Blades Of Magic: Crown Service #1 (5 page)

She walked up to him as he rolled onto his back, and, with some wiggling, sat up.

Dazed Ezekiel looked down at his legs and then back up at her. “You could have killed me.”

“I didn’t,” she said brusquely as she cut the ties from his legs. It would be easy enough to make a new one.

“You fighters, nothing but muscle, the lot of you,” Ezekiel said as he glared up at her from the ground.

Sara raised an eyebrow. “Did you just call me stupid?”

“Maybe?”

She set her teeth in a line, sorely tempted to punch the spindly little scholar in the mouth. But she eased up. Realizing that was just what he would expect.

Then Sara spoke. “What if I told you I speak three languages, know more about ballistics than you, and—”

She paused. He didn’t look impressed.

“—and can name all Sahalian rulers from first to last,” she continued defiantly. She was hoping to impress him with her knowledge, though she hadn’t the slightest clue why she cared at the moment.

He looked thoughtful. She could guess why—most Algardis citizens didn’t bother learning the name of the
current
ruler of Sahalia, let alone her ancestors.

Ezekiel rubbed his jaw. “All thirty-six of them?”

She smiled, a rarely present set of dimples appearing on her face. It was a trick question. “All thirty-
eight
of them. Including the lost emperor.”

Then a grin came across his face. The fastest way to a scholar’s heart was through knowledge—she knew that firsthand.

“Not many know about the lost emperor,” Ezekiel admitted from the ground, “or the twin rulers, for that matter.”

“Not many care,” she said flatly. “I do.”

He rubbed his shins with a pained expression. She waited to see what he would do.

I might have been a little hasty
, she thought.
Maybe it’s up to me to extend the olive branch of peace.

“Perhaps we’ve gotten off on the wrong foot,” she admitted.

He swallowed. “Perhaps I should have introduced myself.”

There. We both apologized
, Sara thought in relief.

He adjusted the spectacles on the bridge of his nose and tried to stand. He winced when he tried to put weight on his left leg and it failed. Grabbing his hand in her own, her dusky skin contrasted with his much paler flesh as she pulled him up until he could stand.

“Sorry if that hurt.”

“
If?
”

She glared.

“Apology accepted,” he hurriedly stated.

She nodded. “Now, where are we going?”

He sighed. “The warehouse for the artifacts is this way.”

“This way where?” Sara knew better than to follow anybody to an unknown location. The first rule of battle was to know your surroundings. The second rule was to be prepared for anything.

Ezekiel looked over at her, truly confused. As if he couldn’t fathom why she was being this difficult. He’d obviously never been cornered in an alley with only a rock to defend himself with. That had been in her younger days. Before she’d learned to
always
keep a blade on her. Now her opponents would be hard-pressed to get the drop on her at any time. But that didn’t mean she’d let her guard down.

“Well?” she demanded.

Ezekiel raised a finger to point at a gray building in the distance. It sat on a rocky outcropping and looked generally very dreary even in the early morning sun.

“There,” he said. “We’re going right there.”

She nodded and proceeded forward.

When she was about to pass him and he still hadn’t moved, she reached out, grabbed his shoulder, and pushed him along ahead of her. There was no way he was going to walk behind her.

“You know you’re very pushy, right?”

She glanced over to see if he was mocking her. He looked completely serious. And completely annoyed as he moved a few inches to the left to get out of her reach.

She snorted. Not answering his question and not pointing out the fact that he’d have to be at least five more feet away from her to keep her out of grabbing or stabbing distance.

“So,” she said, “what are these artifacts?”

He bit his lip and then mumbled something.

“I’m sorry. I didn’t hear you,” she said. She wasn’t sorry, and her voice arced up in irritation to show it. 

He glanced at her out of the corner of his eye before he clearly stated, “Objects that Cormar has procured from mages across the realm. He keeps them in a magically-sealed warehouse. I’m their curator. You’re their guard. Okay?”

She gave him a glare that had him inching further to the left.

Softening the look, she said, “Look, if you drop the attitude I won’t hurt you.”

He stopped dead between the fisherman’s wharf and the warehouse.

“What you mean is as long as you’re not in a bad mood and I do exactly what you say you won’t hurt me.”

She turned to face him. “Did I say that?”

“No, but that’s what you meant.”

“
No
,” she contradicted. “I meant what I said. Drop the attitude, because I didn’t force you into this crappy job. In fact, I’m pretty sure Cormar back there forced us
both
into this crappy job.”

He muttered, “Not so crappy.”

“Watching artifacts all day isn’t crappy?”

“It’s better than cleaning fish guts, which is what you came for,” he shot back.

Her back relaxed and then she grinned. She liked that he stood up to her. Maybe he had a spine after all. Besides...he had a point.

“So, Ezekiel, what’s so important about these artifacts?” she said, turning back to the warehouse.

He started walking beside her again. 

“Some have special powers. Others have yet to be studied. They’re all valuable. To all kinds of people, which is why Cormar needs a watcher skilled in fighting to stop anybody who tries to take them.” 

She raised an eyebrow but didn’t comment. They had reached the entrance to the warehouse. He slid a key into a normal-sized door and walked in first. She followed closely behind and looked around to see an open space filled with rows and rows of waist-high benches. As she walked forward she saw that each bench had multiple objects arrayed on it, each object was spaced a few even inches from the next. They ranged from beautiful opal necklaces to giant mechanical constructions whose purpose she couldn’t surmise. Looking around, Sara continued walking forward.

“Is this everything?” she said turning to see that Ezekiel had stayed standing near the front two rows.

“Yes,” he said back. “Everything we have is here on these benches.”

“How many artifacts do you have?” she asked.

He looked up and did a quick calculation out loud. “Two rows of ten benches that are full. With five artifacts a piece for those. Then there are also two partially full benches because of the danger the artifacts pose. That’s another seven. So one hundred and seven artifacts now.”

She nodded sharply while proceeding to walk to the end.

As she walked away, she heard him add, “But we get more and more each day, you know.”

Judging by the two minutes it took her to walk from front to back and then five minutes it took her to jog the perimeter, she thought it would be easy to keep an eye on the artifacts. Half of the warehouse, towards the back, wasn’t even full. The good thing about the warehouse was that it had an open layout—easy to see clearly in all directions at once and giving her the ability to spot intruders. The bad thing about the layout was that the benches would easily get in the way if she had to fight someone, and there was nowhere to get a tactical advantage.

She sighed and walked back to Ezekiel.

“Anything I should know about these artifacts?”

“Like what?” he said, holding up a magnifying glass to look at a bug made of solid gold with emerald eyes that sat in his hand.

“Like is there anything in here that will react if I touch it or breathe on it?” she said tersely. It was a valid question. Mage objects had the bad habit of killing their owners.

“Um, there’s a pygmy statue about four benches back that way,” he said as he motioned with the magnifying glass. “It’ll turn you to stone if you spit on it and rub it with your thumb, but that’s it, I think.”

She stared at him.

“All right, then. Security question time. Has a mage tried to break into the warehouse in the last week?” she said, spitting out rapid-fire questions. “In the last month? What would they want to acquire first?”

“No, no, and everything in here is priceless.”

“You’re not helping,” she pointed out.

“You’re not asking the right questions,” he retorted.

She clenched a fist and held back from wringing his neck.

“All right,” she said tersely as he continued to play with what she thought was a beetle. “Is the warehouse protected magically?”

He looked up at her with a smile. “Ding, ding, ding! Right question there. The answer is yes. This building has some of the strongest wards I’ve ever seen. No mage, no matter how powerful, could get through those doors.”

He is a very weird man
, Sara decided privately.

Then Sara thought about what he had just said and what he had conspicuously left out.

“You said ‘mage,’” she said slowly.

He nodded patiently. 

“What about common thugs?”

He said, “There’s no mage ward known to man that can bar a common human thief. Why? Because there’s no magic in them to detect.”

She cursed a blue streak.

He continued, “Which is why we need
you
.”

She changed her original question in light of this news. “Has
anyone
tried to break into the warehouse in the last month?”

“Three street thugs in the past week, two trained art collectors in the past two weeks, and one very determined thief three times over three weeks,” he said. “Cormar took care of that last one himself.” 

Her stomach sank. That was a lot of break-ins.

“And what did Cormar do with the thieves who broke in before that?”

“The watcher before you took care of them.” 

She was afraid to ask. “Where is that watcher?”

“In the city morgue. Died last night of multiple stab wounds,” he said, looking at her as if the question was dumb.

Sara groaned. She supposed it was. Why else would they need a new fighter unless the old one was dead?

The death bothered her, but she was practical. Fighters died. She could handle that and handle herself much better than whoever they had previously hired anyway. She was sure of it.

Then Ezekiel said, “There’s a cot over there, a supply closet with materials on the far wall, and a food allowance. You can move a few things in, but don’t bring your family.”

Sara froze. The position had come about so fast that it had never occurred to her that they would need her for more than the daylight hours.

She turned around, muttering, “I can’t do this.”

For the first time Ezekiel stopped fiddling with his golden beetle. As she walked toward the door he reached out a frantic hand to latch on to her upper arm.

“Wait,” he shouted.

She gave him a hardened glare and he let go of her hastily.

“Please,” he pleaded, giving her his full attention. “What do you mean you can’t do this? You promised Cormar!”

“I promised him nothing. I thought this job would be a few hours a day. Now you’re saying I have to live here,” she snapped. “I can’t do that.”

He looked at her and shook his head. “If you leave, he’ll blame me.”

“He won’t if you find a replacement,” she said.

“Where am I supposed to find that?”

“Oh, I don’t know, the mercenary’s guild?”

He grimaced. “They don’t like me there.”

“Why?”

“It’s confidential.”

“Confidential enough to get your ass kicked if you walked through that guild’s doors?”

“Yeah,” he admitted.

“What in the world could
you
have possibly done to piss off the entire mercenary’s guild?” she said.

He pushed his falling spectacles up the bridge of his nose and glared.

“Never mind, I can take a guess.”

He sniffed.

She said, “Look, I want to help you. I do. But I can’t be here all day and night. I can’t
live
here. I have a family of my own.”

My mother
, she thought silently.

He started trembling. “What am I going to do?”

“Not my problem,” Sara said, walking toward the door.

She heard a clatter from behind her. She turned around to see that Ezekiel had knocked a small acorn off of a bench. It bounced and rolled until it stopped in front of her feet. She bent down to pick it up gingerly. In her hands it had a warm muted glow of amber. It was very pretty.

She looked up to see Ezekiel kneeling on the floor as he sat back with a look of pure resignation on his face. He looked like a man who knew he was going to die and had accepted his fate.

Sara let out a breath slowly and grimaced.

“Two days,” she said.

Ezekiel’s head snapped up. “Two days?”

“I’ll help you for two days. We’ll go to the mercenary’s guild tomorrow and get a replacement.”

Her voice was firm.

“Think Cormar will accept that?”

“I don’t know,” she replied, “but he won’t really have a choice. I only took this job for the money. But it’s not worth it to leave my mother alone. I’ll find something else.”

Ezekiel looked a tad doubtful but he didn’t question her. He was probably too grateful that his imminent death had a stay of execution to pester her.

“Now,” she said, “why don’t get back to do doing whatever it is you do here?”

He nodded and stood.

“What are you going to do?” he said.

“I’m going to check the exterior perimeter for weak spots in the mage field. Then I’m going over every inch of the walls to see how those thieves were sneaking in.”

“Sounds like a good plan.”

Sara smirked. She doubted he knew what she was looking for.

“Ezekiel?” Sara said.

“Yes?”

“Catch!”

She threw the amber acorn to him and watched as he caught it after a few fumbles. Just before he caught it, the priceless artifact almost hit the floor. Again.