by S. W. Clarke
They were speaking to Liara. *Don’t stop,* I said to her. *Just keep going.*
But Liara stopped. She turned. I’ve got this, she said.
We were screwed.
Liara thought she could handle this. She thought she could ward the formalists off with her regally high chin and her imperious eyes. “What is it?” she called to the approaching officers.
A man and a woman. He was older, salt-and-pepper temples, weary eyes. She was young, blond with a tight bun, the two of them in the same black, high-booted uniforms I’d seen years ago in Farina North’s living room.
The man swept his nightstick in a circle to indicate the group of prisoners. “We received word from the the prison that you’re extraditing these mages to Singapore. We’ll need to see your orders.”
We’d been just a minute too slow. Thirty seconds. If we’d just walked a half-step faster the whole way, we might have avoided them.
Meanwhile, a whole different set of conversations were occurring rapid-fire in my head.
Clem, those officers are trained in anti-magic, Eva was saying from her perch atop a building. She and the other fae had all flown to high spots to observe. Somewhere nearby, I knew Akelan, Mishka, Paxton, and Maise were waiting on us, too. If it comes to a fight...
How do you know? I said.
See their nightsticks? They’re long, like the ones you saw at Farina North’s home. They’re designed to absorb magic.
I did see them. They were black, gleaming, as long as my femur.
Liara’s got this, I said. She’ll show them the papers and we’ll be good.
Of course, to Liara I was saying: Eva tells me they’re trained in anti-magic. Use those wings and part the goddamn veil with that trigger-happy finger you’ve got.
No, she shot back, her eyes never leaving the formalist officers. She snapped her fingers at Elijah, who retrieved the extradition papers and placed them in her hand. This is a formality.
A formality my ass. Those nightsticks weren’t at their hips—they were in their hands. Liara had misjudged this.
“Who made this request?” Liara approached the officers. “Law dictates Singapore is entitled to any and all fae prisoners.”
“Yes, Ms. Youngblood.” The male officer received the papers from her. “And law also dictates a senior officer lay eyes on any and all extradition orders.”
Her eyes narrowed to chill-inducing slits. “Since when?”
“Laws evolve,” the other officer said. She was facey, less obsequious. “And they have since your father sat on the council. You’d know that if—”
So they know who she is. Maybe it’s common knowledge.
The male officer’s hand raised, and she went silent. He surveyed the papers in tense silence, lifting one to study the next. “This is an order from the the local council?”
“Yes,” Liara said, chin still raised, eyes still somehow gazing down on the officers, who were both taller than her. “Singapore may no longer be formalist-aligned, but the law still applies, does it not?”
“Ms. Youngblood.” The officer handed the papers back to her. “Why have you cloaked these prisoners?”
“To give them dignity,” she shot back.
“Really?” The other anti-magic officer’s head tilted, her shellacked blond hair gleaming under the sun. “Are you sure you don’t mean secrecy?”
“Oh boy,” Loki whispered.
This was going south. She should have just parted the veil at the start.
The other officer was still playing Good Cop. Or at least Rule-Abiding Cop. “Ma’am, I’d like to check on this with the council. Would you accompany us to our headquarters? The prisoners will join—”
He didn’t get a chance to finish.
“This isn’t what I was godsdamn promised,” one of the fae bellowed, shrugging off his cloak. An afro of green hair emerged, wild with years spent underground, his eyes equally manic. “You formalists can suck my fae stones.” He took to the air, wrists still shackled, and we had a half-second of stillness as his words processed.
A half-second as the word “promised” sank in, damning us. A half-second where Liara met eyes with the officers, her ruse exposed, and where Loki and I glanced at one another, and in that glance we knew what we had to do.
Then the nightsticks came up, the extradition papers went flying. Liara’s hands rose from her cloak, lightning crackling on her fingertips, but her wings were hidden under her robes. She took a step back, lightning shooting out, but not before the female officer’s nightstick came down atop her. The lightning was absorbed into the weapon, and though the nightstick crackled with lightning from grip to tip, it didn’t slow in its arc.
The weapon nearly caught Liara in the shoulder, whiffing past her as she leaned away. She was slowed by her robes, her movements less precise. Which was why she didn’t notice the second officer’s nightstick as it came down on her temple, knocking her to the cobblestones with an otherwise soundless thud.
Just like that. It had all happened in a second.
Get the prisoners through the veil, I said into the other guardians’ heads. Now.
But Clem— Eva began.
I’ve got this.
I started forward, both hands erupting into flame. When I emerged from my enshroudment, it was with a jet of fire rushing directly at the two officers, red-hot and pulsing with fury.
That was my fae he’d hit. We may have been in a bitch fight, but nobody screwed with my fae.
The male officer’s nightstick swept in an arc just before the fire poured over them, and I stared as the fire was drawn into the weapon like a moth to light. What had been an intense, three-foot-wide jet of flame narrowed away into the black weapon, coating it.
“Well,” Loki said by my side, “that’s not good.”
A second later, the man held his flaming nightstick out before him, his hard, challenging eyes on me.
Meanwhile, the female officer leaned into her shoulder, fingers on a radio. She was speaking in jargon, but I got the gist: Backup. They needed backup, because they were being attacked.
By a witch, I added in my head, taking a wide stance as I allowed the Spitfire to rise in me. You’re being attacked by a witch.
Chapter Twenty-One
I had to give the others enough time to get through the veil, and I had to get Liara. That was my purpose. I was their leader, and I would be the last one through that veil, even if I had to drag the fae with me.
She was, after all, unconscious on the ground. She must have knocked her head a second time when she’d fallen.
The two anti-magic officers stood close to one another, nightsticks raised, each flaring with its own magic: the woman’s with Liara’s lightning, and the man’s with my flames.
They both had their eyes on me. Ready.
Liara lay at the man’s feet. I had to get close enough to grab her and get out. That would have been the tricky part—if I wasn’t a witch.
The woman’s eyes lowered to the cat at my side. Back up to me. “It’s the witch,” she whispered. “Red hair. Black cat.”
So they finally noticed.
The man’s face went wide-open. “No.”
“The witch,” the woman said into her shoulder radio, her voice taking on a higher pitch, her cadence speeding up. “The witch is here on the water.”
It doesn’t matter now what she says, the Spitfire whispered, delighted. You won’t be around long enough for them to touch you.
I smiled. “Unfortunately for you both, you’re a hundred percent right.” I swept my hand low, embers of flame dropping away and falling onto Loki’s fur. It ignited at once. “Loki,” I said. “Go.”
At once, my familiar blazed with flame as he raced forward, leaping at the male officer with a scream so fierce and shrill it might have been a banshee there by the river.
Nah, just my cat.
The man lashed out with his nightstick, warding Loki from digging his claws in and latching onto his chest.
&nb
sp; But that wasn’t Loki’s plan, anyway.
His small form sailed below the nightstick’s arc and past the officer. He lashed out with his claws as he passed, catching the officer’s forearm before he landed behind the two of them.
Meanwhile, I stepped forward, throwing a wave of flame with my left arm. Then another with my right arm, as if the ocean had caught fire, one after another after another.
The female officer deflected each of my waves, swinging with her nightstick, while the male officer had half-turned to ward off the hellcati.
In the course of the fighting, she took a step toward the water. So did he. And in the process, they moved away from Liara.
Clem, came Elijah’s voice in my head. The prisoners are through.
And the other guardians? I asked.
The humans are making for Arthur’s Seat, he said. The fae are waiting on you.
Sirens sounded on the bridge, vehicles coming to hard stops, doors slamming. The officers’ backup had arrived. *Tell them to go through.*
But what about you? Elijah asked.
I ignored him. Loki and I were facing down the two officers from either side, backing them toward the water. He leapt, screamed, clawed, and I enveloped them with more flame than their sad little sticks could handle.
It was intoxicating, knowing how outgunned they were.
Clem, Eva’s worried voice sounded in my mind. They’re coming. Lots more.
Footsteps sounded down the bridge staircase—more formalist officers. Over a dozen of them.
Some part of me recognized this was bad. Another part wanted to drive these two bastards into the river.
And then Eva appeared in front of me, her gray eyes intense. She dashed my flame aside with her air, hands going to my shoulders. “Everyone else is through. We need to get Liara and get out of here. Now.”
Liara. Get Liara, Rational Clem said into my fire-addled head.
Liara. She was still down.
I squeezed my eyes shut for a moment, fingers curling to fists to quell the flames. Then focused past Eva on the officers sprinting down the cobblestone path toward us.
We needed to leave.
I flicked my attention to the two officers near the water. “Pairilis síoraí” I whispered, staring at one and then the next as I repeated the words.
Like that, they went still. Immobile.
Anti-magic my ass.
“Loki”—I spun toward Liara, ducking down to haul one of her arms over my shoulder as Eva grabbed the other—“let’s go.”
For all her gravitas, Liara was astonishingly light. She couldn’t weigh more than a hundred pounds with those fine fae bones. Her head slumped as Eva and I lifted her, carried her down the path and toward the water.
“The veil,” Eva said, breathless.
“I’ve got it.”
If Liara had shown me one thing in the past year we’d spent together as guardians, it was how to part the veil in a rush. It wouldn’t be pretty or clean, but it had to be.
We hit the water’s edge, and my finger was already moving through the air, drawing down, down, doing my best to close out the noise behind us, to focus on Umbra and her glowing staff.
All that mattered was this.
I knelt to finish the cut, and then, “Go. Just go.”
Eva swept the veil aside, and I caught a glimpse of trees and light—the academy—before Loki dashed through, and we threw ourselves after him, two fae and a human tumbling to the soft ground on the other side.
I rolled onto my back, lifting my head to stare back at the space we’d just passed through as the veil swept to place. I spotted the man’s face, his nightstick, and then it was just a seam in the space before me, and then nothing at all.
No more Edinburgh. Just the academy.
Beside me, Liara lay still. Eva also rolled onto her back, slight chest moving fast, her eyes on the canopy above us.
We lay there in silence, just breathing hard, until the sound of Maeve Umbra’s staff touching the earth echoed behind me, and then her head appeared upside-down over us, her long curtain of white hair shadowing her face.
“Well,” she said, eyes settling on me, “it seems you’ve gotten into trouble again.”
Trouble. Wherever I went, trouble followed—or I brought trouble.
In this case, the trouble I’d brought had saved Liara, which was what Eva told the headmistress as she stared disapprovingly down at us. Her lavender head had risen from the ground, eyes shooting to me, then up to Umbra. “Clem gave them way more trouble than they gave us.”
Thank you, Whitewillow.
“I’ll be very curious to know what Clem did this time,” Umbra said, straightening.
I forced myself up onto my elbows, surveying around us. “Is everyone here?”
“Everyone’s here.” Isaiah appeared from my periphery. He knelt beside the still-unconscious Liara, moving her hair from her face. “She looks in a bad way.”
“She needs Neverwink,” I said, finding a regular seat in the grass.
Isaiah nodded, gently lifted Liara, carrying her out of sight.
Umbra observed our interaction a moment before her name was called from across the clearing. When she turned, Milonakis was calling for her, standing with the huddle of shackled fae. “Headmistress,” she called. “Could you lend us your magic to break these shackles?”
Umbra glanced back at us, gave a long nod. “Trouble or no, you brought five lives to safety today. I hope your pride in yourselves equals mine.”
And with that, she turned with a sweep of robes and was gone.
I reached out for Loki, my hand settling onto his back as his tail rose high into the air. “She meant you, too, you know.”
“You sure she didn’t mean all me?” His green eyes flashed on me as he turned a circle to be petted again.
“I can’t believe you did that.” Eva came to a seat, letting out a long breath. Her eyes drifted up to the sun, and she let out a small laugh. “Gods, I’m about to be late for Neverwink’s class.”
I kept on petting Loki. “Tell her you have a note from your guardian co-leader explaining your lateness.”
A smile appeared, then disappeared. She leaned closer. “Clem, what were you doing in that prison?”
My eyebrows rose like I didn’t know what she was talking about.
“Those officers said there was an incident at the prison,” she said. “It was you. I knkow it.”
I shrugged, patting grass off my clothes. “I guess so.”
Her chin lowered. “Why?”
The jag of frustration and pain returned, the memory and knowledge of one fact: Callum Rathmore wasn’t in that prison. He wasn’t there. My promise came back with it, the acknowledgement I’d made to myself while sprinting through the prison that I would not stop looking for him.
Eva must have seen it in my eyes, because they widened. “Did you sneak in?”
Loki snorted. “Did she ever.”
I half-shrugged, gaze sliding away from her. When I got to my feet, she was up, too. “Why?” she said. “And why didn’t you tell me?”
She had placed herself in front of me, forcing acknowledgment of her presence. Her questions. So I fixed my attention on her and told her the truth. “I wasn’t there for the mission, Eva. And I didn’t think you’d approve of that.”
“Why were you there?” she whispered.
Why was it so hard to say his name? Because you failed, came the small voice. *Because he’s not here with you now.*
My face lowered, unable to say it without Loki in view. “I was looking for him.”
She stepped confidentially close. “Rathmore?”
I gave one nod.
“But you didn’t find him.”
I shook my head.
“Oh, Clem.” Her arms wrapped around me, warm and slender. “You romantic idiot. You should have told me.”
I’d known she would understand, but I had kept it from her anyway. I’d kept it from everyone but Loki, as though
by revealing what I wanted, I was making myself vulnerable. Open to attack.
When she stepped away, she looked upset. “Did you check the whole prison?”
“All three stymy levels.”
“So if Rathmore’s not there, then where is he?”
Evanora Whitewillow, once again being the friend I’d never knew I needed.
“God, I don’t know,” I said in a rush. “But he must be locked up, according to Umbra. I just don’t even know where that would be.”
Eva came around, arm across my back, clasping my shoulder. We started walking with Loki alongside us. “You’ll figure it out like you do all things. First we’re going to shower, and then we’re going to eat. And drink. And probably take a long nap.”
“Cutting class?” I asked.
She laughed. “Don’t tell Neverwink.”
On the way, we passed the group of rescued fae with Milonakis. One of them, an old man with a bald head, met eyes with me. His were an incredible blue in his pale, drawn face, and they warmed on me. An acknowledgment.
Later, I would find out his name was Cornelius Norwood. He was one of the most powerful earth mages alive, and he had disappeared fifteen years ago after he’d spoken out against the formalist consolidation of power in Edinburgh.
And now he stood barefoot on grass, free.
In the end, we’d rescued five mages from the prison beneath Edinburgh. One had flown off, still shackled—which we’d all laughed about later in the guardians’ common room (“suck my stones” would become Elijah and Isaiah’s new favorite catchphrase), after everything was said and done and Liara had been to the infirmary and found not to have a concussion after she’d taken the blow from the nightstick and then hit her head on the cobblestones.
Umbra had escorted the freed fae to various faculty members’ homes, giving them each a place to sleep and stay and recuperate. Among the other fae we’d rescued were two dissidents who’d fought against the formalist government, a tangible manipulations savant, and a professor from the University of Edinburgh who had specialized in magical history.
All five of them agreed to join us at the academy.