Blades of Sorcery Read online

  As she walked hesitantly in the room, now not confident at all about her reason for being here, Sara swallowed and told herself to buck up.

  “Just picture that impudent secretary’s face,” she whispered to herself.

  It worked. It was hard to be unsure when she pictured his quivering after she showed him she wasn’t to be messed with.

  So Sara licked her lips and walked around to where the captain could see her, which happened to be the foot of the bed. Standing at attention and staring straight ahead, she waited a minute more for him to notice her. But all she got was an eyeful of an attendant with blood splattered over his face. Even he was concentrating on the person strapped to the table below him instead of her.

  So Sara did the only thing she could: she looked down.

  When she did, she found that she was standing over a prisoner of war.

  Not hers, but clearly a Kade.

  That was about the only distinguishing feature she could make out on him. For a very good reason. The skin of his temple, from the edge of his hairline down to just below his eyes had been peeled back to reveal the flesh underneath. But the attendant hadn’t stopped there—he’d carved through muscle and bone until the frontal lobe had been revealed.

  Sara saw pink flesh that was rapidly turning interesting shades of grayish-blue as the attendant took one last step: he placed his fingers directly on the brain and released jolts of magic.

  As Sara watched where the magic entered, floating bits of indefinite shape appeared. Ghostly in substance and clearly not brain matter, they went up into the air until a second man stepped forward to collect them with a sharp stylus.

  Sara watched as the stylus transferred the floating debris to a mid-sized pyramid of glass waiting nearby on a table and the process was begun all over again.

  “What are they?” she asked.

  “Secrets,” said the attendant with a satisfied gleam in his eyes. “Lies. Memories.”

  “Why are you doing this?” Sara asked in horror.

  The attendant snapped an irritated look up at her, as if she had done the most horrifying thing possible by interrupting his concentration again. “To get answers.”

  Then Sara noticed the straining hands of the prisoner, tight against the ropes holding him down, and she realized that their prisoner was very much awake and cognizant enough to realize what was being done to him.

  “But—” Sara said as she recoiled from the table and the attendant finished what he was doing.

  “Please be silent,” he said. “I have to focus.”

  Barthis finally acknowledged her presence by looking over at her.

  His head slowly rose from where he was studying the memories that were floating up from the man’s temple, as if it held the most fascinating information, and perhaps it did. But for Sara, it was hard to get past the efforts of what it took to get memories out of his brain.

  “Is this necessary?”

  “What you learned on the battlefield was invaluable,” Barthis said, “but the Kades are already searching for a way to block us from returning, and that’s beside the fact that your unique development killed two of your mages to get you there.”

  Sara’s jaw tightened. He was right, at least about the deaths of Arcnus and Tomas. It had been unavoidable, but that didn’t mean it would be impossible to achieve the same goals without fatalities the next time.

  She said as much, and the captain replied, “I like my way better. Besides, I don’t know about you, Sara, but I’d rather kill the Kade lying before us than take the chance of ending the life of one of my own. We’ve already lost so many.”

  Sara shook her head as she looked at the attendant, who still stood at the head of the table with instruments poised in his hands to begin again, and she wondered what happened to the bereaved captain she had spoken to just days before.

  She didn’t realize she’d said as much aloud until Barthis responded in a clipped voice, “Reality happened Mercenary, reality.”

  Sara looked to him as he continued flatly with his hands behind his back, “I’ve been picking up the pieces of this Kade massacre and can only see one choice—their complete destruction.”

  There was nothing else to say and Sara swallowed harshly as her gaze flickered back to the attendant and her mouth instinctively curled in disgust.

  The attendant, however, noticed this time, and snapped, “You think you’re better than me.”

  Sara stiffened but didn’t answer.

  “I’m talking to you, girl,” the attendant said as he set down his tools. “I’m doing the empire’s work, so I’ll ask you politely—do you really think you’re better than me? That you have a better idea about how to pry the secrets out of this filthy Kade’s mind?”

  She held her tongue because she truly didn’t have an answer. She’d barely gotten the other Kade to talk as it was, and it was only to save his own skin.

  “Sara,” said the captain mildly, “answer the question.”

  Sara gave Barthis a horrified look, but he had given her a direct order.

  Softly, Sara said, “No.”

  The man’s eye bulged in outrage, almost as if she had insulted him instead of giving him exactly what he’d asked for. He hurried around the side of the table in a fast shuffle with a snarl on his face.

  “What was that?” he snapped in her face like a belligerent dog.

  Sara kept her head high and resisted the urge to punch him down a size.

  “I said ‘no,’” she said through gritted teeth, looking directly ahead rather than down at him. She wouldn’t give him the satisfaction of having her meet his eyes.

  “Well, I thought so—” the man began before the captain interrupted him.

  “Drop it, Lieutenant Davinis,” Barthis said. “She’s given you what you wanted.”

  Sara saw Barthis watching out of the corner of her eye, but she didn’t know what he was playing at. This was very different than the captain she had spoken to just days before. It pointed to a mercurialness that was disturbing. More so than the mad dog he barely kept on a leash.

  “I wasn’t through with her,” whined the attendant as he backed off just a bit.

  “Hmm, well then perhaps you need a cool-off period,” Barthis said. “Take yourself outside and go through those memories with a fine-toothed comb.”

  “But—” the attendant said while still staring at Sara like he wanted to pick her apart at the seams.

  “I said go, Davinis,” the captain said. “You’ve done enough for today.”

  This time it was the lieutenant who stiffened perceptibly. Then he yanked off his protective clothing, threw it on the floor, and marched out. Two other mercenaries followed closely behind him, with one of them carrying the pyramid as requested, while two others remained to clean up the mess. Maybe even the blood soaking into the rugs. Sara didn’t know. But if she had a choice, she wouldn’t be here either.

  As Sara looked anywhere but at the body of the weakly struggling man, she tried to get a sense of calmness within her. But that peace had been shattered the moment she walked through the tent curtains. And now Sara couldn’t drag her eyes off the menacing metal tools, meant for torture, meant for harm, on the smaller side table. It was as if just by looking at them, they shouted out the horrors of their present and past to her. Almost like the memories that she remembered glowing in their new repository, just waiting to be reviewed.

  In the eerie silence that she couldn’t bear, she asked, “Will someone at least close him up?”

  Barthis gave the man on the table a cursory look. “He’s fine. There’s a stasis field built into the very wood of this table. No illness will touch him, no blood will flow that we do not will, and even his pain has been muted…so long as we desire. Even his wounds will re-seal as long as we leave the table to do its work.”

  That didn’t make Sara feel much better—in fact, as she stumbled away from the table’s end, the horror apparently in her eyes was eloquent enough that she didn’t hav
e to speak.

  Instead of disciplining her for her behavior, the captain just sighed and sat down in an armchair as if the weight of the world was on his shoulders, which she had no doubt it was.

  Then he said, “Do you know what that attendant was before he got promoted?”

  Sara shook her head.

  “A spy,” Barthis said. “And not a very good one, at that.”

  He looked away from her and started to pour a drink.

  “Want one?” he asked.

  “No,” Sara said as she eyed the tortured man on the table. He was already healing, but that didn’t change the fact that his blood was still dripping off the table onto the plush rug below. She couldn’t drink with that in her face.

  When she turned her attention back to the captain, he was watching her with the queerest look on his face.

  He took a sip of whatever was in his glass and continued staring at her as if he couldn’t quite make out what to do with her.

  “Captain, if I may, I came to ask about my deployment,” Sara said when the silence got too much to bear. “I’d like to be placed with my comrades, if I could be so presumptuous.”

  “Would you?”

  “I would.”

  “And what if I said no?” the captain said, and took a sip of his drink.

  Putting formality aside, Sara walked around the table. “I’d say I’ve earned the right—”

  “Earned it, have you?” he asked. “Funny; just two days ago you were telling me you deserved to be punished.”

  Sara stiffened in the middle of the room and put her arms behind her back. She had miscalculated the captain’s mood badly, it seemed. He was almost…vindictive.

  Not knowing what to say, Sara fell silent, but that was all right, because Barthis filled the emptiness for her.

  He set down his drink with a sigh. “You know I don’t always intend to antagonize you, Fairchild.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “You just bring out the worst in me.”

  “No, sir.”

  “Is that a contradiction?” he asked.

  “No, sir,” she replied, only to see him give her an irritated glance.

  “You also have the habit of bringing out the best in me,” he said as he got up off his seat and back to the table, a bit drunk. She had the feeling that he’d had more than one glass of that drink this morning. Far more.

  Then he reached out to touch her face, in confusion, perhaps. She halted his approach with a move of her own. He stepped back, and they stared at each other in cold silence for a couple minutes more. One in turmoil. The other in grief.

  Finally, he called out, “Davinis, attend!”

  The man came back with the glowing pyramid in hand. If he noticed frostiness in the air, he didn’t mention it. Instead, he listened as Barthis took him back into his good graces.

  21

  Before long, they were heading back to the table toward the prone man. His face had sewn itself back up halfway thanks to the table, and he was beginning to moan as he rose to coherence.

  “Sir, wait!” Sara cried.

  Barthis looked back at her with a wild look in his eyes, and for the first time, Sara wondered not if the Kade’s overwhelming magic was breaking down Captain Barthis’s but if it had already done so. He was manic in a way that reminded her of the grief that had ripped through them back on the edge of the canyon. But this time she could see how he was using it to rule…or it was using him. Either way, she had to be careful.

  Taking a step back, Sara eased away with a wary hand at her waist. Not on her weapons and certainly not near her sword. She never forgot, although he took extreme pains to mask it with a cultured air—he was a battle mage just as she was, and an unbeatable force of power when necessary.

  A small smile flicked onto her face as she wondered how it was possible for him to stay out of constant fights and battles when it came almost second nature to her. But she assumed that whatever secret her father had found to do the same had only been passed to him as well.

  Taking a deep breath, perhaps at the hesitation on her face, Barthis said, “Sara Fairchild, I’ve been through more wars and skirmishes than you can imagine. When we were trapped in those domes, I led my men to victory, I watched countless die as well, and suffered those consequences.”

  She looked around the tent a bit, to see how his guards were reacting to his words. They may not have said anything, but they would know the truth, whether he spoke lies. But their faces were inscrutable, and as she turned back to the captain, his was an open book. Of aspiration. The trouble was that the single thing he wanted, to defeat the Kades, was more than anything or anyone in this room could give him. Including the man he had imprisoned.

  Barthis said, “I’ll get what I need to save my people this time, Fairchild. Nothing will stop me.”

  “At least tell me why I’m here,” Sara said coldly.

  “To listen, to learn,” he said without turning around.

  From that moment on, Barthis ignored her. When he reached the table, he opened his hand over the stasis field he had up and tore it down with a flick of his wrist.

  Then, with anger in his movements, he and Davinis began torturing that poor Kade all over again.

  But he never broke. Not that Sara saw, anyway. Memory after memory Davinis would pull out, but none satisfied his urge to pull out more. He just kept going until the Kade’s screams turned into incoherent babbling, and nothing Davinis produced could tell them anything. She could tell because the memory shapes kept growing smaller and smaller while the cursing from Davinis grew louder and louder.

  She was sad, but not for the Kade’s suffering. She was sad because they were turning him into a demented version of the man who he had been before. He stopped struggling against the cuffs as the intelligence in his eyes, visible when Davinis moved the skin flap, diminished. Then drool began to drip down his chin, and the only sounds that passed his lips were the babbling noises of a child.

  Sara kept her face emotionless, but it was all she could do to keep herself from hurling as she stood at the captain’s side and looked for the man she knew could stop this with one word. But he never spoke up. And it was hard. Because she couldn’t reconcile the two sides of Captain Barthis she seemed to know: the cold, callous one and the one who wanted to avenge his fallen troops. They were like two different men in one body.

  He didn’t let up until the captain had to admit that they’d broken the Kade…perhaps irreparably.

  Sara shook her head. They were talking about a human being. But she kept her mouth shut. She did know her place here.

  Davinis said, “We’ll take a break, then.”

  And the Kade’s hand twitched. One small movement. One small protest. And Sara was over the table before she remembered she was supposed to be invisible.

  Her hands were around Davinis’s throat for seconds before Barthis himself and a guard dragged her off.

  When she was thrown across the room and more guards had come in to manage her, Sara settled down for a good, old-fashioned fight.

  Her hands were practically twitching over her weapons. She just needed one guard to make the mistake that would end his life.

  However it was the captain who held them back.

  To her surprise.

  With a flick of his hand at the guards, he told the men, “Enough. Take the body. Burn it.”

  Sara was so shocked that she whirled to look, forgetting that she was supposed to be on the defensive.

  It had been left unsaid how it had happened, but the prisoner’s throat was neatly cut and his eyes were unseeing. She let out an inhuman cry. He’d been alive when she’d launched herself over that table.

  Then Davinis answered her look with a superior smirk. “He was useless to us now anyway. I shall find another.” He waved over his assistant guard. “Remove this filth.”

  Sara saw red. Nothing else. Nothing more. And Davinis finally realized that perhaps even his captain wouldn’t be able to save him no
w. She took one step toward him. Then two. Like a predator stalking her prey.

  “He wasn’t some disposable trash you could just throw out,” she yelled at him.

  The man squeaked and fell back. The guards fell in front of him as a protective shield. She could see in their eyes that they didn’t want to be there. But their orders were clear as day: protect the man with the ability to extract memories from their enemies. The man who could glean secrets even from the unwilling.

  And they would just have to pay for those orders.

  Sara half raised her sword from its scabbard.

  “Mercenary Fairchild.”

  The bite in the tone, the command, had her falling back in line like a whipped dog. If Commander Karina had taught her nothing else, it was that to follow orders was paramount in her duty as a member of the imperial armed forces. She didn’t have to like it; she just had to do it. It was also why her group had performed so admirably while under siege.

  So Sara released her grip on her weapon, almost forgetting where she was and snapping back to a time when it was she who’d been the person that needed saving. When her mind cleared, she saw Barthis was waiting at the entrance to go outside.

  “Save your sorrow for someone who deserves it,” the captain said curtly as he put on an overcoat. “That Kade killed fifteen of my people before we put him down.”

  That didn’t make it right in Sara’s eyes. But it made a bit of difference. However, what was churning in her heart now was a fierce hatred of this new state she found herself falling in—ambiguity. But the captain didn’t know that and didn’t care.

  Barthis gestured. “Let’s go. There’s something else that needs to be done.”

  She followed as commanded.

  As they walked down the same cliffside she’d come up on with so much difficulty, the protection spells fell away. She had to bite back the resentment that brought, but as she walked surrounded by Barthis’s personal guard, she also thought that it was worth it. The looks of respect they were giving her told her that her efforts, a trial by fire, if you would, had garnered more notice than even she had first acknowledged.