Blades Of Illusion: Crown Service #2 (22 page)

Sara waved her hands in irritation. “That’s not what I’m talking about.” Sara paused. “I’m mean, that
is
what I’m talking about, but that’s not what I meant.”

The redhead raised a sarcastic eyebrow. “Really, now?”

Sara glared, then turned and pointed behind her at the empty field that supposedly held an encampment.

“That,” Sara said with urgency, “isn’t just a warded field.”

Her guide hummed and looked over at it and back at Sara. “How would you know? It’s your first day on site.”

Sara had no words for that.
Couldn’t she see the energy humming in the air like lightning before a strike?

But she didn’t have to ask, because the next moment her guide said, “So wait...you can see it? I thought only the high-level mages could even sense it. The concealed net over it is supposed to be so big that you wouldn’t know it was there even if you pressed your nose against the surface.”

Sara shrugged. “I can see it, it looks like a giant bubble. But that’s beside the point.”

“Alright, sweetcheeks, what
is
the point?” drawled the redhead while looking decidedly bored.

“The point,” Sara said grimly while turning around to face the shield, “is that it’s not just a protected field. It’s a level-five containment area.”

“A level five whatsit?” her new companion asked.

Sara dragged her eyes away from the impressive mage work and looked over at the redhead next to her. For the first time, she
really
looked at her, assessing her potential with her mage sight as she searched for a mage aura or any spark that said ‘here is someone like me’. She found nothing. The redheaded guide was a mundane. A human without magic.

Sara let out a slow breath and looked back over at the bubble.

“A place that they don’t want anyone getting inside of,” Sara replied.

But internally she was thinking,
Or outside of.

The redhead shrugged. “You know healers. They say they have their reasons. Protecting their patients from ‘outside contaminants.”

At least, she meant to say ‘contaminants’. What she said sounded more like
contra-band-ments.
Sara didn’t correct her, though. She understood perfectly well, even if her guide did not.

“Really?” said Sara dryly. “Is that all?”

“Why don’t you ask them when you get inside?” the woman asked crossly. Sara could tell she didn’t consider this a big deal.

Sara understood its importance, but she couldn’t explain why. Not without getting into conspiracy theories about magical diseases and swamps filled with contagions and, once more, a level of secrets she
really
didn’t have time for. So, she did what she was coming to learn she was quite good at—she looked the other way. Sara could either question the redhead all day about what she had seen and what she knew, or she could let the matter go. She chose to let the matter go. For her own sanity.

For once, she wanted to back off from something, at least to the point that her involvement didn’t go beyond a good argument or two. It had worked well enough when confronting Captain Barthis Simon, who, to Sara’s internal consternation, was still in charge of an entire mercenary regiment and was preparing to take charge of many more over the coming weeks.

Sara refocused on the world around her instead of the moral conflict within her when her guide spoke up and asked, “So, can you see inside of it?”

Sara didn’t bother answering her. She just continued to stare. Once she had realized what she was looking at, Sara had been able to quickly decipher the different layers that went into the giant magical construction. She was even more impressed when she realized
why
she hadn’t been able to see it before. She had walked right past it.

“No,” she finally answered. “But I can see the protection spells layered under the concealment spells layered under the weather wards and the containment spells. It really is a work of art.”

“Imagine that,” said the girl with a bit of biting wit.

“You know, I came right by here,” Sara said quietly. “Until you dropped me off right in front of it, I never would have seen what I was looking at.”

The redhead shrugged, looking unimpressed.

Sara frowned. “What do you see when you look straight ahead?”

The redhead gave her a side glance. “What do
you
see?”

“I asked you first,” Sara scoffed. “Besides, I said before, when I looked at it with an untrained mage eye—”

“A pretty powerful one,” the girl offered.

Sara ignored her interruption. “It looks like a giant bubble. A magical one. But enormous. It’s when you really strip away the layers that are as ephemeral as the colors of a rainbow layered atop the other that you really see it.”

“Fair enough,” she said.

“Your turn,” said Sara drily.

The young woman shrugged. “I’ll tell you what every non-magical person who comes within five feet of this sees—nothing. No one. An empty field.”

Sara frowned and turned a confused gaze on her. “Then how do you know the shield is here? And what’s more...how do you know what’s inside?”

“I’m an encampment administrative liaison. It’s part of orientation,” the girl said drily. “And before you ask, no, I’ve never been inside. No one gets in without being sick...deathly sick, at that.”

“And what about those who get out?” Sara muttered grimly.

Her guide either didn’t hear her or chose not to answer; Sara wasn’t sure which.

“This place is only for the special few—“ replied the girl.

“Special few?” spluttered Sara while looking over at her with wide eyes, “It’s big enough to contain an entire garrison.”

“They’ve got special equipment and stuff that needs space,” the girl said with a shrug.

“Did you just make that up?” Sara asked incredulously, “This isn’t a joke.”

“I’m just telling you the lines they told
me,
” shot back the guide.

Sara bit her lip and held her tongue.

“Now,” said the ruffled girl, “As I was saying. They only treat the ones with diseases and illnesses so advanced or contagious that they can’t be treated by the smaller healers’ convalescent camp on other side.”

Sara held up a hand even though the girl already stopped talking, “Wait a second.”

The girl eyed her with a look of exasperation on her face. “Uh-huh?”

“There’s another camp?”

“Yep,” the redhead said. “It’s for normal battle wounds, or least that’s what we’re told.”

“So, why didn’t you bring me there?” Sara demanded.

“You wanted to see your friend, yeah?” shot back the girl. “Well, anyone offloaded from that ship that didn’t
die
is camped here. Swamp fever is pretty deadly, even if it’s not contagious.”

“He didn’t have a fever,” Sara muttered slightly contrite.

The redhead shrugged. “That’s just what the troops call it, not the healers.”

“Oh.”

“The soldiers who have lacerations and burns and the cough, stuff like that, they all get sent to the other camp,” the redhead added helpfully. “Anything, really, that’s not a disease or contagious and deadly.”

“So all the non-lethal stuff, I presume?” Sara said drily, knowing full well that third-degree burns and a laceration that cut an artery were as deadly as it came for a warrior wounded on the battlefield. Usually.

The girl sniffed. “I told you what I know. Anything else?”

Sara crossed her arms. “That you could probably tell me? No.”

Apparently, the feeling of discontent was mutual, from the irritated look in her guide’s eyes.

Sara sighed and rubbed a tired hand across her face. “Sorry, that came out wrong. I’m not angry at you. I’m angry at a level-five containment ward sitting in the middle of an armed encampment of imperial soldiers and mercenaries.”

“I told you why it’s here,” the young woman replied.

Sara looked directly at her. “And I’m telling you, here and now, soldiers don’t just come down with deadly, infectious diseases. Not the kind that would warrant level five containment.”

This time, the redhead frowned sadly as she said, “They do when your opponents are the Kades.”

“What does that mean?” Sara asked.

“You’ll find out soon enough,” was the answer.

Sara gritted her teeth and flashed back to her first conversation with her guide, just a half an hour prior.

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

Sara had been uneasy about the change in conversation. Uneasy then, and outright reluctant about it now. That conversation reminded her too much of this one. A mystery wrapped in a riddle, which everyone but Sara knew the answer to.

She was starting to wonder if she really
wanted
to know what the answers to it.
Any
of it. Her father’s treasonous crime. Her mother’s death. Ezekiel’s identity. And now...this...this secret facility within a secret war.

All I really want is for everything to go back to how it was
, Sara thought grimly.
My father alive. My family whole. My empire safe. My life with no secrets
.

But she had the feeling that that was becoming more impossible by the day. She was becoming enmeshed in a web of lies that would either kill her or be destroyed by her...provided that she started fighting back, instead of wrapping herself tighter and tighter in the sticky cocoon.

Sara remembered that she had asked,
“What do you mean?”
She repeated the question now.

The redhead’s answer hadn’t changed in the past half hour. “Ask your tent mate. They’ll bunk you with someone with experience. You’ll learn then.”

Being direct had always made her a target before...but she would never get answers unless she quit beating around the bush, so Sara asked, “What are you hiding? All of you? What aren’t you telling me?”

The woman’s eyes became both hard and fearful. Sara recognized the set of those eyes from the streets, when she came across orphans and pickpockets. Those eyes said you can beat me or curse me or steal my loot, but I won’t tell you what I know, because telling you is worse than whatever you can dole out, the thief lord at home will make sure of that.

To Sara’s surprise, though, her guide did speak.

“A lot,” she answered at last. “But just like you, I have my secrets. If I don’t keep them, I’m likely to wake up in the dead of night with a knife at my throat.”

Sara frowned.
Just as I thought.

Aloud, Sara asked, “A knife from whom?”

The redhead shrugged. “At this point? Anyone and everyone. And here’s a piece of advice, free of charge. Trust no one.”

Sara smiled. “No problems there. I never do.”

“You’ll be fine and dandy, then. Let’s move on to a safer topic.”

Sara raised an eyebrow, but she didn’t say anything. If the girl wanted to clam up, then let her. Sooner rather than later, Sara would get her answers about the containment camp. For now, it was sitting pretty at number four of her list of priorities.

“I mentioned that there was a camp orientation to tell us where the containment field is,” the redhead said pointedly, rubbing her arm uneasily. “Well, there’s also another way to find it.”

Sara nodded encouragingly. She could see this gesture as the peace-offering it was.

The young guide pointed to the ground a foot in front of them where small vines had emerged from the soil and crisscrossed in crooked shapes before they disappeared again. “Those are it,” the girl confessed. “The crooked crosses in the ground are how I’m sure we’ve arrived.”

Sara examined the find. Every few feet a crooked cross would emerge and as Sara followed the pattern with her eyes, she saw the crisscrossed vines hugged the perimeter of the shield for as far as the eye could see. She turned to look along the other side and saw the same shapes emerging from the ground in a pattern coming straight for her before it passed in front and met her original point.

“They mark the entrance,” Sara said as she realized what the vines meant.

The girl nodded. “And they are practically invisible unless you’re on the ground and close up. That way, no Kades know where to look or target the healers’ encampment. Now,” the redhead said, with her hands on hips, “tell me what else you can see.”

Sara opened her mouth to speak, but before she could, another voice answered for her.

“She sees nothing that we don’t want her to see,” said a male voice in a haughty tone as a small opening in the shield appeared.

H
e stood in healer robes with his arms crossed. Blood stained his gown, and his expression was unfriendly as he continued speaking. “And you’re interrupting
our
concentration. Go have your conversation somewhere else.”

Sara realized too late that he didn’t plan to stick around as he stepped back from the safety of the perimeter, and the hole in the side of the protective magical sphere closed.

Yes, that’s a much better word for it,
Sara decided in her mind.
Sphere.

Aloud, she called out, “Wait, I’m sorry! I need entrance to your encampment.”

The magical sphere didn’t even ripple in response. It was as if he had never appeared.

The shock on the redhead’s face was complete. “Wow, what a rude bugger.”

Sara groaned. “I need to get in there.”

“Well, you’re out of luck, sweetcheeks,” the redhead said.

“Stop calling me that!” Sara snapped as she paced in front of the now invisible opening. Sara couldn’t decide if shouting and screaming outside the place would irritate the inhabitants enough to force them to give her entrance, or anger them enough to have her arrested for being a public disturbance.

Judging by the size of the stick up his bum,
she thought glumly,
probably the latter.

She growled angrily. “Great. Your healers’ encampment is built like the entrance to a money lender’s vault, but your prisoners of war are free to walk around like puppies in a garden.”

“What?” asked the redheaded girl, who was watching her antics with amusement as she idly twisted grass between her fingers.