Blades Of Illusion: Crown Service #2 (21 page)

“What proof do you have of that?” hissed Nissa.

“What proof do you have of your accusations?” Sara shot back. “Whatever it is you’re getting at, I do not want to hear it. I have enough on my plate.”

Nissa leaned back on her legs. “You mean your father’s death.”

Sara stiffened and lowered the comb slowly. “How did you know about that?”

Nissa cocked her head slowly to the right. “I know about a lot of things, little warrior.”

“Such as?”

Sensing an opening, Nissa looked at her hopefully. “Such as the fact that you don’t want to be here anymore than I do. But you’re searching for something. Or someone.”

So she doesn’t know about Hillan
, Sara thought to herself in relief.
As for my father, he was well-known. She could have heard about his death in any tavern in any city from here to Sandrin.”

Nissa narrowed her eyes and continued. “You don’t believe me.”

“Believe
what
?” Sara asked in exasperation. “You’ve told me nothing except for the fact that you want me to break you out of the largest fortified camp in the world and take you to my enemy’s doorstep in direct violation of the law.”

“The empress’s law,” Nissa firmly declared.

“The empress’s law is my law. From her mouth speeds justice by my hand,” Sara replied automatically, quoting the arena trainees’ motto that had been engrained from day one of training.

Nissa clutched her hands into balled fists and snarled in frustration. “What if I told you that the laws you follow, the regulations that brought you here, and even the war you’re fighting, were the very things your father was fighting against?” Nissa cried.

“Then I would say you’re lying,” Sara said.

Nissa shook her head. “I knew of your father. I—
we
trusted him.”

“We who?” Sara asked suspiciously.

“Who do you think?” Nissa cried out before hushing her tone once more. Strange eyes were watching their interaction with interest.

Sara’s face went blank as her eyes filled rage. This time,
her
hand curled into a fist, and the comb she was holding snapped in two, its crack clearly audible in the silence. She didn’t drop it. She couldn’t, since she was thinking of stabbing Nissa in the eye with the broken pieces.

“I’d ask you what you thought you’d gain by this foolish discussion,” Sara said coldly, “but I think it’s clear. You’ve clearly gone mad.”

“I have proof,” Nissa said.

“Lies,” Sara hissed. “If you knew my father so well, why did you try to kill me on the way here?”

“Because I didn’t think I’d
need
you,” Nissa lashed back. “And if I didn’t need you now, I’d put a blade through your belly without a second thought.”

Sara snorted.
Well, that
was
honest.

Outwardly, Sara said, “It’s precisely that desire to escape that makes me not trust your word. That, and the fact that you were captured for crimes against the empress.”

“I’m not the only one accused of being a criminal,” Nissa said. “So was your father. Do you believe he did what they said he did?”

Sara responded slowly. “Whether or not he was arrested for an indiscretion means nothing. He certainly wasn’t allied with the likes of you.”

Even to Sara’s ears the protest sounded hollow.

“He was arrested for treason, you foolish girl,” Nissa cried mockingly. “What other
indiscretion
could you possibly think was the cause?”

“He was arrested for
desertion
,” Sara spluttered, “not for aiding the cause of convicts and rebels like yourself.”

Nissa eyed her coldly before starting to respond. “Sara—”

Sara’s mouth curled into a sneer. “Speaking of your current status, your keepers are here.” She nodded to two approaching soldiers walking the long route down the rows between the bathing pools. Unlike the bathers, these men were armed to the teeth.

Alarm flashed over Nissa’s face as she looked over her shoulder and back at Sara again.

“Listen, if you don’t believe me, you have to believe your bespectacled friend,” she hissed urgently.

“What?” asked Sara, exasperated as she flashed back on the conversation in the clearing about Ezekiel’s true identity and history. “You know who he is as well?”

Nissa looked more distracted than smug.

Sara pressed the point home. “Do you know who Ezekiel Crane really is?”

She wasn’t ready to bargain for the information with a prison break, but right about now she was damned tired of being the only one in the dark about her ‘bespectacled friend’.

“What? No,” Nissa said distractedly. “But I’ve heard of him, and I’ve heard of his exploits. If anyone really knows what got Commander Fairchild into harm’s way—and I’m telling you it was his alliance with our cause—then it’ll be Crane.”

Sara looked away, and Nissa’s hands shot out before they fell useless to the ground, unable to grab Sara’s hand as the linked chains of her shackles brought her up short.

“Please, Sara Fairchild, at least ask your friend,” Nissa pleaded, the guards only steps away now. “Ask Ezekiel Crane what happened to Vincent Fairchild the night before his arrest and summary execution. If you don’t want to do this for me, then do it for your father’s memory. Do it for the truth.”

“The truth,” Sara hissed at her in disgust. “You know
nothing
about the truth.”

There was nothing more to say.

One of the guards put a heavy hand on Nissa’s shoulders. “You said you came here for a bath.”

From the look of reprimand in his eyes, nothing more needed to be said. Nissa wasn’t going to get a bath and she would be lucky if she was still walking by the time this day was through.

Nissa shrugged off his grip and stood up on steady feet, keeping her gaze locked on Sara Fairchild all the while.

She walked away in silence, with the guards following closely.

Sara was all too aware of the inquisitive stares around her. Careful to keep any emotions from showing on her face, she eased back into the pool and resumed combing her hair, taking the opportunity to think everything over.

For her part, Sara decided to finish her bath and truly scrub herself clean before she made any rash decisions. She knew the moment she turned to sink into the bath what she planned to do, but it didn’t hurt to think it over again. The plan wasn’t necessarily rash. Rash would be running after Nissa, killing her guards, and finding exactly what she knew about her father’s last days—through torture, if necessary. No, she was going to methodically find out if Nissa was telling the truth about her father. Of course, the primary way to do that would be to go to the source of information—or rather,
a
source of information.

It always comes back to Ezekiel Crane
, Sara mused to herself as she dried herself off. She put on the full set of fresh clothes, including sheathes in the boots and wrist-guards for weapons she didn’t even have. She liked the way the imperial armed forces thought, though. A girl couldn’t have too many places to store weapons.

Standing and straightening her clothes, Sara looked up to see what time of day it was but noticed that the entire sky was blocked by the rising steam that hovered in a dense fog a few feet above everyone’s head, milled about and drifted down again to encase the entire bath compound in a shroud of dark mist.

I guess that’s one way to keep the place warm
, Sara thought to herself as she made her way back to the entrance, collected her now cleaned and polished weapons, and asked for directions to the healers’ compound.

Getting what sounded like five minutes of ‘turn this way, go around that compound, and cut through this field’ from the rather enthusiastically helpful attendant, she walked off and promptly got lost.

Seeing a farrier, who would
surely
know where everything in the camp was located—if only because he had to shoe horses for all sides—she calmly walked over and asked, “Where’s the healers’ encampment?”

The man looked over his shoulder with a bunch of nails clasped between his teeth and stayed bent over the horse’s hoof that she could now see he was shoeing. He glared at her, and the message was clear.
Not now.

Sara held up her hands in surrender and backed off. “Alright, alright, I’m leaving.”

She turned around and walked some more until she ended up right back where she had started, in front of the older gentleman’s lopsided table. This time, it was a young woman who sat on an overturned barrel beside the desk.

She beamed up at Sara with fiery red curls framing her face. “Looking for Miles?”

“Umm, I guess so,” Sara said.

The girl leaned back so far on the barrel that for a moment Sara wondered if she would tumble off, but she didn’t. Then the girl asked, “Greying? Pretty chipper guy?”

The irony dripping from her voice told Sara she was laughing inside. Whether at Sara or at herself, she didn’t know.

“Sounds like my guy,” Sara said. She sheepishly admitted, “I’m sort of lost.”

“I can see that, sheepcakes,” said the woman drily. “Except for the crew, no one comes
back
to the airships without first checking with their captains.”

Confusion crossed Sara’s face. “Why not?”

“Desertion’s a crime, that’s why,” the girl said drolly. “Hop aboard one of these ships and head home. Or at least, that’s what most soldiers think. They’ll be heading home alright. In body bags.”

Sara blinked and looked around. The encampment seemed calm, structured and orderly. The bathing facility would be at home in any guild in Sandrin.

“It must be a real nightmare here, huh?”, she remarked drily.

The girl looked at her somberly. “You have no idea, do you?”

Sara opened her mouth and closed it, unable to answer.

The girl sighed. “So, not only are you lost...but you’re new. Well, you’re in for a hell of a rude awakening. This may look like a soldier’s paradise
now
, but wait ‘til three days from now. Then it’ll be hell on earth. If you survive.”

Sara frowned. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

“It means,” the girl drawled, “that the Kades have given a new ultimatum. Each time they’ve given one in the past, a thousand more troops have died.”

Unimpressed at her lying, Sara said, “Really? That many?” Her tone was as dry as wheat in the high noon sun.

The girl wrinkled her nose. “Fine. Don’t believe me. But if you’re on the front lines, you’ll see what I mean.”

Sara shook her head and decided to give the girl a lesson in military warfare. “Thousands of soldiers die every day in battle, especially in the first battle. We can always expect to lose a thousand men,” she said quietly.

“Who said anything about losing them in battle?” the girl said.

Sara blinked and shifted her feet in unease. She didn’t like where this was going. “What do you mean?”

The girl gave her a dark smile. “Ask your tent mate. They’ll bunk you with someone with experience. You’ll learn then.”

Sara glared, but she couldn’t force the girl to tell her. Well, she could, but she wasn’t certain she wanted to. She needed to be friendly. Not because she wanted friends, but because she didn’t want to call any more undue attention to herself. She just needed to find Matteas Hillan and get out of here—preferably without being charged with desertion.

Clearing her throat, she asked, “Do you know where they’ve stationed the sick mercenaries from the Corcoran division?”

There. That was polite,
she thought in relief.

“You mean the scraggly few that didn’t die on the way over here?”

Sara gaped at her as the pit of her stomach dropped. “I thought the antidote was foolproof.”

“Who told you that?” scoffed the girl.

Sara had visions in her head of strangling the girl and then strangling Ezekiel Crane, even if he was already dead—
especially
if he was already dead. He had things to answer for, and she wouldn’t let him die until she got answers.

“You don’t look so good,” the girl said cheerfully.

Sara gave her dour look.
Does she find amusement in everything?

“Oh, cheer up, sweet cheeks,” the girl said. “I’ll take you to the greenies.”

“The greenies?” Sara asked carefully.

“What we call the healers...because their patients are always puking their guts all over them,” the girl said. She stood up and righted the barrel. “Kind of a weekly joke around here. Someone’s always dying from some strange Kade disease.”

She walked off whistling.

“Sounds like a barrel of laughs,” Sara grumbled as she followed behind.

S
ara followed the young woman around the tents, through a war machine staging area, past some eagle-eyed command tent guards, and over to a large, seemingly empty field enshrouded with so much magic that she wondered how she’d missed it before. It was like a beacon in the sky. The very air shimmered with the rippling walls of a mage shield large enough to cover two of the airships side-by-side if they had landed here.

Sara stared from end-to-end at the field to make sure she wasn’t seeing things.

She was sure.

She was standing in front of the second largest shielded containment field she’d ever seen. The first largest was one that surrounded the Kade fortress.

What made Sara question her sanity was the fact that this field sat squarely in the middle of the Algardis camp.

“This,” said her guide with a flourish of her hand, “is the healers’ encampment.”

Sara couldn’t turn off the look of sheer astonishment on her face. It wasn’t every day that you saw layers upon layers of magic rippling in the air like the waters of a pond on a cool spring day.

“But...why?” Sara stammered. For once, unsteady in her manners.

“Why what?” said the stand-in for the old man in a bored tone.

Sara turned and looked at her, “You don’t know what this is?”

The young woman frowned up at Sara while nonchalantly picking her nails. “It’s the healers’ encampment, like I promised. I’m not fooling you. You may not be able to see it—”