Page 18 of War Mage (The War Brides of Adrik #4)
Adara
U rim is a taskmaster. That comes as no surprise, as uptight and rigid as he is. He makes me pick the lock again and again until it practically becomes muscle memory. The sun is high in the sky, the camp quiet as I practice, when I finally pick the lock fast enough for the orc’s liking.
He nods. “Good. You should take a rest, but you’ll need to practice again while we travel. You need to be fast enough that you can take the shackle off as quickly and quietly as possible once we’re at the palace at Evernight. The faster you can remove the cuff, the better chance that you’ll take Grazrath unawares when you strike.”
I nod grimly, reminded of what our goal is. To take an immortal being by surprise and hit him with soulfire, which I’m not even sure I can conjure and what it’ll do to me when I do. What it’ll do to Urim. Using core soul to cast is tricky business and I’ve spent much of my life training how to avoid doing so, since the consequences are said to be dire. But at least I have the soultie to the orc, which should at least mitigate the costs to myself. Not that I’m even very sure of that. This whole mission is an exercise in the unknown and working against my self-preservation.
Putting the ankle cuff back on, so that if any guards come by they won’t be suspicious, I immediately miss my fires. The air is nippy, even during the day. The first frost is probably close. I braid the bits of wire back into my hair, careful to cover the shiny metal with my thick locks. When I’m done, I yawn, even though the back of the wagon is bright with late autumn sunlight. I go to lay down on the wagon bed, but the ankle cuff pulls on me and I’m not able to stretch out my leg entirely.
“You need to lay down as well,” I tell Urim, “to give the chain as much slack as possible.”
The orc merely grunts, stretching out his legs and leaning back, though the wagon is not quite big enough for him to spread out entirely. Urim’s body invades my personal space as he tries to lay down, but I don’t mind. He’s so warm, even with his shirt gone. Orcs must run hotter than humans.
“Is it alright if I lay on you?” I ask, eyeing the space at the bottom of the wagon. If I’m to lay down with Urim there, I’ll have to at least lay on his shoulder, if not partially on his torso.
“That’s fine,” he says. “It’s just sharing space and body warmth.”
His need to make excuses for what we are doing amuses me. Like he has to have a logical reason to get back into physical contact with me. But I say nothing, even though the need to needle and tease him is strong. I merely lay down, and hum in pleasure as his body warmth seeps into my cold skin. His arm comes around my shoulders in a gesture that feels intimate, but is probably just so that he is comfortable and I’m not laying on his arm, putting it to sleep.
“I’ll never get used to being cold,” I comment, pulling our threadbare blankets the guards gave us over my body.
“You are used to your fires,” Urim says. “It is understandable.”
“Not only that,” I tell him, “the robes of the Mage’s Tower are spelled to regulate body temperature. So you aren’t too hot in the summer or too cold in the winter. I’ve worn those clothes for most of my life, so I’m just not used to being uncomfortable, temperature-wise.”
“Tell me about the Tower,” Urim asks. “Your life there. Why is it worth risking your life for?”
“I doubt my daily life at the Tower would be of much interest to you,” I say. “It was very humdrum, most of the time. Breakfast at morning bell, followed by research in the Archives. Then I would teach a training course for the other fire mages. I was the oldest and there weren’t very many of us . . .” I trail off, my heart squeezing in pain at the thought of the other fire mages. They were young, so fucking young, and yet fire is the most dangerous of the elements, the easiest to turn into a weapon, so we were all conscripted into the army when Yorian’s war started going poorly. I watched all of them suffer and die. Jamys, Garet, Yvette, and Osanne. I practically raised them all, having known them from children when they first came to the Tower. They were my family, like younger siblings. Osanne was only fifteen summers old, godsdamnit. She shouldn’t have been there. None of us should have been. But mages are rarely seen as people. We are useful tools, assets, and weapons. Even the youngest of us.
I haven’t thought of them in a while, the thought of their loss too painful to dwell on. Cara was hard enough, but the other fire mages, my unit, are an even more bitter medicine to swallow.
Urim’s arm tightens around my shoulder. “I’m sorry,” he says, sounding genuine. “I should not have brought up the Tower. You lost much in Yorian’s War.”
I’m startled that he’s apologizing, but then I realize that he must feel my sorrow and loss through the mate bond. It’s easy to forget sometimes that we are connected so intimately, especially when his side of the bond is always so calm and without large spikes of emotion. What must it be like, I wonder, for someone as cold and logical as him to have to deal with controlling his own emotions, but also feel mine? I’m not as good as he is at masking everything.
“It’s alright,” I tell him. “I should talk about them. They’ll be forgotten if I don’t and I wouldn’t want that. They deserve to be remembered.”
“Maybe you can write about them when you return to the Mage’s Tower,” he suggests, a surprisingly sentimental recommendation from one as emotionless and logical as him.
“If I make it back, that is a good idea,” I say softly, my heart still aching at the thought of my lost chosen family.
“Tell me about them,” Urim says, surprising me again. “If you should fall during this mission and I survive, I will record your thoughts for you and make sure they are archived at your Tower.”
It’s a generous offer, even though, at this moment, it’s looking more like Urim will be the one to not survive our quest. Still, on the off chance that it plays out the way he says, I should tell him. And maybe talking about them will ease this aching in my chest, the hollow feeling where my heart used to be.
“There were only five of us,” I begin. “Like I said, I was the oldest of us. Fire mages tend to get used up and burnt out by the time they are thirty, so all the mages that trained me were already gone.”
“You are twenty-eight summers,” Urim remarks. “Were you close to the age of burning out?”
“I suppose so,” I say. “But I have never felt the same strain on using my powers that other fire mages reported by my age. My mana is . . . substantial. ‘A once-in-a-generation talent,’ the High Master called me. He even said that I might have been the first fire mage to ever be old enough to be considered for High Master . . .”
I trail off again. The young, hopeful, ambitious mage of my past who dreamed of being High Master of the Mage’s Tower seems so far away from me now, even though it was only maybe a year ago that I thought such things. But going through a war and losing my entire unit that I was supposed to be leading has a way of changing a person. I don’t feel worthy to lead the Tower now, even if I do end up surviving this mission.
“What is it?” Urim asks. “Why are you feeling so rueful?”
I smile a little at his question, though I don’t answer it. “It is still so strange to me that you can feel my emotions. I sometimes forget to push them down to where you can’t feel them.”
“I do not mind feeling your emotions, Adara,” Urim tells me. “They make me understand you more. When we first met, I did not understand you at all. You were a being of rage, lashing out in illogical ways. I could see what pressure points to push on to bend you to my will, but I didn't truly understand. Or empathize. Having this bond has made me consider you in ways that I never had before and it has only made my respect for you grow.”
“You respect me?” I ask confused. Why is he being so kind all of a sudden?
“I do,” he admits. “You have been a good partner on this mission so far; brave and cunning. Perhaps overly emotional at times, but though you feel deeply, you have not let those feelings control you. I am glad to call you my comrade for this mission.”
“Huh,” I say. “I don’t know what to do with you when you’re not being an ass. This isn’t your normal behavior at all.”
“I am behaving as normal,” he returns evenly. “I always behave in the most rational manner that fits the situation at hand. Right now, that means supporting my partner.”
“And in the past, it meant being a prick?” I ask, a false innocence in my voice.
“I was doing my job when you were my prisoner, Adara,” he returns, his voice grim. “But . . . in light of our current relationship, I do have some . . . regrets about how I treated you. I wish I had futuresight so that I could have seen that my harsher treatment of you was not necessary.”
I snort. “That is a piss-poor apology, but I suppose it’s the only one that I will get from a golem like you. But I wasn’t talking about when I was your prisoner. I can understand your behavior there, as I’d attempted to kill your queen. I’m talking about the night in the captain’s cabin.”
Urim goes still underneath me, his muscles tensing. “What about that night?”
I shrug, pushing myself up on his chest so that I can see into his eyes. “You were cold and unfeeling after I gave you everything you wanted. Obeyed you and accepted your punishment. I didn’t do anything to earn your coldness afterward. At the very least you could have praised me for following your directives so well.”
“I . . .” Urim begins, sounding at a loss. Then he sighs. “I am sorry for that. That night was . . . confusing for me. I am attracted to you, but such a relationship seemed . . . unwise. Even if it is casual and not romantic. You are my mate, tied to me with a bond. It makes such actions feel . . . weightier than they perhaps should be. I needed to leave and center myself after our intimacies, to remind myself of what was important. I did not mean to insult you.”
He’s being as blunt as normal, but I actually appreciate it in this context. It makes me understand him a little more, in a way that I can’t normally because he keeps his side of our bond so staid and his face so stoic.
“So . . . you’re saying,” I begin, treading carefully, but wanting to make sure that I’m understanding him correctly, “that because we are mate bonded, even though it was purely for the sake of the mission, you are having feelings for me? At least, more than would be wise between two people in a mating of convenience?”
Urim grimaces slightly, a strange expression to see on his normally unflappable face. “That assessment would be . . . accurate.”
I’m stunned. I never would have expected Urim to be having feelings for me. Strong enough that he needed to put distance between us that night. To “center” himself, as he put it. Since his side of the bond almost never shows his true feelings, it just felt to me like he had used me to make a point. That he was always in control and unaffected by me. But according to his own admission, actually the opposite is true.
He continues, “Not that you aren’t an attractive female, but I feel I should explain that orcs have something that we call the Mating Instinct. It pushes us to Claim and breed with compatible partners. It is involuntary and uncontrollable. Given that I already gave you a mating bite, even if just to ensure the success of the mission, it is not surprising that it is pushing me to deepen our relationship, even if logic dictates differently.”
“But I’m human,” I say carefully. “I don’t have an instinct like that.”
“I already know that you don’t return these complicated feelings,” Urim responds. “And that is a good thing. It is wisdom for us to maintain an emotional distance while we remain mated and work toward our shared goal. Emotional entanglements during a mission of this level of peril will only lower our chance of success.”
There’s the emotionless golem again. But I suppose he’s right. I don’t return his feelings. I merely like his body and the releases that he can grant me. But if he has an internal instinct that is pushing him to make us into something more just because we’ve mated, then it is smart to refrain from games of pleasure again. Not that it would be safe to have sex while we’re stuck chained together in a wagon anyway.
“Alright,” I reply. “I agree with you and accept that you didn’t mean to insult me. I’ll downgrade you from a prick to a mere nuisance.”
“Thank you . . . I think,” responds Urim, making me smile. Then I yawn again and lower my head to his shoulder. It may be unwise to be so close together and sharing warmth, now that Urim has admitted that he’s developing some inconvenient feelings for me, but I won’t be able to sleep if I’m shivering by myself under a thin blanket and the wagon’s not big enough to give us much space apart anyway. I’ll just have to risk that laying on his shoulder will stimulate his Mating Instinct further. I trust him not to act on those feelings, anyway.
“Well, now that we resolved that, where was I?” I ask sleepily. “Oh yes, I was the oldest, the trainer. The youngest was Osanne. She was from Aquilar originally . . .”
???
I talk until we’re both lulled into slumber. I sleep comfortably next to Urim, even though the sun is bright. I wake a few times, but then burrow my face into Urim’s shoulder to block the light and then fall back asleep.
We both wake when the sun sets, the camp coming alive with movement as they get ready to move out again. Urim and I get up and move back to the bench silently, feeling tense as the wagon lurches forward again. Every length that we travel we get closer to our target and possible escape, but we both also know that the closer we get to sunrise, the closer we get to the magistrate’s next feeding and Urim’s next torture.
I fiddle with my wires as we travel, learning to pick the lock in the dark without sight. There’s a good chance that when I get to Grazrath it will be night, so I need to be able to take off the ankle shackle without the light of day to aid me. It’s harder without being able to see what I’m doing but, after a few hours, I get the feel of the lock, the subtle tension as pins move. With a soft click, the cuff falls off.
I grin triumphantly at Urim, though I can’t really make out his features in the dark and only see the silhouette of his head nod in approval.
“You are getting better,” he states and I warm under the praise. Being as blunt as he is, I know that he wouldn’t say such things unless he meant them, which gives his words more weight. But he immediately follows that up with, “Now do it again.”
I roll my eyes, even though I’m not certain that he can tell in the dark. “Can I not bask in my victory for a moment before you turn into a taskmaster again?”
“We cannot risk you not being able to open the lock when the time comes. What if it’s dark? What if there is distracting noise? What if there’s a crush of bodies around you and you aren’t able to get into an optimal angle? Picking this lock must be second nature to you. So, unfortunately, there is no time for basking, just practice.”
I grumble under my breath, but I know that he has a point. Truly, I’m glad to have the distraction of lock-picking practice to keep my mind occupied. Otherwise, I would be thinking about what is going to happen to Urim when the caravan stops and what will happen to me should he not survive the encounter. The methodical picking of the lock keeps my mind from spiraling and makes me feel like I’m doing something productive.
Another hour passes before I’m able to consistently open the lock in the dark in under a minute. Urim watches me go and murmurs occasional suggestions on how to go faster.
“Is this not fast enough?” I ask him exasperated. “I am much faster than I was.”
Silently, the orc reaches over and takes the wires from me. He deftly inserts them and barely moves his hands as he digs in. With that tell-tale soft click, the lock opens. In seconds.
“Alright,” I mutter. “I suppose that I could be faster.”
“It is imperative that you are not caught when you start removing the iron cuff,” Urim says. “The faster you can pick the lock, the less chance any guards have of noticing and taking your tools away before you can finish. If we had more room, I would have you practice taking out the wires, crouching down, and picking the lock again and again until you could do it in one fluid motion. But we will work with what space we have and you will get so that you can pick the lock as fast as I can.”
“You’ve had years of practice,” I grouse. “Both as a thief and a spy. How can I get as fast as you in less than a week?”
“We all adapt to our circumstances or we die,” he says, matter-of-factly. “You have survived this long, despite the odds that have been against you. You can survive this. But only if you practice and have confidence.”
“You were not thrown into deep waters on your first mission, I wager,” I retort.
“We are all thrown into deep waters on our very first mission,” he responds gravely. “Nothing can truly prepare you for being in danger when the stakes are high.”
“What was your first mission?” I ask curiously. “After you became an agent of the Crown and not just a street thief?”
“I cannot tell you details,” he says, “as it is confidential information.”
“Oh, come on,” I scoff. “Who am I going to tell? And did I not tell you about my past? Fairness would say that it is your turn.”
“Life is not fair,” Urim says. “Only the ignorant think otherwise.”
“Call me ignorant then,” I say, raising my brow challengingly. “But you know that I’m right.”
The orc is quiet for a few moments, then sighs. “I suppose you are correct. But I will have your word that you will not speak to others about this.”
“Alright, you have my word,” I say graciously, even though I have no other options if I want to hear the story. Which I do.
“It was an assassination,” he says finally. “Like this one, but perhaps a touch safer.”
“A touch?” I ask sardonically. “Were you targeting just a regular demon, then?”
“Alright,” he acquiesces. “ Much safer, though the target was dangerous in her own right. The target was actually the head of the ka Grishna before Vargan. An orcress pirate named Tarka. Tarka was banished and branded, but she had gathered the rest of her clan and taken them to Terria. Kept them together and united, even though they had been shamed and separated when they were banished. It was she, not Vargan, who negotiated their citizenship to Terria, and used clan wealth that she’d managed to smuggle out to buy land and build a slave business. But Tarka was angry, very angry, at Orik for the banishment and punishment of her entire clan. She began targeting Orikesh transports and taking the crews captive and selling what was once her own people as slaves. This was an affront to our people and a direct flaunting of her banishment. Tarka wanted to show that she could do what she wanted and take her revenge. She thought that since she was now a citizen of Terria that she was safe from consequences. But she was wrong and her arrogance made her a target of the old King’s Shield, under whom I trained.”
“That seems like a lower target for an assassination,” I remark. “Couldn’t your navy have just sunk her ship?”
“That would have taken time to locate her ship on the high seas. Time where she could escalate her actions and make a reputation for herself. The King’s Shield wanted to avoid her deeds becoming widely known in Orik,” Urim replies. “He worried that she would become a symbol of hope and rebellion to the Honorless and a reason for the clans to question whether the old king, Rognar’s father, could protect them and their freedom. A quiet assassination before she became a bigger problem was called for. I had just finished my training and he selected me to dispatch her.”
“Were you cocky about being chosen?” I ask, remembering his past description of his younger self.
His head shakes in the dark, outlined by the moonlight filtering through the wagon’s canvas cover. “That had been trained out of me. I had spent some time with the warrior monks of the Durgash Mountains, those dedicated to combat worship of the Father God, as part of my training as an agent of the Crown. They showed me the path of stoicism and the folly of emotional thinking. How to use calm logic to adapt to new situations and take things as they really are.”
“But they couldn’t completely train out your arrogance?” I ask, not being able to resist needling him.
“No, I suppose not,” he replies and I snort at his matter-of-fact response. It’s not as fun to needle him when he just agrees with me. He continues, “Anyway, I knew that this mission was the Shield’s way of testing me. He was seeing if the prince’s chosen for the agents of the Crown was actually worth the effort of his training, especially since most agents are selected as children to be trained, so I came into their ranks relatively late in life. I knew that he had chosen me, a novice trainee, for this mission, not because it wasn’t important, but because it was dangerous to go after an experienced pirate, and if I was caught and killed he’d be free of the burden Rognar had dumped on him. If I succeeded, however, I would prove my mettle and he’d be able to take credit for the kill anyway. It was a situation where he could only win.”
“At your expense,” I say, feeling a little indignant on Urim's behalf. To know that you are being used as expendable is a terrible feeling.
“It was a logical, strategic move on his part,” the orc says, not sounding particularly upset. “I have made moves like it since I became the Shield. Sometimes you must view creatures as part of a bigger whole and can’t afford to see them as individuals. But I was determined to live through my first assignment, regardless of the odds stacked against me. I tracked Tarka down, intercepting communiques that indicated that she was taking a large shipment of slaves to Turin. I got to the port before her and laid in wait for her at an establishment that she favored.”
“What kind of establishment?” I ask.
“A brothel,” Urim says. “I paid a courtesan to stay in her room and to not take other clients while I was there. She was happy enough to take my coin and stay quiet about my presence. But then things went wrong.”
“Don’t they always,” I remark.
“Indeed. It would not be a mission without unforeseen complications.”
“Then what happened?” I ask. “What went wrong?”
“The courtesan I paid turned out to be Tarka’s lover, the one that she was coming to visit. When the orcress showed up, the courtesan immediately told her of my presence and I was trapped in a brothel with a crew’s worth of angry orcs looking to extract their pound of flesh from Orik. I was a very convenient target to hit with their axes.”
“How did you get out of there in one piece?” I ask, engrossed in his story.
“I almost did not,” he admits. “But I had a smoke bomb with me, mixed by the Crown’s alchemist, and threw it down. In the resulting confusion, I was able to slip out, but not before slicing Tarka’s throat.”
“How did you know it was her if the room was full of smoke?”
“Agents of the Crown are trained to filter scents, even through other distracting smells. I could smell her through the smoke and cut her carotid before the smoke cleared. But that’s when things got interesting.”
“ That’s when things got interesting?” I query, disbelieving. “Not when you were almost killed by a band of pirates?”
“No, you see, my ship wasn’t rendezvousing with me until the next day, the day that I had planned to kill Tarka and slip away. The courtesan ruined my plans and Tarka’s crew spilled into the streets looking for me. I had to escape, but had nowhere to go.”
“So what did you do?”
“Well, I realized that there was a mostly empty ship in the harbor with a full company of slaves aboard that could help me sail it,” he tells me.
“No!” I breathe out. “You stole Tarka’s own ship?”
“Yes,” he confirms. “After dispatching the few orcs that were left to guard the cargo. I freed the slaves, most of whom were orcs Tarka had captured, and we set sail, leaving the rest of the ka Grishna behind, and went back to Orik. It was a success that far outstripped the expectations that the Shield had for me. That was the mission that cemented my path toward becoming the Shield of the King myself when Rognar rose to power.”
I whistle lowly. “That is quite the tale. I can see now why you were trusted with this mission.”
“I learned from that mission that success is merely a matter of preparation and some luck,” Urim tells me. “If I had not thought to bring a smoke bomb, I would have had a very different story to tell, if I had been here to tell one at all. That, in addition to my training, let me kill Tarka. That was preparation. But Tarka’s ship being mostly empty and them having not yet sold the slaves was luck. You must take advantage of both to come out the other side of a mission alive.”
“Ugh,” I groan, but I’m mostly teasing. “I can’t believe that you took a great tale and turned it into a lesson about how I need to practice more.”
“We have nothing but time as we travel,” Urim points out. “Do you have something better to do?”
I grumble a little, but take up my bits of wire again and begin to pick the lock once more. Urim’s right, we have time right now, but the time between now and getting to Grazrath is getting shorter. I don’t have a moment to waste.