by Jamie Davis
Continuing on with the theme she’d eventually escape, Cari used her single skill point to increase the level of her multi-foe tactics capability. She was sure she'd have to fight her way free of the Duke's clutches and that likely meant she'd have to battle through multiple opponents.
When she was finished, she looked over the transparent menu hovering in her field of view before canceling it with a wave of her hand, making it fade away.
* * *
Name: Cari Dix
Class: Duelist
Level: 5
* * *
Attributes:
Brawn: 10 - +1
Wisdom: 8
Luck: 10 - +1
Speed: 18 - +5
Charm: 12 - +2
Health: 50/50
* * *
Skills: Two-Weapon Combat, Acrobatic Dodge - 2, Multi-Foe Tactics - 2
Experience: 3,000/4,800
* * *
While she was waiting, one of the gate guards entered and placed the bundle containing her pack full of clothes and her sword on the table against the far wall. He admired her sword, drawing the steel blade from its scabbard and examining its edge. He peered at the base of the blade for a moment before turning and staring at her. He had a curious expression on his face.
"Where did you get this blade?"
"Somewhere far away from here. It was custom made to my own specifications."
"So, this is your name?" The man pointed to the base of the blade where it met the hilt.
It took a few seconds for Cari to realize what he pointed to. Then it hit her. The blade’s smith had etched her name into the steel. He had thought it was a clever way to identify its owner and he did it with all his swords. The words he used in this case were "Cari, of House Dix."
"Yes, that's me. Why?"
The guard shook his head.
"My grandfather used to tell me tales of the old days when the war of succession was fought bringing the Empress to the throne. He told me of fighting under the legendary General Hal Dix, the man who was later named Prince Hal. Who are you to claim membership in that royal line? They’ve been gone from the kingdom for many years. My grandfather said he was still a young man when Prince Hal took his family and left Fantasma through a magic door in the palace. There has been no mention of the House of Dix since."
He carried the sword over to her, examining the inscription closely before he stopped and stared her in the eyes.
"You claim to be a descendent of Prince Hal?"
Cari thought for a second as she realized that this might be her way out if she played her cards right. She eyed the guard, choosing her words with care as she responded.
"Something like that."
If she had read him correctly, this guard was still somewhat loyal to the empress.
The gate watchman carried the sword over to the barred alcove. He stared at the blade and then at Cari. For almost a minute, he stood there, silent, lost in his thoughts before he spoke again.
"Who else was in that carriage that the Duke's men wanted so badly? They weren’t looking for you. We were told to watch for a man. Who were we told to watch out for?"
"I can't tell you that but I suspect you can puzzle it out on your own. Why don't you let me out of here and give me a chance to escape and join my friends?"
The watchman shook his head.
"I cannot. Don't get me wrong. I am a loyal subject of the Empress, but I also want to live to have grandchildren of my own someday. I can't afford to cross the Duke or his men. They’re the ones in charge of this city right now. It don’t make sense to stick your neck out when there’s no hope of winning."
"What do you think will happen when the Duke's men return and come to collect me?"
"I suppose, if you’re really of the House of Dix, you'll make your own luck and escape in some grand fashion. Every story tells of Prince Hal's uncanny luck. If you’ve descended from him, use that to your advantage."
The sound of horses outside and men shouting commands stopped the guard. He looked over his shoulder to check the door and turned back to Cari.
"I cannot help you now, but if you really are of Prince Hal's line and not just someone pretending to be related to him and the lost princess Cari, then you'll find a way to get free. If you do get away, seek me out at a tavern called The Last Retreat just inside the southern caravan gate. My name is Harley Denne. I might be able to lend you aid in secret in honor of the memory of my Gramps."
The door swung open and the leader of the Duke's guard Cari had encountered earlier swaggered in followed by two of his men.
"You there. Is that the woman's sword? Put it back with her things. We'll take it all with us."
He walked over to the bars and leered at Cari.
"His Grace the Duke of Charon is going to enjoy meeting you. If you were sent to protect that idiot we're after, you probably know where your companions took him."
"From your words, it sounds like they gave you the slip outside of the city."
"We found the carriage a mile down the road but the horses had been unhitched and they've probably struck out across country. That is why you're going to tell the Duke where they took him. Maybe if you are helpful, the Duke will spare your life, though I doubt it."
He pointed to his two companions.
"Get the keys from that buffoon over there and take her into custody."
Cari was tempted to try to fight her way free now but decided to bide her time. She'd found an unlikely ally in the city who might help her get away if she was able to escape the Duke and his men. She was not without her own abilities to defend herself. As long as she could survive, she could wait for the right opportunity for escape to come along.
The Duke's men were rough in their handling of her and she was dragged as much as walked from the gatehouse. They had procured a small farm wagon from somewhere and the two guards lifted Cari up by her armpits and dumped her over the side of the wagon to fall to the wooden planks inside.
She rolled to her side and sat up so she could see over the sides. Another guard took her bundle of clothes and her sword from the gatehouse guard, dumping them in the back of the wagon before climbing up to the seat and taking the reins.
The others mounted their horses and started leading the way back into the city. The blue-gray light of the early dawn hours lit up the eastern sky as Cari was taken through the city streets, heading towards the center of the capital where the enormous homes and palaces of the Empire's most powerful nobles stood like broken teeth against the dim back light of the dawn sky.
The Duke of Charon had a compound adjacent to the Crystal Palace itself. It was to be expected for the leader of the Empress's Privy Council. The wagon trundled through the gated opening in the tall stone wall surrounding the small palace and grounds.
Stopping alongside the main building, two of the guards dismounted and grabbed Cari by the ankles, dragging her to the back of the wagon bed before lifting her out and setting her down on her feet. They gave her a shove between the shoulder blades, propelling her forward towards the open doorway. The wagon driver came behind the other two and brought her pack and sword along inside.
Cari entered a long hallway with a black-and-white checkered marble floor. There were doors on either side leading off the hall. She kept walking until a hand on her shoulder yanked her to a stop and turned her to the left.
The guard shoved her into a carpeted room with a broad desk made of dark, stained wood. There were stacks of papers and ledgers on both sides of an open area in the center of the desk where a man sat. He had black hair with white streaks at the temples. He wore a black collared shirt buttoned up to the neck and a black brocade vest with strands of what looked like silver thread woven into the embossed fabric's pattern. He was talking with another well-dressed man as she was marched into the room.
"…Take this message to the council of captains. If the rumors of a royal survivor of that shipwreck are true, it will not sit well with me. Tell them to m
ake it right and finish the job if that is what is needed."
“I will pass along the message, your Grace,” the other man said, bowing and turning to leave.
Cari decided the first man must be the Duke of Charon himself. He waited until the other man left before turning his attention to her and the quartet of guards around her.
"What is this? This is not Prince Timron."
"Uh, no your Grace. But this is the woman who helped him escape. We think she is the same woman who was involved in the deaths of the guards at the dueling grounds last week."
"Oh, really? Well, well, that is a nice surprise. I didn't expect the two things to be related at all. Sometimes you do get to kill two birds with one stone." He waived a hand in the air to dismiss them. “You may leave. I will speak to her alone."
The Duke stood and walked around from behind his desk. He was tall, perhaps six inches taller than Cari's five foot ten inches. He was a strikingly handsome man and Cari drew herself up straight despite the weight of the chains on her wrists and tried to match him gaze for gaze.
He chuckled at her obstinance. "You’d do well to act more humble in the current circumstances. Who are you, young lady, to have gotten mixed up in all these things?"
Cari started to say something but kept her mouth shut. She decided to hold her tongue for the time being. She didn't want to give too much away to the Duke if she didn't have to.
"You've been accused of several serious crimes. You don't have anything you'd like to say in your defense? You brought about the slaughter of a squad of my guards. I can’t have that. It sets a bad precedent."
That brought back the memory of all the bodies she saw stacked by the dueling ground when she arrived there on her first day in the city. She could feel the familiar nausea starting to build in the pit of her stomach again. She once again relived that horrible moment when her blade slid into Raden’s chest, killing the man instantly. As the dread of that memory washed over her, Cari blurted the first thing to come to her mind, anything to justify what she’d done and keep herself from dwelling on the first man she’d ever killed.
"Only after they caused the slaughter of at least a half dozen innocent supporters of the Empress. They'd done nothing wrong other than have an opinion."
"So, you do have a voice after all, and a naïve one at that. You'll find, my dear, that opinions get people killed far more often than you might think."
"Why do you hate the Empress and her family so much that people must die over it?"
"It's not that I hate the Empress but she and her family have served their time and function. The Empire is stable now and the Empress is old. I tried to advise various family members to come to my way of thinking that a time for new leadership and government had come."
“A government led by you, I suppose?”
“Led by a council of powerful nobles, headed by me, of course. What is wrong with that? We run most of the Empire as it is. Ridding ourselves of the Imperial family is really just a formality.”
The Duke stopped himself and cocked his head to one side as if surprised to hear himself talking so much.
* * *
Charm attribute bonus - persuasive conversation successful
* * *
He shook his head, seeming to dismiss the thought and continued. "Curious. I've told very few people that much about my plans before and yet here I find myself bumbling along simply because a pretty face is brought into my office. Who are you?"
Deciding there was no need to hide her name, the connection to her father's time here might even help. Cari lifted her head, met the Duke’s eyes and said, "I'm Cari Dix, THE Cari Dix."
She smiled. Let him chew on that for a while.
To her surprise the Duke let on no reaction to her announcement one way or another. He kept the same unusually pleasant smile on his face and made a shushing sound before continuing.
"So, the Empress got that old artifact to work after all. I heard she thought it was broken when she didn't get an immediate response. At least, that's what my palace sources say. My advisors on things magical, on the other hand, said they sensed a powerful force in the city a week ago, though they couldn't localize it. That would be about the time you and your friends killed my men wasn't it."
Cari didn't answer but the Duke must've taken her lack of response as an affirmation of his supposition because he continued as if she'd said yes.
"Now it all makes some sense. First my men are killed and the perpetrators escape without a trace. Then, I had a firm grip on Timron's whereabouts when he suddenly disappears and no one knows where he is. Now that fop of a man is spirited away from the capital leaving you in his wake to cover his trail."
The Duke of Charon stopped and smirked at Cari.
"I suppose I should bow or something. If you are who you say you are, you are a princess of the realm and technically outrank me."
"I'm no princess, trust me," Cari snapped. She had the preconceived notions of cartoon princesses in her mind. She was definitely not one of those.
"No, you aren't are you, at least not in the way most would think. You intrigue me, Cari Dix. It was said your father had amazing powers to do all sorts of things while he was here. Do you?"
"I'm not without my own abilities. Would you care to match me blade for blade? Perhaps I can teach you a thing or two." She finished the remark by spitting at the Duke's boots.
"You are a spunky one for someone standing in chains. Most people in your position are blubbering for mercy by now. You're beautiful, too. Think of the children I could father with the daughter of the great Prince Hal of legend."
That comment caught Cari completely off guard. How had the conversation drifted that way? Cari was still in shock as the Duke walked around behind Cari. The heat of his breath on the back of her neck shook her back to reality. It made her skin crawl.
Cari felt fresh anger rising inside once again. First the advances from Timron and now this pompous man. They represented just the sort of misogynistic ass she hated. She'd had enough.
Nodding her head forward and rocking it back with all the force she could muster, Cari slammed the back of her head into the Duke's face as he was leaning forward to brush his lips across the nape of her neck.
"Ow!" screamed the Duke, "Dammit you wench. You'll pay for that."
Cari couldn't help but smile as she heard the nasal quality that had been added to the Duke's voice. She turned to survey the damage she'd done.
The Duke's nose was almost certainly broken by Cari's reverse head butt. Blood streamed from both nostrils dripping off his chin onto the expensive shirt and vest below it. He had a hand cupped to his face to try to stem the flow but didn't seem to have much success.
"You know, your Grace, I think I'll decide when and with whom I decide to have children. But I can promise you one thing. It won't be a disgusting old fart like you."
"GUARDS!" yelled the Duke as he pulled a silk handkerchief from his pocket and pressed it to his mangled nose.
Two of the guards who'd marched her into the office burst in, their hands on their sword hilts. They seemed shocked by the bloody face of their master and the smirking young woman standing next to him.
"Take her down to the darkest, nastiest cell I have. I need to consider just how I will deal with her insolence. And fetch me a healing mage. I have a formal ball to attend this evening and I can't go with my face looking like this."
"Something tells me that even a mage wouldn't be able to make your looks any better. They can’t work miracles," Cari laughed as one of the guards grabbed her by the elbow and yanked her out of the room.
She heard the Duke's rage-filled shouts at his retainers while she was led away. It probably wasn't a good idea to antagonize him that way but Cari didn't care. In her mind, he had it coming. She was just the instrument of some long-delayed justice.
Cari kept smiling all the way down to the depths of the dungeon beneath the Duke's palace. She'd find a way out of this place, she just had
to wait for the right opportunity. There was still more justice to dispense after all and she had decided she was just the person to serve it.
Chapter 14
Cari discovered being in a windowless cell for an extended period of time caused one to lose all track of time. The only thing she had to gauge the hours was when the guards brought her a bowl of food or water. The meals consisted of some sort of thick porridge with chunks of greasy meat mixed in it and a mug of lukewarm water. The food left a lot to be desired and the water wasn’t much better. Cari hoped the anti-infection implants she’d received at home still worked.
She couldn't decide if the three meals given to her meant she'd been there for one day, two days, or maybe even three. The bowls were small and didn't fill her up very much so gauging based on her level of hunger was a no go as well.
In the end, she decided it didn't really matter how much time passed; she needed all the time she could get to formulate a plan before they decided what to do with her. Cari ran idea after idea through her head, considering first one thing and then another in an effort to escape before the Duke decided what to do with her.
The plan she kept circling back to involved her ability to "power up" during a fight. She'd only ever used the skill once and she did not have her sword or any other weapons. Cari had received some training in open hand martial arts, but she wasn't entirely sure if that skill would transfer to Fantasma. She was practiced in two-weapon combat in the real world, but the skill hadn't shown up until she had used her first skill point on it. She wasn't positive what would have happened if she had fought that guard before gaining the skill.