by Kyra Halland
His eyes followed the coat’s path, then drifted past hers again, then she seemed to catch his attention. For just an instant she could see him, deep inside. “Go,” he said.
“Yes, yes!” More tears pricked at her eyes. He heard her, he knew what she was saying. Now he just had to do it, before the fight downstairs ended. She guided his movements as, clumsily, grunting in pain, he swung his legs over the windowsill and grabbed the rope. He half-slid, half-climbed about half way down the wall, then lost his grip and fell the rest of the way to land sprawled on the ground with a muffled cry of pain.
“Silas!” Lainie gasped. She scrambled down the rope quick as a spider down its web. A couple of holes had been blown in the wall a measure or so from where the rope dangled from the window, but, judging by the uproar still going on inside, no one was likely to look outside and notice her and Silas. The street was deserted. Lainie glimpsed one frightened face peering out of an upstairs window across the street, then it disappeared.
Lainie knelt next to where Silas lay curled up on the ground. He was making that low, keening noise in his throat. She checked him over quickly; nothing seemed to be broken, but the impact with the ground still had to have hurt like all the hells. She wondered if his bullet wounds had healed properly. What if they were festering and, after all this, he was going to die of infections? But his face still felt cold, not feverish.
“Come on.” She stood up and tried to get him back on his feet, but he pulled away from her and crouched on the ground, pressing his hands to the right side of his chest as though it hurt, rocking slightly and still making that awful noise like a wounded, frightened animal.
Suddenly she couldn’t bear the sight of him like that any more. Her Silas should be strong and brave, ready to take on anything, not hurt and weak and scared. Tears spilled from her eyes as she squatted in front of him. “I’m sorry, baby. I know it hurts. But you gotta get up and run, or they’ll catch us.”
He looked at her, his eyes fixing on her face this time, then he raised a fingertip to her cheek and touched a tear. The distressed sound he was making got louder, and he started rocking back and forth even harder than before.
He was upset that she was crying. Quickly, she dashed the tears away. “Come on, Vendine. If we’re going to save your butt, this is our only chance. Here.” She pulled his hat out from inside her shirt and jammed it onto his head. “The Silas Vendine who wears this hat don’t let any sheepknocking sons of bitches get the best of him. Now, move it!”
With a look on his face like he had discovered some strange and wondrous new object, he touched the hat. Lainie stood and grabbed his arm, and this time he stood up. She pulled his coat onto him; it appeared to have been cleaned, but it still bore the bullet holes and bloodstains from when he’d been shot. Then she took his right hand in her left, leaving her right hand free for fighting. “Let’s go.”
His hand tightened ever so slightly around hers. “Go,” he said.
With Lainie moving at a slow jog, pulling Silas along behind her, they made their way through the streets of the warehouse district without running into any trouble. When they came to the street that marked the boundary of the area, Lainie paused, pressing herself and Silas back against the building on the corner to stay out of sight of the larger street. Keeping her power suppressed, she drew her gun into her right hand and peered cautiously around the corner of the building, checking to see if the way was clear. She didn’t see anything besides the normal traffic she had come to expect in the streets of Sandostra, but something about the movement of the people and carriages didn’t seem right. The flow of movement was being shifted aside by something she couldn’t see…
She reached out with a thin strand of her mage senses. Just detecting the presence of power didn’t do any good here in this city filled with mages, so she searched for shields, and found at least six of them out there on the street. She didn’t recognize any of the power in the shields as belonging to the Hidden Council mages she had fought before; it must be Mage Council people out there.
Damn. She buried her power as deep as she could and moved further back from the corner. Had Silas’s mother told the Mage Council about her and Silas after all? Or had Lord Astentias found out about the raid and let slip to the Mage Council that she and Silas were involved? From the little information about her that Madam Lorentius had let filter through to the Mage Council, Lainie believed that her grandmother didn’t want them to know about her power. Did Madam Lorentius still feel that way now that Lainie had proved to be more difficult than she had hoped? Maybe she had decided to rely on the Mage Council to bring Lainie in for her, and Lord Astentias had told them whatever was necessary to get them to go after her. Lainie’s thoughts spun with all the plotting and motivations and betrayals; it was more than she could sort out right now. Right now, what mattered was getting herself and Silas safely back to the hotel to collect their horses and belongings, then getting out of town.
“They’re out there,” she said quietly to Silas. “We have to go another way.”
She didn’t know how much of that he understood, but he didn’t resist as she led him by the hand back down the street to find another route. They slipped through some narrow side streets, then came to the larger road again at a point farther south and east of where they had been. Again Lainie hung back and checked for mages; again she found half a dozen or so, heavily shielded and waiting.
Lainie cursed softly and turned back, leading Silas. This time she didn’t try to follow the streets; she picked a route through gaps between warehouses and across empty lots. They came around through the yard of a warehouse that backed up onto the larger road, then hid behind a storage shed while Lainie reached out again with her mage senses, looking for concealed mages. There were none; as she had hoped, they were probably focusing their attention on the streets that led out of the warehouse district.
Lainie and Silas hurried across the road, ducking through the traffic of wagons and carriages, then followed a route that led in a more or less westward direction past blocks of small, neat homes and large rooming houses. When they emerged from the tangle of side streets onto another major street that they would have to cross, Lainie found more shielded mages waiting for them.
Lainie pressed herself and Silas back around the corner and tried to decide where to go next. Looking at the palace on the hill, the Mage Council tower, and other landmarks, she reckoned it was another three leagues back to the hotel by the most direct route. That was an awful long way, with Silas in the condition he was in. She couldn’t let the Mage Council people push them any farther out of their way. They were just going to have to make a break for it now.
She let the amber Wildings earth-power she had brought with her come to the surface and wrapped a shield around herself and Silas that would obscure them from view and deflect any attacks. Since Granadaian-born mages couldn’t detect Wildings power in the ground, she hoped it would be harder for them to spot a shield made of it. At her summoning of the power, the Sh’kimech also stirred. Not yet, she told them. But be ready. She would use them only as a last resort, but she had the feeling it would come to that last resort. “Hurry,” she said to Silas, pulling on his hand.
They headed out across the street, moving as fast as they could, weaving through the traffic and trying not to give themselves away by bumping into anyone. Lainie’s instincts screamed at her to run even faster, but with Silas barely able to walk, a slow jog was the best they could manage. She had her eye on a smaller street a short distance to the right on the other side of the road. If she remembered the map right, that street would take them on a side route that more or less paralleled the most direct way back to the hotel. She headed straight for that street, counting down how many steps were left until they’d slipped past the waiting Mage Council enforcers and were safely across the road.
A blast of power from the left exploded into the street at Lainie’s feet and knocked her and Silas to the ground. Around them, people and hor
ses screamed in panic and scattered. Lainie nearly lost her hold on her shield; she pulled the power back in before it could slip away and dissipate, then twisted and fired her gun at the black-clad mage who had unshielded himself in order to attack. He staggered back and fell; immediately, her mage senses warned her of another imminent attack from that same direction. A second enforcer revealed himself and flung a ball of blazing orange power towards Lainie and Silas. At the same instant, Lainie fired at him and flattened herself and Silas against the ground. A shout of pain told her that her bullet had hit its target, while the blast of magic passed over them and plowed into the pavement beyond them. More shouts and screams followed the explosion.
Dragging Silas with her, Lainie scrambled to her feet and started running again. Behind them, people lay scattered on the street, some crying out in pain, others not moving. Sheep-brained idiots, she thought. Firing off attacks like that in a crowded street; didn’t they care if innocent people got hurt?
They made it across the street to the next maze of side streets. Four more bullets, Lainie reminded herself, plus however many were in Silas’s gun. There was plenty of extra ammunition in the gunbelts and in her pocket, but finding a moment to stop and reload would be a problem. Could she work the magical functions Silas had added to his gun if she had to? If things got desperate enough, she might have no choice but to try and find out.
They ran through twisting, hilly streets lined with tidy little shops and tall, pretty houses with small fenced gardens in front. The people they passed got out of their way, alarmed at whatever they saw – Lainie’s gun, or the look on her face, or both. Before each corner and curve, Lainie checked with her eyes and ears and mage senses to make sure no one was lying in wait ahead. So far, the way had been clear, and she almost dared to hope that they had finally shaken the Mage Council’s men. But she couldn’t relax yet; there was a good chance they knew what hotel she had been staying at and would be waiting for her there.
Silas’s breathing was getting louder and more labored, with a sob on each exhale, as he staggered along. Lainie wondered if there were bullets in his lung, then forced the thought out of her mind. If there were, there wasn’t anything she could do about it now. If he hadn’t died from the gunshots by now, she told herself, he probably wasn’t going to.
Finally, they came to a narrow street that zigzagged up the hill where the Bayview Hotel was. “Hold on, baby,” she said to Silas. “We’re almost there.”
Silas’s face was taut with pain and fear and confusion. She still couldn’t tell if he understood her or not, but she could see the intense effort he was making to keep going as they started up the hill. The lane they were following angled first one way then the other between the passes of the main street winding back and forth up the hill. As she climbed, Lainie’s legs, heart, and lungs finally started to feel the strain; she couldn’t believe Silas was still on his feet and moving after that run from the Hidden Council headquarters.
At last, the narrow, crooked lane met the street in front of the Bayview, coming in at a sharp angle from left to right. The hotel stood directly across the street from the intersection. A skinny, pointy-ended building filled the triangle-shaped lot on the left-hand corner of the intersection. Lainie leaned back against the wall of the building, out of view of the hotel and the street in front of it, catching her breath. They had almost made it; now all they had to do was get across the street.
She reached out carefully with her mage senses. In her brief glimpse of the street and the hotel, she hadn’t seen any of the black-clad enforcers among the traffic in front of the hotel, but now she sensed a number of shields. Eight or nine, she guessed. The Mage Council must have had sixty or more men out fighting today, between the raid on the Hidden Council headquarters and the ones chasing her and Silas.
“Wait here,” she said to Silas. Obediently, or maybe just because he was dead tired, he dropped down onto his haunches, leaning against the wall of the triangular building, his arms wrapped tightly around his knees, looking lost and scared. Gods, she hated seeing him like this, with the body of an old man and the mind of a frightened child. She wanted to go back and kill everyone who had had any part in doing this to him. Or the ones who survived the fight against the Mage Council raiders, anyway. The Sunderer and the Avenger willing, the Mage Council would take care of her revenge for her.
Lainie didn’t know if she could rely on him to stay put like she told him, and even if he did, someone might come upon him while she was dealing with the enforcers and catch him defenseless. She drew up most of the Wildings earth-power she had left, keeping only a small amount in reserve in case she needed it later. As her mage ring glowed with rose light swirled with amber, she focused the power and shaped the strongest shield she knew how to make around Silas, to keep him in place, hide him from view, and protect him from attacks.
When she was done, she examined her handiwork. The shield blended in with the reddish-tan plaster on the building, visible only as a slight shimmer at the edge of vision. Silas was concealed behind it, a faint shadow that might be taken as only a trick of the light. The shield would last for about a day before the power it was made of faded away, so if something happened to her, he wouldn’t be trapped forever. And maybe then a kind person would find him and take him home and take care of him –
Or not. More likely, he would be captured and imprisoned and truly Stripped, and maybe even executed. So she had just better make sure she dealt successfully with those mages who stood between them and their path to freedom.
“Just give me a few minutes, baby,” she said to Silas. The shield’s concealment was one way; though she couldn’t see him, he should still be able to see and hear her. She replaced the two bullets she had fired from her gun, then checked Silas’s. There were only three bullets in the chamber; she remembered Silas firing at the hunters as they chased him, but she had never been certain how many times he had fired. She added three more bullets from the extras in his gunbelt and shut the chamber, then holstered the gun. “I’ll be right back.” With her own gun in hand, she stepped around the corner and into the street in front of the hotel.
The mages all remained shielded. She could sense the shields as a shimmering at the corner of her eye and on the edge of her mage senses and as a ripple in the pattern of the traffic in the street. She briefly considered pushing the mages’ power back inside them, but that wouldn’t give her and Silas enough time to get clear away from them. When she had done that at the Hidden Council headquarters, she had only made it half a block before they recovered and came after her, and that was on her own and running full speed. So, unless she could convince them to just let her and Silas go, she was going to have to fight her way past them.
And convincing the Mage Council to let them go free seemed about as likely as a full hand of Deaths winning the tray.
She had no patience for the cat-and-mouse game of trying to trick the mages into attacking her so she could attack them while their shields were down. “I know you’re there!” she called out. “Come out from behind your shields and face me like men. Or are you afraid to fight a woman face to face?”
People on the street stared at her apparently shouting at no one, but a few were smart enough to start retreating. One by one, the Mage Council men began revealing themselves, all in enforcer black, standing in a wide arc in the street between her and the hotel. Now the street emptied as everyone else scattered to the ends of the block. As the last mage on the left, the ninth, let down his shield, he suddenly flung a brightly-glowing green ball of power at Lainie. In one motion, she ducked, spun, and fired her gun at him. He screamed and went down, clutching his knee, as his attack flew over Lainie and shattered the windows in a building beyond her.
Lainie stood up and aimed her gun at each man in turn. Five more shots, she reminded herself. Between her gun and Silas’s, she had eleven bullets left. “Who’s next?” she demanded.
The mage in the center stepped forward, his arms hanging straigh
t down at his sides, palms facing her to show that he wasn’t preparing to attack. “Miss Banfrey,” he said, “if you and Venedias will give yourselves up peacefully, we won’t hurt you. We just want to talk to you.”
Irritated, Lainie fired into the road at his feet. Pieces of rock flew up as the bullet struck the paving. The mage flinched but didn’t back off. There was a time when she had dreamed of getting a chance to talk to the Mage Council, but now she knew better. Now she knew they would never listen and she could never trust them. “That’s Mrs. Vendine to you,” she said. “And do you really think I’m stupid enough to fall for that?”
“If it’s any help, our instructions are to take you both alive.”
“And then what?” Lainie demanded. “We’re jailed? Stripped? Put to death after they find out whatever they want to know?”
“Mrs. Vendine,” the mage said with exaggerated patience, “we don’t want to fight you here on the street, with innocent bystanders around –”
“I don’t want to fight, either. I just want you to let us go in peace.”
“I’m afraid that’s not possible.”
“We’ve done nothing wrong,” Lainie said. “You Mage Council folks should see to what’s going on in your own house before you accuse other folks of wrongdoing. Do you even know if Elspetya Lorentius and her Mage Council traitor friend have been arrested?”
“That is not our concern. You’ve broken the law –”
“Laws meant to let the Mage Council control magic and mages and Plainfolk so they can stay in power! We’ve done no harm to anyone by breaking those laws. All I want is to take my husband and go home.”
“Very well,” he said grimly. “We’ve given you the chance to end this peacefully. We will do what is necessary to put an end to your and Venedias’s defiance. If any of these people are harmed, it is not our responsibility.”