Chapter 53 - The Farm in Irttat

 

Chapter 53: Flame in the Swamp 09

The four knights were momentarily thrown by her bearing. They exchanged uncertain, startled glances, then almost simultaneously moved, raising their heavy black iron swords and driving them down: "Take her together!"

In this age, the old nobility had declined and commerce had risen to take its place. The glory that had once attended knighthood had long since faded, and none of them thought that attacking together was beneath their dignity.

Knights now were simply a respectable profession for those of sufficiently good birth, nothing more.

Lucita did not know how to handle a sword, but she had extraordinary perception, and a body agile and strong enough to match it, both far beyond what any ordinary human could reach.

She retreated to dodge two sword-strikes at once, deflected two more with her own blade, and at the same time spared enough attention to shape the fire element in her left hand into a fireball and fling it at a knight to her right.

The fireball struck the left-breast plate of the knight's armor, and the iron began to glow red immediately, sending up a hissing white smoke.

The knight's face twisted with pain, but she had no chance to tend to her own wound, and stumbled back with a shout: "A magician!"

Magical elements were invisible to ordinary people, and the knights had been puzzled when they first saw Lucita making strange gestures with her left hand.

Only when the fireball came did they understand.

A magician, of all things…

Kenting had two magical towers.

The first was the April Tower, the Spring Tower, named for the founder-monarch of Kenting, standing in the capital.

The second was the former Selene Tower, the Moon Tower, built on the old site of the Eatonian capital. The nobles who now occupied that territory had renamed it the New Luna Tower, and several prominent families had brought in renowned magicians to take up residence and begin accepting students.

The Spring Tower was a thousand miles away. The Moon Tower, though, was only two cities distant from Grande, and it was entirely possible that a magician trained there might be traveling in the area.

The trouble was, anyone with the opportunity to enter a magical tower and study magic came from families of great and renowned nobility. A level of skill like Lucita's, where fireballs could be thrown with a gesture, exceeded anything these knights had ever had occasion to witness.

They had run into something very solid indeed.

The knights exchanged anxious, uncertain looks. Finally the one who had been burned forced herself to ask: "We have been disrespectful. Might we know your family name?"

Lucita: ?

She considered it. The original Lucita's surname should be the same as Grandma Sandy's, it had been written on the opening pages of the books in the study: Cameron. From the rolling hills that surrounded the town, apparently.

She gave the answer inexplicably, and seized on the knights' apparent wavering to press her own question: "My turn to ask. Where have you taken my friends?"

An unfamiliar family name.

The knights paused. Then, without answering, raised their swords again. This time the attack came sharper and more decisive, and with an unmistakable intent to kill rather than capture: "We beg your pardon!"

If her birth was low and she had simply stumbled into learning magic, that was the best possible outcome for them. But if she was the scion of some noble family they had not heard of, then even setting aside their previous attack, once she learned what had happened to her two friends, she would certainly bring trouble down on the city lord and the city lord's entire family.

In that case, it was better to finish the job. She could only blame herself for going out without a guard escort.

Lucita twisted her body aside with a look of mild puzzlement. A pale-green current of wind rose beneath her feet. To the knights, it looked as though she had simply leapt into the air, slipping cleanly out of their encirclement.

With a slightly impatient motion she reached out her right hand, snagged the burned knight by the collar, and carried her to the eaves of a two-story shop along the road. Once landed, she looked down and asked: "You still haven't answered my question. Where have you taken my friends?"

The burned knight, dangling in the air by her collar, grabbed Lucita's arm in a panic, her face going the color of a bruised liver: "Mercy! We were only following orders! It has nothing to do with us!"

"Say one more useless word and I'll let go."

"No, no, no! I'll tell you everything!" The knight gasped: "They're…they're in the city lord's residence! Still alive!"

Lucita's brow knitted hard.

"What do you mean, still alive?" That was a rather minimal assurance.

"The city lord…the city lord only wanted to ask your friends for help treating the illness, there was no intention of harming them originally!"

Fear has a way of making it very difficult to organize one's thoughts, and the knight, clearly someone who had never been forced into sudden clarity, was speaking in circles.

Lucita lost patience, and extended a tendril of her mental awareness.

Since Garcia's warning, she had not used her mental gift at all, except for that one occasion with the animals in the forest.

The knight had the honor of becoming her first human subject.

Lucita broke through the knight's mental defenses, made chaotic by her panic, and slipped into the interior of her mind without encountering the slightest resistance.

The knight's inner consciousness was huddled in a corner, trembling faintly with fear, a rather pitiable sight.

Lucita sensed that leaving a mental suggestion would be effortless. Erasing the knight's own consciousness entirely, however, would be considerably more difficult, and a single misstep might rebound on herself.

She did nothing further, and simply read the knight's memories.

Reading memories was not a simple undertaking.

The capacity of human memory was extraordinary. Something you could not consciously recall might still exist deep within it, from your first toddling steps to your final moment.

To go through each fragment in chronological order could take as many years as the knight had lived.

The key, then, was to learn to distinguish: which memories were recent, which had made the strongest impression on their owner. Those fragments would be sharper, their colors more vivid.

If your mind was sufficiently acute and powerful, you could reach into the grey ocean of memory and pull these bright fragments out, then step into the scene each one contained.

Lucita thought back to the spirit arts compendium the mermaids had gifted her. She reached into the memory sea and drew out several fragments still luminous, still alive.

The ocean of memory stirred in response, sending out ripples.

The fragments had just been pulled free, still dripping. Lucita closed her eyes, and the scene came into view.

The angle of the memory was narrow. The knight had apparently been on rotation guarding the city lord's main courtyard, and had happened to witness the two women being "invited" inside, flanked by knights front and back, with five more escorting at their sides.

Stasia and Kelsey had initially been received with courtesy, holding some kind of discussion with the city lord in the main hall, but it appeared to have ended badly.

By the following day, the two guests were no longer permitted to leave.

The knight had witnessed the city lord enter their room once. When she came out, her expression was dark. After that, the two women had been moved to the dungeons.

Today was the second day of their imprisonment there.

Lucita's expression hardened. She dropped down, deposited the knight to one side, and set off toward the city lord's residence with her sword in hand.

Delphine had reappeared at some point and was murmuring in her ear: "I went ahead and had a look at Number 42, Ivy Street. Your two golden-haired friends are locked up underground. It looks like the thinner one is injured."

Lucita had nearly forgotten about Delphine. She was a spirit, she could drift anywhere.

It hadn't occurred to her that Delphine had already gone ahead to scout for her.

She thanked her, and confirmed: "The thinner one?"

"Yes."

That would be Kelsey. Years of wandering, followed by serious illness, had left her visibly thinner than most. She needed proper rest.

Injured.

"Is it serious?"

Delphine said uncertainly: "It might be... a little serious."

Lucita tightened her grip on the sword and nodded to show she understood.

Number 42, Ivy Street. The city lord's residence.

The gate guard Dimon spotted someone striding toward her from a distance, sword in hand and looking ready for blood, and straightened up with a jolt.

The approaching figure appeared to be no more than sixteen or seventeen, with dark curls tied loosely and low at the back of the head, a loose shirt and waistcoat, a heavy black iron sword half as tall as a person held at the side, and an expression like a layer of frost had settled across the face. Those dark black eyes made something in the chest feel deeply uneasy. She looked furious, and she looked like trouble.

She stopped right in front of the gate, as expected.

Lucita leveled the tip of her sword at the guard Dimon. "Either you step aside and let me through, or you tell your city lord to come out."

Dimon's knees went soft.

Heaven help her. She was just a trainee knight, barely on the job. She had never drawn blood in her life.

In the empty streets of Grande as it was now, gate duty was the easiest post there was. Why did it have to be her?

She forced herself to hold her ground: "Is there no third option?"

Lucita said nothing, and took one step forward.

Dimon swallowed, drew her sword, and pointed it at Lucita: "A knight does not retreat!"

Lucita said "oh," gave a single flick of her heavy sword, and sent Dimon's blade spinning to the ground. "You've been defeated now. You may retreat."

The sword hit the ground with a sharp clang, spinning twice before it came to rest.

Dimon stood frozen, watching Lucita walk through the city lord's gate without the slightest hesitation.

She stood there a moment, then finally found her voice and screamed at the top of her lungs: "Help! Someone's broken in!"

Delphine was chattering away in Lucita's ear: "The city lord's residence has fifty-three knights in total, though some who are out may not be counted. There are three patrol groups around the front courtyard and guest rooms, five knights each. The back courtyard has a large training ground where most of the other knights are drilling, and I should mention, there is a shortcut connecting that training ground to the front courtyard..."

Lucita looked at the ring of sword-bearing knights that had closed around her. "I know now."

Delphine glanced around, registered the situation, and went silent.

After a pause she asked: "That many people. Can you manage?"

"We'll see." Lucita answered noncommittally. Her left hand had already pulled together a fireball.

Controlling magical elements cost mental energy, and at her current level of mental strength she could not sustain it for long. Moreover, with this many people pressing in, whether she could split her attention to manage magic simultaneously was an open question.

But Lucita was in no hurry.

Magic was not only fireballs. Its potential was boundless.

Wind, earth, water, fire.

If all else failed, she could ride the wind upward to high ground. Or perhaps, could she split the ground open?

The latter, of course, would require a level of mental strength far beyond her current state. She knew little beyond basic theory. It was entirely out of reach for now.

In any case, relying solely on magic and her inhuman constitution for self-defense was still a little uncertain. Lucita had other considerations.

Setting aside the healing gift she had inherited from the elves, which allowed her to regenerate, what she truly relied on most was the mental gift inherited from the mermaids.

She could not yet achieve mass control, but who said she necessarily needed mass control?

Lucita looked at the city lord who had appeared behind the knights, and the two of them exchanged a smile across the space between them, each concealing their own thoughts.

The knights parted gradually into two columns, lowering their heads as the figure approached.

A very typical old-style noble, in her thirties or forties, short gold-brown hair, a dark green light ceremonial coat with an orange collar, a sheepskin belt, and a gem-studded longsword hanging from the belt.

She came through the knights and walked up to Lucita. Two personal bodyguards each stepped forward to place themselves squarely on either side of her, keeping their eyes fixed sharply on Lucita.

"No need to be so tense." The city lord of Primavera smiled. "This is our magician guest."

Lucita was anxious about the two people in the dungeons, Kelsey especially, who was injured, and there was no time to waste sparring with pleasantries. She started with reasonable civility: "I have no desire to be your enemy. Release my friends now, and we can discuss anything else afterward at leisure."

But the city lord showed not the slightest urgency. "Whose child are you? How did you end up trailing along behind that brat of the Callen family?"

Lucita didn't understand what she was talking about, and let her puzzlement show. "I think you've mistaken me for someone."

"At a time like this, and you still won't admit it?" The city lord gave a short, contemptuous laugh. "It's not as if I'm really going to do anything to any of you. You don't recognize Stasia of the Callen family, so what are you here for?"

Lucita was quiet for a moment.

She recalled, there had been rumors that Stasia came from some Kenting noble family.

Seeing that Lucita had gone silent, the city lord smiled knowingly, and she tried a more familiar approach: "Which family's little sister are you? Did you study magic at the Moon Tower? We might even be relatives."

Watching the city lord drag the conversation sideways and backwards, Lucita felt a sudden sense of danger.

She understood now. Because of her magic, she had been classified as the scion of some great noble family.

In that case, if this city lord truly had good intentions, the thing to do right now was to release Stasia and the others. Not to stand here weaving conversation around nothing.

So the city lord's purpose was only to extract the name of the family standing behind Lucita, a family that did not exist, so she could clean things up neatly after disposing of them!

Rather than offering an apology that might not be accepted and simultaneously offending two great families, wasn't the simpler answer to make them disappear quietly while they had no guard escort?

"My name is Cameron," Lucita said. "A little sister of your ancestor's family."

Before the city lord could process this, Lucita's sword was already coming down.

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