Balanced on the Blade's Edge (Dragon Blood, Book 1) (7 page)

He considered the couch for a moment—there
was room for three or four to sit on it—but shook his head, then
gestured her to his chair. “Ms. Sordenta.”

It took Sardelle a second to remember that
was the last name she had given. She stepped around the desk and
sat in the wooden chair, the armrests and back spindles more
comfortable than she would have guessed from looking at it.
Zirkander grabbed the folder and a pen, then perched on the armrest
of the couch. Ah, too intimate a piece of furniture to share with a
prisoner? Logically, Sardelle agreed with the… professionalism of
the choice, though the part of her that didn’t want to play
prisoner to his fort commander would have preferred to sit with him
on it.

Looks like you’re not
going to get his room number after all.

Hush, Jaxi.

Zirkander scribbled something on the corner
of the paper stapled to the front of the file. “All right, full
name is Sardelle Sordenta, yes? We have the spelling right?” He
held up the paper so she could see.

Strange that something so minor as a
fictitious last name bothered her, but it did. Still, she nodded
and said, “Yes.” She would have to lie about a lot more than her
name to survive here.

“Date of birth?” he asked.

She froze. It was such an obvious question,
but, in making up her elaborate pirate past, she hadn’t thought of
it.
Quick, Jaxi, what year is it now?

“Balsoth fourteenth… ”
873
, came
Jaxi’s answer. “839,” she finished, hastily doing the math.

Hastily or not, Zirkander noticed the pause.
He gazed at her for a long moment, before copying down her answer.
Sardelle had been keeping her senses ratcheted down since dealing
with those thugs in the mine, but she eased up a touch now, needing
to know if he thought she was lying. And right away she sensed that
he did… and that he was disappointed. For some reason, that stung.
What had he expected? Honesty from someone who, by default, had to
be a criminal?

“Birthplace?” he prompted.

“Cairn Springs.” That at least was true. She
had been born at the base of these very mountains, about a hundred
miles to the south.

“The Cairn Springs that was buried beneath a
lava flow forty years ago?”

Er. “Yes. Near there, obviously not at the
site of the old village. I was born in a rural area.”
Jaxi! You didn’t mention that my birthplace was
gone?

I didn’t know. That’s too
far away for me to sense.

Something that big wasn’t
covered in a book?

Most of the books here
are at least fifty years old. I don’t think reading is a big
pastime among the prisoners. Or the soldiers.

“We were shepherds,” Sardelle went on—the
colonel was writing down her lies, so she might as well go on with
her story, “—a very boring lifestyle for a young person. That’s why
I left—to find a little excitement. That and the arranged marriage.
I wasn’t ready to settle down. I went off to the coast and got a
job on a merchant ship.” She actually could answer questions about
sea life, if he asked. She had traveled with the fleet often to
defend the country from enemy warships. “After a year, we were
caught by pirates. I was given the option of walking the plank or
joining the crew. I’m not very brave. I joined. They treated me…
decently, I suppose. The first year was tough, but eventually I
became one of them.”

Zirkander had stopped writing. He had one
boot up on the couch, his elbow on his knee, and his chin resting
on his fist. Waiting for her to finish this fabricated story and
see if she gave away anything useful in the telling? Yes. She
didn’t need her empathetic senses to tell that.

“Are you done?” he asked.

“I have another five years I can go over.
But, ah, you don’t seem to be recording the details.”

“No. I was busy debating whether I should ask
you to tie a clove hitch or if that would simply be
embarrassing.”

Sardelle
could
tie a
clove hitch. Bastard.

I sense
something.

My idiocy?

No. Outside. In the
sky.

Sardelle looked toward the window, the sky
visible beyond the freshly cleaned panes. From their vantage point,
all she could see were clouds rolling in off Goat Peak. But a shout
arose in the courtyard. No, not the courtyard—it was coming from
one of the watchtowers on the ramparts.

Zirkander jumped to his feet, tossing the
folder on the desk, and strode to the window. Footsteps thundered
in the hallway.

“Gen— Colonel Zirkander!” someone shouted two
seconds before the door burst open. Two privates Sardelle hadn’t
seen before charged into the room. “Sir, there’s an airship in the
northern sky. It’s not one of ours!”

“All right. Report to Sergeant Homish and get
whatever security measures are around for the fortress in place.
I’ll come up to take a look.”

Sardelle had been reaching out with her
senses, trying to get a feel for the airship, so she wasn’t
shielding herself from the emotions in the room, the excitement and
anticipation from the privates and the disgust from Zirkander, who
felt he should have been reading the operations manual rather than
dithering around with a prisoner. And then he was gone, jogging
through the doorway and down the hall, and his emotions faded from
her consciousness. Once again, she felt chagrinned that she had…
disappointed him. Why she cared, she didn’t know, but she had the
urge to show him that she wasn’t some useless prisoner, that
spending time with her hadn’t been a waste.

How are you going to do
that?
Jaxi’s question held wariness.

Maybe everyone on the
enemy ship will develop rashes, causing them to crash it into the
side of the mountain.

I don’t think your range
is that good
, Jaxi thought dryly.

We’ll see.

Since the colonel hadn’t left a guard or
ordered her to remain in the office, Sardelle jogged down the
hallway after him. In the courtyard, people were standing and
gazing toward the sky, toward an airship that was little more than
a speck lurking in the clouds near Goat Peak. Whoever had spotted
it must have had a spyglass to identify whatever markings it had,
to be certain it didn’t belong to this army.

Up on the ramparts, soldiers were jogging
into towers and to cannons. Cannons! They weren’t thinking of
firing those, were they? The calendar might not say winter yet, but
piles of snow blanketed the steep mountain walls in all
directions.

Sardelle spotted Zirkander and ran across the
courtyard to the steps leading up to the wall. At first, no one
stopped her—or even noticed her, their eyes toward the distant
airship—but a soldier on the walkway grabbed her arm before she
could race past him. The halt to her momentum spun her around,
startling her, and she almost launched a mental attack. She caught
herself a split second before she would have hurled him away from
her.

“Where do you think you’re going, woman?” the
soldier demanded.

“I’m in the middle of a meeting with the
colonel.” Sardelle tugged at her arm, but the man had a grip like a
vise.

“A meeting. Sure you are.”

She glanced over her shoulder. Zirkander was
standing on the northern wall next to a cannon, pointing and
talking to a young soldier who stood on the other side. There
wasn’t time to convince this buffoon to let her go. With a subtle
tug from her mind, she unfastened his belt. The weight of the
dagger and other pouches on it pulled it down with impressive
speed, along with his trousers. It was enough to startle him into
loosening his grip. Sardelle wrenched her arm free and sprinted
toward the colonel.

“Stop that woman,” the soldier called after
her, amidst an impressive stream of curses.

At the corner, someone turned and grabbed for
her. On the narrow walkway, she couldn’t dodge far enough to the
side, and he would have caught her, except she loosened the mortar
in the stone beneath his feet. It wobbled, drawing his eye for a
split second. She ducked his grasp and ran around the corner,
coming to an abrupt halt before the colonel.

“The cannons,” she panted, out of breath from
the sprint. “You can’t fire them, not this time of year.” She
pointed at a cornice on the nearest mountain. “Could start an
avalanche.”

Zirkander looked at her for several breaths
before responding—why did she get the feeling he was trying to
scrutinize her?

Probably wondering if
you’re a spy.

After my horrible lying?
A real spy would be much smoother.

“In my experience,” the colonel said, “an
explosion has to be set off on or in close proximity to the
snowpack to cause an avalanche, but if we need to fire, we will be
careful.” Something squeaked behind him on the walkway, and he
pointed over his shoulder without looking. A pair of soldiers was
wheeling out something that reminded Sardelle of the harpoon
launchers on whaling ships.

As the soldier she had unbuckled charged up
behind her—his trousers securely fastened again—she felt… sheepish.
Of course a professional soldier would have experience blowing
things up—explosives seemed to be far more common in this century
than in hers.

A big hand clamped onto her shoulder. “I’m
sorry, sir. I had… an equipment malfunction and didn’t catch her
before she wiggled by.”

The soldier started to drag Sardelle
backward, but Zirkander lifted a hand. “It’s fine, Sergeant. She
can stay. She was informing me about the conditions in the
mines.”

The soldier’s face scrunched up. “Like… a
spy?”

“Something like that.”

Sardelle read the double meaning in the
colonel’s slitted eyes. She did her best to look calm and serene…
and definitely not guilty. But he had to be wondering who she was
after that botched background sharing. The way he kept gazing at
her—appraising her—made her want to squirm. Fortunately, the
soldier next to him spoke, and Zirkander looked away.

“In your experience, sir?” The young man
couldn’t have been more than twenty, and he wore a hopeful
expression as he prompted the colonel. Though the men were
preparing to defend the fortress, nobody appeared that worried by
the airship’s appearance. Maybe this happened frequently.

“I might have started a few avalanches,”
Zirkander said.

“In your flier? With explosives?”

“Bring me a beer later, and I’ll tell you
some stories.”

“Deal, sir!” The young soldier hustled over
to help the men with the harpoon launcher.

“Perk of having your name in the papers next
to all sorts of war-related exploits… ” Zirkander said. “You never
have to buy your own alcohol.”

Sardelle was the only one close enough to
hear him, so the comment must have been for her, but the casualness
surprised her. One minute he seemed to have her pegged for some
kind of spy, and the next he was chatting with her?

Maybe he wants to keep
you confused.

I get the feeling he
confuses a lot of people.

“I much prefer being the one attacking to the
one defending though.” Zirkander lifted a spyglass. “He’s just
hovering out there. Scouting mission?”

He seemed to be talking to himself, but
Sardelle decided to respond. “Do they come around often?”

The more he talked to her, the more trouble
he should have ordering her execution later.

I wouldn’t bet on it.
Judging by the so-called witch drownings I witnessed, when it comes
to magic, these people will kill their own kin without a second
thought.

Sardelle focused on Zirkander’s response
instead of Jaxi’s commentary.

“They
shouldn’t
,” he
said. “This place is supposed to be a top military secret.”
Zirkander lowered the spyglass and gave her an appraising look
again, though his gaze soon shifted over her shoulder. “Captain,”
he called to the man jogging up behind her. It was the aide who had
been introducing him to the fort earlier. And wasn’t he the one who
had been tasked with organizing the archives?

If they were on his mind, Sardelle might be
able to poke into his thoughts and find out where the room was
located and where the empty forms were kept so she could fill one
out for herself. She grimaced at the idea of, for the second time
today, slipping into someone’s mind. There was the risk he would
feel it too. She decided to simply open herself up for the moment.
Maybe they would discuss the archives and the thoughts would float
to the tops of their minds where they might be easily accessed.

“Yes, sir?” the captain asked.

“This happen before?” Zirkander pointed at
the airship.

“No, sir. As long as I’ve been here, no enemy
ships have appeared in our airspace. Audacious of them—they’re
hundreds of miles from the nearest ocean. I wonder where they
slipped in past our patrols.”

“I wonder that too.” Zirkander’s jaw
tightened.

He wanted to be out there. By now Sardelle
had gathered that he was a pilot, and she could have guessed at his
thoughts without trying to sense them. She did, however, catch a
strong vision from him, an image of a dragon-shaped flying machine,
not unlike the one that had dropped him off. But this one was his,
and it wasn’t alone as it cruised through the air. He led a
squadron of other fliers along the shores of Northern
Iskandoth—Sardelle had been along those fjords and gray sandy
beaches enough times to recognize them, though she had never seen
them from above. Zirkander remembered attacking an airship like
this one off the coast, blowing up its engine, and bringing it
down.

It should have reassured her that she and the
colonel were essentially on the same side, having both fought to
defend the continent of Iskandia—even if the people called it
something different now—but it sank in for the first time that he
must also be the descendant of those who had blown up her mountain…
annihilated her people.