The world blinked five times before Cragg let go of Abbee’s arm. She pitched forward into a snowbank and dry heaved. Abbee knelt there until her belly stopped lurching. The snow felt cool on her skin. Her temperature regulation kept the biting cold away, but the snow still melted on her spittle and stuck to her face. She registered thunder somewhere nearby. A lot of it. Crackling and sizzling and flashing lights. The ground trembled beneath her.
“Get up,” Cragg ordered. “I need your help.”
Abbee wiped her face and staggered to her feet. Her legs buckled and she swayed. Cragg grabbed her around the waist and held her up. Abbee stiffened at the contact and pushed him away. Hard. “Don’t touch me.”
Cragg let go, holding his hands out as Abbee found her footing. He dropped them and stepped away to climb a short, snowcapped hill. He stopped at the top. Light flashed from the other side, illuminating the low clouds overhead, followed by rolling thunder. Abbee followed, managing to walk up the hill without stumbling.
The scene in the valley below was chaos. The shattered ground was pockmarked with fresh fissures and blackened craters. On the far side, Abbee recognized the mountain she and Kai had landed on after their descent out of the sky. Or what was left of it. The top was missing. Kai and Emma flickered back and forth in a sea of wreckage, trading warp booms and blasts of crackling energy in equal amounts. A dozen House soldiers lay scattered around the field, broken and bloodied, red sashes fluttering in the wind.
Every few moments, a blast of sickly orange light erupted from Emma, only to hit empty air as Kai warped away. Everything the light touched vanished as if scrubbed out by a giant eraser. Kai answered with blizzards of black darts. The darts pummeled a shield around Emma, thudding into it and exploding on contact. Every few volleys, Emma’s shield shattered and re-formed. As Abbee watched the stalemate from her vantage point, she got the sense that Kai was holding back.
“I’m going to throw you down there,” Cragg said.
“You’re … what? No.”
“Emma’s using death magic,” Cragg said, gesturing at the latest blast of orange light from Emma. “And it’s not exhausting her. She’s used it four times since we got here. If I did that, I’d be on my knees, gasping for air.”
“So? I’m not—”
“I can’t risk Emma hitting Kai with it. He’s not using lethal force. I’ve seen at least three openings Emma has exposed, and he’s not exploiting them. I get it—he doesn’t want to kill his daughter—but if she breaks through his defenses, nothing’ll be left of him. I need you to distract her long enough for me to kill her.”
Abbee dropped back into a defensive stance out of grabbing range. “I’m not going down there. I’m not dying for whatever it is you and Ipsu were looking for. I don’t care how important you think it is.”
Cragg stepped toward her, and Abbee backed up to match.
The wizard snarled in frustration. “You’ll be fine. You can’t—”
“You don’t know that,” Abbee said, gesturing at Emma. “I’ve never been hit with that kind of magic.”
As Abbee pointed, Emma landed a glancing blow on Kai’s shield. It shattered into a million glittering fragments. Emma shrieked in triumph. She took a step forward. Hatred and fury twisted her face as she thrust both arms out at her father. A wave of orange light hurtled at Kai. He threw himself to the side. The light hit him and annihilated his right arm at the shoulder.
Kai dropped to his knees, stricken. He tried to stand, staggered, and collapsed.
Emma’s magic died. Her hands flew to her mouth, and even from this distance, Abbee saw horror on her face. Emma stepped toward Kai. Stopped. She shook her head in disbelief, and with a cry of despair, she warped away with a thunderous crack.
“Strange way to react to winning,” Abbee said.
Cragg warped away from the hilltop. He reappeared down in the valley, near where Kai had fallen. Abbee stuck her fingers in her ears to ease the ringing. She wished wizards would stop warping right next to her.
Abbee looked south. The afternoon sun illuminated the portal frame on its own hilltop. She guessed it would take her twenty minutes to get there. Twenty minutes to freedom from wizards and their mayhem. She looked back and saw Cragg kneeling, half-hidden behind a rock. She assumed he was searching Kai. Maybe he’d find what he was looking for. Abbee wondered what was worth Ipsu abandoning her in Akken after the worst ordeal of her life. She sighed. She wanted to know what was so important that Ipsu had spent twelve years looking for it. She took another look at the portal, muttered a curse, and turned toward the valley.
When Abbee reached Cragg, he was rifling through Kai’s pockets. And swearing. Lots of swearing. He pulled out random objects and tossed them aside. Some of them were far too big for a single pocket.
Emma’s death magic had cauterized Kai’s flesh. His right arm and most of his shoulder were gone. There was surprisingly little blood on the ground around his body.
“Is he dead?” Abbee asked.
“No,” Cragg answered.
“Huh. Tough old bastard.”
“Oh, no, he’d have died if I hadn’t gotten here,” Cragg said. “I’ve put him into stasis until I …” He trailed off as he pulled a short sword out of Kai’s pocket. It was half a meter in length, and its scabbard was covered with strange runes. The runes glowed a faint blue. “So that’s where this went.” He tried to balance it on his knees, but it kept sliding off. He handed it to Abbee. “Here, hold on to this.”
Abbee inspected the sword as Cragg continued to search Kai’s robes. It was lighter than steel but unbalanced enough to drag the point down as Abbee gripped the handle with one hand. The sword’s hilt was shaped oddly too, with four stubby prongs curving downward toward the handle. Wondering if she’d see a red glow, Abbee tried to expose the blade. It didn’t budge. She peered at the scabbard and saw a tab of some sort at the top. She pressed it and pulled on the hilt again. The blade popped up a few centimeters. The brightest white light she’d ever seen flashed out, blinding her. Pain seared Abbee’s palm. She caught a whiff of scorched meat. She tried to drop the sword, but it had fused to her hand.
“Gah!” Cragg yelped. “Put that away!”
Abbee pushed the sword back into its scabbard. The tab made an audible click, and the blade’s light died. She hissed in pain as she pried her hand from the hilt, her burnt flesh sticking in places as new skin formed beneath. Abbee blinked several times to get her vision to return to normal. When she could finally see again, she found Cragg staring at her in astonishment.
“What is this thing?”
“Something I asked you to hold, not play with.” Cragg regarded her for another long moment. “Fascinating.” He went back to searching. “This is taking too long, and I can’t risk Emma coming back.” He gestured, and the littered items on the ground rose up and coalesced into a shifting ball over Kai’s inert body. Cragg put his free hand on Kai’s leg. “Wait here.”
“Hang on—”
Cragg vanished with a crack, taking Kai and his loot with him.
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Abbee looked around at the empty, broken valley. She assumed Cragg had taken Kai to the enclave, and since she was holding this strange sword, she also assumed he’d come back. Still, it took a long time. She felt exposed out here. If Emma returned, all Abbee would have to protect herself was a blinding blade and a bunch of rocks.
A loud boom sounded behind her, and Abbee jumped. She whirled around and almost pulled the sword out again.
It was Cragg. He held out his hand. “Ready?”
Abbee drew a deep breath, steeling herself for another round of throwing up. “No, but okay.”
Cragg put his hand on her arm, and the world shifted five times. Abbee caught a glimpse of a room with beds before she was on her knees, staring at a polished stone floor and retching. Her stomach was empty, but her body didn’t care. She lost track of time while she dry heaved.
Her stomach eventually calmed. Abbee rocked back on her heels, still holding the sword, and looked around.
A dozen beds lined each windowless wall, with an open doorway at either end of the long room. Next to each door was a sink and counter space covered in cubbies, jars, and bins. It reminded Abbee of Whimsy’s infirmary in the Yard District Precinct. She wondered what interesting things she’d find stocked in a wizard infirmary.
Abbee climbed to her feet and found Kai on the nearest bed. Cragg was bent over him, yanking random items out of the wizard’s deep pockets. Cases, pouches, and satchels joined a growing pile on the adjacent bed. Glass bottles filled with glowing liquid went onto the shelf above the headboard. The pile grew until it overflowed the bed, and Cragg was putting things on the floor.
“I’m still on the first pocket,” the wizard complained. “This is going to take forever.”
Abbee remembered Kai putting things into his robe, back at his house in Akken. “Kai said something about it, about the pockets. There’s a flaw, I think.”
“What? What flaw?”
“He said if you put too many things in, they would ‘overrun the buffer.’ Or maybe ‘overflow.’ Something like that.”
Cragg blinked. “Wait, really?”
“Yeah, that’s what he said. ‘Overrun the buffer.’”
“Okay. We’ll try it.”
Cragg stood up and held open the pocket he’d been emptying. He gestured with his free hand, and the items scattered around him rose off the bed and floor. One by one, they whizzed back into Kai’s pocket. All except the golden vials. Cragg looked around the room and gestured. Bins and bottles flew off the shelves and into Kai’s robes. Bedding off all the beds. The beds themselves wrenched apart with screams of tortured metal. All vanished into Kai’s pockets. Cragg stopped when the room was bare.
“Hmm, I guess I’ll have to …”
Something was happening to Kai’s clothes. All his pockets bulged as if full. The cloth rippled and jumped. Abbee heard a low rumble coming from Kai.
Cragg backed up. “I think we want to—”
Abbee and Cragg staggered back as Kai and his bed disappeared under an avalanche of random objects. It was as if the contents of a giant curiosity shop had suddenly materialized in the infirmary. Bedding and bed frames came out first, rocketing out and banging off the ceiling and walls. Pieces of a headboard whizzed past Abbee’s head. She retreated through the nearest doorway. Magical lights in the ceiling came on, illuminating another empty infirmary.
Cragg disappeared with a warp boom and reappeared in the same room as Abbee.
“How much is in there?” she shouted over the jangling din.
Cragg shrugged. “We’re about to find out.”
Bags and pouches fountained up out of Kai and tumbled down a growing hillock. At one point, several small kegs were jettisoned. One of them bounced past Abbee and knocked into a bed frame behind her. It burst open, and amber liquid splashed out onto the floor. Abbee caught a whiff of strong alcohol. “That smells like Kivan whiskey.”
Cragg bent down and put his finger in it. He stuck his finger in his mouth. Gave an appreciative nod. “Good stuff, too.”
Abbee couldn’t see Kai anymore. “Will he be okay under all that?” she asked.
“Yes,” Cragg said. “He’s in stasis. You could drop a boulder on him, and he’d be fine.”
“Can you heal him?”
Cragg shook his head. “The only person I’ve ever seen regrow limbs is you.”
Abbee shot him a look full of violence. “I’m not talking about that. Aside from his shoulder, will he survive?”
“Maybe,” Cragg said, shrugging. “I need someone to look at him first.”
“Who?”
Cragg stared at something over Abbee’s shoulder. His eyes widened. “It’s here.”
The wizard walked through the pool of whiskey and past Abbee, wading into the small mountain of objects. The flow of things slowed down. Cragg clambered over the pile and pushed aside a saddle, of all things.
“Aha!” he shouted. “Finally.”
The wizard half staggered, half fell down the pile back toward Abbee. He walked past her, cradling an object in both hands, and sat down on one of the beds. He balanced his hands on his knees. Abbee came over to get a good look. Cragg held a small stone tablet. It had strange designs etched on the sides, and a round emerald poked up from the top. Abbee frowned. She glanced at the sword in her grip. The runes on the scabbard and the etching on the stone tablet looked the same.
“This is why Ipsu left you behind,” Cragg said, hefting the strange brick. “He went to find this.”
“What is it?”
“The key to everything,” Cragg said.
Abbee waited for him to elaborate, but he didn’t. “You’re being vague again.”
Cragg looked up and met Abbee’s gaze. His expression turned considering. “I need your help.”
“No,” Abbee said, shaking her head. “Forget it. I’ve had enough of wizards, thank you, and more than enough of you. I’ve not forgotten what you did to me. How about you tell me what that’s for? And then I’ll go.”
“Go where?” Cragg countered. “The hunters have a tag on you. They’ll find you wherever you try to run. If you stay, I can protect you.”
“I find that idea extremely offensive,” Abbee told him. “You tortured me, made me kill people, and now you want me to forget about it? Help you, even? No. You’re lucky I don’t try to kill you with this burning sword. Something tells me you’d have a hard time defending yourself against it.”
“It’s not a sword,” Cragg said. “Well, it looks like one, but it’s not.” He gave her a half smile. “The fact that you exposed the blade and didn’t immediately explode tells me—”
Abbee sucked in a breath. “You didn’t tell me it was dangerous. You should have warned me.”
“I think you’re safe,” Cragg said. “Abbee, I need your help. The world needs your help. If I’m successful, the hunters won’t be able to hurt you. They won’t be able to hurt anybody.”
Abbee frowned. “Still going on with the very vague things.”
She hated it, but Cragg was right. She had nowhere to go. If the hunters could find her anywhere, holing up in Veronna’s wizards’ enclave, a place they apparently couldn’t enter, didn’t seem like the worst idea in the world. She tried to ignore the idea that she’d be stuck in here for a year. With Cragg.
“Answer two questions,” she said.
“Only two?”
“To start.” Abbee took a deep breath. “When Ipsu found me in the mover pit all those years ago, was that random?”
Cragg shook his head. “No. You were a fortunate side effect of the golems.” He smiled. A genuine, warm grin. “You’re the best thing that’s happened in a long while. A very long while.”
Abbee planned on finding out where all of Cragg’s gems had come from, and if there were more of them. “Second question.” She gestured at the stone tablet. “What’s that thing for? And don’t be vague. Tell me the truth.”
Cragg drew a deep breath and exhaled. “It’s part of a machine, built a long time ago and never used. Some thought the machine was a weapon. Others believed it a way to create a superhuman. Technically, both are possible, but that’s not its true purpose. We had to hide the machine’s purpose from its builders. We even tricked the person who designed it—she had no idea what it was really for.”
“Which is?”
“To break an ancient stalemate and make the world truly safe. Finally.”
“You’re being vague again,” Abbee said.
“Sorry,” Cragg said. “Force of habit. If the machine is used on the right day in eleven years, at exactly the right moment, it will destroy a very old, very dangerous being. Probably.”
Abbee squinted at him. She couldn’t tell if he was being truthful or not. He sounded sincere, but everything he’d said sounded insane. The eleven-years bit, however, also coincided with the next Miracle Day in Joor. The monastery. Abbee knew that this had to do with the monastery. “Probably?”
“Well, it’s never been tried before, but the theory is sound.” He waved his hand. “That’s enough for now. Please stay. I need your help to secure the machine.”
Abbee wondered why Cragg Rawley, a wizard, and quite possibly a monastery wizard, needed her help to do anything. “Where is this machine?”
“Here in Veronna. So not far. Please, stay. You could be the key to everything. I’ll make it worth your time. I can teach you how to control your latent.”
Abbee wanted that a great deal. She hated causing pain to people who didn’t deserve it. She hadn’t completely ruled out the possibility that she was low-level stealing life just by walking through a crowd. Learning her own limits was worth a few days at least.
Abbee sat down on the bed opposite Cragg. Spread her fingers out, feeling the soft cloth. It felt good to sit. She glanced at the tablet in the wizard’s hands. Besides her latent, Abbee wanted to know if this story about a grand machine was true. Wanted to know if the tablet had been worth Ipsu spending twelve years in a stuffy basement with a crazy old wizard and his even crazier daughter. But most of all, she wanted to know who Cragg was and why he’d done what he had to her. She’d do something permanent to him if she caught a whiff of betrayal. Wizard or not, she’d find a way.
Cragg arched a brow. “Your threat outline has made some alarming oscillations while we’ve been talking.”
“Can you blame me?”
“No. Just making an observation.”
“I’ll stay.” Abbee held up her finger. “But I’ve got a long list of demands. The first one is a deal-breaker, so get ready.”
Cragg’s expression grew suspicious. “What do you want?”
“Have you got satin sheets?”