced.
20
Sara was officially recognized, alongside other newly promoted officers, as a lieutenant commander of the empress’s Imperial Armed Forces.
And Barthis was promoted to field commander of the Red Lions and Corcoran Guards.
Sara had known that his promotion was to happen, if not precisely here, somewhere in the field. After all, it was why he’d been sent from Sandrin in the first place—to take charge of what had then been a swelling mass of troops, disparate in identity as they ran under two captains and multiple command units. But this was something different. Something fresh. It was both a somber affair, as he was taking command after stunning losses and even more defeats, but it also stirred a bit of hope. Hope she desperately needed to squash before he did one more thing to prove he was the man she had come to know as cold and psychotic, even if he did think he had the best interests of his men and their forces in mind.
Still, she kept her face motionless, even as the winds blew grit into her eyes as she stared straight ahead and stood on the makeshift platform the soldiers had hastily put together. As she turned her mind to other things, it was hard to say what would make her more happy: leaving this behind—this simulacrum of rules and order that bound her as surely as a rope-tied hog was bound in the dirt—or finding Gabriel again and shaking the truth out of him.
Either at the moment would be good, she decided.
As the captain announced all of their names proudly and gave them the regiments under their command, with the exception of Sara, she couldn’t escape the chill that went down her spine. Truth be told, it had taken longer than she had guessed it could when she’d left Sandrin. After all, she had seen him and the other captain—Kansid—conferring from the moment she had arrived at the first encampment, but now it was happening in a whirlwind. It felt rushed. It felt wrong. Or maybe it was the fact that she was up here with the six that felt so out of place.
Trying to keep her emotions in check and her hands firmly at her side, before she did something idiotic like disrupting an official transfer of power ceremony, Sara locked down her thoughts and descended deep into her well of magic. At least here she was guaranteed calmness.
Though too late, she forgot that it was also here that she was never alone. Not anymore, anyway.
Like a snake uncurling itself in her mind, the darkness spoke too soon.
Yes, I know, but it’s also necessary, she said to him mentally, her lips pinned firmly shut. She wanted to say more, but she had figured out long ago that trying to hold intense conversations with the presence in her mind was too much. Complexities and gray areas went over its figurative head.
Not enough, the darkness said.
Explanations also go over its head, she thought as she wondered what it meant by “enough.”
Deciding to take a chance, Sara poked the darkness as they floated together in her well. Is the captain not enough?
She said this directing toward it a clear mental image of who she meant.
The darkness swirled a bit, perhaps thinking, before answering.
He is not enough, it agreed. More powerful should come.
Its words were as succinct as ever, and yet she couldn’t fault its logic, even if they were thinking of two potentially different forms of power. She couldn’t precisely voice why she was so sure about this—maybe because it would mean they would have all the physical and magical support they needed no matter what came—but Sara had the feeling that until the empress herself came to the field, none of this would end.
But knowing there was a difference between her innermost desires and the protocols in place, Sara left the darkness to keep swimming in the home it had made, and she surfaced.
As she did, she forced herself to smile with the crowd below them and clap in time with her comrades as they cheered on their newly official leader.
Sara knew the soldiers were proud of Captain—excuse me, Field Commander—Simon Barthis, and in their eyes, they had every right to be. He had led them through countless battles and skirmishes. And even though they were losing, badly, with thousands of their fellow soldiers dead and dying, he was right there in the trenches with them. Facing death alongside them.
Qualities that made him a great leader.
But
it wasn’t just him Sara questioned as her eyes shifted over to the empress’s representative in the field. Chatteris waved to the crowds magnanimously now that the soldiers—caught up in the fervor—were cheering. People might have festering resentment, but a ceremony like this could do a lot for morale when all you could see around you was death and despair. Which was why Sara’s dark thoughts weren’t going to be welcome, no matter how pissed off the soldiers were. As a collective, they weren’t at the turning point needed to do something about their outrage.
So with a grimace, Sara let it go and stepped down from the platform until she was on the right side of the empress’s representative and the new field commander was on her left. Chatteris did everything but grab their hands and pump them jubilantly in the air. For her part, Sara stoically accepted the cheers, which weren’t for her but for the empire as a whole. As the empress’s representative started walking forward, Sara and Barthis did the same. It didn’t matter that Sara didn’t trust Chatteris one bit, and instincts were telling her to put a sword through her jugular before something worse happened. She just walked. Because unfortunately for her, her honor and her duty to the crown superseded any particular fantasy in her head. So she just watched, carefully noted her actions as they moved through the crowds, and wondered.
Wondered why the empress had really sent Chatteris.
And wondered what, if anything, the ruler of them all intended to do about the threat facing them all. The Kades had proved time and again that they were no ordinary enemy, that they couldn’t be quelled by a show of force, and even if their numbers were smaller than the hundreds and thousands who had called themselves members of the empress’s own, they had proven an ability to use their lighter force far more effectively than even Sara had imagined.
Something had to be done.
Something needed to be done. But when your empire’s best mages happened to be fighting for the other side, where did that leave you?
“Up shit creek without a paddle,” Sara said bitterly as she pasted a bright smile on her face and looked on as one last rousing cheer went through the boisterous crowd.
This was the first sign of goodwill that the soldiers had had in a long while. They needed the morale boost, and Barthis was giving it to them. If she couldn’t admire anything else about him, Sara grudgingly had to admit that he knew how to work a crowd.
As they walked out past the final ranks and the horns of dismissal sounded behind them, Chatteris quickly dropped both of the hands she had grabbed, as if they might have lice in their hair and turned to Sara with a demanding look on her face.
Wary, Sara stepped back and eyed her—waiting for the empress’s representative to speak and demand the world be deposited at her feet once more.
She didn’t disappoint. “You realize, of course, that we expect you to make regular reports on your progress.”
Sara nodded—it was nothing but standard protocol to ensure that she was actually making an effort to track her prey.
Chatteris said, “Good. Keep us informed. We may be distraught now, but with this mission and our empress’s support, we will prevail, no matter what the Kades think they have in store for us.”
Sara wondered what that last tidbit meant, but she was well aware that she had managed to push past the boundaries of propriety far enough. That would be a mystery for another day. Even if there was something she did still desperately want to ask.
She pushed the thoughts away and asked, “Will that be all? If so, I’d like to begin my journey. My people have already begun preparing the supplies that will at least cover the first half our journey, and whatever else we need will be deposited by the field commander some distance away.”
Barthis nodded but kept his distance and didn’t speak up in support or against her. Not that Sara needed him this time. She was pretty sure she had the measure of Chatteris—the question was, did she know just what Sara was capable of?
The empress’s representative said, “That is about all we can give you at the moment. Just find the hole the Sun Mage is hiding in with her traitorous friends and bring her back to us—dead or alive.”
Sara nodded sharply and, knowing there was nothing else they hadn’t already covered in their previous discussions, swiftly turned away to melt into the crowds of those pressing forward to give congratulations to, and maybe get a word in with, the new field commander and his benefactress.
But before she could, she heard Barthis calling her name.
Reluctantly, Sara turned back and pressed through the crowds to see what it was he desired.
In a tone that brooked no arguments, the field commander said, “I may have a few good men here I can spare to go with you, Fairchild.”
Quickly, before those surrounding him could catch on that the new leader of the entire camp was offering them a mission, Sara exclaimed, “Don’t you worry, sir—I’ve got just the crew!”
She heard his forlorn shout behind her as she left. “That’s exactly what worries me, you scamp!”
But she didn’t turn around or debate him. She’d fought for the truth, and now she had it. She’d fought for the self-determination to forge her own command, and Lady Chatteris had given it to her.
Distracted as she walked by a farrier with a multitude of horses, Sara backtracked when a particular horse caught her eye. A beautiful black stallion that was about thirteen hands high. Rubbing her jaw, she approached the farrier, knowing that Ezekiel and the rest of the cohort had probably already selected a horse for her travels. But there was nothing wrong with choosing one for herself, and using the one provided for her as a respite horse in order to give her main steed a break.
They would be riding hard all night, after all, and she couldn’t take the chance of exhaustion overcoming one mount, only to turn and notice there wasn’t another.
She requested the one she wanted, and after pointing out that she was now a lieutenant commander for the forces that had a rapidly dwindling number of officers, he graciously handed over the steed that he’d labeled Balefire.
Smiling as she gripped Balefire’s reins, Sara thanked the farrier, told him to note down her name and rank for the camp supply notations, and left. She sincerely loved riding a spitfire of a horse. They could be as good as having a second soldier at your side when trained correctly, and Sara had no doubt that, if nothing else, the Imperial Armed Forces had put Balefire through his paces.
As she looked up into his eyes, she noticed intelligence in that eager gaze. And perhaps a streak of fire a mile long. Which was just what she needed to get out of the main camp and into the distant fields as soon as possible.
Sara patted the stallion on his neck and said, “Let’s go and get into some trouble, boy.”
If his eager whicker was any indication, he was more than ready.
21
It didn’t take her long to find Ezekiel and the rest. When the scholar saw her walking up with her own horse, he just nodded and tied the reins of the piebald gelding to his own mare.
And then they were off. Her ragtag group of soldiers and mercenaries and even a few mages on a suicide mission to capture not one but two extraordinarily talented mages, who both had the lead on them, thanks to a continuous onslaught by their brethren Kades.
Now that Sara thought about it, she had to wonder if the goals of the Kade attacks after the domes weren’t just payback but also a deceptive maneuver to pin them down, distract them, and give Nissa time to get as far away as possible. She wouldn’t put it past them. Not at all.
Pulling out the disc that she had, until now, kept on a long chain about her neck, Sara grinned and yanked with the strength of a War Mage in her grip. Now that her powers were back to normal levels, the metal in the chain snapped with little more resistance than a piece of string, and she tossed the disc in a side pocket for safekeeping…and to get it out of her face.
Ezekiel was riding beside her, but said nothing, and then it was just them riding into the dusk with the others behind them aside f
rom a lone tracker ahead.
Night fell before long, and Sara kept them all moving forward at a good clip down the imperial road they’d chosen. That was about the only good thing about this scenario. The roads were clear at night, the moon was high—giving them light to shine on the path along with their own mage orbs—and she was fairly certain she knew where she was going.
Toward the Madrassa on the easternmost edge of the empire.
It seemed counterintuitive for the Kades who had rescued Nissa to spirit her away to the keep where the uprising had started, but Sara was certain it was either that or their hidden siege camp, and that was on the way to the Ameles Forest. As the person who had managed the target lock for their first official offensive against the Kades that had had any success, she had managed to get a peek at the countryside while flying high above. She even knew what the structure of their base looked like. Combine that with the knowledge the Kade invasion leader had managed to impart upon her and that she had conveniently forgotten to tell the field commander, in all the hubbub, about her being kidnapped and then returned, she had the upper hand.
And she could be sure that she would be able to use that ace in the hole deliberately and with tactical awareness. She just had to be aware of her chance and take it when it came.
As the night deepened, she was surer she was heading in the right direction.
But for all the wrong reasons.
The skin on the back of her neck was crawling and her hand was itching for a weapon, but she didn’t want to give anything away.
So she whistled to get the attention of the rider in front of her.
As Ezekiel eased up alongside her and the other rider pulled back his mount so he could slow down and come up on her left, Sara said quietly, “Heads up—I believe we have company.”
Neither gave away her knowledge by looking around; instead they stayed gazing straight ahead.