Sworn to Sovereignty

by Terah Edun

  “Look for tracks,” said Sebastian icily as he nodded at Tobias and Samuel.

  They quickly took off.

  Ciardis had the feeling they wouldn’t find anything. They hadn’t seen or heard the wyvern move off, and what’s more, there were no disturbed markings in the plains’ dirt to indicate its passage.

  No path to track. No wyvern to find.

  They were flat out of luck and they all knew it.

  Then Raisa cleared her throat.

  Terris threw her an irritated glance from where she stood with arms crossed in a sulk and snapped, “Now what?”

  The dragon shrugged gracefully. “Watch your tone, Companion; it was not I who lost the creature.”

  Terris snarled and stalked forward with enough anger in her stance that Ciardis feared she’d hit the other woman where she stood. Still the Weathervane didn’t interfere. This wasn’t her battle. Not yet.

  “You’re right, I did,” said Terris. “I was distracted so badly that I lost my concentration and—”

  “That’s right, you lost your concentration,” shot back the dragon. “How could you for one second take your mind off the creature? You had one job—controlling a dangerous and deadly adversary. One that could have sliced every single person here open with the slightest effort.”

  “Well, obviously,” said Tobias dryly as he returned to the circle from his scouting mission, “it chose to spare us.”

  Out of the corner of her eye Ciardis saw Raisa grow mean-looking claws on her hand as she glared at the soldier for his interruption.

  He stared right back at her stonily. Ciardis got the feeling the dragon ambassador didn’t scare him as much as Raisa thought she should.

  “Report,” snapped Sebastian with a tired rub of his brows.

  “No tracks, no trail,” said Tobias as he looked over at Samuel walking over.

  The other soldier nodded in confirmation.

  “Perfect, just what I need,” Sebastian said through gritted teeth.

  Ciardis decided now was as good a time as ever to test the limits of Sebastian’s temper.

  She cleared her throat, not wanting to remain silent much longer. But Terris spoke up before she could.

  “Sebastian,” said Terris quietly.

  He looked over at her with annoyance on his face and she quickly jumped.

  “I-I mean Prince Heir,” Terris said stumblingly.

  A deep frown etched into Sebastian’s face.

  Terris’s brown skin paled and Ciardis’s mouth pinched in an effort to hold her tongue. To let Terris speak for herself.

  Except she didn’t. She froze.

  The prince heir, however, had no such compunctions. “Not only were we overtaken by a plains tribe unaware, but we’ve lost the one creature in our grasp that assured my father of our success.”

  To Ciardis’s surprise, it wasn’t anyone from her friends who spoke up, but the shaman herself.

  “I assure you, Prince Heir, my people—” the shaman begun. But she was cut off by a swift motion of Sebastian’s hand before she could continue.

  Though Ciardis wasn’t too sorry about the interruption. It sounded more like she was coming to the defense of her tribal group than Terris.

  “Be silent,” said Sebastian. “Your people attacked my party without provocation, which I’ll get to in a moment. For now we need to find and wrest back control over a creature that is an imminent threat to everyone and everything nearby. I am done with incompetence. I am done with excuses.”

  Terris apparently was done being a pushover, though.

  In a biting tone she said, “Well, I may be at fault for one of those incidents but certainly not the other. For that you’ll have to look to your own self for recrimination.”

  Sebastian’s eyes widened in semi-shock, and this time Ciardis interjected quickly.

  Quietly she said, “Perhaps we should all take a step back. We’re bickering like children while the wyvern flies off to who-knows-where and a tribe of strangers stares at us fracturing.”

  If the last five words came out in a strident hiss, that couldn’t be helped. Her blood was starting to boil.

  Nevertheless, Sebastian didn’t seem to be interested in being calm.

  “That may be, Lady Weathervane,” Sebastian said. “But it still leaves us one critical creature short of completing our mission. A creature, I might add, that we journeyed halfway across the empire to find.”

  “And destroy,” Thanar said laconically as he cupped his wings forward in a gesture that reminded Ciardis of a hawk about to take off. “We should have taken its head when we had the chance.”

  “Was that before or after I still had my mind meld with the creature?” Terris said in an irate hiss. “Because I don’t know what that would have felt like, but I’ve heard stories and none of them sound good.”

  Thanar snorted. “We’d have killed your bond with it before.”

  “I’d have liked to see that,” Christian said with a roll of his shoulders.

  Several pairs of eyes turned to him and he shrugged uncomfortably. “I may not know much about Terris’s techniques, but I’ve had three days to study their unique…connection. Temporary though it may have been, it was quite similar to another group of individuals among us.”

  “Who would be?” questioned Thanar.

  Christian raised a sardonic eyebrow.

  “Don’t speak in riddles,” said Sebastian in a slightly pissed-off tone.

  “Very well,” Christian replied. “The triad’s bond and the Kithwalker’s connection with the wyvern have some of the same overt ties linking them together.”

  “Our bond isn’t an enslaving technique,” Ciardis said quickly.

  “I said some,” Christian responded.

  “Hmm,” Thanar said. “And you still think it could be broken?”

  Christian eyed him with a cool look. “I didn’t say that.”

  “Then the bond is unbreakable?” Ciardis asked with a rub of a sore backside. “We knew that already.”

  “We knew your bond was unbreakable…at least without death,” Christian said. “But theirs? It could have been done, with a considerable amount of pain.”

  Ciardis tilted her head as she eyed Christian in faint distaste. She wasn’t sure she liked his line of thought.

  “Well, I’m glad we didn’t have the time to test out all of your theories,” Terris said, barely holding her fury back.

  “No, you just did it for us. No pain required,” a soldier said with no little malice.

  Terris whipped her head around in outrage. “What did you say?”

  This time she didn’t bother lowering her voice. Ciardis stepped forward. This had gotten way out of hand.

  She was surprised Sebastian didn’t reprimand him, but when she took a look at the prince heir’s face, Ciardis realized that the soldiers were doing nothing but taking their cues from the prince heir, and his posture was one of aggression, not diplomacy.

  He’s changed, Ciardis thought with concern.

  But she wasn’t sure if his anger was coming from his internal struggles…or theirs.

  Still, she didn’t have time to discuss it with him or them anyway.

  “What do you suggest now, Terris?” Ciardis asked. “You know the wyvern best. You’ve been in its mind and you have that connection with it.”

  Terris didn’t answer her. Instead, she turned in a wide circle, her eyes closed but her right hand outreached. As if she could touch whatever she was seeking…or materialize it out of thin air.

  Finally she dropped her hand, dejected. “I don’t know. I can’t feel the wyvern. I know it’s nearby. But I can’t tell where. Just that it’s alive.”

  “But it’s not far?” Ciardis confirmed.

  “It’s not miles away, if that’s what you’re asking,” Terris said, her voice tense.

  They all looked around, but all they saw was grasslands with waving fronds for as far as the eye could see. None were taller than knee high, certainly noth
ing big enough for a wyvern to hide within or behind.

  Ciardis heard a throat clear and then the shaman spoke up.

  “If I may, I have a thought,” Rachael said.

  Thanar looked over at her. “We’re all ears.”

  “Yes,” Ciardis said. “The sooner we get that creature back the better, so if you have an idea of where it might be hiding?”

  Her voice trailed off in a hint.

  Finally Rachael said, “I’m fairly sure my people know where the creature is.”

  “Really? How convenient,” Sebastian said. “Especially considering it was your people who just attacked us.”

  “Perhaps with just enough distraction to spirit away the wyvern in our midst,” said Samuel in speculation with a tight hand gripping his sword and a shared look with Tobias.

  They both shifted their stances with their booted feet planted apart in the golden dirt of the grasslands and renewed looks of wariness on their faces.

  Rachael gave a slight nod. “It is true the creature could have escaped in the commotion, but that was not their…our…intention. After the fall of Kifar I was only supposed to leave you all to rejoin my tribesmen. That’s all. The blast was a…complication.”

  Sebastian smiled, but it was a dark look. “And we’re just supposed to believe that?”

  Rachael raised her chin with a haughty look. “Believe what you want, Prince Heir, but I did not journey with you hundreds of miles only to betray you on your crucial return.”

  “If my father hired you, you might have,” Sebastian shot back in a low, tight tone.

  “Ah, but you see, Prince Heir,” the shaman said bitterly, “your father didn’t have the gall to hire me.”

  “If he didn’t order you to come, then who?” asked Sebastian coldly.

  The shaman shook her head. “I didn’t say that. We have our orders from the Emperor, just as you do. They were to observe and rattle your party, nothing more. The desire to talk is from another group entirely.”

  Ciardis cocked her head. She didn’t like the shaman’s tone. It promised secrets.

  Secrets they didn’t have the time or the inclination to settle.

  Ciardis crossed her arms in irritation. “And who might that be? If you’re not here by the Emperor’s request—”

  “Then I must be here on the Companion’s Guild’s orders,” finished Rachael with a sardonic look.

  Ciardis raised her eyebrows. “That or a very naughty patron.”

  “Ah, you surprise me,” the shaman said with a cool look.

  “Then she’s right,” interrupted Thanar with a dark look of his own.

  Rachael sighed and clucked her tongue. “As much as I would love to make you all play this guessing game, we’re short on time.”

  “That’s what I’ve been saying all along,” Tobias murmured.

  A sharp look from his superior officer shut his mouth, though.

  “And?” the prince heir said smoothly. “If you are not here at the behest of any of those individuals, then whom?”

  The shaman grimaced and crossed her arms. “The rebellion sent me, Prince Heir.”

  “The who?” was the universal response from everyone from the daemoni prince to a perplexed prince heir.

  Even Ciardis Weathervane was stumped for once. Though that word choice was reminding her of a very chaotic night she’d spent chasing a duchess through ruins, only to be face to face with an older man who looked like he belonged more in a tannery than gallivanting across the city’s rooftops in the middle of the night.

  When Ciardis turned to gauge Sebastian’s reaction, it wasn’t his face that caught her attention.

  Mystified looks reigned supreme among the faces of her travel companions. All except one.

  The lone dragon among them looked as pleased as a child who’d just been given a whole pie…and didn’t have to share.

  5

  We can’t trust the shaman, Sebastian said.

  Really? Because I was all ready to share state secrets with her, sniped Ciardis.

  Sebastian shook his head ruefully. All right, I earned that.

  You did, said Ciardis. But you know that we can absolutely trust Terris.

  The look on Sebastian’s face said that he wasn’t so unequivocally convinced on the subject.

  How sure are you that she didn’t lose it of her own free will?

  What are you suggesting? Ciardis said while almost recoiling in horror. That she would betray you, betray us? Not possible.

  That’s just it, Ciardis Weathervane, Sebastian said with a steely-eyed glare. Neither you nor I know enough about anyone to discount them based on moral high ground.

  She’s a woman of her word. And moral high ground my butt. She’s risked her life for me and for your citizens, if not yourself, enough times that there’s nothing moral about my argument.

  Ciardis didn’t like where this conversation was going. What would Terris have to gain by letting it go?

  I’d ask the gryphons of Ameles Forest that same question, he said dryly. Your friend has gained quite the reputation back east.

  A reputation for what? Ciardis asked, this time with unease as she fought the urge to stare at the object of their conversation with unseemly focus.

  At the moment Terris Kithwalker was pacing back and forth in the high grass like a caged bird. Her shoulders were tense and the lines of her face etched with regret.

  Stepping over Sebastian’s pointed silence, because she too had heard the whispers in the halls of Sandrin, Ciardis spoke. She’d have to be blind, deaf, and dumb not to. And whether or not the Weathervane had any desire to pursue and eliminate court gossip on behalf of herself, she had certainly had a vested interest in snuffing it out when she had heard malicious rumors about the person she called a dear friend.

  I know what the rumors said.

  Do you believe them?

  Ciardis looked up at Sebastian’s face which he had set in a kindly court mask that did not reach his eyes. The face was an act. One that fooled onlookers and servants alike, as they tried to give privacy to a prince heir and his intended who were obviously having a private conversation in the middle of nowhere. To everyone else it must have looked like they were so in love. His face angled down to hers in a receptive manner. Hers angled up with tense strain, read as desire to those who couldn’t read their minds. But to Ciardis it looked very different from the inside. And at the moment Sebastian Athanos Algardis looked more like his father the Emperor than ever before. She was lost in the hardened green glint that reflected in his orbs.

  She had a moment to wonder where the gentle and affable prince heir had gone in the year and a half since they’d met. But she couldn’t deny that this suspicious and wary prince heir was more of a match for the capital court wiles than the one she had first met, and much less susceptible to its guile.

  Sebastian squared his shoulders and tightened his so-far gentle hold on her hand.

  She looked up at him, waiting for him to speak the words she so clearly did not want to hear.

  He stared back down at her with unreadable eyes.

  Unreadable to everyone else, that is.

  But to Ciardis Weathervane they swirled with regret.

  “I think it’s time we tested the loyalty of one Terris Kithwalker,” he said in a dark low tone.

  Ciardis snatched her hand back, surprised and not at all happy. She knew that there was something wrong with Sebastian...something off with his voice. She just couldn’t pinpoint what; and seeing those words come out of his mouth was just too much.

  “Hers or mine?” she asked.

  A tense silence descended between the two and he held her gaze with a steely look. One which he had been missing when he’d watched her be interrogated by his father’s own people in the northern mountains. Now...now he held his own unflinchingly.

  It’s not her fault, Ciardis thought at him softly. Give her a break.

  It is her fault, Sebastian responded swiftly. And if she wasn’t your f
riend and confidante you would see that.

  He walked off.

  Ciardis turned to look at Thanar who stood a few feet away, eyes locked like a lion staring down its challenger with one of the shaman’s people.

  Before you ask, Thanar said without even looking at her, I agree with him: the creature was her responsibility.

  Christian sighed aloud. “Who knew a wyvern was smart enough to hide its tracks.”

  Ciardis tilted her head and thought about it. Then she had an idea.

  Christian looked at her and she saw the same thought mirrored in his gaze. She didn’t even have to speak it aloud. Instead she mouthed, “Do you think?”

  Her eyes were wide with the possibility.

  “I don’t think, I know,” he said dryly. “The lore is clear where the creature originated. In the home of the dragons.”

  They exchanged startled glances and said one word at the same time. “Raisa.”

  Both of them turn to find the dragon.

  She was gone.

  Ciardis raised a hand to her forehead and rubbed her temple. “This day just gets worse and worse.”

  Ciardis stirred and walked over to Sebastian to put a wary hand in the crook of his elbow. It wasn’t intended so much as a gesture of support as one of caution. To hold him in check.

  They didn’t want to say too much about their confrontations with the Emperor of Algardis to anyone, least of all a fairly unknown entity like the shaman of the plains.

  Companion’s Guild vetted or not.

  Sebastian raised up his arm, not to dislodge hers but to use his remaining free hand to cover her hand resting on his left arm.

  “Listen Sebastian, it wasn’t Terris,” Ciardis said quickly.

  “I know,” he replied just as quickly.

  “Then why did you accuse her?” she said out of the corner of her mouth.

  “Because I wanted to know if the true instigator would come clean,” he said softly as they stepped forward.

  “Will they?” Ciardis murmured

  “We’re about to see,” Sebastian replied.

  “The wyvern?” Ciardis asked while stepping forward smoothly in front of Rachael.

  The shaman waved a hand and said, “It is still here.”