المجلد 8.5 - البارت السادس

Necessary Risks (Part 2)

Sanborn Troel leaned forward, smirking. "Even the lowliest Alacryan unad commoner is better than you, Dicathian scum. Speak to me like this again and I will have your blood's licenses revoked and every one of you thrown from the edge of the city. Clear enough for you?"

My prideful faأ§ade cracked and I felt the blood draining from my face. Looking at his feet, I nodded.

"Now. Move."

I hesitated just an instant before moving aside, allowing the Alacryan to step into the warehouse. He glanced around, then began stalking through the aisles, his sharp gaze investigating every nook and cranny.

"Have you seen anything unusual tonight?"

"No," I said, a little too quickly. "As you said, I was sleeping when you knocked."

He scoffed. "So it is possible someone could have entered this building without you being aware?"

I blanched, grateful that he wasn't looking in my direction. "The—the doors were locked, so—unless you're searching for a powerful mage, someone who could bypass the wards—I don't think it would be possible for anyone to have entered, no."

He kept walking, speaking without looking at me, his head always moving as he scanned the warehouse. "Some Dicathian children have gone missing. Their blood, who have been very helpful in our effort to settle this city, believe they were manipulated into running away. A guard patrol saw a group of five children out after curfew not five minutes' walk from here."

I rearranged my face into passive curiosity, just in case he glanced at me for a reaction. "Why would the Alacryans care about a couple of missing children? I know plenty of Dicathians who have gone missing since you arrived. Perhaps you'd like a list of names?"

Sanborn Troel lifted the lid off a barrel, releasing the heavy scent of lamp oil. "I don't care, and neither do my superiors. But if there are Dicathian rebels operating in Xyrus…" He closed the barrel and kept moving.

"Well, I can assure you that a group of runaway children couldn't have broken into the auction house…"

"No," he said idly. "I don't suppose they could have."

Despite his statement, the Alacryan kept up his circuit of the warehouse. I noted with concern that we were headed directly for where the children were hidden. The magic artifacts will hide their mana signatures. We've planned for this, I assured myself. Somehow, the thought didn't make me feel any better.

Sanborn Troel stopped right in front of the rack displaying the array of minor magical artifacts. Most of them weren't worth much, but my gaze lingered on a round, metallic artifact about the size of an apple.

"What a shame to see such items hoarded by a lowly Dicathian trader."

"Our buyers are mostly Alacryans," I said, my voice constricted with nervousness despite my best efforts to keep calm. If the children made even the smallest noise…

He pulled a fine dagger off the rack and slid it from its sheath. The bright blade gleamed dully in the light. "Perhaps a little something for my trouble…" he said, seemingly to himself.

"Of course, I'm sure my father wouldn't mind at all," I replied, bowing slightly. The dagger was only a minor artifact: The blade would never grow dull or rust. If it got him to stop snooping around and leave, it was well worth the investment.

He ignored me as he clipped the dark sheath to his belt. Suddenly a ripple of mana pushed outward from him, tingling as it passed over every inch of my body.

Before I knew what was happening, the stocky Alacryan grabbed the edge of the rolling display and yanked, causing it to tip over and crash to the ground.

I jumped aside, only narrowly avoiding being struck. The display rack burst apart, scattering artifacts across the floor. The metallic ball bounced away, rolling under a stack of shelves.

Through the resounding noise of wood and metal striking the stone floor, I could hear the children's frightened yells.

The Alacryan wore a victorious expression. "Idiot girl. Did you really think you could deceive an emblem-bearing Sentry?" He reached into the hidden cubby and grabbed Clara by the hair with his free hand.

Orange light filled the dark space, highlighting each of the children as Cleo's hands became wreathed in claws of fire. He lunged at the Alacryan, but was met by a heavy boot to his chest, dropping him to the ground and dousing his spell.

Miah, Mara, and Holden crouched in the hidden alcove. Holden had moved in front of his sisters to shield them, but all three were trapped.

Clara wriggled in Sanborn Troel's grip, her hands clawing at his wrist. I was surprised to see her nails dig into his flesh, then remembered that the Alacryans' spells were very specific, controlled by runic tattoos along their spines, and he likely had no defensive magic.

I conjured a long whip of water, but was wary of the dagger still clutched in the Alacryan's hand. Before I could attack, another ripple of mana burst out from him, and a high-pitched, painful ringing pierced my mind.

Clara slumped in his grip, and the others slapped their hands to their ears as they collapsed into a heap, their mouths open in silent screams of pain.

The whip momentarily lost its form as I struggled to maintain my concentration on the spell through the awful mental noise. I gritted my teeth and focused on the drills they'd put us through at the academy. I'd practiced maintaining my spells through all kinds of distractions, though never anything quite like Sanborn Troel's mental attack.

Although my whip was still wavering, not fully under my control, I lashed out and caught the Alacryan across the calf. He flinched and jerked Clara's semi-conscious body around, holding her between us like a shield, the tip of the dagger pressed into her side, just under her ribs.

Cleo's small form appeared out of the hidden alcove again as he threw himself bodily into our attacker, but the boy was much too small to fight physically against the hardened Alacryan. Sanborn Troel laughed and backhanded Cleo across the ear, knocking him to the ground, but this gave me an opening.

My water-whip lashed across his arm, tearing his tunic and leaving a red welt on his tan skin. Clara slumped to the floor in a daze.

Not wanting to give him any time to recover, I brought the whip down in a cutting arc, forcing him to dodge away from Clara and Cleo, then slashed sideways, the water-whip curving gracefully around me, aimed at his neck.

The Alacryan ducked under the whip and released a burst of painful mental noise focused directly at me. Though I knew what to expect now, and condensed a dampening layer of mana around myself to defend against it, the pain was much more intense the second time, hitting me like a physical blow.

With my mind on the metal ball hidden out of sight beneath the shelves, I spun and let myself fall, sprawling into the clutter of scattered artifacts. Although my head was ringing like a bell and my heart was hammering against my chest, I had a plan.

I looked back over my shoulder from where I lay face-down on the floor, letting all the real fear I felt show. Sanborn Troel, dagger held point down, growled and took a menacing step toward me.

I let out a pitiful moan and crawled away from him, inching toward the shelves. He stalked after me like a hunter tracking wounded prey, unhurried and overconfident.

The timing had to be just right: too soon and I might miss; too late and I'd find out just how sharp the edge of the magical dagger really was.

His shadow fell over me as my hand darted under the shelves, reaching for the metallic sphere. My fingertips brushed it and it rolled away. Each beat of my heart felt like a punch to my chest as I felt frantically around under the shelf.

My fist closed on it at the same time as Sanborn Troel's strong hand grabbed my shoulder, flipping me over onto my back and flashing the dagger in front of my face.

"In the name of the Vritra and the High Sovereign, I sentence you to death—"

His eyes went wide with surprise and confusion as I pressed the artifact to his chest and pushed mana into it. He tried to pull away, but it was too late.

The mana trap was designed to instantly drain all the mana from the target's core, absorbing it into the artifact itself and leaving the affected mage defenseless. Unlike everything else that had been on the now-broken display, the mana trap was a rare and expensive artifact, though this one had been designed to look innocuous, mimicking a common artifact for training a mage's mana core.

Father had placed it here as an added precaution, a trap for anyone poking around the warehouse who shouldn't be.

Sanborn Troel's mana core was drained with a flash of light. The dagger fell to the floor with a ringing clang as both hands clutched at his sternum.

I stood as the Alacryan sank to his knees in front of me, his breath ragged and sweat pouring down his forehead. Our eyes met, mine now confident, his panicky and disoriented.

When his face contorted with concentration, I held up the artifact, now glowing slightly. "Did you really think a mere Sentry could defeat a Dicathian battlemage trained at Xyrus Academy?" I asked, throwing his own words back at him.

Movement behind him drew my eye: the Ravenpoor twins were struggling to help each other to their feet. "Stay where you are," I ordered.

Sanborn Troel looked from me to the dagger on the floor, then in the direction of the door. He tried to stand, wobbled, and went back to one knee.

"Are you going to kill me?" he panted, the physical toll of having his entire core instantly depleted putting him into a state of severe backlash.

I frowned. I didn't want to kill anyone, but…

"What would you do?" I asked.

He took a deep breath, like he was struggling to even keep talking, then shouted at the top of his voice, "Help! Guards! I'm in—"

Water mana condensed around him in a wide sphere and his shouts cut off, transformed into silent bubbles from his mouth. He kicked wildly, swimming but going nowhere, trapped at the center of the sphere.

Unsure what else to do, I turned away, walking around him to where the children were staring in horrified fascination. I pulled Clara and Cleo's heads to my body, hiding the sight of Sanborn Troel silently drowning behind me.


Now More Than Ever (Part 1)

JASMINE FLAMESWORTH

One good thing about finding the girl was that Dalmore seemed to have forgotten that he kicked me out. The innkeeper hadn't complained when I spent the night in my old room, and had brought me a bowl of gruel in the morning.

The hot sludge wasn't exactly my favorite meal, but it was better than nothing.

"So," I said after swallowing a mouthful, "your mother taught you all that stuff about plants and herbs?"

The girl nodded vigorously. "Papa was a mage, but Mama's talent was with plants. Not plant magic, like me, but knowing stuff about them. I think she knew the name and purpose of every plant in the Elshire forest."

The girl paused and picked at a loose sliver of wood poking out from the edge of the table. "She taught me about plants, and Papa taught me about magic. I wasn't born an emitter, but I always wanted to help make people better when they got hurt or got sick." She scoffed in a way that reminded me of myself.

"What's wrong with that?" I asked uncomfortably. The conversation felt like it was drifting into "heart-to-heart" territory.

She met my eye for just a second, then looked back down at her sliver. "It just seems a little silly now, doesn't it?"

"Actually," I said slowly, not exactly sure what I was going to say, "it seems like we need healers now more than ever."

She looked up, her face hopeful. "Really? Papa always told me that the world needed a lot of looking after, and everyone had to work together to do that. That's…why he and my brothers stayed to fight, even though they weren't soldiers."

I opened my mouth to say…something, but the girl kept going.

"We talked a lot. Mama and Papa and my brothers. We would go for walks in the forest, and they would tell us about everything we saw, what it was good for, what it needed from us in return. 'Everything has a purpose,' Papa said." She smiled, childlike and innocent. "And then Mama would add, 'Even if that purpose is just to be beautiful, like your father.'"

The elf girl giggled, even though she was on the edge of tears.

"That's…lovely," I said softly, then flinched at how awkward it sounded coming out of my mouth. "Your family sounds very nice."

She turned her chin up and wiped away a tear. "They were."

We finished our breakfast in silence before the girl asked, "Jasmine, what are we going to do now?"

I was about to suggest we go for a walk when I realized that wasn't what she meant. What were we going to do?

Ideally, some elven family at the Wall could have taken her in and raised her, but there were no elves here. Based on the seamstress's reaction to my simple request for clothes, I doubted anyone would be charitable enough to take on an extra mouth. People had their own problems.

There was an alternative, but I didn't know how to find them even if I wanted to.

Before they left, Helen had assured me they'd come back to check on me, and to see if I'd changed my mind. If I kept the girl safe until then, she could go be with others of her kind in the sanctuary. It was safer there than anywhere else in Dicathen, even if they were fighting a losing battle.

Out loud, I said, "We'll figure something out."

Before she could pepper me with questions, the inn's door creaked open and four large men came in.

They were soldiers, dressed for guard duty in the Bulwark Division. The largest of the four was missing a couple of teeth.

They glanced around the barroom, and, when they noticed me, the other three began chuckling and teasing the man I'd knocked out. He scowled at me, then led the rest to the bar, where Dalmore was looking on nervously.

"Little early for a drink, isn't it boys?" Dalmore said with a forced chuckle.

"Cold wind off the mountains," the big man grumbled. "If I'm going to stand watch from the top of the Wall for the next ten hours, you can bet your ass I'm not going to do it sober."

His cronies all chuckled appreciatively as Dalmore began pouring them mugs of beer.

Mug in hand, he turned and rested against the bar, watching me as he took a long, gulping drink.

"Why don't I show you around town," I suggested to the girl, though I didn't take my eyes away from the soldiers.

This drew the other soldiers' attention. "Look, Fulk, that girl who knocked your teeth out has a pet. That's cute."

The big man, Fulk, spit on the floor, drained his mug, and then slammed it down on the bar. "Where'd you find this raggedy little thing, Flamesworth?"

I was mildly surprised to hear him use my name, and it must have showed.

He grunted out a dull laugh. "Oh, that's right. I found out all about you after the last time we met. From what I hear, you're not quite the motherly type, so what's this all about then? Looking to make a quick buck? Wouldn't put it past a Flamesworth to deal in a little light slavery."

His eyes traveled up and down Camellia. To the girl's credit, she glared right back.

"Not much meat on that one, is there? My cousin used to do a bit of trade in elves on the side. Preferred to get 'em a bit younger than this here, I think, but then again, not many elves around no more." His flat face split into a cruel grin. "Tell you what, I'll give you, say, two gold for her."

The men around him howled with laughter. I took a step toward them, but Camellia was pulling at my arm. "Come on, Jasmine. Let's just go for that walk."

Fulk pushed away from the bar and crossed the room so that he was standing between us and the door. "What's the matter, pointy ears? I promise I'd be a real good master. I could use someone to clean up after me, knock the mud off my boots, wash my uniform, and you don't look like you eat much, anyway."

I took a step toward the big man and fingered my daggers. "Move."

From behind the bar, Dalmore was looking on in a panic. "Now, I won't have another fight in here! Stop or I'll—"

"What? Call the guards?" said one of the others with a laugh.

"Careful now, Fulk," said another. "You don't have many more teeth to lose."

Fulk snarled and clenched his fists. "I heard elves mature a lot quicker than humans. Is that true Flamesworth? I—" The man choked off in a wheezing grunt.

Three quick steps had brought me right beside him, and my fist had sunk into his ribs before he could even bring his meaty hands up to defend himself. He doubled over, and my knee came up into his nose with a satisfying crunch, sending him toppling onto his back.

I thought that would be the end of it, but Fulk struggled back to his feet and drew his sword.

The other soldiers eyed him nervously. "Hey, Fulk, we were just having a little fun, let's not—"

Their companion wasn't listening. His eyes bulged above a swollen, bloody nose, and he let out a roar as he lunged toward me, his sword blurring through the air in an overhead swing.

I sidestepped and let the sword crash into the wooden floorboards, then pushed the toe of my boot against the flat of the blade to keep it trapped there. "You're an embarrassment to your uniform," I said mockingly, then drove a mana-shrouded fist into his jaw.

Fulk tumbled sideways and crashed through one of Dalmore's tables, smashing it to kindling. Distantly, I heard the innkeeper groan.

The other three soldiers moved away from the bar to stand protectively over Fulk, who was struggling onto his hands and knees. "All right, that's enough. You're under arrest for assaulting a member of the Bulwark Division, Flamesworth."


Now More Than Ever (Part 2)

"Here now!" blustered Dalmore, but he was thoroughly ignored.

"He started this," I ground out, doing my best to sound reasonable.

The soldier was shaking his head. Behind him, the other two were dragging Fulk back to his feet. "Don't care, Flamesworth. Over three-quarters of our unit got wiped out when your dad sent us beyond the Wall. Still, we stay and grind on, no pay, little enough hope. So you of all people don't get to put your hands on one of us. Understand that?" His face had reddened as he spoke.

The guards had clearly decided to double down on Fulk's idiocy. I didn't entirely believe the senior captain's threat that I'd be chucked out of town for being arrested again, but I couldn't leave Camellia on her own.

Not with thugs like these around.

"Now," he said, his hand drifting toward the handle of his sword. "You are under arrest. If you don't come along quietly, we'll cut you down."

Half turning so I could see Camellia, who had sunk back against the closest wall to stay out of the way of my short fight, I said, "Go get your things. We're leaving."

One of the soldiers was already moving to intercept her. Hooking a chair with my toe, I kicked it at him as hard as I could, then lunged toward the red-faced guard.

My hand was on the pummel of his sword before he could unsheathe it, and he rocked backwards and tripped in the pile of broken wood as my forehead connected with the bridge of his nose.

The dazed Fulk caught him and both men tumbled to the floor hard enough to shake the mugs lining the wall behind the bar.

The fourth man has his sword out, but hesitated to attack.

I didn't.

I released a condensed burst of wind mana that threw him off his feet and into the bar. He crumpled at its base, not moving.

The guard going after Camellia had recovered from the chair and drawn a shortsword and a long dagger from his belt. The floorboards groaned and cracked as two vines burst up through them and wrapped around the man's legs.

He began to hack at them, giving me time to move in and pin his sword-arm to his side. I twisted his wrist until he howled in pain and the shortsword clattered to the ground, then drove my elbow up into his chin.

The soldier took one stumbling step back, got hung up in the vine still clinging to his leg, and went over backwards, his dagger flying. Camellia rushed around the fallen man, heading for the stairs up to our room.

Fulk and the red-faced guard were both struggling to stand.

"Enough," I said firmly. "This is over. Take your friends and go."

The two men regained their feet, and both brandished their swords. Fulk stalked toward me cautiously while the red-faced guard circled around to my left, his blade glowing red hot as he infused it with mana.

I drew my daggers. "No one needs to die here."

Fulk bellowed as he took Mankiller in both hands and swung downward toward me. At the same time, the red-faced soldier darted in from the side, thrusting at my hip.

Instead of dodging right, which would have left me pinned up against the bar, I moved left, into the thrust. One dagger parried the searing blade while the other licked out and made a shallow cut on the back of Fulk's unprotected hand.

Spinning, I put one foot between the red-faced soldier's legs, letting his own momentum trip him up, then drove the pummel of my dagger into his ear.

Although the pain of the sharp blow knocked him to his knees, he swept blindly backwards with his glowing sword, forcing me to dodge. The sudden movement sent a searing pain up my side as I twisted my torso, aggravating my still healing wound.

While the two were collecting themselves, I tried again to put an end to the fight. "Listen, idiots. I'm taking it easy on you, and you know it. Walk away."

Wordlessly, the two approached again. The red-faced guard's sword grew so hot that it burst into fire, whooshing as it moved.

I rolled my eyes so hard it hurt.

Jumping backwards, I threw both daggers, each wrapped in a disk of wind. The men's swords came up to block, and I lunged forward again, building a cyclone of wind-attribute mana around me that threw chairs across the room and overturned the tables.

Stopping suddenly just a couple feet from Fulk and his companion, almost directly between them, I pushed outward with the cyclone. It grabbed both men and hurled them bodily across the room, twisting and tumbling like ragdolls.

The red-faced soldier hit the roof, bounced off, and spun through one of the windows with a crash, disappearing into the street. Fulk's head hit the bar, then the rest of him smashed into the back wall, breaking the shelving and sending all of Dalmore's precious mugs plummeting to the ground where they burst into a thousand pieces.

The ringing noise of shattering ceramic hadn't even stopped before I heard yelling from outside the inn.

"Shit." Up the stairs I shouted, "Camellia, hurry it up!"

Dalmore, who had ducked below the bar when my cyclone attack went off, stood up and gazed slack-jawed around his barroom in horror. "Jasmine, what have you—" He went silent as his eyes locked on something behind the bar. "He's dead, Jasmine. You killed him."

Wrapped in an insulating post-battle calm, I walked slowly to the bar and looked over. Sure enough, the flat-faced guard's neck was twisted unnaturally, and blood was pouring from a gash near his temple. He was definitely dead.

Light footsteps on the stairs and a stifled gasp announced Camellia's return.

"Jasmine, you're bleeding…"

I pressed a hand to my side; sure enough, it came away red with blood. "It's nothing. Just opened my wound."

Withdrawing the ravager's beast core from my dimension ring, I set it on the bar with a heavy clunk and met Dalmore's eye. "Sorry about this, Dal. Maybe this can cover what I owe you."

An S-class beast core would have fetched enough gold to rebuild the whole bar back before the Alacryans took over. I wasn't sure of its value in our new world, but I hoped it would set him right. For all his nagging, Dalmore had been kind to me.

I gestured for Camellia to come on and gave the silent innkeeper one last nod before rushing out the door.

A small crowd had already gathered around the red-faced soldier, who was lying in a heap on the ground, only half-conscious. A few of them watched carefully as I came out of the Underwall.

After checking to make sure Camellia was following, I ducked away from the crowd, went down an alley between two buildings, then waited for a pair of rushing guards to pass by before making a beeline toward the west exit.

The carriage gates were closed, but the guards didn't seem particularly on edge. Camellia and I slowed to a walk as we approached the smaller gate that opened out into the Kingdom of Sapin.

The bored-looking gate guard hardly glanced up at us as he swung the iron gate out, allowing us to pass.

We had gone a few hundred feet from town when I heard the large carriage gates rattling open. A dozen armed and armored men, all soldiers of the Bulwark Division, were rushing out.

"Jasmine, they're—"

"Never going to catch us," I said firmly, hoisting Camellia onto my back. A burst of wind mana swirled around me, kicking up a cloud of dust that quickly obscured us, and I began to run.