“I’m surprised you do, since rifles are illegal.”
I have good vision, even in the dark. The man in the window tensed and released. Fire!
There was no sound. No flash. No percussion.
The man turned and shouted into the interior. “We’ve got a mage! Bring the crossbows!”
“Up,” my husband said.
I clambered over a big branch like I was mounting a horse. He shoved the mass of the coverlet, now shedding feathers, into my face.
“What—”
“Take it! Must you question everything? While it’s true the rifle won’t fire, I likely won’t survive a crossbow bolt.”
I took it. He climbed after me. A pair of men appeared in the window, lifting crossbows to sight. On the branch, now at the same height as the window, he ripped the coverlet from my hands and, just as the men released the bolts, flung it outward as if rich fabric and the feathers of a rumpled and now-dirty coverlet, however finely made, could stop two iron bolts.
The coverlet billowed open and began to unravel along the rip. I stared as the cloth unwove, becoming a cloud of threads, some racing out in front while others lagged behind with the mass of downy feathers, all of it slowly drifting toward the window as if on unseen wings. As the two bolts pierced the cloud, they unaccountably slowed and began to wobble. Surrounded by the cloud of feathers, they simply dropped heavily to earth, all their momentum sucked clean away. The threads and feathers meanwhile accelerated toward the men hurriedly cocking new bolts into place, as if they had fed on the speed of the bolts and turned it into their own energy.
A yank on my braid pulled my head around.
“Move!” He went up.
I scrambled after him, easing out on a thick branch to the top of the wall. As he swung his legs over, the branch he was on snapped off and it—and he—dropped out of sight with a thump into the alley. Straddling the wall, I looked back to see the men in the window flailing in a storm of down.
“Catherine!” He was rising, dusting off his clothes with one hand as he raised a cold bubble of illumination in the other.
I lowered myself until I hung from my arms and then let go. Naturally, I landed with perfect grace and straightened immediately to scorn the hand he offered, since he had been expecting me to tumble to earth as clumsily as he had.
“Who are they?” I asked. “Why do they want to kill you?”
“Why do you suppose it is me they want to kill?”
My heart was racing and my thoughts were churning and my mouth lost that tight leash Aunt Tilly had bound it with. “How much time do I have to answer the question?”
He took a step back from me. “I was warned that Barahals would have little conversation and fewer manners, coming from a clan of spies and mercenaries. Can we go now? Or must we duel in the Celtic style with more pointless insults?”
On the other side of the wall, men shouted orders. No doubt they were sending men the long way around to cut off both ends of the alley.
“Which way?” I asked.
He measured the sky. I had no trouble seeing in the light made by the fire, hazy and red and tangled with streamers of smoke, but he seemed to be looking for something else. Temple bells came alive, first one and then the others joining in, ringing the fire chase: Awake! Awake! Awake! Their thundering rhythm drowned out his answer. With a grimace of annoyance, he gestured more broadly than necessary, as if he thought my vision was as poor as most people’s would be: this way. As he turned to run, he stumbled over the broken branch lying across the narrow alley. I snorted. Didn’t mages possess spirit sight, as I did? He took one dragging step, righting himself with a shake, and took off at a run for the eastern end of the alley, the one that lay farthest from the inn’s gated entrance. I ran after him. Maybe the Barahals were now spies and mercenaries, if you felt obliged to use those words, but that meant Barahal children, male and female, were trained in the family business. By the time we got to the end of the long alley, he was breathing hard and I wasn’t.
Not until I stuck my head around the corner. A mob of torches bobbed along the street, heading toward us from both directions. Men brandished shovels and clubs and swords; behind the front line, crossbows were being leveled. Voices chanted, but fortunately the bells were so loud I couldn’t make out what the crowd was screaming beyond “kill!” and “burn!” and “revenge!”—the usual furious shouts that come right before a mob’s victims are swarmed and brutally hacked to death.
Fear came in a rush so strong that for an instant I could hear nothing except an indeterminate roaring. It seemed I would choke on terror.
A howl cracked over the mob, muffling the peal of the bells. Every burning torch shuddered and snapped out. Just like that. An icy wind blew through, shattering tree limbs and dropping men as though they’d been punched. Through the crowd rolled the coach, ghastly where the twisting light of the conflagration, still burning strong, caught in its lineaments. The horses no longer looked like flesh-and-bone beasts; they galloped about an arm’s span above the ground, the white-haired coachman flicking his whip over manes as translucent as icicles. The other creature hung off the riding board in the back, looking no longer anything like a human being but rather a storm of cold magic so powerful it began to pelt ice along the street.
They pulled up alongside us as men wailed in fear, faces pressed into the ground. The eru leaped down from the back, flipped out the stairs, and opened the coach’s door, as precisely as would any humble footman serving an exacting household. My husband climbed in without looking back, but I stared at the eru, who paused in the midst of chaos and looked right at me.
“Greetings, Cousin,” it said in a voice that sounded so perfectly normal I should not have been able to hear it above the clangor of the bells and the wail of the storm winds and the cries of the mob. “I’ll offer you a gift, if you’re inclined to accept. For I think you may need this.”
It flicked an object off the rack on the roof where boxes were tied and tossed it to me, hilt first. I caught it instinctively, felt its weight and balance mold to my grip. If there’s one thing a Barahal knows, it is the sword. For it is true we are born to a lineage long scorned, if necessary, to the rule of the powerful: that of the hired swords and spies who across the centuries have done the dirty work of princes, bankers, guilds, and mage Houses. Djeliw and bards never sang praise to us, although we Barahals had always served honorably, paid the bitter price, and finished the job.
My husband called from inside the coach. “What is taking so long? We must move.”
The horses stamped restlessly. The cold cut to my bones, and my teeth chattered. The eru turned away, and only then was I able to drag my cold-heavy legs up into the coach. I collapsed onto the seat facing him. He slammed the door shut. The stairs thunked into place beneath the undercarriage. The coach jerked forward once, twice, and a third time, slamming me back each time against the box.