The Queen's Blade, page 23
I forced the power through me.
Something exploded. The weight lifted.
I darted ahead, not pausing to think about what I had done or how I had done it. A shadowy form near the palace wall loomed up ahead, and as I raced toward her, I saw that a pair of guards near the palace had been dropped. Talina had used the same magic on them that she had used on me.
When she reached the palace door, it opened.
And then she was inside.
I had a moment of hesitation. Only a moment.
I was a Blade.
I had to stop this. I had to stop her.
I had to keep her from getting to the Queen.
I paused once more at the palace entrance, where I saw chaos. Bodies lay all around, either dead or incapacitated. Talina was racing up the stairs. I did the only thing I could think of and hurled my blade at her.
When I had been training with Waleith, he had never taught me to use the blade in this manner. It was supposed to be an extension of me, harnessing the power inside me. It tumbled end over end and landed on the stairs next to her.
She glanced down at the blade, almost dismissively.
“Interesting,” she said. “There is another here?”
Once again I began to feel that pressure building. The same pressure that I had felt before. It was a hand attempting to push me down.
I resisted.
I was strong. Was I magically strong?
Maybe that was the reason Waleith had brought me with him.
I didn’t even care. I exploded upward, raced up the stairs, but was not nearly fast enough. Talina had already turned, and now she was outside an ornate set of double doors. The guards on either side of the doors had collapsed.
She had her hand raised, and I lunged.
I wrapped her in my arms and dragged her down.
She fought, kicking, struggling. I squeezed, holding on to her.
I felt pressure building within me. I felt the resistance trembling within me. I felt her using her magic, and I knew that I wasn’t going to overpower it.
Still, I fought.
I continued to squeeze.
Talina wriggled around, coming face-to-face with me. I continued to hold her. The power that she was attempting to grab for was considerable, and unfortunately, even though I could feel that, I wasn’t sure that I had enough strength to resist it.
She was far too powerful. And the kind of power she was channeling was so substantial that I had little doubt that if she succeeded here, she would overpower the Queen, even.
It made me hold on more tightly.
I felt the resistance as a painful stinging sensation. I felt the way that my entire being began to burn, as if she had jabbed needles into me. She was silent as she fought.
Everything about her was silent.
I kicked, tumbling, keeping her with me. I wanted to get her as far away from the Queen’s room—assuming this was the Queen’s room—as possible. I reached the stairs. I held her, and a thought occurred to me.
My blade.
But I had to grab for it with one hand.
I let out an angry cry, practically crushing her with one arm while also reaching with my other.
Then I felt it. The cold metal. I brought it around, and Talina was gone.
She had escaped my grasp.
I tried to move quickly, but I was too large for speed. I did the only thing that I thought possible, and I lunged at her.
She was at the door. She had her hands pressed out, and I could feel the burning again. I dove and crashed into some invisible resistance.
She glanced back at me, and then the door began to warp. She was using magic on it. I had no idea what it was, but I could feel the effect inside me, the way that it was pushing on me.
I pushed. This was something I could fight through. I had the blade.
All the lessons that Waleith had taught me came back in a surge, though I didn’t know if I would be able to use them here. Talina was powerful, and I was barely trained.
The blade eased downward. I pushed, forcing as much of myself into the blade as I could, thinking about what Waleith had taught me about commanding and controlling my power.
Gradually it moved.
There was a barricade, but it was cracking.
The door rippled. It opened.
And then I pushed everything into the blade and slammed it into Talina’s back.
She looked back, her eyes widening, as she slipped to the floor.
All the strength went out of me. The strange resistance I’d been pushing against had exploded.
And I swallowed. Collapsing.
Chapter Thirty-Three
I lay there for a long moment, until a pair of swords pointed at my throat. I stared up, realizing how this had to look. I was near the Queen, presumably, holding a blade and looking like a madman.
“Not him,” a gruff, pained voice said behind me.
I looked over. Waleith was clutching his belly, blood pouring from it, but his eyes were still bright. He had his blade in hand, and he jabbed it at the two guards.
“Not him,” he repeated.
“I would listen to him,” a familiar, distinguished voice said from inside the room.
The blades were withdrawn, and the soldiers moved away.
Slowly I got to my knees, trembling. Exhaustion worked through me, a wave of it, much more potent than anything I had ever felt before.
I looked up at Waleith. “What happened?”
“They were a little trickier than I had expected. It was a good thing I didn’t need my bodyguard.” He smirked and looked down at the fallen form of Talina. “Where did you place the blade?”
“I didn’t place it. I just stabbed her,” I said. “Her back. I don’t know what happened.”
“Resistance?”
“Resistance,” I said.
“Good. She will have lost her abilities. Perhaps forever, or perhaps for a spell. It will give us time to question her. We need to know what she intended.”
“She obviously intended to get to me,” the Queen said. “Or isn’t that obvious?”
“Yes, but why did she think to get to you,” Waleith said, still clutching his belly, a pained look on his face, “and what made her think to violate the treaty?”
The Queen frowned. “Those are interesting questions.”
“Someone placed items to destroy the fabrications around the city. Not only that, but they knew how to get such items into the city.”
“What are you saying?” she asked.
“I fear we have a traitor,” Waleith said.
He sank to the floor.
The Queen tsked and waved over one of the guards. “Go fetch my physic. He will be displeased that I have awoken him, but he needs to attend to Mr. Fant.” She coughed, covering her mouth for a moment, and then turned. “And make sure that I have water.”
The soldier hurried off.
“Why don’t you carry him in here?” she said, nodding to me.
I scooped Waleith off the floor and settled him into a chair that she indicated.
“What about Talina?” I asked.
“She does not appear to be going anywhere,” the Queen said.
The guards outside the room had recovered, and now they stood over Talina, both with blades angled toward her back. A third guard, one that had been standing over me, had begun binding her wrists and her ankles, and applying fabricated metallic items around them as well. Some sort of magic mitigation? I didn’t know.
“Tell me what happened here,” the Queen said.
“Obviously an attack,” Waleith said, blinking for a moment. “And I’ve been trying to make sense of why now, but I was not able to determine why the training compound was destroyed. It appears that she was using it as a way to test thresholds. Nothing more.” He grimaced.
“Which leaves us unprotected,” the Queen observed.
“It does, but perhaps not as much as I feared,” Waleith said, looking over at me.
The Queen turned and regarded me for a long moment. “Yes. It is good that you discovered him. So the stories were true?”
“Very much so,” he said.
I tensed.
“And will he serve?”
“You can ask me,” I said, getting irritated that they were talking around me. “Because if you need me to serve, or if you’re trying to find out if I’m willing to, then maybe you should be asking the person that you’re talking about.”
The Queen snorted. “True enough. Will you serve?”
“Do I have a choice?”
“Yes. And no.”
“Where will I have to serve?” I was prepared for them to send me away. And maybe that would be for the best. It would give me a chance to start over somewhere.
“I imagine Waleith has something in mind.”
I turned to him. He was slumped in the chair. An older, gray-haired man scurried into the room, clutching a bag, and fretted over Waleith for a moment.
“Don’t mind Jamie. He is my physic, and well regarded,” the Queen said. “Waleith?”
“I need to find more Blades,” he said. “I am the only one who can now.”
“I fear you are right. And that means that the city remains unprotected.”
“No. He can serve here.”
The Queen regarded me for a long moment. She sized me up, and there was a look in her eyes that I couldn’t quite read.
“What do you say, Zaren Joha? Can you serve as the Queen’s Blade?”
A dozen different thoughts entered my mind. I would stay here. I would serve. I would be a Blade. The city was strange to me, but there were familiar aspects to it. Jaqarl Harent for one. Dara, someone who I wanted to see again, and take up on the offer to enjoy dinner together. And perhaps I would even take her to the Queen’s garden.
But there was the unfamiliar.
Maybe it was time for the unfamiliar. Maybe it was time for that change.
I needed something like that. I needed change.
The Queen was watching me, waiting.
“I will serve. I will be your Blade.”
“Good. If Waleith is right, and the dangers to the city, and to me, are only just beginning. We will need my Blade to serve well.”
I couldn’t help but feel that was almost a threat.
Perhaps it didn’t matter. I had purpose now. I had a way of serving.
And so I would. I would be the Queen’s Blade.
Epilogue
The streets were dark in this part of the city. I felt as if I had a better understanding of finding my way through the city, and I could even get a sense of the map that the magic around the city formed—and it did form something of a map. Much like Waleith had claimed, I would learn to detect the different magics in the world, and I would be able to discern how much was dangerous and how much was not.
Waleith wasn’t with me. He had been interrogating Talina, though I didn’t know what that entailed—and I had a pretty good idea that he wasn’t going to let me in on that aspect of his treatment of her. She was dangerous, and though I might have been the one to stop her for now, that didn’t mean that I could be involved in her interrogation.
As Waleith had reminded me after the attack, I was still learning what it meant to be a Blade.
But now I felt that was what I was meant to do.
That was freeing.
And it surprised me that I would feel this way. Maybe I’d always needed to have a sense of purpose, though. The farm hadn’t been it. The army hadn’t been it, though I had wanted it to be. And Lavrun definitely hadn’t been a purpose.
Maybe coming here and being a Blade was what I’d always been meant to do.
I didn’t know how I had this ability.
Waleith had been unable to share any insight with me, though I’d been curious about it, and curious about whether there was something to me, or perhaps my family, that made me the way that I was. That was something I’d need to learn over time.
Now I had a different task.
Detecting magic had become easier. Maybe it was the shifting of power that Talina and her people had been tied to, and how they had seemingly adjusted some of the protections that were placed around the city, the fabrications that Waleith had mentioned. Something had obviously happened, which I suspected was the reason that my mental map of the magic in the city had shifted. But maybe it was about what I had developed and how I had continued to develop.
Whatever it was, I could track the different types of magic, and I had been doing so for the last week, picking up on familiar tugs of power that I thought I might use to find Jasar.
He was still in the city.
And I would find him.
The pull had dragged me toward this quiet and dark part of the city.
The narrow street stretched out ahead of me, lined with a haphazard collection of homes. They sat pressed together, each one sharing walls and whispered secrets with its neighbors. Their facades were faded and worn, with paint that had long since lost its vibrancy, and windows clouded with years of neglect.
Some houses leaned a bit too much to one side. The roofs sagged in places. The occasional crooked chimney emitted a weak trail of smoke, suggesting that people lived in this part of the city.
The faint pull of Jasar’s magic tugged at my senses, just out of reach. I could feel it weaving between these homes, drawing me deeper into the maze of narrow paths and cobbled stones.
I was close—and I felt it.
It reminded me of the time when I had been tracking through the city with Waleith, only this time I would be doing it on my own.
No shops, though.
There had been no further break-ins since Talina had been defeated. That was enough for me to know that Jasar and his crew had been involved, though I hadn’t revealed that to Waleith. A part of me wondered why I had kept it from him, though the reason was likely that I wanted to be the one to deal with Jasar.
I might not have known what he was up to when I’d been expelled from the army. And I still didn’t. And I might not have been able to handle him when I’d snuck up on him. Now I would.
Because I was a Blade.
Stopping at the home, I paused to look around it.
The building itself was unremarkable compared to its neighbors, with the same chipped paint and foggy windows. But beneath the surface, a pulse of magic throbbed, beckoning me closer.
I worked my blade into the frame and popped it open.
The door came open easily. There had been magic resisting me, but that was an easy enough thing to overpower now that I knew how.
Derek was sitting at a table. He turned his one good eye toward me, and it went wide as he did. He jumped to his feet, but I was there fast.
I drove my fist into his temple, knocking him out.
Even someone I’d been friends with would not get in my way.
Lowering him to the floor, I was tempted to bind him, but he wasn’t the target.
As I straightened, Erind came from a back room. He took one look at me, then at Derek, before shouting.
Resistance pressed on me with a heavy electrical sense that burned.
Magic.
Then I lunged.
The power wasn’t enough to hold me.
I didn’t know what he had, but I could overpower it easily.
This time I had my blade ready. I was ready.
And I didn’t hesitate.
The blade sank into his shoulder. My knee went into his groin, dropping him.
Then I kicked. He went rolling to the side.
Not before Jasar raced toward me from the back room.
I didn’t see what he was holding, but I felt it.
Power bloomed as he slammed into me. The electrical sensation slammed through me, a painful coursing of energy that attempted to overpower even the magic I carried—and the fabrication that I wore on me.
Jasar looked at the blade. “They took you on, Joha? Wouldn’t have figured you to work for her. Didn’t she decide that you were useless?”
“Not useless,” I said. “And she has decided that I am to be her Blade.”
He shifted. I noticed the pyramidal object in his hand. The item that he’d used on me before. The item that I had been tracking.
I could feel the magic in it.
And I could resist it.
“What’s more, Jasar, whatever you were working on is over. I’m still not sure why you’ve remained in the city, but maybe it’s because I’ve asked the constables to keep an eye out for you and the others.”
The twitch of his eyes told me that I was right.
I smiled. “Probably difficult to get past that many constables, all determined to keep you from leaving. And the harbor… well, let’s just say that’s been quiet as well, especially for you.”
He lunged.
He was quick, but I was ready.
I simply caught his fist.
The strange item gave him speed and strength.
He probably anticipated that he would be able to handle me easily.
But when I caught the item, I made a point of pushing through it, the way that I had before. There was power, but not enough power that I couldn’t fight through it. The resistance was there. Without the blade, I hadn’t been sure that I’d be able to remove the power of the item, but I could feel the energy in it. And I could squeeze the power through it. Then I could feel how that pressed through me.
There was a soft pop.
And a crack.
Jasar stumbled back.
I was there.
With a jab to his chest, he went down.
I dropped, sinking atop him, pinning him to the floor. He didn’t and couldn’t move. He thrashed as he tried to get free, but I was too heavy.
My size could be an advantage.
“Nice little trinket you have. Or should I say had?” I said. “It’s not going to be much help to you now. Or ever again. Given that I am aware of all that you’ve been doing to work against the Queen, I think you’re going to have a long and painful time in prison. Maybe we can even imprison you in the dungeons, though that might be too kind for you. I don’t know how the Queen and her guards will take to someone who has so actively fought against her, all while pretending to serve her. I do know that she will be interested to know all that you’ve been working on. As will I.”
