Balanced on the Blade's Edge (Dragon Blood, Book 1) (28 page)

“Let’s just see what’s waiting for us,” she
muttered.

She might have sensed fifty people, but when
they came into sight, it seemed like a thousand torches out there
surrounding the tram cage. After the ride up in the darkness,
Sardelle squinted at the light. It didn’t keep her from seeing all
the rifles aimed at her. Even miners were armed, albeit with
pickaxes. Fear hung in the air. Fear of her? Gods, she had been
helping them all month. How could they forget about that? How could
they think she was an enemy now?

Through the cage bars, she spotted General
Nax at the back of the crowd—he also had a rifle aimed in her
direction. Ridge stood next to him. He had a rifle, but the butt
rested on the ground. Only his frown was aimed at her. Somehow that
was worse than all of the weapons.

Sardelle blinked back tears. A sorceress
striding out to fight shouldn’t be weeping.

I can send the cage back
down if you want.

It’s flooded by now, I’m
sure.

Not all the
levels…

Sardelle shook her head. With all of those
men, Nax could guard this exit indefinitely, and she couldn’t stay
down there forever.

She was tired after her ordeal below, but she
threw her remaining strength into a shield around her body, then
pushed open the gate door. The men tensed, their fingers tight on
their triggers, but nobody fired.

Of course not. The
general wants to know where the rest of the crystals are
first.

Hopelessly mired under
the new lake, I hope.
Sardelle held her arms out and let the
soulblade dangle in her grip. Unthreateningly.

She met Ridge’s eyes. He didn’t look away,
but he did mask his expression. She could have probed a little and
figured out what he was thinking… but she had a feeling she didn’t
want to know.

“Take her sword,” General Nax said.

Her hand tightened on the hilt. Fight now or
fight later? If she fought now, she risked hurting a lot of people.
She ought to be able to escape whatever cell they locked her in and
find Jaxi later. At night, when most people would be sleeping.

Sighing, she turned the soulblade, extending
it hilt first toward one of the twitchy privates who crept forward.
Once she was unarmed, two other soldiers walked up, grabbed her by
the backs of her arms, and steered her toward a building she knew
held cells. She looked up at the sky, at stars so big and bright
they seemed touchable, and hoped she hadn’t made the wrong
choice.

She almost tripped at a sight below the
stairs—while she had been down in the tunnels, one of the wall
towers had been obliterated. Now that she was out of the crowd, she
could see rubble in the courtyard, too, dark rocks against the
stark snow drifts. So, she had missed the first real battle. How
had it gone? Had Ridge and the others driven off the Cofah? Brought
down their ship?

You found a
soulblade
, came a hungry and unwelcome thought in her
head.

Sardelle’s shoulders slumped. The shaman. He,
at least, was still alive.

Now I see why you’ve been
here, what you wanted. Brilliant.

Thank you,
Sardelle
responded though she knew it was more Jaxi’s existence he found
brilliant than anything she had done.

A soft laugh sounded in her thoughts as the
soldiers led her into a cell-filled basement hallway.
Better sleep with it under your pillow. As rare as they
are anymore, I’ll be looking for it when we return.

Ugh. Not three minutes had passed, and she
was already certain she had made the wrong decision. Jaxi was
getting locked in some office or supply closet—where a powerful
shaman would have no trouble finding the blade—and Sardelle was
getting locked in a cell.

A heavy iron door thumped shut behind her,
and a latch was thrown. Utter darkness filled the tiny room.

I think we need to break
out tonight, Jaxi.

Sardelle expected an answer along the lines
of, “That’s obvious,” but she didn’t get an answer at all.

Jaxi?

Silence.

She realized with an alarming start that she
couldn’t
feel
Jaxi anymore, either. Not on
the fort, not anywhere. Even when the soulblade had been buried in
the mountain, she had sensed it. What had they done? Thrown Jaxi
off a cliff?

Sardelle dropped her hands to her knees and
told herself hyperventilating wouldn’t do her any good. The advice
didn’t help.

Sardelle needed to escape and find
Jaxi—wherever the soulblade was—but she had to wait until some of
those milling soldiers and miners went to their beds. Maybe the
guard outside her door would grow less alert too. She paced in
circles around the tiny cell. The carnage she had left down below
had people buzzing around the courtyard, going up and down on the
tram. And she sensed Ridge and the engineer working on the flier
again. Er, wait. No, he wasn’t up there anymore. She swept across
the fort with her senses—others she might not have been able to
identify so readily, but she knew his aura well by now. She halted
in the middle of her circle and faced the door.

He was on his way down here.

To see her? Her heart swelled with relief,
but the emotion soon faltered. She didn’t know what he felt, what
he wanted. Maybe the general knew they’d had a relationship and had
decided to send Ridge to question her. And if, instead of
strong-arming her, he gave her that quirky smile, she would tell
him whatever he wanted. No, she would do that anyway. What did the
crystals matter to her? What mattered was finding Jaxi. She would
trade him whatever information he wanted if he gave her the
soulblade’s location.

It took Ridge longer than she expected to
come down the stairs and into her hallway of cells. There was an
uncharacteristic anxiousness about him. Those pauses… was he
stopping to listen? To glance back over his shoulder? The general
hadn’t sent him at all, she realized. He was sneaking down. Did he
know about the guard? What was he going to say to the man?

Soft murmurs started up outside the door.
Sardelle leaned her ear against the cold iron, but she still
couldn’t make out words.

A soft thunk sounded below her ear—a key
turning in the lock. She stepped back.

“Sardelle?” Ridge whispered, pushing open the
door a couple of inches.

“Yes.” Ridiculous that her heart was beating
so loudly that he could probably hear it. His opinion of her
shouldn’t matter so much. But it did. She could fight against
everyone else in the fort, but she didn’t want to fight him.

“I thought you might have sneaked away
already.” Ridge stepped inside, a lantern in hand.

The hallway outside was dark, and Sardelle
didn’t see the guard. Ridge leaned his back against the wall, not
coming close.

She tried not to let that distance sting. He
was here at least.

“Not without Ja—my sword.”

“Ah.” Did he sound hurt by her answer? Did
her feelings toward him still matter?

“And,” Sardelle added, “I would not wish to
leave you without… ” Knowing if he still cared? Knowing if he could
possibly see past that which he feared in her?

Ridge sighed. “Saying goodbye?”

“No. I mean, I… don’t want to say
goodbye.”

Sardelle shifted from foot to foot in the
silence that followed. She didn’t regret saying the words, but…
maybe she should have waited and let him talk first.

“You’re not saying anything,” she observed
oh-so-helpfully.

“You can’t read my thoughts?”

“I… don’t. We aren’t like that. Very few ever
were, except for those who went rogue and… quite literally ruined
the world for the rest of us. There are rules that we swear by and
hold dearly. Or did.”

After another long pause, Ridge asked, “How
old are you?”

“Thirty-four.”

“How… ”

“This is… hard to believe—trust me, I had a
hard time believing it myself when I woke up, but I basically…
missed three hundred years.”

The single lantern didn’t provide a lot of
light, and Ridge’s face—which had been carefully neutral through
most of their conversation—didn’t change much, though his bottom
lip did lower a few millimeters.

“I was here when the original attack came
that collapsed this mountain,” Sardelle said. “It was actually…
your ancestors, I suppose. They figured out a way to sap in beneath
our community when nearly everyone was home for a big celebration,
and… I’m not sure how it happened exactly or where they found such
powerful explosives—your dynamite hadn’t been invented yet, so far
as I know—but it was devastating.”

“My ancestors.” He sounded like he didn’t
want to believe her.

Sardelle shrugged. “Well, maybe not
yours
specifically. Yours might have been
off inventing flying machines somewhere.”

She watched him, hoping for a smile, but he
was either too stunned or wasn’t believing anything she said.

“Ridge,” she said, then paused,
half-expecting him to tell her not to call him by first name
anymore. He didn’t. “The sword. It’s mine. I don’t mean in the
I-found-it-so-I-have-the-strongest-claim-on-it way, but in the… we
were bonded when I was sixteen and passed my exams. There’s a
spirit inside… that of someone who was once a sorceress but who
died young and placed her soul in the blade so she could continue
to live on, in a manner of speaking. This happened over three—er,
six hundred years ago, and Jaxi has been bonded with several
handlers since then, but most recently with me.”

Somewhere during her speech, Ridge had leaned
back against the wall, one hand propped on his hip. If he weren’t
holding the lantern with the other, he probably would have propped
that one up too. The stance said… I’m not buying this.

“I don’t need you to believe all that,”
Sardelle said, “and it’s perfectly understandable if you don’t, but
I just wanted you to know what Jaxi—the sword means to me. She’s
all I have left of my family, my friends, my
life
.” Her voice broke, and she took a few breaths,
struggling for equilibrium. The last few weeks had been busy enough
to distract her from all she had lost—aside from a few nights in
those awful barracks when she had allowed herself to weep
silently—but that didn’t mean the emotions weren’t there, hovering
beneath the surface.

Ridge stirred, lifting a hand toward her, but
he let it drop again. Uncertain.

“I… sense that something’s been done,”
Sardelle said when she could find a more normal tone again. “You
don’t owe me anything, but if you could tell me where she—the
sword—is, I would appreciate it.”

“Actually, I owe you… much. More than what I
thought, I’m beginning to realize.”

Was that why he was here? Because he felt he
owed
her something?

Sardelle swallowed. It was better than not
having him talking to her at all, and yet… she wished he had come
simply because he cared.

“What’s a
sherastu
?” he asked.

“It’s a title. Mage advisor. We worked
alongside the military and the clan leaders to defend Iskandia from
the Cofah and other invaders.”

Ridge nodded to himself. “This afternoon,
when that owl showed up again, distracting us so the airship could
sneak in for attacks, no odd little blasts of wind hit it.”

So, she hadn’t been as circumspect as she had
hoped with her attacks. “Sorry. I was busy down there. I didn’t
know the fort was under attack.”

“Yes, when the general got the report on the
devastation down there, his face turned so red, I thought he would
pass out.”

“What happened down there wasn’t
intentional,” Sardelle said. “I was just trying to get the sword.
If I’d had more time, I could have been more careful. I wasn’t
expecting… a water source.”

“Nax is certain you sabotaged the tunnels on
purpose so we couldn’t pull out any more crystals.”

“I almost crushed and drowned myself in the
process. I assure you it wasn’t intentional. Also… these crystals
you value so much, they’re meaningless to me. They were our light
fixtures.”

“I believe you. I—did you say
light
fixtures?” For the first time, a hint of
Ridge’s humor shown through. Tickled by the concept, was he?
Good.

“They hung on the ceilings. Honestly, if you
gave me a few days to study, I could probably make them for
you.”

Ridge’s response was somewhere between a
snort, a cough, and maybe that was a laugh. “Well, that would be
one more argument I could make for keeping you alive.” His comment
sobered him though. He stepped forward, his face grim. “The Cofah
are on the horizon again, or the general might already be down here
with his… chosen interrogator. He thinks you’re too dangerous to
keep alive. You need to… ” He glanced toward the hallway, perhaps
making sure the guard hadn’t returned. “You need to not be here
when he comes.”

“Did you come to leave the door open for
me?”

“Do I… need to do that? That young man out
there—” Ridge waved toward the hallway, “—he’ll be back soon, and
he respects me. I would rather not have him think I’m a traitor. I
just… wanted to make sure you knew and that you could find a way
out on your own.” He gazed into her eyes. “Can you?”

“Yes. I was waiting for things to quiet down
out there, and I was… hyperventilating a little because I couldn’t
communicate—er, feel—my sword.” Sardelle studied his face. She
wanted to ask him if telling her Jaxi’s location would make him a
traitor in his people’s eyes—or in his own, which probably mattered
more to him, no matter what he had said about the guard. But at the
same time, she didn’t want to press him to go against his morals.
She could find it on her own. Someone else would have the
information and she could, despite what she had told Ridge, access
it.