Blades Of Magic: Crown Service #1
Read Blades Of Magic: Crown Service #1 Online
Authors: Terah Edun
Tags: #coming of age, #fantasy, #swords
S
ara Fairchild stared with hard eyes at the three men and two women who surrounded her. They had cornered her in an alley. But only because she wanted them to. She was having a bad day, might as well end it right. Feet planted firmly in the dry dirt, she called out to the group arrayed in a semi-circle around her, “Nice day for a fight, isn’t it?”
The woman to her right wore a raggedy scarf around her hair and her ears were covered in at least five earrings per lobe. She glared and said, “You think you’re funny, girl?”
Sara watched as the woman spit into the dirt before her in disgust.
“Your da was a disgrace,” the woman continued. “You’re just like him. A coward.”
“And a cheat!” said the man directly in front of her. He nervously fingered a blade in his hands. It was a poorly crafted one. That Sara could tell from five feet away. She stood in front of him with her back up against the wall. She wasn’t carrying her sword, but she did have one fine long knife at her waist, a dagger on her thigh, and a baton she’d lifted from a city patrolman in her right hand.
“Is that so?” Sara said, directing her voice at the man in front of her, “And what, pray tell, did I cheat you of, Simon Codfield?”
Her tone was level. Even surprised. He shifted warily. He was nervous even with four of his friends to back him up. When the people standing with him began to look at him oddly, he stiffened his back. Simon licked his lips and said, “Cards. I know you had an extra ace in your belt. Admit it now and we’ll only beat you two ways until Sunday.”
She tilted her head. “And if I admit it later?” Even he couldn’t miss the derision in her voice.
“We’re trying to go easy on you,” said Simon Codfield, his voice dipping into desperation. He might be a liar as well as a thief, but he was no fool. Sara knew the only reason he and his crew had followed her into this alley was because if he didn’t accuse her,
he
would have to take the fall for losing over forty shillings in a card game that had only started on a bet of five. She knew and he knew that he didn’t have forty shillings to give. That was one month’s pay for a dockworker, never mind a ne’er-do-well like Simon who hadn’t worked an honest job a day in his life.
“Tell you what. Why don’t you drop those trousers of yours? Then we’ll call it even,” said the thief lord in charge of the west district of Sandrin. She turned to face the man who had spoken. He rubbed a hand over his two-day-old beard with a grin.
Sara brought up the long knife in her left hand. “Why don’t you drop yours, Severin, so that I can cut off your balls for you?”
Anger flashed in the thief lord’s eyes. Anger and passion. Sara smiled. She wasn’t joking. If she got close enough to him, she’d make him a eunuch without batting an eye. Simon Codfield gulped and took a step back. He knew she wasn’t playing around.
But Severin was new. He didn’t believe the reputation she had acquired on the streets. More’s the pity for him. He thought he would be in for what a man like him considered a little rough play—disarming a pretty girl of a simple knife. Maybe getting a few scratches and bites for his troubles.
She couldn’t wait to show Severin just how wrong he was.
Sara chuckled. “I’m feeling generous today. You lot can back off and slink back into whatever hidey-hole you crawled out of. Or I can show you some manners.”
Either way they chose, this would end soon. She had less than fifteen minutes to grab some meat pies off a vendor and get home. Sara Fairchild was seventeen years old. Almost a woman grown with the talent of ten swordsmen and the fierce determination of a lioness cornered. But even she quivered at the thought of being late to her mom’s dinner table. Hell had nothing on Anna Beth Fairchild’s anger.
“Well? Which is it going to be?” said Sara impatiently. “I don’t have all night.”
Severin chuckled while raising his hand. The brass knuckles on his fingers were still sticky with the blood from the last poor sod he had beaten into the ground. You didn’t get to be thief lord by playing nice. She grimaced. She hated those types of weapons. They were crude. Designed to provide the most damage to a body in the least amount of time. Which meant beating a person bloody until their head split open and the bones in their face were broken. There was no finesse about the brass knuckles and nothing clean about the kill. It was quite the opposite of the grace of her favorite weapon—the sword.
“Is that supposed to intimidate me?” Sara said.
“It should. You’ve got too much pride,” he taunted back.
“For a woman? Or for a Fairchild?”
Severin looked at the man who stood next to him. Then he jerked his head to lackey while issuing an order. “Get her, Rube.”
Rube moved forward without complaint, every step he took jangling the rusty chain of metal links intertwined between his fingers.
Then Severin turned back to her and answered her question of why she had too much pride. “For both,” he said.
Then there was no more talking, because Sara was facing off against a menacing Rube. A lumbering giant, Sara had a feeling he was Severin’s muscle on the docks when the thief lord was cheating sailors out of their hard-earned coins. She’d heard stories about the lumbering giant. Here, in the rapidly darkening alley, as she faced him down with just a knife and baton, she could see why he was intimidating. To most people. But not to her. Because Rube moved with a slow gait. Not the careful precision of a trained fighter, but with the bulk of a man who didn’t know how to use his weight to his advantage.
She smiled. That was too bad for Rube, because she did.
Keeping her back to the wall, Sara Fairchild danced forward on light feet with her baton at the ready. She wasn’t going to kill Rube. He was the dumb muscle—she could see it in the placid cow-like gaze of his eyes. Severin gave the orders and he followed them. She didn’t kill attack dogs like him. She killed the owners that made them kill.
Rube swung the thick metal chain out with the strength of an ox. The chain snapped forward with enough speed to crack open her head like an egg,
if
she had stood still. Instead Sara was already moving forward with the speed and dexterity of a warrior trained by the very best. With a swift grunt, she jumped up onto Rube. The force of her momentum as well as weight knocked him back flat on the ground. She was careful to keep her balance and fell with him until she landed atop his waist in a straddle. He sat up with a roar of anger. Wasting no time, she brought her baton down with a harsh
crack
, infusing it with just a hint of battle magic. It was enough to make the baton take on the weight of twelve of its kind. So when Rube fell back this time, he fell hard.
As Rube’s body crashed into the packed dirt with a loud
thump
, she jumped up and landed behind the remaining four thieves with ease. Turning so that her back was now to the opposite wall, she smiled.
“Who’s next?”
They looked down at their unconscious muscle man, then back up at her.
Severin snarled, “Kill her. I don’t care about her loot. I want her pretty throat cut from end to end.”
Simon looked ready to bolt. But even as she watched his comrades ease up on her warily, she pitied them. They were in a tough position. The thieves’ code meant if one of them ran and the others found them first, they wouldn’t be outcast; they’d be killed on the spot by their thief lord. Simon couldn’t run on the off chance that one of his group survived their encounter with her. But she could tell that he didn’t want to stay and face her, either. She could have told him to run because no one would survive this encounter if they didn’t turn tail first, but she didn’t. This was his fault anyway. Who runs up a forty-shilling wager on their thief lord’s tab and doesn’t break for the hills the moment they loose?
The woman with all the earrings said, “I’ll give her a red throat from ear to ear with
pleasure
, Severin. This one is getting on my nerves.”
Sara raised an eyebrow at the cocky broad.
She shrugged her shoulders. “If you think you can take me, then come on.”
Instead of a chain, the woman came at her with a wickedly-sharp curved blade.
A modified scimitar, really
, Sara thought as she dodged back from the first thrust.
As Sara watched the woman swing wide again she thought with a calculating eye,
But she has no form. A blade like that should have a proper mistress.
“Come on, you whey-faced coward!” shouted her opponent. Anger emerged in the rapid tic of her eyelids as Sara dodged another blow easily.
Sara sighed, “If you insist.”
In the blink of an eye, she changed from defensive to offensive. She moved forward with her knife at the ready. Sara had no plans to spare this woman. She had insulted Sara’s father,
and
she carried something Sara wanted.
That scimitar is mine
, Sara thought with some glee.
The idea of possessing the blade was a nice bit of sunshine in the spiral of darkness that was her life since her father’s execution.
She shifted the knife in her hand so that the blade rested almost horizontal to her palm. She wasn’t going to stab the woman. She was going to slash her throat. With a silent move, Sara came up under the woman’s broad chest as her opponent swung the scimitar wide for another attempt at a killing blow. As swiftly and silently as a cobra, Sara slit her throat only to quickly dodge to the side to avoid the red spray of blood. Sara had gotten into a lot of scuffles over the years. Many of which had ended up with her opponent dead. She’d learned early on to avoid all evidence of such fights on her clothes. It didn’t please her mother if she came home with her tunic stained red with blood.