Blades Of Illusion: Crown Service #2 Read Free Page A

a fight he didn’t need at the moment.
    As she had watched him walk away with rage and disgust in her heart, Sara remembered huffing and irritably yanking her left wrist out of Ezekiel’s bruising hold . She had stared at the retreating captain’s back and said to Ezekiel beside her, “Don’t ever get in my way again.”
    “Fine, I’ll just let you hang in the gallows for assaulting an officer,” he had said dryly.
    Sara had then turned to him with a solemn look on her face and a bit of the anger still in her eyes.
    Ezekiel had stilled at the look. “I was only trying to help.”
    “When I need your help, I’ll ask for it.”
    A tic had appeared in Ezekiel’s eye. “You see, Sara, that’s something friends do.”
    She folded her arms crossly as she watched him. “What?”
    “They help without being asked.”
    Before she could get another word in, Ezekiel Crane had proceeded to do what he did best in a huff—ignore her. He had strode forward silently. She had followed moments later, and they had been silent marchers for the better part of an hour before Ezekiel broke as he spotted a crested-something-or-other bird that he had to get Sara’s attention for.
    “Look at that, Sara! That’s a black-crested Willow Pike C—,” Ezekiel had exclaimed.
    Sara hadn’t paid his words the least bit of mind. But she had obediently trained her eyes on the bird Ezekiel’s trembling finger pointed at while putting a hand on his raised arm and forcing him to lower it. Caution had forced her to put a wary hand on a knife even as her eyes sought out his prey. She wouldn’t know if the bird was one of those caged balls of feathers so popular with nobles on Market Street or a terrifying, razor-beaked predator until she had set her eyes on it. Relief that it was the former and not the latter put a small half-smile on her face. You could never actually tell if whatever Ezekiel was pointing at like an attraction in the central square was dangerous or simply interesting. He seemed to find both qualities mesmerizing. Both because the bird was the former and he was talking to her again. Sara tensely wondered for a minute if she could have trusted Ezekiel to shoot it out of the sky; she hadn’t exactly had a chance to test his mettle with the old bow-and-arrow.
    She had reluctantly decided to just be grateful the issue hadn’t come up.
    “You’re sure it’s not a threat?” she had teased.
    “Of course it’s not a threat,” had said Ezekiel, “But I don’t know what it’s doing here. They’re woodland birds, not swamp creatures.”
    She had watched the black and white winged creature flit from branch-to-branch before it took flight, away from the direction they were heading. Its movement left her both with a sense of unease and cautious satisfaction. Satisfaction because she had been right. Unease because being right meant they were stuck up the creek without a paddle, so to speak. In other words, they were screwed.
    “It’s going away from us,” Sara said.
    “I know,” grumbled Ezekiel as he hastily put away the sketchbook he had brought out from a pocket of his non-regulation gear.
    “That’s bad,” Sara said.
    “I know,” Ezekiel repeated with slumped shoulders while staring ahead. Then he side-eyed Sara in surprise. “Wait. Why do you think it was bad?”
    It was obvious he thought it was the end of the world because he had just missed his opportunity to illustrate the rare bird.
    “Because,” Sara said as she looked forward into the endless swamp that lay before them, “You never want to go somewhere a damned bird won’t, and...“
    “And?” Ezekiel prodded after she was silent for a moment.
    “And,” said Sara grimly, “We’re three miles into this swamp trek, by my estimations, and we’ve yet to see anything as close to normal as that bird, rare though it is, as we walked by. That tells me two things: one, the builder was right—this swamp is mage-made.”
    “And the other?” Ezekiel asked