Chapter 165: Carried on the Wind

Chapter 165: Carried on the Wind

Siobhan

Month 4, Day 9, Friday 9:40 a.m.

Siobhan suppressed her fear and all the instincts to flee or fight that it encouraged. If there was ever a time to use all the lessons she had ever learned from Ennis and act as if her life depended on it, that time was now. She let out a loud, breathy laugh and pressed a fluttering hand to her chest. “Oh, my! I apologize, sir! You startled me,” she said airily, smoothing out her voice to something more overtly feminine. “I get a little nervous in such large crowds, and some young ruffian tried to pickpocket me not an hour back, so I’m afraid I’ve been on edge and overreacted.”

She smiled brightly at the tall, dark-skinned man, her gaze dipping from his eyes, to his shoulder and hands, and then a quick glance at his lips before returning to his own eyes. She forced her smile to soften into something more genuine than polite, growing a little lopsided and allowing the fake wrinkles at the sides of her eyes to deepen just a little. It was almost an exact copy of something she had seen Ennis do several times, to a more generally positive effect than his attempts at blatant flirting or propositioning someone often returned.

As Silvia, she looked like the kind of woman that might be attracted to a man in uniform, and who could subtly flirt only seconds after being startled, because she definitely wasn’t so afraid she felt like she was going to pass out. She kept her eyes from darting around searching for his backup, but her knees almost buckled as she felt the subtlest tingle in her back, where the disks of the divination-diverting ward rested. ‘Please, let me be imagining that because I’m on the verge of passing out,’ she pleaded to the indifferent sky. Her scalp was also tingling, and her palms felt frozen, which gave her hope.

Unfortunately, the copper’s expression was inscrutable, so she couldn’t tell if it was working or not. “No apologies necessary. What brings you out today, Madam?”

‘Are my knees shaking?’ she wondered, trying to stiffen the muscles in her legs just in case. Shaking knees could create a tell-tale tremble in the fabric of a lightweight dress such as the one she was wearing. “Oh, Madam sounds so stuffy. You can call me Silvia,” she said, leaning toward him slightly. “What should I call you?”

“Copper Robards,” he replied expressionlessly.

She nodded, ignoring the rebuff. “And of course, I’m out for the same reason as everyone else! There’s a little stall up on Bett Street that I heard was selling the most delightful pastries. It’s too bad you have to work on a day like today, though I admit it is comforting to see your presence on the streets. Are you going to get any time off?”

He brushed by her question with a few vague words, and asked a few more basic suspicious questions. Though Silvia responded—for that was her name at this moment, as fully and truly as possible—with every conceivable trick to make herself seem less suspicious, some part of her was detaching from the conversation, watching her pilot her body as if from above.

‘If his wand has a basic scanning divination like that woman cast on me the very first time I transformed into Sebastien, when I was hiding in that empty building with Oliver, it’s over for me.’ She catalogued her various routes of escape and plotted a course through the city toward the south. There, the maze of streets, dead-ends, and random alleyways might make following her difficult. She might still be incredibly stiff from all her practice with light-refinement, but the concoctions she’d taken that morning were suppressing her pain, and adrenaline would push her onward. Fekten’s class had given her the cardiovascular stamina to run half the city. If she absolutely had to. Maybe a concussive blast to this Copper Robards, to slow him down and get a head start. Alternatively, she could even get to one of her supply stashes and transform into Sebastien. If that didn’t throw them off her trail, all was lost.

But as her thoughts were beginning to spiral out of control with barely leashed violence and drastic plans, the copper’s attention was diverted. He looked at someone over her shoulder and his eyes immediately narrowed. “Mr. Irving!” he called. He took an unconscious step past her, then paused and said, “stay here, please.”

Siobhan blinked twice, staring at the side of the building in front of her as her dissociating consciousness seemed to slip back into her body. There was so much adrenaline in her veins that she felt sick with it, like an overdose on beamshell tincture mixed with six cups of dark coffee, after pulling a thirty-six hour study session in preparation for an important test.

Slowly, she turned to follow Copper Robards with her eyes.

He was talking to a young man with large glasses and slightly lighter skin, who strangely looked somewhat familiar, despite the fact that he appeared too young to attend the University, and Siobhan had no idea where else she could have encountered him.

“Why are you here?” the copper asked, his tone much more accusing than the one he had used with Siobhan.

She shifted on her feet, partially because her muscles were tingling and trembling from being so tense, and partially because she wondered if she might just...slip into the crowd while the copper was distracted.

But the man noticed even that small movement, and raised one finger to her, a command for patience.

“I’m here as a journalist,” the young man said defensively, lifting as evidence a slightly scratched, high-end camera obscura from where it hung at his chest by a neck strap.

“I thought we discussed the need to avoid potentially dangerous situations,” Copper Robards said.

“It’s my job!” the young man retorted. “Someone has to get photos of the sentencing and conduct interviews with the populace. This isn’t the kind of event we can just neglect to report on.”

“Doesn’t your paper have anyone else they could send?”

Mr. Fring spoke for the first time. “My wand has a shield spell, but the charge is depleted. They tried to stun us several times, and once sent a piercing spell at the back of my skull when I got too far away from the boy. They seem to want to take the Nightmare Pack heir alive, though the rest of us may be expendable. I have two concussive blast charges remaining, and a knife.” He opened one side of his jacket to reveal the blade there, long and heavy enough to go beyond dagger into the realm of machete.

Jackal’s eyes darted around, focusing on her for only a moment, his fingers twiddling nervously and his knee bouncing. “I’ve got knives, too. About six left. Managed to nick a couple of our pursuers when they got too close.” He retrieved a few small throwing knives from his pocket, and his hands seemed to feel more comfortable holding them, because the twiddling and twitching stopped. “Also, got a philtre of liquid fire.”

Martha sent him a scandalized glare. “Jackal! You know Lord Lynwood decreed you weren’t allowed to mess about with fire any more.”

Jackal grimaced at her. “Well, I haven’t messed around with it, have I? Just having some on hand isn’t a crime.” He looked back to Siobhan. “I couldn’t find a safe place to use it. So many people out and about, someone’s likely to go up in flames like a spitted pig. Someone innocent, I mean. Bad way to die, if you’ll pardon me saying, my queen.”

Miles pointed toward the east, where the front of the stable looked over the street. “They’re coming from that direction. And maybe circling around, too. Their whispers sound kind of sneaky.”

Martha’s eyes narrowed as she looked Siobhan over again. “My queen?” she mouthed to herself in obvious confusion.

Siobhan handed out three of her new philtres of darkness, fleetfoot potions, and a single bark-skin potion, which she handed to Mr. Fring. If someone were going to act as a human shield, it wouldn’t be her. “We don’t have much time. Can we escape out the back?” she asked Miles.

She poked her head around the corner, looking to the east for their pursuers.

A man passed in front of an open stall window, narrowed eyes searching the crowd. Probably searching for them. Siobhan’s blood froze even as her heart sank, because she recognized the crisp gold-and-midnight blue uniform, as well as the proudly displayed gold badge stamped with the same crest from every coin in her pocket.

She pulled her head back in, scowling. “Did you neglect to mention that the ‘bad men’ are Lord Pendragon’s personal forces?” Unlike coppers, they didn’t patrol the streets, only leaving Pendragon Palace when they had a particular mission. Such as, perhaps, catching the Raven Queen.

Martha paled, clenching her skirt in her fists. “That can’t be. Right? Maybe they’re after the same criminals that have been chasing us.”

“Didn’t see any Pendragon operatives,” Fring added.

Fighting back against Pendragon operatives was automatic treason, and sentenced by execution. But more importantly, those men would be well-outfitted, powerful, and practiced in battle.

“If you’re talking about the people in those fancy outfits that aren’t copper outfits, they are definitely bad guys,” Miles provided helpfully. “And we need to leave right away. There’s no time left.”

Everyone else shared looks of dismay, and Siobhan led the way in the opposite direction from the Pendragon operative. One hand held a beast core, the other her newest battle wand, and Millennium’s grip tugged on the skirt of her uselessly fluffy dress. ‘Should we split up? Send the other three away as a decoy, and I keep Miles? But would they agree to that? It might get them killed.’

The boy’s grip grew tighter as he looked around in panicked confusion, gaze once again distant. “Oh no, oh no. I was wrong.”

“About what?” Siobhan snapped, wondering if they could open the horse stalls and create a panicked stampede with a loud spell. The animals might cover their escape. But it might be better to just sneak out and avoid attention. ‘No, it would take too long to free the horses.’ Siobhan hurried instead toward the same back door that they had entered through. “Is there any way they could be tracking you?” she asked, the question for Miles as well as the other three.

They shared looks of fear and confusion, but before anyone could answer, Millennium murmured in a reedy voice, “It was bait.”

A branching explosion of red lightning and dust from underneath the door sill took away any chance to stop, ask for clarification, or try another way.

The magic sent Siobhan flying. She hit the ground and rolled painfully, catching glimpses of her companions in similar states as she tumbled.

She fell still, crumpled in the dirt and facing away from them all, the world spinning dizzily around her. The cold burn of her medallion against the skin of her chest told her it had protected her against some of whatever that spell was. As her dizziness settled, she watched from slitted eyes as a thin powder sprinkled to the ground.

Combined with the red light, it became obvious that someone had trapped the door with some sort of overpowered stunning spell. If she had to guess, it was a single-use mine artifact, not so different from the disintegration mine she’d used a few weeks ago, though thankfully not so deadly.