“Really, I hadn’t noticed,” she said dryly. She thought about their first conversation outside of Cormar’s office. It had started with him falling to the ground because of her and had ended with him gaining a healthy respect for her knowledge of dragon rulers but not necessarily for fighters as a whole.
Without pause, Sara answered. “I don’t know why he deserted.”
She held up a hand to forestall his protests.
“I honestly don’t,” she said, “but I do know my father was the most honorable man I knew. He would never abandon his command. Not unless he was forced to for the greater good of his men.”
The pain of her words was evident in the tone even if her face was expressionless.
He nodded. “I’m sorry. It must be hard not to know how or why your father chose that.”
She looked away, her mind off in the distance before she snapped back to the present.
“It is and was. I guess it always will be. He chose to be a military commander. Under his leadership were the mage companies, the empire’s soldiers and three of the premier mercenary companies in the land – including both the Corcoran guard and the Red Lion guard. But because he chose to serve so far away I’ll never know. I’ll never know what he died for, what was going through his mind in those last few days or even how he died.”
Ezekiel looked at her. “What do you mean how he died?”
She looked at him. Irritation grew on her face.
“I wasn’t trying to dig the knife into your pain or even get in a question that time,” he said, walking forward with both hands upraised. “I really mean it. How can you not know?”
She humored him. “Because the military didn’t tell me,” she said.
He frowned. “But it’s public record. The Empress’s forces are required by imperial law to notify families of the officers about how they died—on or off the field of battle. Often it’s more of a question if they can ever really know for sure if the body was too badly damaged for complete analysis. In that case, they would tell you something like he perished in the first charge of the battle of whatever. But this, this is a question of how could they not know? Especially if they executed him.”
As usual he talked too much. Slowing down, Ezekiel asked, “Did you ask them?”
“My military contacts weren’t very receptive to our inquiries,” she said tensely. “Even getting my father’s ashes back was a battle, and we had to pay to get them transported here ourselves.”
Ezekiel looked the most upset she had ever seen him. “Do you want to know?”
“Of course I want to know,” she said. “How can you ask that?”
He said, “It’s not an easy matter for most people to learn their family member was hanged, drawn and quartered, or dismembered on a wheel.”
“I want to know. I need to know.”
He nodded. “Then I know a way you can find out.”
Her crossed arms fell to her sides. “Tell me.”
He looked away. “The mercenaries keep all the records for the imperial guards. Death records. Benefit records. Even deployment records.”
She scoffed. “Why would they have the imperial files?”
“Because of the war,” he explained, going over to his satchel. “The Empress has had her armed militia deployed upon the field of battle for months now. Everything she’s got is there—from her palace guard to the city watch. She needed protection and to keep the capital city of Sandrin secure, so she outsourced the work of her missing men.”
Ezekiel stopped and dug deeper in that red bag of his.
“Go on,” she urged.
“Got it,” said Ezekiel, holding up a sheath of papers in the air in excitement. He began thumbing through while Sara watched in mounting frustration.
“Ezekiel!” she shouted. It was the first time she had lost her cool. The first time he turned to look at her and was able to see emotion on her face. Predominantly frustration, but there was some excitement in there.
“Right,” he said with a delighted smile that he couldn’t hide plastered on his face. “It’s the mercenaries. He outsourced the work of the city guard, the imperial guard, and the garrison staff to the mercenaries. One company in particular controls every single piece of military paperwork—the Corcoran guard. They would know how your father died.”
She stared at him. “Then the Corcoran guard is who I’m going to see.”
She turned to leave.
“Wait!” Ezekiel said, running to stand in front of her. “Where are you going?”
She raised an eyebrow.
“All right, stupid question,” he muttered, “but what do you think you’re going to do when you get there?”
“I would think it would be self-explanatory.”
He shook his head. “You can’t just walk into the mercenary guild’s headquarters and ask to see the private files of their most elite company.”
She said, “They’re my father’s files, and if they won’t give them to me, I will take them.”
“You and what army?” he snapped.
Anger crossed her face and he stepped back.
“I’m just trying to help. They’re not going to like you walking in there and demanding their information. You certainly won’t just walk back out. You think you can take on at least five other battle mages by yourself? Because you’re not the only one, you know.”
She said, “I can try. If I don’t, my father’s memory is nothing.”
He shook his head. “What if I said I had a plan to get you those files?”
“How?”
He rattled the sheath of papers still in his left hand. “This is how.”
“I’m listening.”
He let out a slow breath. “Mind if we clear the doorway?”
She looked at the door inches from his back. Then she walked over and sat down on a bench they had used to rest supplies on. He hurriedly sat down opposite her with his legs on either side of the bench. Putting the sheath of paper in the middle between them, he launched into his explanation.
“This is documentation from Cormar stating I have the legal right to acquire and hire a new mercenary for the protection of his warehouse.”
She picked up the paper in interest. Not reading it but noting a gold seal in the corner with an anchor and the pole of the fishery’s wharf on it. Cormar’s seal.
“He was looking for a new watcher before you walked in his door this morning,” he said hurriedly. “I was supposed to go this afternoon, but then you showed up. The hiring form is good for two days. We could go to the guild tomorrow just as planned.”
She pulled up a leg and rested her chin on her knee as she watched him with wary eyes. “I don’t understand how this helps me find out about my father’s death.”
He nodded. “I guess I wouldn’t either if I’d never been through the mercenary guild’s hiring process.”
She said, “So why don’t you tell me how that goes?”
“It’s simple,” he explained. “A nobleman, business owner, or caravan chief will usually go in looking for a mercenary with a specific skill set. The guild itself has the documentation on thousands of men and women spread throughout Algardis and some in the far kingdoms. Many of them don’t even live near here. What the guild does is match the preferences of the hirer with a specific mercenary. If the hirer needs the person immediately, the guild will assign someone within the city.”
She stared at him. “How do you know all this?”
“I took a temporary job there once,” he admitted.
“You?” she said with surprise in her voice.
He cleared his throat. “As I was saying, in my experience with one caravan leader, he was looking for someone to journey with his crew through the winter vales in the north for two months and the guild rounded up the most likely candidates. Those with experience with deep snow, caravan beasts, and long but slow journeys. They also looked for someone who could be away for long periods of time.”
He continued on i
n excitement, “We had all of that information on file. Every candidate’s personal life and professional history is there. From their weapons specialties to the location of their domiciles is in those records.”
She stared at him. That was all fine and dandy, but she needed him to get to the point.
“But here’s the important part,” said Ezekiel, realizing he had gone off on a tangent. “The documentation for each mercenary is in the same room as the death records. Partly, I think, because mercenaries tend to die fairly often.”
She blinked. “So we get into the records room in the search for our candidate and find my father’s file instead?”
“Yes!” he said. “Well, except we really do need a new candidate to replace you, so it’s a two-birds-with-one-stone kind of thing.”
“I like how you think, Ezekiel.”
“It’s a pleasure to be of service, my lady.”
“Don’t call me that.”
“Right, sure.”
She sighed. “I guess you came through, curator.”
He nodded.
Then something distracted her. The sound of steps outside echoed with her enhanced hearing. Sara stood up abruptly while pulling her knife from her sheath.
There were two sets of boots walking this way. No voices. Yet.
“What?” Ezekiel said.
“Shhh, I heard something,” she said, staring at the door.
Then Cormar strode back in with the grin of a happy man on his face.
It was the most disturbing thing she’d seen that day. No man like him should ever be happy. And if he was, she feared for whoever had just made his day. She doubted they had survived the experience.
But still she relaxed. Although she was honestly getting quite tired of him barging into the warehouse throughout the day.
Behind him Wainwright came through the door, tugging on the reins of two braying pack mules.
Sara almost felt sorry for him. He seemed to do everything for Cormar except fetch his lunch and she doubted he was that highly compensated for his work either. Cormar looked around and gave a grudging nod. “Good work.”
“Thank you, Cormar,” said Ezekiel respectfully.
Sara said nothing. Cormar didn’t seem to mind.
She watched as Ezekiel went to the pack mules that occasionally shifted and brayed. Each had a wooden crate atop its back.
“Sara, can you help me?” Ezekiel asked as he stood on one side of the crate.
She came forward, careful to take her knife out only when she was on the far side of the mule and out of its eyesight. She knew that the quickest way to scare an animal was to pull a blade in front of it. She put a hand on her side of the rectangular crate and called out to Ezekiel, “Brace yourself. I’m about to cut the rope.”
From the mule’s other side she heard him speak. “I’m ready.”
She smoothly cut the rope holding the crate in place.
“Got it,” she heard Ezekiel say with a grunt.
A moment later: “Maybe not.”
“Sara!” was the only thing she heard before the sound of him falling over with the crate on top of him came to her ears.
But it wasn’t Sara who saved Ezekiel from falling. She came around the mule’s front to see Ezekiel balanced inches above the ground with the crate atop his chest. There was a wind tunnel beneath his back holding him up. It had stopped the crate from shattering on the ground, but by doing so it had also done something far worse. The wind tunnel was forcing Ezekiel to bear the weight of the crate on his chest and the tip of his throat. He couldn’t move out from under the weight or from atop the funnels of wind beneath him.
His face was turning blue.
“Cormar, stop! He can’t breathe!” she frantically shouted.
Sara saw Cormar light a cigar out of the corner of her eye. “He should have thought of that before he almost destroyed my new artifacts.”
She growled in frustration and rushed forward. Quickly she stuck her knife in her belt, not her sheath as she grabbed the edge of the crate and pulled with all of her might. It came off of Ezekiel’s throat and his airway opened up. He began gasping for breath frantically. She kept tugging. She needed to get it off his chest, and Ezekiel was worse than useless as he lay like a crab stuck on its back with legs flailing in the air.
Flailing is good, she thought to herself. If he wasn’t moving, I’d be worried he was already dead.
With a harsh yank and grunt, she took the full weight of the crate from atop Ezekiel by bracing her feet harshly on the ground and tapping into her battle magic. This time she was boosting her strength, just as she would if she was whirling a mace above her head or throwing an opponent to the ground. It worked.
Staggering back as the load grew lighter in her arms, Sara stood up straight and carried the crate, which was twice her size, a short distance away. Setting it down on the floor as if it was as light as a feather, she stood and glared at Cormar.
He stared at her with fascination in his eyes as he puffed rings of smoke into the air. “Well done, Fairchild, well done.”
He’d been testing her, she realized. He had to have known the crate weighed more than a grown man. Cormar wanted to see what his new watcher was made of. She couldn’t fault him for his logic or his actions, but by the gods, she wanted to rip out Cormar’s throat. The man just rubbed her the wrong way. She knew part of that was her instinctual need to kill when she dipped into her gifts, but she didn’t think her instincts about his persona were wrong. There was something off about the fishery manager turned collector. He ignored the hate in her eyes and turned to Ezekiel. As Cormar let his wind tunnel dissipate as if it was never there, Ezekiel fell to the ground again. This time he just laid there coughing.
Sara didn’t move. Not because she wasn’t interested in Ezekiel’s well-being, but because she wasn’t certain she could keep herself from strangling him for taking on such a larger load than he could handle. If she had known it was that heavy in the beginning, they would have found another way.
Finally Ezekiel rose to his knees and stood. Wainwright waited next to the second mule’s head.
Cormar said, “I do believe you have one more load to carry.”
Ezekiel turned to look at the second mule with something akin to despair on his face.
“I’ll get it,” said Sara.
She came forward and grabbed her knife from her belt. As she passed Ezekiel, she gave it to him. “Here, cut the ropes on the other side and try not to stab yourself while you’re doing it.”
Ezekiel said nothing. He just did as she asked. She hoped it wasn’t so heavy this time. She was already letting her hold on her battle magic diminish. She knew the power was affecting her mood and she was getting dangerously agitated. She might snap at Ezekiel now, but if it got too much worse she could end up taking off his head.
She bore the brunt of the lighter crate with a slight grunt and smoothly set it down.
“Not so hard, right?” said Cormar as he walked out the door.
Ezekiel and Sara just watched him with dark eyes.
Wainwright grabbed the first mule’s lead without a word and followed his boss into the evening air.
Chapter IX
SARA AND EZEKIEL LOOKED AT each other and then back down at the crates on the floor. Ezekiel grabbed a crowbar leaning against the wall without a word. As he got to work trying to pry open the crates, she watched. After a few minutes, she came forward. “Here, let me help.”
“No thanks, I got it,” he grunted.
She stepped back.
After a second time where he nearly fell on his bum, she snapped, “Really? Because it looks like you’re failing.”
He turned and said, “Well, not all of us are super humans.”
The crowbar was clutched tightly in his hand as he breathed heavily.
“Do we have a problem?”
“No, no problem,” he said with a caustic laugh.
“I think we do,” she insisted.
He g
ave her a glare. “Don’t worry. I’ll still get your mercenary file for you. There’s no need to take pity on me now.”
“Pity on you?” she said, genuinely confused.
He dropped the crowbar with a thud. “It’s obvious you think I’m weak and incompetent and…”
“Hold up,” she said, raising a hand. “Is this about what happened with Cormar?”
He shrugged. “You handled yourself well and hated that I didn’t.”
She was still lost. “Hated that you didn’t? Because I didn’t come to help you up?”
“No!” he shouted. “Well…yeah.”
She stared at him in astonishment.
His face went blank. “Never mind.”
His back turned away and hers stiffened. She didn’t want to do this. Not now. But silly as it seemed she felt that she owed him an explanation.
“Look, Ezekiel,” she said quietly, “I didn’t come because I was afraid.”
He laughed while still facing away from her. “Afraid? Of Cormar?”
“Not of Cormar. Of myself,” she said.
He turned around. “What?”
She twisted her lips and looked off in the distance. With a sigh she focused back on him. “How much do you know about battle mages?”
“That they’re badasses that take no shit from anyone.”
She shrugged. “Yeah, that’s true. But that’s not all of it.”
He shifted on his feet and crossed his arms as he asked uneasily, “What else is there?”
“A lot,” she said with a rueful laugh.
Then a pounding knock on the door interrupted their conversation. Ezekiel nearly jumped out of his skin. She quickly strode forward and snatched the knife from where he had left it atop the other crate.
“Stay there,” she said when she passed him.
“Wouldn’t dream of moving anywhere else,” he said. She didn’t miss the sarcasm in his voice.
A second knock echoed through the door.
“Who is it?” she called, wary of another intruder.
“The messenger,” she heard shouted back at her. The voice was coming from a young male who had just hit puberty. She could tell by the crack in his voice that hadn’t adjusted yet.
FIERCE: Sixteen Authors of Fantasy Page 308