Page 4 of War Mage

She keeps a brave face on, but I catch hints of uneasiness in her scent. She must know about anti-mage chambers and knows that I am not bluffing.Good. Her thinking about it will add an additional mental pressure on her to answer my questions.

“Go on,” she says, trying to sound arrogant, but her confidence is a little too low to quite pull it off.

“You said that there would be others that would take your revenge for you. Who are you working with?”

“No one,” she glares back at me.

I scent the air and am surprised it is the truth. She is working alone. So, she is not connected to the human Cabal that my queen wants to root out and destroy? Her words after the fight made me think . . . well, no matter what it made me think. It is obviously not true.Hmm.

I change course. “Then who were you talking about taking revenge?”

She hesitates. “No one. I was just spewing threats before I died.”

A half-truth, according to her scent.Interesting. What can that mean?

I stand and head to the door, passing my finger over the fourth rune, activating it. The mage flinches, the new rune affecting her. “That was the wrong answer, Adara. I will have the whole truth, or you will be punished.”

“I really don’t know of anyone else that would take revenge! It was empty threats!”

More half-truths. I hit the fifth rune. She flinches again. How does it feel, I wonder? Is it painful or just unsettling? Whatever the answer, she obviously doesn’t like it.

“Tell me the whole truth, Adara.”

She grimaces, fighting my question a while longer, but eventually, grudgingly, she says, “Occasionally, not too often, the Mage’s Tower would get requests from the Crown. Requests for dark manuscripts. Forbidden writings about demons and blood magic. The Tower did an investigation and found that all over the country, people would disappear after these requests. Serfs, mostly. The lowest of the low. Those that wouldn’t be missed. But they would disappear, never to be seen again.”

Ah, the Cabal. So shedoesknow about their existence, in a roundabout kind of way. Playing dumb, I ask, “What does that have to do with the threat toward the queen?”

“My masters at the Mage’s Tower had a theory that there were nobles in the kingdom experimenting with forbidden rituals of death and pain to increase their power and wealth. We were going to investigate further, as forbidden magic threats are meant to be neutralized by the Mage’s Tower as part of its charter, when the High Master gave us the order to cease. He was worried that since the requests often came from the Crown, that Yorian was at the head of the conspiracy and would punish the Tower if we interfered. Not that us ceasing the investigation meant anything in the end. He still conscripted us all once the war started going poorly.” These last words are said with abject bitterness. Her rage still hasn’t abated. She still wants her revenge.

“But the threat?” I insist.

“I’m getting there!” she retorts hotly. “I just had the thought that if there are nobles that follow forbidden magic rituals under the old king, they wouldn't just roll over and give up their power to orcs! That they would also look for a way to kill the king and queen and most likely succeed where I failed.”

“You would rather have nobles that were kidnapping and killing innocent peasants rule, rather than the queen who saved your country?” I am genuinely curious.

She scrubs a hand over her ear like it’s paining her. “Saved the country? Honestly? Saved her own neck, you mean. She should have kept fighting! Used her magic to expel you all back across the border, not welcomed you in and started this farcical peace! Humans died defending this country that she just handed over to your king. But what does she care? She kept her head and gained another crown in the bargain. What does it matter if the rest of us suffer?”

“Orcs died too,” I point out softly.

“What?” She looks at me sharply.

“Adrik invaded Orik first. Attacked the border villages. Do you know who lived in those villages, Adara?”

“No . . .” she responds warily, obviously not understanding my meaning.

“Farmers, mostly. Retired warriors making a living off the land. And their families. I hear that when the reinforcements finally arrived, there were so many dead orclings littering the road that hardened warriors wept. Your soldiers didn’t even spare thechildren. All because your king wanted the rich, pastoral lands past the Deep Wood. And not for any noble purpose; purely for greed. Because he thought that my king was too weak to stop him.”

“Why are you telling me this?” she asks, though she looks a little horrified, my words finding their target. It would appear she has some semblance of a conscience. Another weakness I can apply pressure to.

“Because you are an angry fool,” I say simply. The outrage on her face is immediate, but I continue, “Did you think that you were the only one who lost someone in the war? Your own queen lost her brother. Did you think that there weren’t orcs who wanted to raze your whole country to the ground to recoup what they lost? To not stop until every human was dead? Who opposed the king’s decision to sign a treaty with your queen? But orcs, though you humans think of us as barbarians, know one thing.”

“And what is that?” she glares at me, though with less confidence than before.

I shrug. “That there is no honor in killing innocents. Your queen is an innocent. She was powerless in the face of Yorian. He didn’t treat her as an equal, did not listen to her thoughts. Her hands were clean in your war. Once shedidhave power, the first thing she did was stop hostilities so that no more of her people were killed. No more ofyourpeople were killed. The remaining mages from Fort Attis have all been released, as well as the other prisoners. Yet you, in your rage, blame her because the true focus of your hate is already dead.”

The mage looks stunned, like I have slapped her across the face with my words. At that moment there’s a knock on the door, the orc guard back with the bread and water. I open the door, letting him in and he places the dishes on the floor before leaving. I go to follow him.

“Where are you going?” demands Adara.

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