Blades Of Illusion: Crown Service #2 (29 page)

“Nothing as ephemeral as that,” the man said slowly as he turned away and walked in front of her.

“Where are you going?” she asked in a stressed voice.

He replied, “To the bedside of Ezekiel Crane.”

Sara still didn’t move.

He turned around and looked at her. “That
is
your destination, is it not?”

“Well, yes,” admitted Sara.

“Then shall we carry on?” he said with a pleasant smile.

“Who are you?” demanded Sara crossly. They were standing in the middle of the path, and her outburst drew suspicious stares from nearby healers. Margaret pulled at her tunic, but Sara ignored her.

The man raised an eyebrow. “A friend.”

“A friend I’ve never met until one of the most perilous journeys of my life,” Sara said.

“Isn’t that when the boundaries of true friendship are tested?” the man bantered back.

Sara crossed her arms and glared. Not moving.

He shrugged and said, “Suit yourself. I’m still going ahead.”

Sara stared at him, wondering what
he
wanted with Ezekiel. She didn’t know whether to hold him back or go help him. She didn’t know if he was friend or foe.

Then Margaret hissed. “
Sara.
”

Exasperated, Sara turned around and looked at her. “What?”

Margaret huffed in exasperation. “How can you be looking for a person and not know who that was?”

“I
know
what Ezekiel looks like,” Sara retorted back.

“No,” said Margaret with her curls flying, “That’s not who I’m talking about now.”

Sara threw up her arms. “Then pray tell. Who do you mean?”

Eyes wide, Margaret said, “That was Matteas Hillan.”

Sara stared. “You’ve got to be joking.”

“Afraid not,” quipped Margaret.

Without another word, Sara took off hot on the heels of the mysterious man.

They caught up to Hillan as he disappeared into a white tent. “What do you want Hillan for, anyway?”

“He was the last one to see my father’s body before he died,” said Sara in excitement.

Finally! The reason I came on this godforsaken journey in the first place,
she thought as she ducked into the smaller tent after him.

From the outside, it had looked big enough to house three or four beds. From the inside, it was just the same. At first glance, and to Sara’s momentary horror, it seemed that none of the beds were occupied. Instead, a man stood next to a bed and was folding a jacket while Matteas approached him with ground-eating strides.

Sara quickly recognized the man nearest the bed as Ezekiel Crane, even with his back turned.

“Ezekiel, behind you!” she called out involuntarily.

Ezekiel turned with surprise on his face. Sara started to move toward him, but Hillan was mere feet away.

Hillan made short work of that distance, hauled back a fist, and slammed it straight into the side of Ezekiel’s jaw.

Ezekiel fell back on the bed with a crash, cradling his face.

Sara unsheathed her sword and got between the two of them.

“What was that for?” both she and Ezekiel managed to utter at the same time.

“That,” said Matteas Hillan while shaking out his hand, “is for being a horrible cousin.”

Sara blinked and straightened up. “Cousins? You’re cousins?” She realized she was shouting, but it didn’t sound loud in her head. Just angry. Very, very angry. Sara turned in a lightning-fast move, bringing up her sword and placing it near Ezekiel’s whole and healthy head.

Ezekiel gave a tremulous smile and tried to inch away from the weapon while staying flat on his back. “Sara,” he said quietly, “Nice to see you again.”

“Ezekiel Crane,” Sara said with restrained fury. “You have a hell of a lot of explaining to do.”

He chuckled nervously as he pushed at the side of the blade with the tip of his finger. It didn’t budge.

“Perhaps in more comfortable circumstances?” Ezekiel suggested tentatively.

“Not a chance,” said Sara flatly. “Start talking. You
knew
I was looking for Matteas Hillan. Sometime during the period when I was hauling your sick bum through the swamp, you could have mentioned that, oh, not only do you know the guy, but he’s
family
!”

“To be fair,” Hillan said from behind her back, “He didn’t know me
as
Matteas Hillan.”

Sara turned a disgusted glare to the man her father had told her to find at all costs. “Then who exactly are you?”

Hillan didn’t have time to answer her query. Neither did Ezekiel. Not before Nissa, dressed in stolen healer’s garb, burst into the tent with a frenzied look on her face and her shackled arms outstretched.

“
We’ve got a problem!” Nissa said in a hurry.

Sara frowned.

Nissa’s gaze found Matteas, and she sucked in a sharp breath.

Sara frowned and took a step to stand beside him. “Nissa, calm down. What’s wrong?”

The expression on Nissa’s face only grew tenser as she looked at Matteas and shouted, “You’ve found them. Can you do it? Can you get out of here with enough time?”

Without pausing, Matteas answered, “Yes.”

Sara frowned deeper. “No one’s going anywhere until I have some answers.”

Ezekiel frantically stood and grabbed his jacket. “Whatever questions you have, Sara, now is the worst time to ask them.”

“No,” Matteas said. “Now is actually the best time.”

“Elan,” said Ezekiel, exasperated. “We have to go.”

“She needs to know who I am before we proceed.”

“
I’d
like to know who you are before we proceed,” snapped Ezekiel. “The man I grew up with wasn’t a revolutionary, and he certainly wasn’t the type of person to work as an imperial mage.”

“All a means to an end, cousin,” said Matteas. “All a means to an end.”

“Why don’t you tell us what that is?” Sara suggested tensely.

Matteas turned to face her fully. “My name is Elan, Sara Fairchild, and I—“

Nissa shouted, “There’s no time. They’re
coming
.”

“Then what do you suggest?” shouted an exasperated Elan.

“Follow my lead,” said Nissa with wide eyes.

Sara wanted to protest, but Elan nodded to Nissa, giving his assent. Sara looked at Nissa, trying to gauge her appearance and well-being. Under the strong glow of mage orbs in the tent, Sara could see she was fully healed. She wondered briefly at her urgent desire to leave. She wasn’t left wondering for long.

“No, we need to think of another way to work around whatever the problem is,” said Sara firmly.

Nissa scowled at her. “It’s too late,” she said. “He’s here.”

An official-looking man strode into the tent, followed closely by a line of armed soldiers. Too many to fight.

Sara turned in confusion, looking between the newcomers that moved to surround them and the group that stood beside her—Ezekiel Crane, Nissa Sardonien, and the mysterious stranger with purple eyes named Elan who stood next to her. She noted that Margaret had managed to make herself scarce at some point.

Sara lowered her sword, instantly recognizing the uniforms and stances of imperial swordsmen. These were her people.

They stared at her grimly and kept their weapons raised, and Sara grew uneasy at the dark expressions on their faces.

They’re here to kill someone
, she thought with deadly certainty.

That just left all the usual questions: Who would die? Why were they to be killed? And, selfishly, would
she
be among the fallen?

Sara recognized their confident leader, standing amidst a circle of protective guards in the confines of the small tent. Kansid stepped forward with a solemn expression on his face, and he said, “We thought this might be the key, but I never imagined you’d actually fall for it.”

Sara eased up from her crouch and watched Kansid carefully. He wasn’t talking to
her
; he was talking to the man who stood beside her. The one who lived two lives, one as the loyal soldier, Matteas Hillan, and the other as the mysterious revolutionary, Elan.

Sara turned her gaze to Matteas
—Elan
—and whispered, “What’s he talking about?”

Stony silence met her query.

Nissa sauntered forward and spoke, “I held up my end.” Again, the statement hadn’t been directed at Sara.

She sucked in a breath. “What does that mean?”

Nissa turned to look at her. “I told you when you broke me out of those tent chains,
‘I told them everything they wanted to know’
.”

Sara flashed back to the conversation in her memory and gritted her teeth.

“I meant it,” Nissa continued, oblivious or indifferent to her anger. “They needed an outcome. I furnished the details on how to get it...”

Sara swallowed harshly. “And me?” Sara had to wonder if this was all part of the plan, but she didn’t know Nissa well enough to play along.

More’s the pity for her
, Sara thought through anger and pain,
because when I’m through with her, they’ll have to sweep the pieces off the floor.

Nissa sighed wearily. “You, Sara Fairchild. You were just a pawn. A means to an end. A means to getting me my immunity.”

“Immunity?” squawked Ezekiel with a laugh. “Immunity from what?”

“Prosecution,” Nissa said calmly.

“You think they’ll keep their word?” Sara said coldly.

Nissa smiled and held up her palms. Fire flickered to life and danced an inch above the skin. “They’d better.”

It was with ice in her veins that Sara realized the mage shackles on her wrists weren’t the shackles she’d worn before. These were lighter in both power and weight. They wouldn’t restrain the full powers of a mage like Nissa. Not by a long shot.

The Algardis soldiers surrounding them flinched but didn’t move. They were just as aware as the people they held weapons on what Nissa was capable of. The heat from Nissa’s flames could be felt by everybody in the tent. Sara just hoped those new shackles restrained the worst of her magic.

Ezekiel moved away from the sun mage, and together with Elan and Sara, they formed a half-circle that looked out at Nissa and the soldiers, assessing them both as threats. Nissa stood undeniably on her own.

For a moment, sadness crossed Nissa’s face before she wiped it away and turned to Kansid. “Right?”

Kansid chuckled. “No need for threats. You’ll have your immunity, and your criminal record wiped clean, Mage Sardonien.”

Nissa smiled. “Thanks, but what I really want is immunity and a ride on the first ship out of this empire.”

Kansid turned his beady eyes on her. “As you will.”

Nissa lowered her hands slowly and extinguished the flames. “They’re all yours.”

Great,
Sara thought bitterly.
I’ve been sold for a ride on a ship. Why is she so desperate to leave the empire?

In the end, Sara knew it didn’t matter. Nissa was someone else’s problem. Now she had her own murky situation to deal with. What was Kansid going to do to them? And precisely who did he think Elan was?

Kansid smiled directly at Sara and spoke two sentences that threw terror into her mind. “Sara Fairchild, daughter of exiled Commander Vincent Fairchild, you are under arrest for insubordination and treason. Will you step forward?”

Old nightmares resurfaced, and she realized that she was being accused of the very same false crimes as her father had been. It was something she had dreaded coming true for a long time now.

Sara felt ice-cold. She must have misunderstood what he was saying.

She hurried to explain. To justify her actions. To stop this madness.

“It’s not what you’re thinking, Captain Kansid. This man was a friend of my father’s. He has vital information about why my father did what he did. I was only seeking to get that information from him and force Nissa Sardonien to answer those questions. That’s
all.”

Kansid snorted. “That’s more than enough. We allowed your bumbling attempts at detective work and freeing your friends for one reason,” Kansid said coldly. “To lure in the man we’ve been searching for over a year. The man who the entire empire has been living in fear of for far too long.”

Sara laughed harshly before she could catch herself. This all had to be a joke—a mad, mad joke.

When no one else laughed and the stern expressions on the armed guards around them remained, she felt sick to her stomach.

Ezekiel said calmly, “Captain, Sara Fairchild is telling the truth. She really only came on this journey and to this encampment for answers. She was looking to me for those answers. Mistakenly, she thought that Elan could also provide those...answers.”

Sara swallowed harshly. She was still pissed that Ezekiel knew more than she did, and her anger deepened when he thought he could speak on her behalf while their lives were on the line.

Before she could force herself to speak up, Kansid stepped forward and back-handed Ezekiel across the face. The action was so quick that it nearly escaped her own eyes.

With a cold expression on his face, Kansid lowered his hand, and Sara saw in horror that blood poured down from Ezekiel’s broken nose. His glasses, now on the ground by his side, had been snapped and cracked by the blow.

Sara sucked in a breath and turned away from her friend with a feeling of dread in the pit of her stomach. This couldn’t be happening. She tried to strengthen herself, very much aware that she was frozen in a miasma of shock and fear. But Sara didn’t want to call on her mage gifts. It would be a foolish maneuver in a crowded tent, and particularly ridiculous to attack the current leader of the encampment of imperial armed forces.

Whatever Sara may have been feeling now, it wasn’t suicidal. And she certainly wasn’t ready to be a convicted traitor to the empire.

I still have a chance to appeal. To appeal to reason
, she thought frantically.

Arms shaking, she fought not to make any sudden movements.

Casually, Kansid asked, “Do you have anything to say for yourself?”

Sara took a moment before speaking in a carefully controlled voice. “Since you’re so convinced I’m a traitor, would you mind enlightening me for whom I’ve betrayed my empire for?”