Blades Of Illusion: Crown Service #2

by Terah Edun

  “You will someday,” he said with a quiet chuckle.

  What he had said then was true now. Today, she finally did understand.

  She had yet to see Captain Barthis Simon on the field of battle, wielding a sword and shouting rapid fire commands, but she had no doubt that as a battle mage he would be quite good—at least with a sword. She suddenly doubted his capacity for strategic thinking.

  What could have possibly convinced him to abandon the leadership of three of his core groups and race into a swamp, only to lose a further half of his men?

  Command and orders be damned, Sara thought distractedly. At some point, a man has to take initiative for himself and his people. The empress isn’t here. Her people aren’t here, and I doubt she would have advised such a foolish trek if they were.

  She was brought back from the thoughts going through her mind as the captain of the Air Guard cleared her through. Sara Fairchild knew she hadn’t moved a muscle and her face was impassive. Nothing about her showed the traitorous thoughts going through her head, not unless you looked into her eyes. And as far as she knew, having a passionate gaze wasn’t a crime. Yet.

  “We have the cure,” the woman confirmed. “We’ve known about the paralysis bite for a while. The cure to medical ailments like that and others are what my healers are constantly searching for.”

  Sara’s shoulders slumped in relief.

  “Others?” Captain Simon asked.

  The airship captain turned to him. “One of the war tactics Kade mages are fond of — coming up with all manner of ill disease to infect our men and women. We’ve seen so much.” Then she turned back to Sara and Ezekiel with a weary tone in her voice. “This paralytic is the least of it.”

  Sara’s mouth gaped in shock, but she managed to stammer, “The least of it? My mercenaries are being slowly taken over by a paralytic so strong that they’re unable to move their bodies within days of being infected.”

  She hadn’t consciously meant to say ‘my mercenaries’, but it was out now, and she couldn’t retract it.

  The airship captain just smiled grimly. “It doesn’t dissolve your hands in seconds, or introduce a hemorrhaging factor in your blood that causes you to bleed out from every orifice. Those are the ones you have to worry about.” She gestured to Ezekiel. “This we can handle.”

  Sara felt a shiver at the abject coldness in the woman’s voice. Still she forced herself to say, “But this, this can be cured? Now? Right now? He’s dying.”

  “I know,” the airship captain confirmed as Sara saw white-robed healers descend en masse from the decks of the ships.

  Sara felt darkness rise in her blood. Not ire. She was too far gone for irate hatred. She felt a serene bleakness come over her. The woman hadn’t said she could cure Ezekiel. She had said she had the cure. What would she demand for its release? If they had been having this conversation in Sandrin, years before, Sara would have asked her father to leverage their accounts to pay the woman in gold and silver. She would spare no expense to save her friend’s life.

  When did I become this person? she wondered silently to herself. A person that would move the heavens and mortgage whatever I had to save this one man...and why?

  She didn’t know. But she had the feeling that this change had crept in, like tendrils of fog in the night, when she had taken shelter in Ezekiel’s humble abode. She had run from the burned shell of her small house covered in blood and the stench of death—her mother’s death—and he hadn’t turned her away. He hadn’t shut the door in her face like so many of her so-called ‘friends’, hadn’t turned his back in mock sympathy, hadn’t stood over her and looked down upon her life with a barely-concealed mixture of pity and horror.

  Ezekiel had cared. And she could do no less for him now.

  In that moment, Sara knew that she would do whatever it took to wrest the cure from this woman and her healers’ hands. Sara was familiar with the dealings of the streets. Some healers and their apprentices wouldn’t venture into certain parts of the city—day or night—unless paid a princely sum, even before they had seen their patients. Over time, the thief lords had managed to establish working relationships with these healers. For the healers that wouldn’t agree to take on the work, no matter the fees paid, well...the thief lord managed to make other incentives. Kidnapping the family of the healer in question usually got the job done. That is, as long as the city lords and ladies continued to look the other way.

  Sara’s mouth almost curled in disgust as she remembered a certain magistrate looking on a healer being dragged away by a group of thugs. Sara had been fifteen then. Her father had been just down the street, but still out of earshot. She had turned to the magistrate, who she had recognized by the stripes on the shoulders of his silk garment, and demanded, “Aren’t you going to do something?”

  The richly dressed man with gleaming black hair had looked down at her haughtily. “Such as?”

  Sara’s eyes had widened. “Administer the law? Stop them from taking away a lawful man under no cause?”

  The magistrate had smiled and said, “No cause, dear? The cause is the health of the community.”

  “He deserves his freedom,” she had sputtered, young and naïve.

  “Then he’ll pay for it with his services,” the man had said disdainfully and walked off. Sara had stood in the middle of the foray, flummoxed before she snapped out of the reverie at her father’s impatient call for her.

  It took Sara a long time to understand what she had encountered that day—the simple fact that money was power. The man was free, upstanding—a healer. But he had no protector. Not in the common streets of Sandrin. If he had hired bodyguards, belonged to a strong clan, or been born of noble blood, then the magistrate might have intervened. As it was, he was a no body, someone who would be forgotten before the day had ended.

  The memory of that day clenched like a fist in her gut as Sara let out slow breaths. She could feel her rage rising. The rage not just of a distraught friend, but of a battle mage. It burned like a fire in her core. As the magic began to rise within her, she didn’t try to stop it or draw the red tendrils back towards her mage core. She let them unravel like the flares of the sun before hell exploded.

  Taking deep breaths in order to at least try to calm down, she looked up to see the female captain urgently waving over another person that was out of Sara’s line of sight.

  Barthis Simon, however, had his full attention on the young mercenary that knelt on the swampy ground. “Get a hold of yourself, girl.”

  Sara turned her fiery gaze on him.

  His hand strayed to the pommel of his sword. Captain Simon gripped it tightly, but he didn’t draw the weapon. Instead, his tone cooled as he tightly said, “Calm down now. That’s an order.”

  Sara’s gaze never wavered from his own, but they each knew who was the stronger battle mage. He could draw his sword with his gift and lop off her head faster than she could react, throw Ezekiel to the ground and raise her own weapon into a position that would allow her to defend herself...or stab him through the heart.

  It was just a fact. She could see the muscles in his arms tense as he waited for her to make a move, to slip up and give him an excuse to end her life.

  He looked silently down at her.

  She looked up at him with burning fury in her eyes.

  The airship captain intervened without turning around. Which saved her from seeing two battle mages facing off. Well, her back turned and her words saved her.

  When the female captain spoke, she said, “There’s nothing more important in my mind. We have to save Ezekiel Crane. We will.”

  Sara wasn’t so far gone into her rage that she wasn’t startled when she heard the woman say Ezekiel’s name. The fact that she had that knowledge was what startled her, not the action itself.

  “Wait, how do you know that?” Sara asked, her tone full of suspicion.

  “Know what?”

  Sara blinked and stuttered. “His name.”

 
The airship captain raised an arched eyebrow in surprise. “My dear, everyone on this side of the war knows who the infamous Ezekiel Crane is.”

  Stumped, Sara stared up at her. “And who is that?” she said sharply.

  This time it was Captain Simon who answered her query. “Why...don’t tell me you don’t know?”

  Sara threw an angry glare at her captain, but the airship captain intervened before she could respond with a biting remark. “Never mind, it can wait,” the woman said. “Healer, attend to this man.”

  The healer stepped forward, offering her a kindly smile, and she moved out of his way. She didn’t want to slow him down, especially when so many others needed help as well. Well, everyone except me, she thought.

  She wasn’t hurt, which freed her mind to think about this new revelation. Why had she been the last to know of Ezekiel’s mysterious identity? He’d an entire hike through a damned swamp to bring it up and right now she was downright furious.

  Typical Ezekiel, Sara thought with a grimace.

  She’d warned Ezekiel once before that if his past came back to bite her in the ass he’d pay. But for now it didn’t seem to be having any negative connotations and she’d be damned if she’d ask this woman something she should have wrung out of Ezekiel long ago.

  Sara helped position Ezekiel for the healer’s cure—a dosage of something that looked as vile as swamp water—and she plotted out her next steps.

  Step one: Get Ezekiel Crane well.

  Step two: Put a knife to his balls and force him to start singing like a blasted bird at high noon.

  Chapter 13

  Sara watched cautiously as the man knelt down in the mud. He ignored the grime that soiled his robes, instead focusing completely on the patient with his focused gaze. That action, in itself, made her think better of him. In her youth, she’d known foppish surgeons who couldn’t be bothered to climb into the arena and walk across its blood-strewn sand to reach patients immobilized by life-threatening injuries. Their hesitation had never cost a patient his life, however, primarily because of a single arena policy at the time—a long-standing rule that healers that wouldn’t perform in the worst conditions didn’t deserve to practice in the best of them.

  Sara’s face cracked into a wry smile. A good rule, that, she thought to herself.

  Those surgeons who had hesitated to triage arena soldiers were summarily handed their walking papers on the spot and told never to return. The surgeons kept on staff in the background would then rush to the fallen warrior’s side. The arena hadn’t been just a training ground of warriors, but also of the squires who served them and the healers who aided them. A vicious sport of blood and swordplay that tested the mettle of not only the combatants but the will of their aids as well. Those who had survived the tests, mentally and physically, had emerged all the stronger for it. As she had.

  The arena had always been a special place for Sara. Had been, for a reason. She missed it, the memory of what it once was...not what she had heard it had become.

  With a stiff shudder, Sara pushed herself to focus on the moment. The arena was in her past, and there it would remain. Her eyes sharpened as her mind focused on the present and what mattered now—the healer’s skill. Sara watched as he tentatively extended precise, magic-laced fingers to Ezekiel’s face, and she couldn’t help holding in a breath. The vial of swamp water had disappeared into his pocket with a mutter. Sara guessed it was for something else entirely. She wasn’t sure if that was a bad thing or a good thing. But at least the healer looked prepared.

  She thought he was being cautious out of fear of disrupting his patient’s current diagnosis...or worse, making the symptoms worse by aggravating the spread of the poison. Sara knew—as, she was sure, did the healer—that a lot of battlefield magic was crafted to set off if tampered with. A mage’s battle fire only grew stronger if attempts were made to restrain it, and a healer’s magic had been heard to trigger worsening effects in a patient if that person was infected with a weaponized form of magic.

  Sara took in a sharp breath and did her best not to interfere. A single word might break his concentration. He knew the tactics of the battlefield much more clearly than she did. She also knew that he was risking not only Ezekiel’s life but also his own by reaching into a foreign mage’s magical meld. The poison wasn’t natural, after all, and the beasts of the swamp were, for lack of a better term, weaponized guards of the swamp. Still, Sara tried to gauge his intentions without breaking his concentration or hindering any efforts already begun. She believed in his skills and his knowledge. That didn’t mean she was sure of his intentions or even his allegiance...what if he was somehow affiliated with the Red Lion Guard who had tried to kill her mother? What if he wanted Ezekiel dead for the same reason?

  What if? What if? What if? The question ran through her mind in an endless loop as she considered each theory that came to mind and discarded one after the other as either ineffectual or groundless. It was an internal fight for her to keep herself in check, to not act. Her first instinct was to cut off his fingers at the knuckle. Sara was naturally wound tight. She wouldn’t be a battle mage and ready for any conflict that came at her if she wasn’t. However, she was secretly beginning to feel that the swamp was affecting not only the fallen mercenaries, but those still standing as well. Psychologically, if not physically. She was lot more jumpy, a lot more tired, and hell of a lot more depressed after seemingly endless days without proper food and adequate hydration. Seeing her comrades drop like flies all around her wasn’t helping, either.

  It could have just been the physical effects of enduring the trek, but she also suspected an unseen magical culprit. She imagined the magic’s effect spreading like a laced net over the entirety of the swamp. What it did, she didn’t know. But she did know that she wasn’t acting on top of her game, and she reluctantly eased back and settled on a new strategy—patience.

  So she would wait, let the healer do his work, and continue to watch him and the others.

  It took her mere seconds to settle down and do the right thing, the only thing that had a chance in hell of saving any of the poor lads stricken by the illness right now. But just because she was cautiously awaiting the outcome didn’t mean she wasn’t preparing ahead of time. Breathing out slowly, releasing the taut breath she hadn’t realized she’d been holding, Sara tapped into her battle magic in an effort to see what was beyond the physical plane. It didn’t take much of her gift to do so, and it was one of the more versatile tools of her trade, giving her an edge on her enemies in almost any encounter. Know your enemy, know yourself, Sara thought grimly.

  This poison may not have been made of flesh and blood or possess a knife to skewer her with, but it was just as deadly—even more so, in fact, than the enemies she had faced on the street. The thugs and con artists and outright idiots she had fought in the back alleys of Sandrin all had one thing in common—they all died when struck properly in the right place. She couldn’t say the same for this ailment.

  But still, if she could at least make certain that Ezekiel was now in the right hands, that was better than nothing. Quickly, Sara used her gift to assess the skills and abilities of the healer in the same way she did many mages she came across. Magical practitioners didn’t have to be evil bastards like Cormar for her to pick up on their intent and practice. Healers, therefore, were no exception, and she could see from his mage levels that this man was both powerful and a true practitioner of the healing faith.

  However, that didn’t mean she trusted him. Her personal motto was to stay wary around every individual until they gave you a reason not to be. Besides, her mother hadn’t been extremely fond of magical healers. She preferred herbal remedies and tonics for her ailments. But with a battle mage for a husband, as well as a reckless young daughter around the house, Anna Beth Fairchild had soon grown used to having a magical healer tend to her family’s wounds on a weekly, if not daily basis. It was that or watch her daughter hobble around with splints on her legs for numer
ous broken bones for the entirety of her childhood.

  Sara watched carefully as this healer reached out and gently placed his pale fingers on Ezekiel’s face. Sara swallowed in anticipation. She knew she had no reason to stop him and every reason to cheer him on. Her assessment of his aura came back clean. The healer was doing his job, but too slowly for her liking. Sara had to wonder why he was cautiously probing at Ezekiel, as if his predicament wasn’t obvious.

  “Why don’t you just get on with it?” she asked through gritted teeth.

  The healer paused with his hands lightly touching Ezekiel’s face and looked up at her. She reeled back in surprise. The healer’s eyes were bloodshot. Not with tiredness but with the glow of burst magic in his veins. Each vein surrounding his iris pulsed not with the red of oxygenated blood but with the orange of taught magic.

  “Step back. Now.”

  “Not to worry, battle mage,” the healer murmured calmly. “I am not ill. This is merely a sign of my work. The work I have already begun. The work you are only delaying by interrupting.”

  “I’m so sorry I’ve interfered,” Sara said sharply, without the least bit of regret in her tone. If the sound of her voice wasn’t warning enough, then her narrowed eyes certainly got the point across. The mage sighed and spoke with reluctance.

  “I am a healer. I heal as well or better than any mage you’ve yet to see, but the healing I do is different.”

  “How so?” Sara questioned.

  “What do you know about the healing arts?”

  “Not much,” Sara admitted.

  The man grimaced. “Then here’s a quick background. There are different types of healers. Natural healers who harness the energy of everything around them – the most common. They are like using a sledgehammer to push a tiny nail into the wall.”