Then she let out her breath in a sigh.
“That’s that,” she said. “Hurrah. Another victory for applied magic.”
The Bellringers stood.
“We knew you could do it,” said Kervis, blushing. “You’re the smartest person we’ve ever met, and that’s a fact.”
Meralda found a weary smile. “And you are the bravest. Thank you. Let’s get back to the park, shall we? I could use something to eat.”
“Me, too,” said Tervis. “We should have brought some apples.”
“I’d rather eat with my feet on the ground,” said Kervis, opening the door to the flat. “Ready, Mage?”
“Ready.” Meralda pushed back her hair and brushed her magelamp to life. “Mind your step.”
Kervis grinned and stepped out of the light. Meralda followed, and Tervis locked the door behind.
A dozen steps down the stair, Meralda saw something black flit and dart just beyond the reach of her magelamp’s white glow.
A dozen steps later, she was sure she heard, fainter than a cricket’s footfall, the sound of crow’s wings beating.
Neither Kervis nor Tervis gave any sign of seeing shadows or hearing fluttering in the dark.
Meralda kept one hand in her bag and hurried down as fast as she dared.
“I do love the feel of the sun on my face,” said Kervis, as he stepped out into the light.
Meralda nodded, too out of breath to comment. Tervis brought up the rear, armor clinking and clanking as he hurried to catch up.
Meralda could see Mug waving his fronds from high atop the stands. She waved back. If Mug was shouting the din in the park made it impossible to hear.
Meralda searched the crowd ahead for any sign of Humindorus Nam, but saw only idling Tirlish and grinning, bruised Alons and a group of assorted carpenters all hurrying about their tasks. Hammers rose and fell. Saws cut and glinted in the sun.
Fromarch peeked from behind a stack of lumber, flashed Meralda a rare wide grin, and vanished.
Meralda let out her breath all at once. “Let’s fetch Mug and be off,” she said. The Bellringers hurried to her side. “I’ll get us some lunch on the way to the palace.”
“Don’t have to tell me twice,” said Kervis, who hurried for the stands. “I’ll fetch Mr. Mug. Won’t be a moment!”
“Don’t forget his sheet,” called Meralda.
“I’m sure Mr. Mug will remind him, ma’am,” said Tervis. He peered out at Meralda from behind his too-large helm. “Ma’am, it’s none of my concern, but you looked to be a mite angry back there. Did we say something wrong? Kervis didn’t mean anything about that Alon football he likes to watch.”
“No, nothing of the sort,” said Meralda, quickly. “I saw some…difficulties with the spell. That’s all. Extra work. I’m just grumpy these days.”
Tervis smiled. “Well, as long as it weren’t nothing we did.”
Kervis came charging back, a swaying, sheet-covered birdcage muttering in his hand.
“I’m going to be thoroughly sick,” said Mug, from within.
“Oh, let me have him,” said Meralda. Kervis handed the cage to her. “Here, we’ll be sitting still very soon.”
“Not soon enough. Oh. Donchen stopped by, mistress. Said to tell you something. Please slow down! I’m not a swinging vine, you know.”
Meralda glared, but slowed her walk.
“Yes? What was it?”
“His message?”
“Yes, his bloody message!”
“He said your bag is very heavy, and any carpenter in Tirlin would be proud to carry it for you some day. Are we walking up and down hills, mistress? Because it feels that way.”
Meralda frowned. “My bag isn’t that heavy…”
Meralda paused to let a trio of carpenters pass. One smiled at her and winked, and for an instant his face was Donchen’s.
“Actually, I could use some help,” she said aloud.
“I’d be honored,” said the man. His face was now Tirlish, his clothes stained and sweaty, his brown hair filled with sawdust. “Where are you heading, milady?”
“Just down the walk,” said Meralda. “Thank you for helping.”
Donchen hefted the bag across his shoulder. “Think nothing of it,” he said. His fingers flew in a series of small gestures. “We can speak, for a bit. You were followed here, Mage. I believe he meant you harm.”
Meralda smiled, as though discussing the sunshine. “What stopped him, then?”
“Three very determined wizards with a bagful of horrors. Your friends have been quite effective, Mage. The Vonats are beginning to distrust their co-conspirators. And each other. Remind me to avoid playing your card games with any of them.”
Meralda nodded. “And you? What have you been up to, sir?”
“Oh, idling in beer halls, gambling at dice, napping.”
“I doubt that.”
Donchen grinned. “We’re nearly there. You’re bound for your laboratory?”
“Yes. More work to do.”
“I’ll bring supper. Until then, be wary. I fear Nam’s mischief was merely delayed.”
“I have a bit of horror in my bag as well,” said Meralda. “But I thank you for your concern.”
Donchen smiled and nodded. “I’ll be close all the way to the palace,” he said. The Wizard’s Walk ended, leaving Meralda and Donchen to weave their way through the crowd to the curb, where Angis waited atop his buggy.
“Mug was right,” said Donchen, as he handed the sheet-covered bird cage to Meralda. “It is a nice red ribbon.”
And then he was gone, lost in the noisy crowd.
Mug feigned snores until the park was well behind them.
Tervis dozed in his seat. Angis and Kervis sang atop the cab, laughing at each other’s missed notes. Meralda pulled the ribbon from her hair and shoved it down in her bag and fumed as the carriage made its way slowly toward the palace.
Mug remained silent, though Meralda did catch a glimpse of a small brown eye peeking up at her from beneath the bed sheet’s edge.
The carriage rolled to a halt. Meralda leaned out of her window and saw that traffic up and down the street was at a standstill. In the distance, she heard whistles blow.
“Looks like a pair of fools have gotten their harnesses tangled up ahead, ma’am,” shouted Angis. “We might be here for a bit.”
Tervis stirred, rubbed his eyes, and reached suddenly for his sword.
Meralda’s door was flung open. Sunlight rushed in.
Time slowed to a crawl.
Tervis shouted. Whether a warning or his brother’s name or hers, Meralda couldn’t say.
Someone tossed a bundle of dirty rope through the open door. Meralda kicked at it, slid away from it, and tried to open the cab’s other door.
The handle wouldn’t budge. As Meralda struggled to open it, something struck the door hard from the outside. A length of thick dirty rope fell through the open cab window and looped itself over Meralda’s right shoulder.
The rope stank of oil and soot. A remote, perfectly calm corner of Meralda’s mind noted that the oil must have come from the dirigible docks, and that the stains would never come out of her blouse.
Tervis grabbed the rope with one hand and tried to draw his sword with the other. The cab was too confined to let his blade clear the scabbard. Tervis twisted and pulled, but before he could draw he was yanked whole by his ankles from the cab and dragged out the open door.
More stinking rope fell through the cab window. Meralda tried to slide away, but the ropes moved about her, pinning her right arm, wrapping themselves tight about her ankles, coiling and climbing up both her legs.
Mug screamed. A loop of rope coiled and struck like a serpent, smashing Mug’s cage nearly flat.
The ropes holding Meralda flexed and stood, knotting themselves suddenly into a crude simulacrum of a person, with loops of rope for arms, for legs, for trunk, for head.
Meralda managed to get her left hand in her bag before a turn of rope closed about that wrist, too.
Outside the carriage, Tervis screamed and Kervis swore and Angis flailed away at something with his stick. Meralda could see blades rising, men running, and impossible lengths of rope standing and moving and fighting.
Her hand closed about a warm, smooth metal cube as the rope man before her leaned down and slid his open noose of a face over Meralda’s head.
As the rope around her neck began to tighten, Meralda pulled the metal box from her bag and spat out the short harsh word that loosed the spell inside.
There was a flash, the smell of fresh air after a summer thunderstorm, a crack of infant thunder.
The rope man gripping Meralda sagged and dropped to the cab’s floor. The ropes about her arms and legs fell away.
She pulled the rope around her neck over her head, flung it down, and leaped from the cab, Mug’s crumpled, sheet covered birdcage in her hand.
Kervis and Tervis rose from the cobblestones, each covered in tangled ropes, each red-faced and winded. Angis leaped down from his cab, his nose bloody and his eyes wild.
Mug moaned softly beneath his bed sheet. Meralda grabbed Tervis and dragged him toward the sidewalk, where a frightened crowd gathered.
“Move away!” shouted Meralda. “They’ll be getting back up any moment now. Move! Run!” She lifted the icy cold cube and held it high. “Magic! Run!”
The crowd scattered. Meralda dragged Tervis as far as she could, then waved to Angis and Kervis to follow.
“Go!” she shouted. “Indoors! Hurry!”
Angis mopped blood with a handkerchief and spat. “Not without you, Mage.” He’d lost his stick, but he bent and pulled a short plain knife from his right boot. “I’m too old to run, anyway.”
“Ma’am, they’re moving,” said Kervis, lifting his sword. “What do we do?”
Run like I told you
, thought Meralda.
But they won’t. They’ll stand here and try to fight a hundred feet of mooring ropes with swords and kitchen knives.
She put Mug’s cage behind her, searched Milhop’s Irresistible Void for any hint of remaining capacity, and then let it fall to the street.
Filled. Impossibly so, but filled nonetheless. Useless.
The ropes stirred, coiling and shifting, animated again by some dark, foreign spell.
Whistles blew, down the way, and horns answered.
The guard will be here in moments,
Meralda thought.
A rope man rose. And another.
But the guard will be too late.
Tervis and Kervis moved to stand on either side of Meralda, blades level and ready, faces frozen in identical masks of grim determination. Angis cussed and bled and spat, shifting from boot to boot as if deciding on a dance.
The rope men stood. There were five, then six, then seven.
“It’s you they want, Mage,” said Angis. “Take to your heels. We’ll hold them here.”
Meralda dropped her bag. She held her arms out beside her, hands open and empty, and as the rope men advanced she called upon her Sight.
Instantly, a pair of flitting shadows descended, darting and swooping, just out of her reach.
“What oath would you speak to us, imperiled mage?”
“No oaths,” said Meralda, aloud. The steady scratch-slide of ropes dragged across cobblestones grew louder. “No vows. You help me, or you don’t. The choice is yours.”
“No oath?”
said one.
“No vow?”
said another.
“Many would pledge their lives.”
“Many would offer their souls.”
Kervis took a step forward. Tervis did the same.
“One cannot deny she is brave.”
“One cannot deny she is wise.”
“I do not love these things of rope.”
“Nor I. Are we agreed?”
Meralda’s hands closed about two plain ironwood staves.
“Behold, Mage,”
said one.
“This is how.”
Meralda’s mind filled with wonders.
As one, the rope men charged, arms flailing like whips, legs looping up and out, ready to catch, ready to coil, ready to wrap and knot and choke.
Meralda’s Sight expanded, clarified, became an all-encompassing panorama that showed not just the ropes that bore down on her, but the spells that gave them shape and lent them motion.
Meralda laughed. Pure, wild, unfettered magic blazed suddenly through her veins, her heart, her mind. She marveled at the simplicity of it, at the ease with which she could form it, shape it, bend it to her will.
No equations. No diagrams. No symbols.
Just magic. Just will.
Just…
this.
Meralda lifted Nameless and Faceless, crossing them above her head. Without even a word she loosed a wave of raw power that lifted the rope men like so many dry leaves, spinning them into a flailing tangle before incinerating rope and spells alike into a short-lived puff of golden incandescent air.
Every window for two blocks shattered. Horses bolted, dragging cabs and carriages up onto the sidewalks and sending them careening into storefronts and lamp posts. Two water mains burst, flooding streets and sending panicked crowds fleeing.
“Now the true test,”
said one.
“Let us see,”
said the other.
Meralda’s Sight raced. Everywhere, wonders lay hidden, coiled in impossibly small spaces she had never dreamed existed. Magic infused every stone, every brick, every breath of air, always in easy reach for anyone who dared seize it.
So easy,
thought Meralda.
So easy…
She heard voices. Distant, yes, and faint, but familiar, somehow. Friends, perhaps.
Voices full of concern.
Still, such power, so close, so simple to take.
“Ma’am, he’s hurt! Please! We need you right now!”
Someone tugged at Meralda’s sleeve.
Kervis. Kervis was speaking.
“Mr. Mug! Say something! Mr. Mug!”
Mug.
Meralda let go of the staves. They leaped into the sky, vanishing instantly, something very like approval hanging briefly in their wake.
Meralda’s head spun. She forced her Sight away, fell to her knees, blinked and squinted until she saw nothing but dirty cobblestones and the wild fearful eyes of Kervis and Tervis.
Kervis held Mug’s cage. He was carefully prying away the tangled bed sheet. Meralda gasped, her stomach knotting when she saw Mug’s bird cage was crushed nearly flat in the center.