They were about halfway back from the palace before anyone spoke. It was Henri who finally spoke. “Another interesting evening. I will give you this, Lady Scardale. Life is not dull with you around.”
“It used to be,” Sophie said with a sigh. “I look forward to the time when it can be again.”
“And have you thought about what you will do if your queen will not provide these reassurances you seek?”
Sophie shrugged. “I imagine at that point we will need to make a choice.”
“Just so. You are, of course, both welcome to continue at the Academe. Your teachers speak well of your skills.” Henri smiled at her. “We always need mages who are strong. We would be more than happy to complete your training. Or enhance it, in your case, Lord Scardale.”
“What happens after the Academe?” Cameron said. “We can’t stay under your roof forever.”
“Well, that would depend on what interests you developed during your studies usually. Some of our students stay on as staff, of course, or to immerse themselves in the study of magic itself. Others join the imperial corps. A small number of earth witches decide to dedicate themselves to the temple of the goddess. But there are those who go out into the world and find occupation for themselves. Who work in trades where magic is an advantage, such as those who make the fabriques, or become healers, or join the households of nobleman. There are options. Mages are respected here in the empire. You and your wife will not starve, Lord Scardale, if you remain here. True, you will not be a member of the Illvyan nobility. Not unless you distinguished yourself in some way that might cause the emperor to reward either of you with a title, but that doesn’t mean you can’t have a prosperous life. A successful one.”
“A safe one?” Sophie asked.
“Ah. Well, as to that, I am no farseer. No man or woman can see their future clearly. And no life is without risk. But the risks here are no greater than in Anglion, surely? For one thing, I believe our skills in healing and other matters are somewhat advanced compared to yours. That should improve your chances.”
What wouldn’t improve their chances would be to remain the center of royal intrigues. But it was difficult to see how they could remove themselves from that position. It might become easier once they made a choice between two countries, but right now she didn’t think that either monarch would want her to stray too far from their control.
It felt like stepping from one cage to another. True, the Illvyan cage was somewhat more spacious. And it offered more options. Along with less chance of execution as a traitor, for a start. But it was still a cage if she couldn’t avoid becoming a tool for the emperor to manipulate.
She leaned back against the carriage seat, suddenly exhausted. Cameron beside her was a large warm presence but less comforting than he usually would have been. He said he owed her an apology. And maybe he was sorry for what he had said. That didn’t necessarily mean that he hadn’t meant it at the time.
Which cut her as surely as though he had taken a blade and stabbed her. But that was something else she couldn’t do anything about. She was getting very tired of feeling helpless.
Her eyelids drifted closed and she was nearly asleep when the carriage suddenly jolted, sending her crashing against the wall.
“What was—” She didn’t get a chance to finish her question. Because something flashed in sudden brilliant orange in the window beside Cameron and the carriage went tumbling through the air like a child’s toy tossed in temper.
The world turned around her dizzyingly, and all she could hear was the splintering of wood and smashing glass and the shrieks of horses. She thought she heard Cameron call her name and reached for him, but they were still tumbling and her hands closed on empty air.
She could feel him through the bond but as she was tossed through space, she couldn’t grasp exactly where she was, let alone him. She tried again but just as she thought she might have him, her head cracked sickeningly against something and the world went dark.
When her eyes opened, it was to the sensation of hands closing around her, tugging and pulling. It took a moment to remember. Carriage. Explosion. Falling.
That explained the pain in her head and the blurriness of her vision. The hands pulled again and she wriggled, trying to help them, but couldn’t free herself. Until it registered that there were voices accompanying the grasping hands, and that they were speaking Anglish, not Illvyan. The voice closest to her said clearly, “Get the witch, let the other two die. They do not matter.”
The hands around her wrists tightened, yanked at her a third time, the pressure harder, jerking at her shoulders. The fabric of her cloak, which she hadn’t fastened, ripped and tore away, and then she was sliding upward despite trying to resist.
“Let me go,” she screamed as her side scraped over something rough, but whoever had hold of her didn’t stop and soon she tumbled out of the carriage and onto the cobblestones with a thump that stole her breath.
She gasped, then sucked in a breath as she started to push herself up.
“Stay still, witch,” a low, harsh voice rasped, and she looked up to find a gun pointed at her face. The man wielding it wore a hooded cloak and had covered his face with some sort of black cloth tied around it, but his intent was clear enough.
Where was Cameron? Or Henri? She turned her head, pretending to shake it slowly as if to clear it.
The street they were in seemed empty, the buildings closed up and dark. Not an area with houses, then. But in a city as large as Lumia, someone should be around. Someone had to have heard the commotion caused by the carriage. Someone would surely call for help. There was a city guard as well as the Imperial Guard. Where were they?
The partially shattered carriage lay on its side about fifty feet away, the two horses fallen beside it. One was struggling to rise, whinnying hoarsely in distress, hopelessly tangled in its harness and held down by the weight of its companion, who lay motionless. To the left of the carriage, a fire danced on a patch of the road, burning and spitting sparks. Pieces of debris littered the street, some of them on fire. A chunk of something that might have been a door lay just a few feet from her, cracked and half-destroyed. She shuddered. So much damage. She was lucky to have survived.
“We should go.” A second man joined the man with the gun. His face was covered, too, but he wore no cloak. His clothes were dark but simple, she thought. Plain jacket, shirt, trousers. Short boots. He bent down and she tried to scramble backward out of reach, but her feet couldn’t find purchase on the stones and slippery velvet, and she only made it a foot or two before he grabbed hold of her wrist and hauled her to her feet.
She struck at him with her free hand. “Let me go!”
“Quiet.” The gun swung round to face her.
Now that she was standing, she could see beyond the carriage. About a hundred feet past it stood a second carriage with a team of four, the horses dancing a little nervously in the smoky light, and a driver seated ready.
Goddess, no. She wasn’t going wherever they were planning to take her.
She reached for her bond with Cameron. She could feel him but couldn’t see him and he felt quiet, like he did when he was asleep. Unconscious? Hurt? Both? She couldn’t say. But she needed some of his power. She had no other weapon at her disposal.
Pulling on both the bond and the ley line she could sense somewhere off to her right, she tugged at the chunk of door on the street and sent it arcing up to smash into the man holding her. He let go as the wood hit him, falling back with a shocked “Oof.” He fell backward and she heard a crack that she hoped was his head hitting the stones but she didn’t stop to look. Instead, she lunged for the gun.
The hooded man, attention drawn to his comrade for a second, didn’t dodge immediately or fire, thank the goddess, and her hands closed around the weapon, trying to wrench it free.
“Bitch.” The hooded man swore and swung a fist at her face. Pain arced through her head, bursts of light spinning in front of her eyes, and she started to fall forward. The action pulled the gun down but she somehow managed not to let go of it, instead trying to push it around so it faced her attacker. There was a sudden deafening sound and something stung her arm. The hooded man cursed again, falling back, clutching at his right thigh. For a moment she thought she’d been shot, as her arm throbbed painfully.
But if she had, it couldn’t have hit anything too vital because she was still standing. She drew a breath, screamed, “Help me, please,” as she reached for the ley line again, intending to try to send another piece of debris against her attacker.
Instead, suddenly, there was a sanctii between Sophie and the man in the cloak. She saw his eyes widen in horror above his mask, then he lifted the gun. The sanctii roared something in its own tongue and the gun suddenly . . . vanished. The man in the hood turned and bolted for the carriage, his motions panicked. The carriage had already begun to turn around, the driver having obviously decided that retreat was the order of the day. The sanctii roared again and stepped forward as though it intended to give chase.
“No,” Sophie yelled. “Please. There are others here who need help.” Her attacker in the hood showed no sign of turning back. In fact, as she watched, he reached the carriage and scrambled up beside the driver as the turn was completed.
The sanctii turned back to Sophie. Under the dim light of the streetlamps it almost looked like part of the road itself, the color of its skin blending into the shadowed cobblestones. Its black eyes reflected the light of the fire. It was the sanctii from the ball, she realized. The one who had defended Cameron.
“Please,” she said, then started to move back toward the fallen carriage as the one containing the men who’d attacked them clattered away down the street, the driver whipping his horses into a gallop. “Please, I need help.”
She glanced around. The second man was lying motionless on the cobblestones, seemingly no threat. So. Cameron and Henri. She turned and ran back to the wrecked carriage, ignoring the pain in her arm. Bending, she stuck her head through the shattered hole in the side of the carriage facing her, peering into the dark. There was no one inside and she pulled back, skirting around behind the carriage. With no knife, she had no way to try and cut the surviving horse free. She had to focus on Cameron and Henri.
Was the sanctii following her? She didn’t look back. As she reached the other side of the carriage, the first thing that caught her eye was someone lying in the street about fifteen feet beyond the carriage itself. Henri. The figure was too short to be Cameron. And it seemed very still. Her footsteps quickened, even though her legs didn’t want to entirely obey her, tremors running through them and the rest of her, the shivers enough to set her teeth chattering.
When she reached Henri, she saw his chest rise and fall. Slow, perhaps, but steady. Unconscious. But alive. There was no blood on his head or anywhere that she could see, though his cheek was scraped and part of his hair soot-blackened. She patted him down quickly, feeling for broken bones the way she’d seen her father do with animals that had fallen or gotten themselves trapped somewhere. All the while her mind was screaming at her to find Cameron. But she couldn’t leave Henri until she knew he wasn’t seriously hurt.
But her hurried inspection found nothing and with a sigh of relief, she heaved herself back upright and turned back to the carriage. At first she didn’t see him, his evening clothes blending into the near-black shadow cast by the ruined carriage. But then her eyes found a paler patch amongst all the black and it resolved, as she squinted, into a head. Cameron’s head. Soot-stained like Henri’s, which was why she hadn’t seen him immediately. He lay on his stomach on the cobbles, his head turned to the side so only half his blackened face was visible.
“Cameron.” It was more breath than word but it was all she could manage against the fear suddenly gripping her throat and heart. “Cameron.”
She had no recollection of moving but suddenly she was by his side. He didn’t move when she called his name or when she started to frantically pat him down as she had Henri. His breathing was slow and, to her eye, not entirely steady. There was a gash on his forehead that had bled everywhere but she had brothers. She knew head wounds were misleading and blood was no longer pouring from it, so it couldn’t be that deep. Of course, his skull could be cracked beneath the cut, but she didn’t have the knowledge to determine if it was or to attempt to heal such an injury.
No other cuts revealed themselves as she continued her inspection, though the sleeve of his jacket was ripped almost clean off. Relief had begun to flood through her until she came to his left foot. It was tangled through the wheel, which was half off the axle, listing at a drunken angle. But not just the wheel, his foot was caught on something else that she couldn’t quite see. She slapped a hand on one of the cobblestones closest to her, calling earthlight, but the glow wasn’t strong enough to help much. Part of the underside of the carriage was buckled and twisted, and she couldn’t make out exactly what had caught Cameron’s foot.
When she wrapped her hands around his shin and tugged gently, Cameron moaned and, worse, the carriage itself moved, creaking alarmingly. Goddess. If she pulled something the wrong way, she might just send the entire weight of the carriage crashing down on him.
He moaned again and she glanced back, but his eyes were still closed. The sensible thing to do would be to wait for help, but what if the men who had attacked them regained their courage and decided to return for a second attempt to take her? She’d be helpless. Cameron and Henri, more so. She’d heard the men say they didn’t need “the other two.” And they had guns. What if they returned and decided to put a bullet through Cameron’s brain?
She scrubbed a hand over her face to brush away the tears that threatened to fall. When she blinked them clear, she saw a pair of thick gray legs beside her and looked up to see the sanctii.
It hadn’t left. Thank the goddess. Sanctii were strong, weren’t they? Could the creature lift and hold the carriage so she could try to release Cameron’s foot? She stared up at the impassive face. “His foot is caught. I can’t pull it free because the carriage is broken. It might fall. Can you lift it?”
The sanctii tilted its head. Then turned to face the carriage. It leaned forward slowly, its body bending gracefully in a way that seemed impossible with the rocklike skin, and inspected the carriage much as Sophie had. When it straightened, it turned back to Sophie.
“Help,” it said, nodding and stretching its massive hand toward her.
She didn’t know what it wanted. Did it need her to stand? The chill radiated off its skin like an icy wind but she forced herself to ignore the sensation. She put her left hand on Cameron’s leg, wanting the comfort of something warm and human, and lifted her hand to place it in the sanctii’s.
There was a sensation rather like a lightning flash or her world being turned briefly inside out and then put back again. Everything whirled around her and she closed her eyes, willing herself not to vomit. When the nauseous sensation faded, she opened them. To see the carriage seemingly suspended in air about six inches off the road.
“What—” She stopped. This wasn’t what she had meant when she asked it to lift the carriage, but what was done was done. And there was no denying the carriage was lifted. She’d never heard of a spell to make something float. She had no idea what the creature had done, but this wasn’t the moment to waste any time asking questions. “Thank you.” She nodded at the sanctii, and then pulled her hand free and crawled back to the wheel.
Cameron’s leg was raised with the rest of the carriage. The angle looked uncomfortable but not dangerous. It seemed the sanctii had been careful to consider the tolerances of the human body when it had decided how high to lift the carriage.
She slapped more of the cobblestones, lighting them up, though the magic seemed to come slowly and made her head spin slightly again. With the carriage raised, she could see more clearly. One of the springs that eased the carriage’s ride was twisted around the axle and Cameron’s foot. If she could unwrap it, then she should be able to ease him free. But the thing was made of coiled steel nearly half an inch thick. She doubted she was strong enough.
Easing back, she turned to look at the sanctii. “Can you help me again? Please?” She patted the cobblestones beside her. “There’s a spring holding his leg and I’m not strong enough to shift it, I think. But you may be. I don’t think it needs magic. Look.” She pointed at the spring. The sanctii knelt next to her and peered down to look through the wheel, curving its upper body into an awkward crouch.
It—no, she, Ikarus had said the sanctii at the ball was female—looked back at Sophie and then reached forward and tapped the carriage. Which rose obediently another half a foot into the air, dragging Cameron’s leg upward.
“Careful,” Sophie said, only stopping herself from trying to tug the creature away with an effort. She had asked her to help. She needed to trust her. The sanctii reached through the wheel with both hands. Metal groaned and Cameron’s leg twisted slightly. Sophie leaned in to support it and as the sanctii moved back, his foot came free of the wheel and she was able to lower it to the ground.
“Thank you,” she said to the sanctii. “Thank you, I—” The carriage suddenly crashed to earth, sending up a cloud of dust and splinters. Sophie heard a creak and looked up to see the wheel toppling toward her, but then the sanctii’s hand was there. She caught the wheel, pushing it back toward the carriage, where it stayed.
Sophie stared at the creature, unable to think for a moment. Indeed, the world began to spin a little again, as though she had reached the limits of her strength. But as she fought the dizziness, she heard the sound of hoofbeats in the distance. Ikarus appeared next to the carriage and the sanctii who had helped her winked out of existence as though she had been a figment of Sophie’s imagination.
As Ikarus bellowed and vanished, too, Sophie allowed herself the luxury of giving in to the demands of her body and slid into darkness.