Shadows in the Smoke - 29 - A Rude Awakening

  “Inheritance is the source of many of the evils of society. By allowing the accumulation of property and titles based on nothing more than birth, a nation ensures that the most talented will not have the chance to rise to the top. Nowhere was this better illustrated than the pre-Republic Kingdom of Itria. Now, the Republic is able to prosper in the knowledge that every Citizen has an equal chance at success.”

  The Struggle for Freedom by Bjarne Midthun

  =====

  That night, Ester was deep in thought as she got herself ready for bed. If things didn’t change, she was going to have some of the most miserable months of her life. Assuming they weren’t all overrun because the Republicans didn’t even care about trying to hit back at the undead!

  Everyone here hated her. She could hardly miss the way they all looked at her. Maybe that made sense, they were Republicans after all. They’d have been indoctrinated to think that the Empire was bad. However, the incident with Commander Sundt and the soldier couldn’t have helped. She hadn’t meant to hurt the man. In fact, she hadn’t hurt the man. He was only injured because he’d fired his hand cannon. No, Jakob had told her the portable ones were called guns or muskets. If she hadn’t done anything to stop him then she might have been the one that was hurt, or even killed. She didn’t want to die out here in this freezing cold wasteland, surrounded by Republicans.

  It didn’t matter. Ester scowled as she undid the buttons on her dress. They were never going to like her and they wouldn’t help her prove herself to them anyway. She was used to having to do things for herself, this would be no different. She’d show them and she’d help them all to survive, even if they didn’t deserve it. If they still didn’t want to talk to her after that, well that didn’t matter. They were only Republicans.

  The question was, what to do. She sighed to herself, she was far too tired to think properly. She couldn’t just set everything on fire, however much she wanted to. She wouldn’t be so tired tomorrow, she just needed to make sure she got a good night’s sleep.

  Ester fumbled in her bag and then pulled out a small strip of iron before setting it down on her lap. She was alone in a Republican fortress, surrounded by people who hated her, who were in turn surrounded by undead. She’d rather be in her own home with its wards, than here, but she could still do something to make sure she was safe. She carefully didn’t think about how Sir Vitaly had casually penetrated those wards. If only he was here.

  Anyway, she wanted something a bit less noticeable than regular wards. It took a few moments of thought to get the array straight in her head and then she started to speak.

  “Kelgan. Ai’sornai. Na’bagraig.” With each word, a flash of magic carved a small rune into the iron, its location precisely aligned with the others. “ébair. Mar. Picit.” Ester kept going until thirty or so runes were scattered across the iron.

  The Schema would only last a day or two, given the materials and the way she’d tried to keep the magic hard to detect, but at least no one would be able to sneak up on her in her sleep.

  Ester got up and laid the newly made strip of metal against the bottom of the closed closed door.

  “ébair.” With that, she’d done what she could, short of trying to carve something lethal into the door itself, which she doubted the Republicans would appreciate.

  At least slightly reassured, she lay down on the uncomfortable bed to try to sleep.

  =====

  Ester woke up to a sudden, stabbing pain in her foot. She nearly jumped hard enough to fall out of her bed, but just managed to stay still. Her Schema!

  The door to her room swung open, somehow far quieter than when she’d opened it earlier. She cracked an eye open, but couldn’t see anything through the dark.

  With a soft click, the door closed again and quiet footsteps moved slowly towards her. There was someone in her room!

  It only took a few steps before she could feel a presence over her. Despite her heart feeling like it was going to explode out of her chest, she forced herself to breath steadily.

  “Idiot girl didn’t even have wards up.” A man whispered above her.

  “Just do it before she wakes up.” Two of them!

  Ester forced her mind into focus, magic hovering at her finger tips even as she lay completely still. She couldn’t just kill them, not if she didn’t want to be accused of murder by the other Republicans. She was alone and vulnerable here. It wasn’t like the Empire, there’d be no justice. The best she could hope for would be the rest of the Republicans hating her even more. There was no point trying to talk to them either. If she gave any sign she was awake they’d just try to kill her.

  ‘Diwaien gewaaj’fa,’ the words hovered in her mind. She understood them at a fundamental level. She knew without the slightest doubt that the world would bend to her will. Any doubt would break the spell.

  In a flare of magic a solid barrier of air appeared above her, just as the Republican struck downwards with a dagger. It screeched as it scraped along her shield.

  Ester didn’t give the two men time to recover from their shock. They were already practically on top of her, who knew what they could do if they had time to react.

  The story has been illicitly taken; should you find it on Amazon, report the infringement.

  Without thinking, she rolled out of the bed to their feet. Hitting the cold, stone floor hurt, but she barely noticed through the shock of energy searing through her body.

  Her spell broke as she moved and a moment later something smashed into her bed hard enough to shatter the wood.

  Ester acted faster than conscious thought, bringing bright light into the room without a word.

  Two uniformed men stood over her, staring dumbly down at her empty bed. She didn’t hesitate. If one of them kicked as hard as they’d just punched her bed, she’d be smeared over the wall.

  “Cuvlug diwaien’fa.” Ester snapped the words and almost instantly a solid wall of glowing air blasted out from her in an expanding cone. The door to her room exploded outwards into the corridor. One man tumbling after it. The other smashed into the wall on the other side of her small room with a dull thud.

  With the door gone, just enough light was leaking in from the corridor to cast her room into dull light.

  Ester couldn’t see the Republican who’d been blasted through the doorway. The other one should have hit the stone wall hard enough to kill him, but he was already pushing himself back to his feet, even if he did look like he might fall over again any moment.

  Her mind flashed back to the necromancer in the Wasteways and what he’d done to Arsor and Cai. If the Republican pulled himself together, he might just tear her in half with his bare hands before she could stop him.

  With a shriek, Ester scrambled forward on her hands and knees, scrabbling to reach him.

  Her hands closed on the cloth of his trousers just as he shook his head and focused down at her. Bare skin! She needed skin! Fire!

  His swing towards Ester’s head went wild as fire exploded from her hand, straight into his leg.

  He yanked it out of her grip with a scream of pain, but lost his balance and fell, landing on top of her hard enough to drive the air out of her lungs.

  No! She couldn’t let him! She didn’t want to die!

  Ester flailed, panic overriding thought for a fraction of a second, until her hand landed on his face.

  The world came to a stop, everything around her suddenly irrelevant. The Republican’s will, backed by his magic, beat against her, trying to overwhelm her.

  It was small, weak. With a thought, Ester pushed it aside, overwhelming everything that was him and laying him open to her. She could feel his spirit, every bit of his body, reinforced as it was by the magic that hammered through his veins. With a thought, she cut that off.

  He froze in top of her, even as she was vaguely aware that she was gasping for breath under his weight. He must know, she could kill him with a thought now. He’d be dead before he even knew it.

  She nearly did. He’d tried to kill her in her sleep. His friend might come to help him any second. But it was a bad idea. She didn’t want to be accused of murder and she wanted to know who else was helping him. Had more of the Republicans decided to murder her, or were he and his friend acting alone? She needed answers.

  If there were a lot of them, Ester would have to try to flee. She couldn’t survive in Fort Statvinger with half the soldiers there trying to kill her. She’d be barely more likely to survive running away though. Even the greatest heroes would struggle to fight their way through an undead horde on snowy, unfamiliar ground while being hunted by their former comrades. She wasn’t anywhere near those storied heroes’ abilities. Not yet, anyway.

  Whatever she decided, she needed to move.

  Ester fumbled at the man’s wrist until she could pull up his sleeve and clamp her fingers around it. She could feel everything that made him him, pulses of emotion she couldn’t identify running through him. This was why no one would touch a Mage. The moment she’d overwhelmed him, he was utterly at her mercy.

  “Get up! If you try to break away from me, I’ll kill you before you have time to think.” She tried to make her voice as harsh as she could.

  He seemed to be about to say something, but after a moment he moved without a word.

  Ester breathed a sigh of relief as he levered himself off her and she could suddenly breath easily again.

  Slowly, carefully, he got up off the ground and Ester followed. It was cold outside her blankets and she was only wearing her shift, but there were more important things to worry about. She was safe from him as long as they were touching, but how long could she keep that up? He had the Talent, even if he didn’t seem to be all that strong, certainly far weaker than Duke Marcni. If he got the chance, he could probably hit her so hard and fast she’d be dead before she hit the ground.

  The man shifted and Ester tightened her fingers on his wrist in response. The obvious thing to do would be to find an officer she knew and get their attention. If she could even trust them not to help the man. The question was how to do that. She couldn’t risk her attacker getting free and she could hardly go wandering around the fort in just her shift!

  “You know, we can talk about this. Uh, my lady.” The man shifted in her grasp again.

  “Be quiet, I need to think.” Ester squeezed his wrist.

  “If you kill me, they’ll behead you for murder!”

  Fury flared in her and she rounded on him. “You can talk! You just tried to murder me in my sleep! Now shut up or I’ll take my chances with whatever you people call justice.” She’d flee the fort if that happened, she wasn’t going to trust her life to the Republicans.

  “Like I said-”

  Suddenly, the whole room shook and dust sprinkled down from the ceiling. A moment later a dull boom echoed through it.

  “What was-” Ester was cut off before she could finish her question by a defeaning clamour of bells, sounding as if they were right by her head. The sound only lasted for a few seconds, but it left her ears ringing painfully.

  What had happened? Had the Republicans worked out what had happened? No, that was ridiculous. It must be a Schema of some sort sounding a general alarm. She needed to move, no more vacillation.

  First, she was going to see what had happened to the man outside. With a decisive nod, she moved towards what was left of her door.

  “The alarm means we’re under attack you know. The undead are coming and neither of us can fight them while you’re holding onto me.”

  Ester didn’t look at her prisoner. “I wouldn’t be able to fight them if I was dead either.”

  She carefully poked her head out of the now empty doorway and into the more brightly lit corridor.

  Her gorge rose at the sight. A man, the second attacker, was slumped against the wall, surrounded by broken wood. A smear of blood painted the wall behind him and his head was… She quickly looked away. At least he wouldn’t be stabbing her in the back. She needed to remember that.

  “Ice and steam, you killed him! You fucking bi-” Her prisoner abruptly stopped talking as she tightened her grip on his wrist. She needed to think and he wasn’t helping.

  Another low rumble shook the fort, sending more dust down on Ester’s head.

  Should she just kill him and run? She wasn’t sure she could do that to an unarmed prisoner. Someone was going to come this way sooner or later though and she wasn’t stupid, she knew how it would look. Her standing over a dead Republican with another at her mercy. They might not even stop to ask questions. Could she try to make it look like an accident or move the bodies or something? Maybe if she just burnt them to ash and pretended they’d never been there.

  Ester recoiled from the thought, horror shooting through her that she was even considering doing something like that. Like some kind of monster! There had to be another way.

  Her train of thought was broken by the sound of boots coming down the corridor. Several people at a run. Her time had run out!

  Sign up here.

  We've had a lot of discussion on the Bones in the Dark discord too, including discussing why some people look down on Ester. .

  Dramatis personae:

  Ester Mazar - Chartered Mage, my cunning trap worked perfectly(ish)! Great Spirits, what do I do now?

  Unnamed Assailant - Rude Republican, that was probably not my best plan ever.