Balanced on the Blade's Edge (Dragon Blood, Book 1)

by Lindsay Buroker

  * * *

  Sardelle advanced on the shaman, Jaxi glowing like a sun in her hand. She had surprised him with her initial attack, and his defenses had fallen, allowing the bullets to reach the Cofah warriors, but he had recovered enough to brick off his mind. That was fine. She had no problem stopping the man with her sword. So long as the Cofah didn’t distract her overly much.

  They were clearly acting as the shaman’s bodyguards, whereas the soldiers on the wall… would be as happy to shoot her as to shoot him.

  A Cofah warrior aimed his firearm at her. When it blasted, Jaxi blazed, incinerating what turned out to be sprayed shot rather than a bullet. Fortunately, the rest of the Cofah were focused on shooting back at those shooting from the wall. With their shielding gone, they had the low ground. Some had already run to take cover behind buildings.

  The shaman tried another mental attack, similar to the one he had originally launched. He wasn’t the only one who had shored up his brain’s defenses. The assault broke around Sardelle, like water passing a boulder in a stream.

  She smiled at him and walked closer. Less than ten meters separated them. If he was armed, his weapons lay under that fur cloak. She eyed it. The wombat fur or whatever it was looked coarse and dry. She waved her hand, trying to ignite it. For a moment, smoke wafted up all around the shaman, but he squelched the attack.

  He sneered at her, raising his hand, and tendrils of red mist floated toward her. Sardelle kept walking, not certain what that mist was—much of his magic was foreign to her, something from a distant continent—but trusted Jaxi’s power to destroy it. For herself, she raised the soulblade over her shoulder, preparing for a physical attack.

  Jaxi pulled the red mist toward her. It wrapped around the blade, then light flashed and it was gone, incinerated like the bullets.

  The shaman’s eyes grew round as he stared at her—at the sword. At that moment, he knew he was outmatched.

  It’s not too late, he spoke into her mind. Forget these talentless apes. They’re not worth wasting your power on. Come with me. I’ll give you more than they ever could.

  Is this going to be another offer to breed? Sardelle didn’t bother to hide her disgust this time. He should have offered again to take her to the other sorcerers in the world. That would have tempted her more. Not enough to lower her sword and stop advancing on him, but more.

  Do you not want children? Children with power to rival your own?

  If I choose to have children, I want them to have two parents that love them, and each other.

  That could come in time. With his thoughts, he sent an image of them together, locked in a lovers’ embrace.

  Sardelle curled her lip. The shaman was backing away, even as she advanced. She increased her pace. Another five meters, and she would reach him. As she pressed forward, Jaxi cut down bullets that came close—one burst into flames a foot from her eyes. That had originated on the wall, not from a Cofah shotgun. It wasn’t the first. No matter what the outcome of this battle, she needed to leave as soon as her confrontation was over.

  You see them? The shaman flung a hand toward the soldiers on the wall. They would strike you down as swiftly as they would me. To defend them is utter foolishness. You are not worthy of a soulblade.

  Your courting words could use some work. Three meters.

  The shaman crouched like a tiger, as if he meant to launch a physical attack at her. Instead he threw up both hands, hurling a tidal wave of energy. Again she let it deflect off her mental shield, and it barely stirred her hair. Behind her, windows shattered and doors flew open. A soldier was knocked off the wall and cried out in pain.

  Sardelle leapt forward, slashing at the shaman’s neck with her blade. He scrambled backward, but his heel caught on slick ground. He flailed trying to catch himself. Sardelle lunged after him before he could recover, reminding herself that, weapon or not, he was not a helpless unarmed opponent. He had come to destroy this fort—and to steal Jaxi. She finished him with a stab to the heart.

  Sardelle turned three hundred and sixty degrees, checking for fresh attackers, prepared to defend herself. Rifles fired and metal clanged in all directions. Red and gray uniforms mixed, as men fought hand-to-hand. The drab garb of prisoners was everywhere too. She had forgotten—the shaman had released the miners. A pickaxe slammed into a man’s back. The victim wasn’t, as she had feared, one of the fort’s soldiers. It was a Cofah warrior. The prisoners were helping the soldiers, not hindering them.

  Light flared in the night sky, and a cheer erupted. The rear of the airship had exploded, and shards of wood flew in every direction. Its balloon was already a misshapen, half-sunken mess. A single bronze dragon flier streaked out of the remains of the explosion, its frame gleaming with the reflection of the flames eating at the back of the airship. The wooden craft slumped in the sky, floating lower and lower, a crash inevitable.

  Sardelle wished she could join in with the celebration and wait for Ridge, give him a kiss and a hug for his heroics, but she remembered those bullets all too well. As long as General Nax was in charge, she wouldn’t receive fair treatment here.

  With tears stinging her eyes, Sardelle checked the shaman one last time to ensure he was dead, then ran for the balloon craft that had delivered the Cofah. A single man waited in the large basket, the pilot doubtlessly. He was kneeling with only his eyes peeking over the rim. When he saw Sardelle coming, he leaned out and cut a line, then a second. They were attached to anchors holding the balloon down, and as soon as he severed them, the craft rose. Her run turned into a dead sprint. As dubious a craft as a hot air balloon might be for flying over the Ice Blades, it was all she had to escape these mountains.

  She tossed her soulblade into the basket—that ought to alarm the pilot—then leaped, catching one of the dangling lines. Though she was weary from the battle, and no great athlete under any circumstances, she was motivated enough to find a way up. Half afraid the pilot would brain her, she rushed to claw her way over the edge and into the basket. Her sword was the only thing waiting inside.

  I flared at him, and he jumped over the side.

  You make an effective bully, Jaxi.

  Thank you.

  Sardelle pushed herself to her feet. In a minute, she would figure out how to work the controls. Sometime after that, she would contemplate her future and decide where she wanted the craft to take her. For now, she simply inhaled and exhaled the cold mountain air, feeling some of the tension ebb from her body as the fort grew farther and farther away.

  The clank-thunk-kertwank of the dragon flier’s engine drifted to her ear, and she found Ridge, the light of his power crystal illuminating him in the cockpit. He was flying toward the fort as she drifted in the other direction—by the sickly sound of that engine, it was doubtful his craft would make it much farther—and too much distance separated them for words. He gave her a nod though and lifted a hand.

  Her throat tight, Sardelle returned the gesture. Even if nobody else in that fort understood, he did.

  Is that enough?

  Sardelle wiped her eyes. It has to be.

  Epilogue

  There were either no fish, or his bait wasn’t fooling them. Or he was too drunk to realize they had snickeringly made off with the bait an hour ago. He pondered whether fish snickered. And then he pondered whether he had the strength to get up from the chair, go inside the cabin, and make something to eat. It sounded like a lot of work. Much easier to lean back on the deck and enjoy the winter sun—if one could even call this weather “winter” in comparison to what the Ice Blades experienced. There wasn’t any ice on the lake, and it felt more like autumn with the sun warming his skin.

  On the other side of the water, a rooster crowed. There were only two other houses on the lake, part of the reason Ridge had bought it, but he wasn’t sure he was enjoying the solitude at the moment. Given his mood, it might have been better to stay on base, to wait in the company of others for his squadron to return from their latest mi
ssion. But he hadn’t given Sardelle his address there. He doubted she wanted anything to do with the military again.

  Ridge picked at a sliver on the chair and wondered if he was being a fool. Did he truly expect her to show up? Was he even sure he wanted her to? After seeing… all that he had seen?

  “You’re sitting here, aren’t you?” he mumbled.

  What reason did she have to come though, now that she had her sword—her big glowing sorcerer-slaying sword? She didn’t need any more favors from him.

  “Drinking again?” came a soft voice from behind him.

  Ridge nearly fell out of his chair. He did knock his fishing pole in the water as he jumped up and spun around, his mouth hanging open.

  Sardelle stood at the head of the dock, wearing an elegant forest-green dress that hugged her slim waist and accented her curves far more nicely than the prison garb had. Her black hair hung lush and thick about her shoulders, and framed her face, including the spattering of freckles across her nose and cheeks. Somehow Ridge had never pictured sorceresses with freckles. He was glad for them though. They made her seem more… human. That and her archly raised eyebrow as she regarded his bottle.

  “It’s only the second time in a month,” he said.

  “Ah. I hope it’s not because of… bad news again?” Her eyebrow lowered, and her expression grew earnest. Concerned. Maybe she thought he had gotten in trouble because of her.

  “Nope. I was allowed to return to my squadron, and I got an award for my—” Ridge rolled his eyes as he quoted the rest, “—cunning, bravery, and initiative.” Some idiot had threatened to promote him as well, but Ridge had squashed that snowball before it could roll downhill and turn into an avalanche. Generals didn’t fly; generals commanded brigades—sometimes forts. He had no interest in enduring that again for a long time, if ever.

  “Oh, I see,” Sardelle said. “And that’s why you’re sitting out here and drinking, as if you’ve lost your oldest friend.”

  “The king and general of the armies were so happy to get that pile of crystals that they just had to award someone. With General Nax gone, I guess I got it by default. I’m not a believer in awards that are given without being earned. I didn’t do a single intelligent thing while I was out there, and in the end I didn’t do much more than blow up an owl. Someone else was paramount in defeating the Cofah.” Ridge gave her a pointed look. It had all been in her hands all along.

  “All I did was defeat their shaman. You blew up their airship. And that owl was big.” Sardelle tilted her head. “When you say General Nax is gone, do you mean… ?”

  “A little band of those Cofah sneaked up to the wall and got to him. I actually missed him when I got back down. There was no senior officer to foist all of the cleanup on.”

  “Regrettable,” Sardelle murmured.

  Ridge wondered if she would have kept flying away in that balloon if she had known the general had already been dead at that point. Probably. From what he had heard later, his own people had been shooting at her, right along with the other sorcerer.

  “Sardelle, I… ” Ridge stuffed his hands into his pockets and studied the dock boards at her feet. “I can’t imagine it means much, but I want to apologize for the way you were treated there. I’d like to say things would have been different if you had told me the truth from the beginning, but… ” He shrugged.

  “I was afraid that if I did… Among other things, would you have spent the night with me in that cave if you had known?”

  “Seven gods, no. I would have been afraid you would melt my dragon if I didn’t please you adequately.”

  Sardelle snorted softly. “Just so we’re clear, you’re talking about… the little wooden figurine, right?”

  Because a woman would find a man who called something else a dragon silly. Right, he knew that. “Of course.”

  “And the night in the library?” she asked.

  “Oh, I was drunk enough then, that I might have risked your ire.”

  “I see.”

  Sardelle padded down the dock, soft green shoes that matched the dress whispering across the boards. He wondered when she had gone shopping—or how. Did she have money? Or had she simply snapped her fingers and willed the dress into existence? He swallowed as she drew nearer. He wasn’t afraid of her, but at the same time… he couldn’t pretend nothing had changed. She looked the same, but… it was hard not to see that aura that had enveloped her when she had held her sword aloft.

  He glanced toward the yard and the cabin. “You didn’t bring your shiny sword?”

  Sardelle stopped a couple of paces away, her head tilting. “I didn’t think I would need it here.”

  “No… it’s generally safe, though the mosquitoes can be a powerful threat in the summer. Still, it doesn’t seem like something you should leave lying around for anyone to find. Or for a mountain to fall on top of.”

  “I rode a horse here.” She waved to the trees by the road. “Jaxi—my sword—and a pack are on it, but I wasn’t sure if I should… presume to drop my things on your porch. I wasn’t even sure this would be your porch. That address… at first, I thought it was some research facility the general had meant to ship my sword to.”

  “No,” Ridge whispered, distracted by the thought that she wanted to drop her things on his porch.

  “Then by the time I got that balloon over the mountains and down to civilization, and figured out what city that address was in, I was a little concerned I might find you here with… someone else.”

  “Who else would there be?”

  “I don’t know. Given how quickly the general’s daughter—I presume she’s still alive?—grew infatuated with you, I gather you don’t have much trouble finding female company.”

  “Oh.” Ridge decided not to mention that he had ridden home with Vespa, who had tried to convince him to console her physically over the loss of her father. “She was actually infatuated before she came, I gathered later, and more by my reputation than by actually knowing me. Once women get to know me, they often flee the other way.” Not exactly true. The incompatibility issues didn’t usually arise until they tried living together, and he was off for months at a time, trying to get himself killed—their words, not his—and leaving them alone at home to worry.

  “Ridge, are you lying to me?”

  “Maybe a little. I thought it was my turn.” He smiled and crossed the last few feet between them, sensing that she wanted that from him, and took her hands. “If you can tolerate my mendacious ways, maybe you could stay a while, see if you find the knowing more appealing than others have.”

  She leaned against his chest, their hands still clasped. “I’d like that.”

  “Good,” he whispered, locking eyes with her. His heart was beating as fast as a propeller. He felt like a teenager filled with that mix of exhilaration and terror as he mustered the courage to kiss her. But as soon as their lips touched, there was a sense of the familiar… and the right.

  THE END

  Afterword

  Thank you for giving Balanced on the Blade's Edge a read. If you enjoyed it and have time to leave a review, I would appreciate it. If you would like to check out my other works, the full list is up on my website. If you would like a quick note when I have something new out, please sign up for my newsletter. (I occasionally send out information about contests or opportunities to snag review copies too.) For the social media fans, you can find me on Twitter, Facebook, and Google+.