Steel Victory (Steel Empire Book 1) (32 page)

He cradled it in the palm of his hand, raising an eyebrow at her. “Yes?”

“Can you guys tell whether that shield is self-contained?”

Both of them eyed the invisible structure with their inner sights while she waited with impatience. She would never get used to not being able to do such simple tasks herself. She needed her magic back.

“Looks like it to me,” Syri said.

“So whatever goes in, stays in,” Kane said. “Got it.”

Perfect. Now for the next step. “Is the shack shielded separately?”

“Yep,” Syri said. “Gonna share with the class?”

“I’m thinking improvised flash-bomb,” Toria said. “Disrupt their defenses. I can’t create electricity for you guys, but I’ve still got all my passive defenses. Kane, I want you to leech the energy from my shields and channel it into the crystal. Then we throw it at the tent, and—”

“Poof,” Kane said. “Leaving you completely defenseless. Screw that.”

“Minor detail. Makes me less of a target,” she said, “if I look like a regular fighter.”

“I don’t like it, but we’re running out of time.” Kane gripped the stone in one hand and placed the fingers of his other on her cheek.

The world dropped out from beneath her feet, and Syri grabbed her arms from behind before she could stagger away from the pressure building behind her eyes. A few seconds merged with eternity, and she shut her eyes to hide from the mingled look of pain and love on Kane’s face.

An internal “pop” relieved the tightness in her skull, although the world around her still felt detached. Kane removed his hand from her face. Opening her eyes once again, she met Kane’s still concerned expression. The airy feeling around her body intensified, and she resisted the urge to look down and check that she still wore clothing.

That was it. No more magic. She had nothing left to convince herself that life would go back to normal. Now she was just a regular fighter. And Kane became the only warrior-mage in Limani.

A different type of pressure built behind her eyes again, but Toria forced back the threatening tears. “Did it work?”

Kane unclenched his fingers, and the crystal he held vibrated with sparkling amethyst light. “It tingles,” he said. Without further ado, he drew his arm back and sent the stone hurtling toward the dark tent. It shot through the air like a miniature shooting star, hitting the top of the pavilion with a burst of sparks and crack of lightning. A second loud shock followed the first, as the electricity found the metal tent poles and sent power surging through the entire structure.

Silence followed the short fireworks show. The odor of singed fabric drifted across the clearing to meet their noses.

“Think we pulled it off?” Kane said. “The bomb saturated the tent. I can’t tell anything with my magesight.”

“I’ll go check.” Before either could stop her, Toria crept forward from their hiding spot, drawing her sword.

She met no resistance passing the area where the shield’s edge should be, but that didn’t mean it wasn’t still there. Feeling her partners’ eyes boring into her back and ready to rush to the rescue, she kept up a steady pace until she reached the pavilion entrance. There were still no sounds of movement from within, so she drew a corner of the deep blue fabric back with a finger.

The interior was surprisingly spare—a camp cot and a few chests lined the edges, not the lavish display of creature comforts she expected. But she had expected the bodies of the two soldiers sprawled unmoving in the center of the tent. Longbows lay within reach of their lifeless fingers, reaffirming the decision Toria had made not to charge right in.

Fingers snapped once, and a putrid green light illuminated the back corner. It encompassed a gaunt young man dressed only in breeches in the tent’s oppressive unmoving air. He lounged on a few pillows in the corner, apparently at ease despite the dead bodies at his feet. Spiraling tattoos decorated his naked torso, one particularly intricate knot on his lower abdomen glowing with a yellow tinge.

“And she keeps coming for me,” the mage said, a touch of legitimate surprise in his voice. “How charming.”

Toria stepped into the tent and pointed the tip of her sword at the mage. “Who the hell are you?” She didn’t have time for niceties.

“Your puppet master.”

Before she could make a snarky inquiry, he snapped his fingers a second time. Toria felt every muscle in her body tense beyond her control. The hilt of her sword dug into her palm, and she worried the sudden slickness she felt was blood rather than sweat. Pain ran through every joint in her body, and her teeth ached with the pressure of her jaw clamping together.

The pain wasn’t good. On the plus side, she’d found the mage who’d cursed her.

He was silent for a beat, but the strain on his face told Toria he was attempting something she wasn’t going to like.

She relaxed as much as possible, but every muscle screamed with cramps. Despite her best efforts, a high-pitched whimper escaped her gritted teeth.

After a second whimper, as she desperately wished for her shields back, the pressure lessened. The mage’s eyes opened, and he studied her through narrow slits.

“Someone else has been draining your power,” he said. “Not quite what I’d intended.”

The rest of her muscles remained rigid, but her teeth stopped grinding together. An overwhelming urge to call out to Kane for help washed over her. The mage’s yellow tattoo flickered under his silver shields.

No way would she be used to lure her partner into a trap. Manipulating the mage’s mental control, the words that finally slipped from her were, “Nalamas! I’ve got him!” Then every muscle in her body seized, and it became an effort just to breathe.

She
never
called Kane by his last name. It took her two years to learn how to pronounce it right.

Feet pounded across the clearing toward the tent, Kane’s boots followed by Syri’s lighter steps. Her teeth snapped shut again, and she began to curl in on herself, the weight of the pain pushing her to the ground.

The tent flap snapped open behind her, but she had no way to give them further warning. The mage lunged to his feet, a mocking smile spreading on his face.

“Right then,” Kane said. He laid a gentle hand on her shoulder, but his other secretly pulled her pistol from the holster at her lower back. Relief, both physical and mental, spread through her.

The mage’s grin transformed to horror, and a pistol cracked inches from Toria’s head. The yellow tattoo disappeared in a spread of crimson when the bullet buried itself in his stomach and disrupted the magical energy with his own blood.

He fell back on the pillows with a howl of agony, clamping both hands over the wound. Toria stood up straight, muscles still aching but under her own control. With her shields gone, magesight flooded her field of vision as her magic poured back into her, turning the dark tent into a miasma of corrupt magical energy.

Kane, keeping her pistol squared toward the mage, stalked across the tent toward him. “I would kill you,” he said, “or challenge you to a duel. But you’re the one tied to the bomb.” He hauled the mage to his feet by the arm as the man kept his hands pressed over his wound.

A glimmer of clean violet caught Toria’s eye in the corner of the tent. She stalked over and pulled aside the cloth covering a low trunk. Lying on top of the trunk was her rapier, still neatly sheathed. The blade might be new and untouched by her magic, but the hilt of the sword contained years of her imbued magical signature.

She sheathed her replacement sword, then clutched her rapier with both hands, a single tear tracing its way down her cheek. Things had to get better from here on out. Now she was whole again.

“This is mine,” she said to the mage, a snarl in her voice that vented all the stress of the past days of trauma.

Syri covered Kane while they followed Toria out of the tent and to the small wooden structure. Giddy with power flowing through her veins once again, she pointed to the padlocked door and blew it open with a focused bolt of energy. They didn’t need the mage to disarm this nuclear warhead. She could take anything—

“Steady, girl.” Syri’s fingers intertwined with her own, reeling her back before she could become drunk on her reborn power.

They entered the shack together. Upon the bare dirt ground sat a metal cradle holding the cylindrical object she recalled from Kane’s memories. He hadn’t exaggerated the nauseous aura the weapon produced, waves of roiling ochre contained by a gunmetal shield the same color as the Roman mage’s.

But the electronic keypad lay dead. No conveniently ticking numbers marked how much time they had left to prevent the utter devastation of her beloved home. “You wired it to yourself,” Toria said, whirling on the mage who had collapsed at Kane’s feet upon entering.

He nodded, once. “The power itself was easier to work with, so I bypassed the control system.” He gasped out through the pain. Kane heaved an exasperated sigh and ripped another strip from his tattered shirt. He wadded the cloth and pressed it to the gunshot wound, folding the mage’s hands back over it.

Toria’s scientific tendencies briefly overtook her hatred of the man. “Idiot. You could have killed yourself. There’s a good chance you would have died anyway when it blew if you tied it to yourself too deeply.”

“I know,” he said. “You think I had any choice?”

“Well, you’ve got a choice now,” Kane said. He drew his dagger and idly flipped it from hand to hand. “Tell us which of your little tattoos is tied to the bomb, or I’ll start cutting them out at random.”

Before the mage could begin gibbering or Syri could protest, Toria said, “No need.” His pants had ridden up when he’d hit the floor, revealing a tattoo on his right calf glimmering with the same swirling mass enveloping the bomb. She slid the pants leg up a few more inches with the tip of her sword. “That one.”

The tattoo was new relative to the more faded ink work on his torso and upper arms. A delicate spiral began on his inner leg, partially hidden by a heavier star. It glowed in the same fashion as the one now hidden behind a bloody bandage.

“At least knock me out first,” the mage said. It almost disappointed Toria that he didn’t put up more of a fight. “And make sure I don’t bleed to death after you do it.”

“You’re helpful all of a sudden,” Syri said. “Why the fuck should we even let you live?”

“Because of all the military secrets I hold?” The mage returned her feral grin. “I doubt you three are authorized to let such a source escape your hands.”

“Fine, bargain all you want,” Toria said. She nodded once to Syri.

The elven girl placed a hand on the mage’s head. Light flowed from her fingers into his skull, and the mage slumped to the side. If it was the same trick she’d pulled on Fabbri, he wouldn’t wake up for anything. Syri gestured to his leg.

Kane’s turn. Her partner was not as bloodthirsty as he’d wanted the mage to think. Kane visibly steeled himself before placing the edge of his blade to the side of the tattoo and slicing through the skin, peeling away the layer holding magic anchored with ink. Blood dripped through his fingers as he sliced.

The shield around the bomb shattered and faded while Kane cut, the ochre magic flowing through the air and reabsorbing into the mage’s skin. It dispersed throughout his body, soothing a few of the lines on the mage’s face.

He had tied so much of himself into the bomb that it was no wonder he’d put a link on Toria’s magic. Some of her sympathy faded when she realized he would have eventually started to pull energy from her to feed the bomb’s power. But she’d made a promise, and ripped some of her own shirt to have a new bandage ready once Kane finished.

“We good?” Kane waited for her signal before removing the knife. Blood covered his hands and pooled on the floor beneath the mage.

The bomb was completely inert. No magic, no electrical power, just a dull undertone of violence that should never have seen the light of day again. Toria said, “We’re good.” She handed the bandage to Syri, who wrapped the mage’s leg with deft fingers.

“So now what do we do with him?” Kane said. All of their adrenaline had worn off, and he sounded as tired as Toria’s aching body felt.

“Run like hell before any Romans get the bright idea to check on their precious toy,” Toria said. She dialed down her magesight. Now her partners weren’t glowing vessels of power so much as worn-out people. She couldn’t wait to begin rebuilding her shields. After about a hundred years of sleep.

“There’s a truck on the other side of the mages’ pavilions,” Syri said. “Probably dedicated just to them. I almost feel obligated to take it.”

Grateful a little humor still existed in the world, Toria matched her smile. “Let’s go. We’ll take their toys, too.” Sounds of continued fighting leaked in from outside. But their mission was complete.

Time to go home.

Article Seventeen of the Roman Constitution contained a tricky bit of language. A holdover from the old Imperialate, before Emperor Gordian IX had created the Roman Parliament in the last century. With the caste system demolished, official houses of nobility had been tainted to the point of being almost unrecognizable to anyone without dual degrees in genealogy and heraldry.

But five hundred and thirty-seven years ago, Victory married into the house of Galerius. It only lasted six months before she left Leto for his womanizing and gambling, but Octavian didn’t need to know that.

The law required the Roman soldiers to escort Lady Victory Galerius into Octavian’s presence for an audience. Access was all she needed.

She cooled her heels under the watchful gaze of the soldier. The explosions tapered off, but the fighting around them never ceased. She was grateful for the chance to—metaphorically—catch her breath. Though she still owned property in the Roman Empire, and Mikelos still held many financial interests from his days of musical fame, her own past as a lady of the nobility seemed a much more impressive way to demand a face-to-face meeting with the general. Calling on Article Seventeen had occurred to her as a possibility for getting within range of Octavian the day before, but she’d never solidified the plan. She could wing it. That was her specialty.

The aide came scurrying back, three more soldiers trailing behind. He gave her a low bow; the soldiers followed suit after the aide gave them nasty glares.

Looked like this might work after all. Victory gestured with her empty hand for the aide to rise.

“I apologize for the wait, my lady,” he said. “General Octavian is willing to see you.” He fumbled in a pocket and withdrew a small green cloth. “However, the general offers you this token in return for your firearms. You are more than welcome to retain your bladed weapons.”