Blades Of Illusion: Crown Service #2

by Terah Edun

  “Follow my lead,” said Nissa with wide eyes.

  Sara wanted to protest, but Elan nodded to Nissa, giving his assent. Sara looked at Nissa, trying to gauge her appearance and well-being. Under the strong glow of mage orbs in the tent, Sara could see she was fully healed. She wondered briefly at her urgent desire to leave. She wasn’t left wondering for long.

  “No, we need to think of another way to work around whatever the problem is,” said Sara firmly.

  Nissa scowled at her. “It’s too late,” she said. “He’s here.”

  An official-looking man strode into the tent, followed closely by a line of armed soldiers. Too many to fight.

  Sara turned in confusion, looking between the newcomers that moved to surround them and the group that stood beside her—Ezekiel Crane, Nissa Sardonien, and the mysterious stranger with purple eyes named Elan who stood next to her. She noted that Margaret had managed to make herself scarce at some point.

  Sara lowered her sword, instantly recognizing the uniforms and stances of imperial swordsmen. These were her people.

  They stared at her grimly and kept their weapons raised, and Sara grew uneasy at the dark expressions on their faces.

  They’re here to kill someone, she thought with deadly certainty.

  That just left all the usual questions: Who would die? Why were they to be killed? And, selfishly, would she be among the fallen?

  Sara recognized their confident leader, standing amidst a circle of protective guards in the confines of the small tent. Kansid stepped forward with a solemn expression on his face, and he said, “We thought this might be the key, but I never imagined you’d actually fall for it.”

  Sara eased up from her crouch and watched Kansid carefully. He wasn’t talking to her; he was talking to the man who stood beside her. The one who lived two lives, one as the loyal soldier, Matteas Hillan, and the other as the mysterious revolutionary, Elan.

  Sara turned her gaze to Matteas—Elan—and whispered, “What’s he talking about?”

  Stony silence met her query.

  Nissa sauntered forward and spoke, “I held up my end.” Again, the statement hadn’t been directed at Sara.

  She sucked in a breath. “What does that mean?”

  Nissa turned to look at her. “I told you when you broke me out of those tent chains, ‘I told them everything they wanted to know’.”

  Sara flashed back to the conversation in her memory and gritted her teeth.

  “I meant it,” Nissa continued, oblivious or indifferent to her anger. “They needed an outcome. I furnished the details on how to get it...”

  Sara swallowed harshly. “And me?” Sara had to wonder if this was all part of the plan, but she didn’t know Nissa well enough to play along.

  More’s the pity for her, Sara thought through anger and pain, because when I’m through with her, they’ll have to sweep the pieces off the floor.

  Nissa sighed wearily. “You, Sara Fairchild. You were just a pawn. A means to an end. A means to getting me my immunity.”

  “Immunity?” squawked Ezekiel with a laugh. “Immunity from what?”

  “Prosecution,” Nissa said calmly.

  “You think they’ll keep their word?” Sara said coldly.

  Nissa smiled and held up her palms. Fire flickered to life and danced an inch above the skin. “They’d better.”

  It was with ice in her veins that Sara realized the mage shackles on her wrists weren’t the shackles she’d worn before. These were lighter in both power and weight. They wouldn’t restrain the full powers of a mage like Nissa. Not by a long shot.

  The Algardis soldiers surrounding them flinched but didn’t move. They were just as aware as the people they held weapons on what Nissa was capable of. The heat from Nissa’s flames could be felt by everybody in the tent. Sara just hoped those new shackles restrained the worst of her magic.

  Ezekiel moved away from the sun mage, and together with Elan and Sara, they formed a half-circle that looked out at Nissa and the soldiers, assessing them both as threats. Nissa stood undeniably on her own.

  For a moment, sadness crossed Nissa’s face before she wiped it away and turned to Kansid. “Right?”

  Kansid chuckled. “No need for threats. You’ll have your immunity, and your criminal record wiped clean, Mage Sardonien.”

  Nissa smiled. “Thanks, but what I really want is immunity and a ride on the first ship out of this empire.”

  Kansid turned his beady eyes on her. “As you will.”

  Nissa lowered her hands slowly and extinguished the flames. “They’re all yours.”

  Great, Sara thought bitterly. I’ve been sold for a ride on a ship. Why is she so desperate to leave the empire?

  In the end, Sara knew it didn’t matter. Nissa was someone else’s problem. Now she had her own murky situation to deal with. What was Kansid going to do to them? And precisely who did he think Elan was?

  Kansid smiled directly at Sara and spoke two sentences that threw terror into her mind. “Sara Fairchild, daughter of exiled Commander Vincent Fairchild, you are under arrest for insubordination and treason. Will you step forward?”

  Old nightmares resurfaced, and she realized that she was being accused of the very same false crimes as her father had been. It was something she had dreaded coming true for a long time now.

  Sara felt ice-cold. She must have misunderstood what he was saying.

  She hurried to explain. To justify her actions. To stop this madness.

  “It’s not what you’re thinking, Captain Kansid. This man was a friend of my father’s. He has vital information about why my father did what he did. I was only seeking to get that information from him and force Nissa Sardonien to answer those questions. That’s all.”

  Kansid snorted. “That’s more than enough. We allowed your bumbling attempts at detective work and freeing your friends for one reason,” Kansid said coldly. “To lure in the man we’ve been searching for over a year. The man who the entire empire has been living in fear of for far too long.”

  Sara laughed harshly before she could catch herself. This all had to be a joke—a mad, mad joke.

  When no one else laughed and the stern expressions on the armed guards around them remained, she felt sick to her stomach.

  Ezekiel said calmly, “Captain, Sara Fairchild is telling the truth. She really only came on this journey and to this encampment for answers. She was looking to me for those answers. Mistakenly, she thought that Elan could also provide those...answers.”

  Sara swallowed harshly. She was still pissed that Ezekiel knew more than she did, and her anger deepened when he thought he could speak on her behalf while their lives were on the line.

  Before she could force herself to speak up, Kansid stepped forward and back-handed Ezekiel across the face. The action was so quick that it nearly escaped her own eyes.

  With a cold expression on his face, Kansid lowered his hand, and Sara saw in horror that blood poured down from Ezekiel’s broken nose. His glasses, now on the ground by his side, had been snapped and cracked by the blow.

  Sara sucked in a breath and turned away from her friend with a feeling of dread in the pit of her stomach. This couldn’t be happening. She tried to strengthen herself, very much aware that she was frozen in a miasma of shock and fear. But Sara didn’t want to call on her mage gifts. It would be a foolish maneuver in a crowded tent, and particularly ridiculous to attack the current leader of the encampment of imperial armed forces.

  Whatever Sara may have been feeling now, it wasn’t suicidal. And she certainly wasn’t ready to be a convicted traitor to the empire.

  I still have a chance to appeal. To appeal to reason, she thought frantically.

  Arms shaking, she fought not to make any sudden movements.

  Casually, Kansid asked, “Do you have anything to say for yourself?”

  Sara took a moment before speaking in a carefully controlled voice. “Since you’re so convinced I’m a traitor, would you mind enlighteni
ng me for whom I’ve betrayed my empire for?”

  Kansid smiled, “You were a pawn, mercenary. Just like your father was before you. A stupid pawn who couldn’t keep her nose out of empire business, but a pawn nonetheless. But, you’ve managed to bring up the man we’ve been looking for, so I’ll tell you.”

  Matteas Hillan stood silently beside her, still as a statue. Kansid stared at him with the utmost distaste.

  “You stand beside the infamous Elan Mayfair.”

  The gleeful look on his face at capturing Elan told Sara that whoever this Mayfair was, he was an important prisoner. But she didn’t know who that was. No spark of recognition, not even the faintest possible idea flowed through her mind of what that name meant to Kansid.

  That was apparently visible to Kansid, because he frowned and said, “Do you truly not know?”

  “I assure you, sir,” Sara said diplomatically, “I’m as blind to the reputation of Elan Mayfair as you are to the true nature of my father’s actions.”

  Kansid glared at her, but apparently chose not to take affront. “Then you’re even more foolish than I thought. When you got into that little fight with Castile’s men, I was sure you were a fool, but I still needed you, so I held Castile back from pursuing you. I even killed Lester to ensure you would not fail in your mission to find Mayfair. After all, you were the only one I knew that Elan might be willing to meet.”

  Ezekiel’s voice came from the corner, filled with pain. “And how’d you know that, you spineless man?”

  Irritation flowed in Kansid’s eyes as he answered the question, “We long suspected that there was an Algardis soldier liaising between the Kades and Fairchild. We didn’t know who or why. Therefore we needed to not only flush him out, but prove beyond a doubt it was Hillan once we captured him in the act. Torture couldn’t do that. But a second Kade would. There was only one person we knew that could make him reveal his identity. Vincent Fairchild. And now there’s two.”

  With a deep and pleased breath Kansid continued on, “In front of you, Sara Fairchild is the man we’ve been searching for many months.”

  Nissa slipped out from behind the man with a devilish smile on her face. “The man who has been trying to murder the empress and seize her empire.”

  Sara looked over at Elan’s expressionless face. “I’m afraid you must be wrong,” she said. “This man has information on my father’s death.”

  “That may be so,” acknowledged Kansid, dropping a hand to grip his sword. “But you do not know the whole of who he is.”

  “Why don’t you enlighten me?”

  She was tired of all the secrets, lies, and more secrets. She would have her answers tonight, even if she had to kill to get them.

  Kansid smiled victoriously. “We’ve just captured the elusive leader of the Kade mages, the illusionist mage formerly known as Elan Mayfair.”

  Find out what happens next by pre-ordering Blades Of Sorcery: Crown Service #3.

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