EARLIER ...

After I woke from my nap--with Princess’s advice about traps at the forefront of my mind--I trotted across the basement and cornered Chetty.

“Don’t bother looking for Erdinand,” I told her. “I don’t care where he is. I know something better. I know where he’s going to be.”

She chewed her lower lip, her eyes clouded with thought. Then she exhaled worriedly. “You want to snatch him from Gallows Square?”

“Yep.”

“That’s a bad idea, Alex. That’s a bad idea in so many ways. That’s a terrible, suicidal kind of bad idea.”

“Instead of finding Erdinand,” I told her. “I need you to find Usim.”

“Usim?”

“Command Wren’s son, the one who helped the ollie kids escape. He just arrived here, in the same caravan as me. His name is Usim. He’s the one you need to find.”

“I know who he is, Alex. Why do you need to find him?”

So I explained the plan, then she and Hollis improved the plan. And then, at the height of the urgency, I bathed and ate and strapped into the new armor that Maryne had fitted for me. Padded leather leggings and hauberk with scales embedded between the layers. Not metal ‘scales’ like in scale mail armor on Earth, though. No, these were scales of the banded glide-lizard: very light, and very hard to pierce. The leather and padding around the scales helped absorb blunt damage, and Tansy told me that the armor was good for a mobility-based fighter, which I hadn’t known I was.

I also got three new pairs of socks from an ollie guy who knitted, which was sweet, and well-fitting armored boots from Chettur. After I strapped into my new gear, I sorted through my domain, removing the clutter, and adding anything I thought might come in handy.

Then I paced for an hour until I annoyed Hollis so much that he told Tansy to shoot blunted arrows at me. I practiced blipping them into my domain until Chetty got word about Usim.

He was locked in his bedroom.

“Like ... a teenaged kid being locked in their room?” I asked.

“What else could that possibly mean?” she said.

“Right. So where is he?”

She told me--then gave me a map. And a key.

“Well, that makes things easier,” I said.

* * *

An hour later, I frayed into smoke behind a spiny-leaved bush then wafted across the street. An updraft carried me easily higher until I reached the level of my target window. It felt so much like flying that I would’ve laughed in glee if I’d had a mouth.

Except when I pushed myself toward the window, the draft kept moving me higher. I struggled and squirmed and clawed through the air, trying to surf on air currents and gravity. Oh! The word ‘surf’ made me realize I should stop struggling and clawing.

I relaxed into the motion. Down. Down more, faster ... oops! Up, up, up ...

Anyway. I managed to trickle through the window, then ran out of mana a little too soon. I returned to my body ten feet above Usim’s bed, with my head pounding. I fell directly onto his mattress. Fortunately he was in a reading chair nearby. He yelped, I hushed him, then he spent a minute babbling about me taking shape from ‘mist.’

“I need your help,” I told him.

He took a breath then exhaled slowly. “For what? I don’t have much information, and you don’t need ... ah. I see. All I truly offer is my importance to my mother.”

“Yeah.”

“You want use me to get to her.” He looked uneasy, and scratched his orange chin. “For leverage.”

“Damn you’re quick.”

“How, exactly, do you want to use me?” he asked, then frowned at me. “You want to take me hostage?”

“You’re so smart that it’s a little scary. But yeah, that’s exactly what I want, if it’s okay with you?”

“You’re asking? Like, for my permission?”

“We saved those ollie kids together, Usim. I don’t know about you, but that means something to me.”

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“I ... “ He shook his head. “Wait, back up. You’re here to take me hostage, yes?”

“I’m kind of hoping you’ll just agree.”

“And if I don’t?”

I leaned back on the bed and smiled. “Oh, this is good, you’ll like this. If you agree, that means you’re my hero. Fearless, badass, all that. Then we work together to save Erdinand. Just a couple of buddies on a mission. That’s my hope.”

“And if I say no?”

“If you don’t agree to help, that means--well, you’re still smart as hell and twice as brave. But if you’re willing to let them murder Erd without raising a hand, that’s pretty non-heroic. So then I don’t have to feel too bad about kidnapping you?”

“You’re the strangest human I’ve ever met.”

“Oh, that reminds me. I’m Alex. We were never properly introduced.”

“Hello, Alex,” he said. “I’m Usim. What is your goal?”

“To save Erdinand’s life.”

“Is that all?”

“Yeah. Well ... yeah.”

He gave me an orange-eyed stare. “You don’t sound sure.”

“It’s all I want here, now, with any of this.”

“I’m still not sure if I believe you.”

“Okay, well I, uh ... I also want a few words with Miss Kathina about what she did to your friend.”

His orange eyes flinched at the memory, but he just said, “Can I bring a book along?”

* * *

So I freed Usim from his bedroom using the very convenient key, then snuck him from the building using the even-more-convenient servants who actually worked with Chetty. We bundled Usim into a cart, blindfolded him, then led him eventually into the cellar, where the ollies greeted him almost like they’d greeted me. They bowed to him and praised him. Usim flushed and stammered--and looked absolutely thrilled. He was precocious as hell, but still just a kid.

Then Hollis and the other ollies headed for the city center, to begin sifting into position around an alley that opened into Gallows Square. Their job was to escape with Erdinand while I kept a blade at Usim’s neck. Once Erd was definitely out of danger, I’d release Usim then run down the stairs and waft back through the bottleneck.

Nobody could follow me there.

We’d all be safe.

Easy peasy.

Of course, first I needed to clear the bottleneck a little. Just enough for Usim to crawl through to the Gallows Square side, so I could hold him ‘hostage’ there. Then I’d collapse the rubble behind me when I left. I’d considered just showing his mother his shirt or his book, to prove that I had him, but in the end I decided I needed his mother to see him with an axe at his throat.

So after he joined us, Tansy led me and him downstairs, through the buried houses, across the buried streets. Past the maze of alleys, with Usim asking wide-eyed questions the entire time. He loved everything about the cellar: the mystery and the history and even the danger. Meanwhile, I loved watching Tansy swing between hostility to the Sixers generally and gratitude for Usim personally. I knew she wanted to wish a terrible death on his mother, but because Wren was his mother, she kept leaving her more murderous sentiments unsaid.

When we reached the bottleneck I started clearing a narrow passage of rubble. I wafted inside, blipped stones into my domain, moved a few feet, then bamfed them into the sinkhole I’d found. I was scared that I’d unbalance the structure and cause a crash or a rumbling: something audible from outside. So I moved slow and steady ... and eventually made a path. Big enough for me, but not Tansy. Which was intentional. I wanted her behind the bottleneck, to watch my back and help with the retreat.

After I helped Usim through the tunnel in the rubble, we squeezed behind the crates in the sub-basement of the storage tower. We waited anxiously in the cramped space, giving the ollie team enough time to get in place in the square above. Well, I waited anxiously. Usim read a treatise about mountain fauna on tropical islands that’d I’d stored in my domain for him.

We waited.

We waited.

And then, moments before the executioner killed Erdinand, I said hello to the gathered crowd.

Well, I said: “Why would I hurt him? I’m not going to hurt him. Even if you kill Erdinand I won’t hurt Usim. Nah, I’ll slit his throat so fast that he won’t feel any pain.”

Usim swallowed audibly at his mother’s expression, because she looked beyond angry: she looked destroyed. She looked frightened, absolutely mindlessly terrified to the bone. As if the threat of losing Usim was killing her from the inside out. I wasn’t a parent but I was a doting uncle, and I’m pretty sure that even I would’ve looked exactly the same.

She didn’t waste any time, though. She snapped, “Release the prisoner! Sergeant, bring him to that alley.”

One of the soldiers behind her startled in surprise, then strode across the stage to free Erdinand.

“Stop right there!” Miss Kathina snapped at him. “My uncle does not negotiate with--”

Wren backhanded her off the stage. She fell with a flutter of light yellow, frilly fabric, and by the time she hit the ground Wren was already reaching for Erdinand. She gathered him into her arms, his wrists still bound, and leapt from the stage.

The soldiers shifted and stared as she carried Erdinand across the square toward an alley. And as I caught flashes of her through the crowd, Wren grew.

She grew about a foot taller in five seconds, reaching maybe six-and-a-half feet. Her horns stretched and thickened into spiraling ram’s horns and her shoulders widened. And even before her transformation finished she leapt thirty feet across the square. While carrying a full-sized crab-dude. At the apex of her leap, I noticed that she’d grown a tail. A goddamn tail. As thick as my arm and maybe five feet long. She’d hulked out. That was Wren’s gemmed power. She’d hulked out into demon-form.

She landed at the mouth of an alley, where she dropped Erdinand at the feet of Hollis and the other cloaked ollies.

“They got him, they’re picking him up,” I whispered to Usim. “It’s working, it’s working ...”

“Stop them!” Miss Kathina shouted, scrambling to her feet beside the stage, the shimmer of her shield clearing a space around her. “By the order of the viceroy, seize the commander--the ex-commander--and bring me that human, now!”

“Okay,” I said, releasing Usim. “Here comes your mom, and she doesn’t look happy. That’s my cue to leave.”

“Jikon, Jikap--stop that human!” Miss Kathina shouted, running toward me across Gallows Square, her shield clearing a path. “Tiral-ur, bring me the head of the commander. And her son!”

For a second, I couldn’t believe what I’d heard. What the fuck? Now she wanted to kill Usim?

“There will be three executions today!” Kathina shouted to the soldiers in the crowd. “Wren betrayed my uncle, betrayed Krelv. Seize her! Her son, the human--seize them! Her son is forfeit for her betrayal I demand ...”

As she ranted, I spotted a crachen with a speckled green shell approaching and remembered why the name Tiral-ur sounded familiar.

INTUIT: Cachen, Level 19

Shit. He was one of the two gemmed who’d killed Oksar. I hadn’t seen his power, but he was on the very cusp of second tier. Which meant it was time for me to go. Except ...

“They’re going to kill me!” Usim said, grabbing my arm. “Me and my mom. They’re going to kill us both.”