“Used to,” Desidora agreed. “But now I’ve met you, and I see why I was chosen. I see that for all the darkness I found within me, all the cruel magic I’ve unleashed, I am still me. I am still a love priestess. And you are still a thug.”
“A thug with a hammer,” Lively said, snarling, and brought his fist up again.
Then he blinked as Desidora flickered and dwindled before his eyes, and when he brought his magic down, it did not smash against where she had been, but sank in slowly with a muffled impact.
“A hammer, yes.” Desidora let the cloak slip away from her, and Lively spun, realizing that she had stepped several yards away from her earlier position. “And all I have are bedsheets. Funny thing about bedsheets, though. A man who never learns subtlety might have a hard time finding a woman in them.”
She pulled the cloak of her power around her again and stepped aside as his magic crashed down. The force was unstoppable, but she wasn’t trying to stop it anymore, just letting it slide by her and making herself easy to miss. He glared and looked around, trying to track her.
She kept her footsteps light and quiet as she circled him, and then let the cloak slip. “You can’t really have bedsheets without the mattress, can you, Smith Lively?” He spun. “So I suppose I have the mattress too, and the funny thing about a good mattress—and as you so crudely implied, I’ve known a few—you can swing a hammer at one all day without doing a damned bit of harm.”
His magic crashed down, and then slid away, muffled and useless as she brought up her power.
“A good smith has tools beyond just his hammer,” Lively snarled, hands curled into claws as he spun, looking for where Desidora had made herself fade away. “Like fire. I wonder if those sheets of yours will burn?”
Desidora laughed then, and let herself be seen as she stepped to the anvil. Where she stood now, it was between her and him, and she rested her hands on the altar possessively. “Idiot,” she said, and he flinched from her voice, “how many lovers have first kissed by candlelight? How many have gloried in the glow of firelight on naked skin?” His magic danced around him like flame, hot and angry, and she took it and used it, and it crackled as Lively cried out in pain. “Tasheveth accepts Pesyr’s mastery of steel, but fire is as much mine as yours.”
She felt it then, in the anvil beneath her hands, and pulled at the power around him, twisting it into the form she needed as she slid the magic into the altar.
It was vital work, but it took a moment’s concentration, and so she did not see him coming.
He slammed into her, and again she crashed through the pews, landing in a pile of smashed wood.
“Magic would have been faster,” Lively said, cracking his knuckles, “but a good smith takes pride in honest work. I will enjoy beating you to death with my bare hands.”
Two minutes or a quarter of a mile. That had been the lesson the scouts had drilled into Loch during her training. Two minutes or a quarter of a mile. If you could lose a pursuer in that time or that distance, do it, because you don’t die in a fight you escape from.
“This woman, whoever she is, seems determined to rain devastation down on these good people!” shouted someone on the screens. The griffon or the manticore, she couldn’t tell anymore.
But after two minutes or a quarter of a mile, if you hadn’t cut their line of sight or seen them slow to a jog to watch you flee, you might as well turn and fight, because anyone you couldn’t shake by then was probably going to catch you eventually, and you’d fight better after running for two minutes than after ten.
“We just have to ask why? Why does she hate the people of the Republic so much?” someone on the screen demanded.
They had drilled hard in those days. At the end of training, every scout in the ranks could run hard for two minutes, then turn and fight as well as if they’d been fresh.
Loch had been sprinting and diving and dodging for ten minutes now. Her breath was coming hard, ragged in her throat, and her feet fumbled on the quick turns, clumsy beneath her as they pounded on the turf.
“It looks like she’s sending the dragon after the crowd again! Guards are doing their best to stop it, but the damage so far has been horrible.”
Mister Dragon killed people whenever she stopped.
The exit was no longer an option, given the mass of competitors pushing and shoving to get through. Up in the stands, spectators bunched around the stadium exits as well, far from the flames that licked the stadium seats or scored the field itself.
She saw a hole in the smoldering wreckage of the stands, a space where she might get through if she were willing to brave some burns, and she turned and ran for it.
She’d missed the stakes placed in the ground to mark distance on the javelin throw, though. Her foot slipped on one, her ankle twisted on the turf, and she went down onto her hands and knees.
She was almost back up when the hand closed on her ankle.
“LOCH,” Jyelle snarled, and Loch kicked free, got back to her feet, and then took a backhand to the face that put her down again.
Jyelle had put herself together well. In bad light, she could pass for human, with grass for hair and earth for a body that even had her slim curves.
“GET UP AND FIGHT ME,” Jyelle said, and beckoned.
Loch turned, spat a little blood from her mouth, and pushed herself back to her feet. She’d held on to her walking stick—a scout who lost her weapon was a dead scout—and she raised it grimly. Jyelle smiled, the earth of her face twisting in pleasure, and then she looked up overhead and shouted, “NO!”
Flame scored the ground a few feet away and a great billowing wind knocked Loch to her knees as Mister Dragon landed. She looked up into red scales and rainbow wings and golden fangs, all looming over her shackled by silver chains, and in that moment, Loch felt glad that she was exhausted, because otherwise she’d have felt obliged to try to fight, and that would have been downright embarrassing.
Then a cry rang out across the field. “Paladins, now!” And as Loch and Jyelle looked around in confusion, nobles and athletes rushed in from all sides. They wore the crimson paladin bands, and as they gestured, energy snapped out like ropes, lashing around the dragon and bringing him down to the ground roaring in pain.
“It looks like—yes, the paladins are using some sort of magic!” shouted someone on the screens. “They’ve brought the dragon down and stopped the woman’s attack!”
“YOU ARE KIDDING ME,” Jyelle muttered as Loch dropped her hands to her knees and sucked in great lungfuls of air.
“Skinner,” one of the paladins said as he came over. “And you’d be this Jyelle woman, or the daemon with her memories? Makes no difference to me.” He smiled. “You weren’t planned.”
“I WANT LOCH,” Jyelle said, glaring at the blond man.
“This goes one of two ways,” Skinner said, apparently unoffended. “You attack, and we put you down, and you’re just another monster Loch brought to kill people. Or you come with us, all nice and smiling, and you’re a security-daemon that helped catch her, and there’s a pretty good chance that Mister Lesaguris lets you do whatever the hell you like once he’s done with Loch himself.”
Jyelle looked at Skinner, and then at Loch, who was still doubled over, trying to catch her breath.
Jyelle’s hand slammed down onto Loch’s shoulder, gripping with force that was just short of crushing.
“I HAVE APPREHENDED THE CRIMINAL,” Jyelle said.
Skinner grinned, and then turned to Loch. “Mister Lesaguris will see you now.”
“You are the overseer,” Icy said to the paladin who had enthralled Westteich and coated his body in crystalline armor, all gray save the paladin band on his forearm. “May I understand that you are responsible for the enslavement of the elves and dwarves in the mine outside?”
“You may.” The overseer came forward. His steps thudded on the ground, but he nevertheless moved with the speed of an unarmored man.
“Tern,” Icy said, “pleas
e do what is necessary. The overseer and I will be having a discussion about the morality of enslaving sentient beings.”
Tern blinked. “Um.”
Icy shrugged out of his robes, and they slid to the ground in a pool of golden silk around him. He stood in silk slippers and loose pants that left him free to move. His chest and arms were bare, tan, and corded with muscle.
“Go, Tern,” Icy said, and started walking toward the overseer.
The overseer laughed. “You call yourself Indomitable Courteous Fist. You were formerly Unstoppable Deferential Fist, until you grew ashamed of your power, and swore an oath never to fight again. You knocked down my slaves with gentle throws. I will be a little harder to—”
Icy leaped into a spinning kick that lifted the overseer off his feet and sent him crashing onto one of the moving belts, spraying crystals everywhere as he landed.
“I swore an oath never to kill again,” Icy said as he hopped up onto the moving belt and raised his fists. “Please try not to die.”
“Excellent!” The overseer laughed and lunged in with a punch, and Icy dodged it, parried the next blow, leaped over a kick, landed on the next kick, and leaped from it into the overseer’s face with a blow that struck hard . . . and bounced off an invisible barrier. “Ah, well struck, and wise to strike at a perceived weakness.” The overseer’s blow caught Icy as he landed, and Icy rolled with it and came back to his feet on the ground, grimacing. “But my face is warded, so you may not simply kill my slave to defeat me.”
“I will not kill anyone,” Icy said, and charged.
He came in low, ducking under a punch and slamming a blow into the overseer’s gut, then stepping behind him and sending the blade of his foot into the back of the overseer’s knee. As the overseer collapsed, Icy stepped in with precision, took one perfect step, pivoted, and struck a blow with bone-shattering force at the overseer’s spine.
The armor cracked, and the overseer grunted. He dropped to his belly and kicked out behind him, catching Icy with a blow that flung him back onto another moving belt.
He rolled back to his feet and came up in a fighting stance, ignoring the shallow cuts left by the crystals and the deep bruise he would have from the blow.
Again they clashed, and again. Icy leaped from moving belt to moving belt, dodging and weaving and striking blows that would have shattered stone, but which only left the faintest cracks in the armor. The overseer laughed as he fought, chasing Icy from one side of the processing center to the other. He smashed the belts, and Icy leaped and swung from the chains. He threw tables, and Icy slid under them and came up with perfect blows that did nothing.
Icy fought as a master. The overseer fought as a god.
“How does it feel, Unstoppable?” the overseer asked as they stood upon yet another belt moving toward a great furnace at Icy’s back. “To break your oath after all these years and lose? To see that all your skill, impressive as it might be for a chattel race like yours, avails you so little against our superiority?”
He came at Icy with a lazy punch, and Icy ducked under it, came up, and struck the overseer more than a dozen times, hitting every chakra and three vital nerve clusters.
When he was done, the overseer grabbed Icy by the throat and slammed him down on the moving belt. “I should crush you,” he said as they slid toward the furnace. “I have earned it in righteous battle.”
“You earned nothing,” Icy said, forcing the words out, though the overseer’s hand made breathing all but impossible.
“Ah, but I did,” the overseer said, “because I took it. You trained for years, and you think that makes you better, but I was born with this power, passed on from my parents, and with these resources, you had no chance against me.” They drew closer to the furnace, and the overseer smiled. “I think I have a better end for you, Unstoppable. I think you will die in the fires my people use to forge their own greatness. And as you die, you can tell yourself that it wasn’t fair.”
They were almost to the furnace, and the fire bore down ahead of them, blazingly hot waves of heat billowing out across both of them.
“You keep calling me Unstoppable,” Icy said, still pinned, and smiled at the overseer. “It shows a truly unfortunate ignorance on your part.”
The overseer sneered, and in preparation for whatever last gambit his foe might make, he brought his other arm, the arm with the paladin band, down on Icy to pin him in place even more securely.
“I did not simply choose Indomitable Courteous Fist as my new name,” Icy said quietly, and as he edged into the furnace, he found within him the perfect stillness, the center where concentration met emptiness in alignment of the energy inside him.
“I chose a name that could be shortened to Icy.”
Lips pursed, he blew out one long breath.
The furnace twitched, clanked, whined, and rattled to a stop, along with the moving belt.
The overseer leaned down and looked in.
Icy smiled out at him, from beneath a ceiling that had frosted over, with glittering icicles dangling down.
Then, before the overseer could pull away, Icy reached up, grabbed the paladin band with one hand, and struck three times along the underside of the glittering red crystal.
The paladin band popped off Westteich’s wrist and clattered onto the belt. A moment later, Westteich himself stumbled back and fell off the belt, crying out wordlessly.
Icy eased himself out from the furnace and stared down at the band of red crystal. He took it from the belt and placed it gently on the floor.
“I did not know the pressure points of a creature such as you,” Icy said, “but I believed that if I fought long enough, struck enough blows, and gauged the manner in which your body reacted, along with the body you controlled, that I could make a guess. It seems that I was correct.”
He looked down at the red crystal, and then over at Westteich, who stared at him warily. “Do you wish to continue our hostilities?” he asked.
“I, ah, in light of current events . . .” Westteich stammered.
“Good.” Icy looked back at the crystal band of the overseer, and then knelt down beside it. “I do not believe that killing you would result in me being prosecuted for any crime,” he murmured, “nor would my friends think any less of me. This world would, by any measurable standard, be no worse for your absence. The only reason you live is because I choose to let you, and the only reason I choose to let you is because I swore an oath.” He stood up, rolled out his shoulders, and bowed briefly. “Please try not to die.”
He headed back toward the room where Tern was working.
When he was about halfway there, he heard a crunch from behind him. He looked back over his shoulder and saw Westteich stomping down on the ground, over and over again, fury written on his face.
“Perhaps you should have tried harder,” Icy murmured.
In the room in the back, Tern stood at a great array of crystals that seemed to grow from the wall in a pattern that made Icy’s head swim. She plucked crystals from one location and inserted them elsewhere, treating others with tools that changed their color.
“The overseer has learned of the potential negative consequences of slavery,” Icy said. “How are you?”
Tern looked over at him, eyes wild. “Not good. I’ve done my part, but remember how we were having Kail disrupt the energy pattern at the font? He did it. I can see the readings, and that would have been good, only now that I’m in here, we actually kind of need the font to work again if it’s going to do what we want. I can confirm the ambient magical energy isn’t floating around in the tunnels like it was last time we were here, which is good, but the reason it’s not floating around is because the ancients have got it all tied up right here, and in order for that energy to be directed properly, we need the font that channels the energy to Heaven’s Spire to have a prismatic setting of one-third diffusion. Anything else, and we either blow up this whole mining complex or Heaven’s Spire.” Tern took a breath. “Maybe both.�
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Icy pursed his lips. “Do we have any means of getting a message to Kail or the others?”
“Is there any chance Ululenia is back?” Tern asked hopefully.
Kail shook his head. “I am afraid I have not seen her.”
“Well,” said Tern, “then unless you’ve got a way to ride the fire of that giant stupid flaming fountain up to the surface where Kail is and tell him to reset the font to one-third diffusion on the outgoing energy, we should probably hug or something, because everything is going to blow up.”
“I see.” Icy nodded. “Can you get me into the room from which the flame fountains to the surface?”
“Oh, sure, it’s the gate room. No more ambient magic, easy to get to.” Tern nodded. “Incredibly hot fire, though, so . . .”
“I will need directions,” Icy said, “and later, some juice.”
Dairy hung in the great empty golden expanse, looking at violet clouds and sparkling things in the sky that were almost stars but not.
He hurt. The blows that had rained down upon him had struck with a force that he had never felt before, not so much because of the physical power but in how it seemed to slide past whatever it was that made him him. He had felt the blows as if he were any other young man, and his body throbbed with the aching pain even as he tumbled gently in the sky, trying to make sense of it.
The wrongness pulled at him. Something in the core of his being told him that whatever this place was, it was not a place he was meant to be. Steam rose from his body as tiny bits of whatever made this place struck him and hissed away.
When he saw the great hill made of rainbows uncurl into a formless mass of tentacles that stretched out above and below and beyond him in directions that his mind did not know how to process, glowing with glittery brightness as amazing as it was false, Dairy knew.
The Paladin Caper Page 34