Balanced on the Blade's Edge (Dragon Blood, Book 1) (14 page)

Sardelle flexed her fingers inside her
mittens and let her own senses drift toward the towers. One man
stood in each of the ones closest to the gates. They were the main
people she needed to worry about. She could either distract them or
tweak their thoughts, so they wouldn’t remember seeing her. That
would require a delicate touch, though, and it would be difficult
to do to two people at a time… not to mention the sketchy
morality.

Just give them
rashes.

That thought… did cross
my mind. But perhaps something less painful this time…
Sardelle closed her eyes and examined the interiors of the towers.
Both had stairs spiraling up to wooden floors at the top where the
soldiers stood. The lower level of each tower held a big cast iron
stove with neat stacks of firewood under the stairs. A little smoke
might do for one, but for two? Too much of a coincidence. In the
left tower, a hint of life other than that of the soldier’s made
her investigate between the floorboards. A family of rats staying
warm for the winter. Perhaps they would enjoy a little
exercise…

You’re not a sorcerer,
you’re a prankster.

Sardelle snorted.
You say
that as if you don’t approve. I’m sure you’re down there, roasting
some chestnuts to snack on while you watch this.

Possibly.

Sardelle closed the flue on the stove first.
She waited until the soldier in that tower started crinkling his
nose before sending the rats out from beneath the floor in the
second. Soon, a family of six was scampering around the soldier’s
legs. He cursed and tried swatting at them with his sword before
hunting around for a broom. In the other tower, the guard was
jogging down the stairs to investigate the stove.

“Time to go,” she murmured, and glanced
around the courtyard to make sure there wasn’t anyone inside
looking her way. The snow, which was falling more heavily than
ever, made it hard to tell. So long as it made things hard for
other people too.

She strode across the packed snow, waved a
hand to disengage the lock on the gate, and muffled the squeak of
the hinges. After closing it behind her, she strode onto the trail
Zirkander’s team had left, her snowshoes tucked under her arm. Even
with the unwieldy things attached to their boots, the soldiers had
sunk down several inches in the fresh powder. Autumn calendar date
or not, there had to be at least three feet already snuggled up to
the fortress walls.

A quick check showed that the soldier in the
stove tower had figured out the flue was the problem. His comrade
was still chasing rats, but he would be back at his post shortly.
Even with the trail broken, Sardelle floundered in the deep snow as
she tried to reach the trees before witnesses showed up. The
fortress occupied the only level land in the tiny valley, and she
was already angling down a slope. Maybe she should have put her
snowshoes on in the courtyard, but that would have been hard to
explain if someone spotted her.

Half running and half floundering and
flailing, Sardelle reached the first of the trees. She put several
more of the ancient evergreens behind her before stopping to put on
the snowshoes. She readjusted her pack and wiped sweat from her
brow.

“I’ve gone a hundred meters, and I’m already
thinking about a nap.”

Hm? I’m sorry, I wasn’t
listening. Watching your friend run around after the rats is indeed
entertaining.

The most excitement
you’ve seen in three hundred years?

Sadly so. The world is
dreadfully boring when you’re not awake.

I’ll take that as a
compliment.

A cold wind whistled across the hillside,
whipping at Sardelle’s damp skin. She pulled her cap low over her
eyes and wrapped her scarf up to her nose, then pushed away from
the tree and headed down the trail. The soldiers would probably
walk faster than she could, even breaking the trail. She didn’t
want to catch up with them anyway—explaining her presence and why
she had disobeyed Zirkander wouldn’t be fun. All she wanted was to
be close enough to help if the sorcerer she had sensed attacked the
team.

Are you sure you
want
to help against someone who might be… a
distant relative?

If he’s Cofah, he’s no
relative of mine.

Not technically true.
Their ancestors are the same as yours, back from the dragon-riding
days when mages were flying around the world and colonizing it as
easily as… well, as easily as they can do today in their airships,
I suppose.

I know, Jaxi, but the
Cofah were trying to take over our homeland three centuries ago,
and that doesn’t seem to have changed. Whoever is out there isn’t
anyone I have anything in common with.

Except magic. Would a day come when she would
grow so lonely for her own kind, for those she could speak openly
with about the mental arts, that she might seek out sorcerers on
other continents, continents that had either never suffered a purge
or could boast more survivors from that time period? If so… it
wasn’t today. She certainly wasn’t going to stand aside and let
Zirkander get hurt. He was… she didn’t know what he was to her
exactly, but she knew she didn’t want to see him wounded—or
worse.

Sardelle waited for a snarky comment, but
Jaxi must have been distracted. Maybe she was trying to scout the
mountain ahead to see if the airship had indeed crashed—with a
sorcerer inside—or if it had escaped into the ether. Sardelle paid
more attention to the forest around her, to the towering evergreens
stretching toward the sky, the boughs heavy with fresh snow. Now
and then an overburdened branch would drop its load, and the noise
would make her jump. There were few other noises out there.
Whatever animals lived in the hills had probably gone to ground
when the avalanche roared through the mountains.

The path leveled, giving her legs a
break—remaining upright while walking across an ever-steepening
slope was not an easy task—but it turned to head through a narrow
canyon too. She eyed the craggy gray walls and the high perches
overhead, wondering if there were any mountain lions about. Because
she was looking in that direction, she missed the movement behind a
tree to the left of the canyon entrance.

A dark figure jumped out and grabbed her
before she could so much as think of defense. An arm wrapped around
her waist, tugging her off-balance, and she tumbled against…

“Colonel Zirkander,” she gasped, glad she had
identified him before her wits had returned and she had launched
some attack that would be… hard to explain later.

The grip around her waist loosened, though he
didn’t let her go. “It
is
you. I didn’t
think it could be… how’d you get out?”

“Just waited for a moment when nobody was
looking.”

“I’m going to have to talk to those gate
guards.” Zirkander released her and propped her back upright on the
trail—the snowshoes did make it difficult to maintain one’s
balance. He touched her pack. “You came prepared.”

Sardelle decided not to remind him that she
had grown up in the area, not when she had been caught mentioning a
town that no longer existed. “Are you going to send me back?”

Zirkander looked back along the trail. If he
said yes, turned her around, and swatted her on the backside to get
her moving, what choice would she have but to do so?

“No. We’ve already encountered tracks out
here.”

“Human tracks?”

He nodded. “A couple of men went most of the
way to the fort, presumably to see if the avalanche swallowed us
whole or not.”

“That means the ship
did
land then.”

“Or crash. Come on. We’ll find out.” He
headed into the little canyon.

“Thank you.”

“And along the way, you can tell me why
you’re so eager to come along.” Zirkander gave her a long look over
his shoulder. “I doubt there are any archaeological dig sites out
here.”

Sardelle stumbled. She almost asked what made
him think she was here as an archeologist, but she caught herself.
If he thought she was some academic here to poke through stones,
let him. That was a lot better than being a prisoner. Of course,
she had already installed her forged record. It was only a matter
of time before that captain stumbled across it.

Just worry about the
now
, Jaxi suggested.
And be wary of what’s
ahead. For all we know, that sorcerer could be one of the ones
padding about out here.

Good point.

They passed through the canyon without being
jumped on by mountain lions, and a fit, young soldier veered out of
the trees to join them on the opposite side. A nametag on his parka
read
Oster
.

“Sir?” He looked at Sardelle.

“Our shadow,” Zirkander said.

“She’s… coming?”

“She seems to be of that opinion.”

Oster stared at the colonel, but didn’t
question him. Sardelle wondered if people would start to, behind
his back if not to his face, because of her. She was still dressed
in prisoner garb, if with a few extra layers she had piled on for
this trek. Even if she had helped with the avalanche retrieval, the
soldiers wouldn’t necessarily trust her. She hoped the fact that
Zirkander seemed to wouldn’t make trouble for him.

“You find any more tracks, Corporal?”
Zirkander asked.

“No, sir. The two sets over there walked out
to the fort and then walked back the same way. They didn’t have
snowshoes, so it’s possible we’ll catch them if we hurry.”

“Tell the sergeant to go ahead then. I’ll
catch up. You young warriors would probably like me out of the way
for any fighting that comes up anyway.”

The corporal hesitated. “We wouldn’t want you
getting… sniped or—” he glanced at Sardelle, “—anything else,
either, sir.”

“I’ll be fine.” Zirkander pulled out the
rifle strapped across his pack and held it in front of him. “I’m a
fair shot, I’m told.”

“Yes, sir.” Oster saluted, then jogged down
the trail ahead of them.

“I didn’t know you could jog in snowshoes,”
Sardelle said.

“It takes practice.”

She wagered Zirkander could have kept up with
the younger men and was staying back because of her. She didn’t
know how she felt about that.

Like a burden?

Not until you mentioned
it. Thanks, Jaxi.

Sardelle extended her senses around them as
she walked—she hadn’t been paying attention earlier, and Zirkander
had snuck up on her with embarrassing ease. It wouldn’t do to let
anyone else approach. They were tramping down a slope toward a
canyon, this one much larger than the other they had passed
through. Large enough to hold a crashed airship. Something out
there tickled the edge of her senses. Several people, and someone…
The sorcerer? Working some magic? He or she didn’t seem aware of
her, but she pulled back anyway. The magic user seemed busy, but
since she had sensed him probing the fortress, he might feel her
presence as well.

She wanted to warn Zirkander, not only that
the crashed ship and several people were at the other end of the
canyon, but about the other sorcerer as well. How, though? She
focused on the back of his head, wishing she could will whatever
prejudices he had against magic users away. An impossibility, alas.
She shook her head. She would have to simply try to help the
soldiers when they encountered the airship crew.

Zirkander lifted a hand. “Wait here,
please.”

He removed his snowshoes, leaned his rifle
against a cliff, and scrambled up the rock, the edges and crevices
slick with ice and snow. She gaped as he went up forty feet, as if
there were a rope there to assist him. Yes, he definitely could
have kept up with the young soldiers.

At the top, he crouched, his back to a
boulder, and peered toward the valley. The snow had slowed to a few
intermittent flurries. “Yes… I thought I smelled smoke. They’re
here.” He clenched his fist. “It doesn’t look like they smashed
into any trees, but there was definitely some damage done on the
way down.”

“You really want that ship, don’t you?”

“Yes.” Zirkander crawled back down, not quite
as quickly as he had gone up, but he landed in the snow beside her
without falling or appearing in danger of falling at any point.
“Some astute bartender would doubtlessly pin this desire back to my
childhood days when my father refused to buy a model airship for
me.”

Astute bartender? Is that what passed for a
therapist in the army? “Why wouldn’t he buy it for you?”

Zirkander strapped his snowshoes back on as
he answered. “He said he didn’t want to encourage me—I was already
flight mad by five or six—but Mom said we didn’t have the money for
silly toys. I decided to make one of my own. Out of sticks. It was
more of an air-raft.” He nodded his readiness and started down the
trail again.

“I’m sure it was cute,” Sardelle said.

A shot fired in the distance. Zirkander
cursed and started jogging. Sardelle did her best to keep up. More
shots were fired, all from the direction of that canyon, and she
thought he would tear off without her. But he glanced back, saw she
was falling behind, and stopped to wait. His hand was clenched
about his rifle, and he reminded her of a sled dog, straining at
the traces, eager to charge off down the trail.

“You don’t have to wait for me,” Sardelle
said. “I’ll catch up. Or maybe hang back and stay out of
trouble.”

“Oddly, I don’t believe you.”

Good. She wanted him where she could keep an
eye on him anyway. She would try to watch over the other soldiers
as well, but Zirkander was… her best hope of freeing Jaxi.

Uh huh. I’m the reason
you’re trailing him across the mountain and through a
blizzard.