The Silvered (71 page)

She dragged herself up onto her elbows as Tomas raced past, up onto her knees as he reached the top of the stairs, and onto her feet
just barely in time to move out of the way as the two came back down in an interlocked mess of growling and snapping teeth. From the sound of the impact, Tomas had landed on the bottom, limiting the damage to the starved wolf’s prominent bones.

He fought like a crazed animal. Tomas had not only strength and speed, but reason on his side.

The fight quickly became toenails scrabbling against stone and Tomas growling with a mouth full of fur. Mirian inched forward until her boots touched something solid then she dropped carefully to her knees, bent forward, and moved enough air to wrap her scent around the tangled muzzles. “You’re going to change when he lets you go,” she said. “You’re going to change because you need to heal. Now, Tomas.”

The matted fur under her hand turned to greasy skin.

“Give me…” His voice was so rough she could barely make out the words. “Give me…a reason…to live.” Skin turned back to fur, rising and falling under Mirian’s hand as he panted.

She heard Tomas grunt as a small body dove back into his arms.

They could go back the way they’d come in. Get the men up into the palace. Sleep a few tourists. Get them clothes. Put them in the guards’ clothes if it came to it. Get out the north gate and find a place to hide until dark. Feed them. If she had to sleep half of Karis to get them out, she would. That was the plan and there was nothing in it she couldn’t do. Hadn’t done—sleeping, stealing, feeding, sleeping again.

At the top of the stairs, the guards worked to free the bolt. Guards who’d locked a child in a cell with his dead father.

They had guns. Silver shot.

They thought they knew what they’d be facing.

Revenge seemed like the best reason she could give him right now.

They were almost across the Sun Gallery before they ran into a problem. Thanks to Danika’s constant murmur as well as the Sisters’ reputation for aggressive solicitation, the crowds peering at the wall of glass, at the golden tiles, at the golden Sun, parted before the five of them and closed up behind them, willingly blind.

Unfortunately, there were always priests in this part of the palace.

Reiter saw a smiling face perched above that ridiculous court collar closing the distance between them, clearly intending to intercept them before they reached the open doors to the courtyard. He sped up as much as he dared, but a soldier leading four Sisters of Starlight out of the palace at a dead run wouldn’t help them remain unseen. With luck, this particular priest had never had contact with the charitable…

The priest’s smile turned to a puzzled frown. Puzzled turned angry.

Seemed their luck had run out.

Although not entirely, as the priest chose to grab the redhead’s arm before he yelled, “Impos…”

She tapped his forehead. “Sleep.”

If they hadn’t just been so thoroughly screwed, Reiter would have found his expression amusing. “Can you lot run in your condition?” he asked as the priest slowly crumpled to the tiles.

“Our condition?” When he gestured at her stomach, the redhead narrowed her eyes. “We walked out of Aydori in our condition. We were thrown into dungeon cells in our condition. Danika was tortured in our condition. We can run.”

“Good. About that,” he added when her eyes narrowed even further. Far too close already, a trio of priests hurried toward their fallen comrade. “Run!”

A pair of soldiers flanked the courtyard door. Reiter shoved the redhead left. As the soldier on the right moved to intercept, Reiter drove a fist into his stomach and, as he folded forward gasping, gave him a hard shove out the door and down the four broad stairs. A mass of vines came up through the cracks between the pavers and held him in place. Although Reiter knew they couldn’t afford the time, he turned to stare at the brown-eyed mage.

She shrugged as she ran by him. “Like weeds, those. Leopald’s gardeners is idiots.”

Two small fountains erupted with force enough to blow a stone lion to pieces. People screamed and scattered. Roses grew to hedges. They had a clear run all the way to the balloon.

There were Shields stationed on the palace roof, but it was a big roof and they were in an interior courtyard. Reiter grabbed the
downed soldier’s weapons and ran to catch up, an itch between his shoulder blades.

“Ready!”

As the guard on the other side of the door sheared the bolt, Mirian dissolved the hinges then reached out and called every piece of silver she could feel. She let the metal splash against the other side of the door, then reached deep for her last reserves, blowing door and silver out to slam into the mass of men. As Tomas and the eight adults charged past her, she lifted the boy onto her hip—skin and bones and light enough that, as exhausted as she was, his weight meant nothing.

It seemed reasonable to assume that the light making her eyes water had been intended to blind the freed Pack as they attacked out of darkness. Bad planning. The Pack depended on their noses more than their eyes. Mirian could smell nothing over the stink of the boy in her arms.

But she could hear.

Wet tearing. Crunch of bone. A yelp. Even disarmed, the guards weren’t helpless and only Tomas was at anything near full strength.

When the screaming stopped, the sounds grew wetter. She was about to set the boy down,

Then stopped.

Someone howled—it didn’t sound like Tomas.

It bounced off walls and ceilings and floors, then faded and turned to the sound of nails against tile as the pack raced away.

“Tomas?”

Of course, he’d gone with them. Or after them.

Mirian set the boy on his feet, pried his hands off her skirt, took his left in her right, felt his right grip her thumb. She could see shadows on the floor that might have been guards’ bodies, but, given the medieval dungeons already in use, they could have been pit traps. “I can’t see.” She could tell herself it was because she’d come out of darkness into bright light, but she knew it had more to do with the mage-craft she’d used freeing the Pack. “You need to direct me around obstacles. Can you do that?”

He whined and hung on.

She’d been speaking Aydori. When she repeated herself in Imperial, he sniffed and began pulling her carefully away from the door.

When her foot caught under what felt like an arm, she kicked it out of her way.

The boy understood Imperial. The ninth freed Pack had asked for a reason to live in Imperial. Mirian hadn’t noticed because she’d been speaking it for days. The emperor had not only encouraged Imperial citizens to kill and skin Imperial citizens, but he personally had them imprisoned and tortured.

He was making war not only on Aydori, but on his own people.

As the boy tugged her toward the sound of snarling, she ignored the way her boots slid on the wet floor.

“Mirian!” Tomas grabbed her arm and pulled her into a room so bright she thought for a moment she could see.

The aeronauts watched wide-eyed as four women ran past them, torn sheets flapping. Reiter grabbed the arms of the young areonaut he’d spoken to earlier and yanked her out of Danika’s way.

“They’re not allowed on the balloon! No one is!” She twisted in his grip. “His Imperial Majesty’s orders!”

Danika and the redhead were already on board, ignoring the aeronauts demanding they come down. The brown-eyed mage was nearly at the top of the half dozen stairs, an aeronaut hanging off the lower edge of her sheet. While waiting her turn, the youngest seemed to be causing more havoc with the fountains, spraying them toward the doors, keeping people inside. Smart.

“Look at me!” Reiter tightened his grip, pulling the young woman’s attention from the balloon. “You don’t want to get blamed for what’s about to happen, and I don’t want to hurt you. Go!”

“But they’re…”

“You can’t stop them from taking it.”

Her eyes widened. She seemed more indignant than angry. “It’s not that easy!”

“You told me the balloon is always kept ready, in case the emperor decides to go up.”

“Yeah, but…”

“It’s a big bag of air.” He glanced at Danika now staring up into the balloon. “Trust me, it’s that easy for them.”

Four ropes hit the ground, the balloon surged up against the four remaining. The brown-eyed mage grinned, chips flying from the mahogany railing as she wielded the ax.

Maybe it was the grinning. Maybe it was the ax. The aeronaut jerked free of Reiter’s grip, put two fingers in her mouth, whistled a complex pattern, and ran. The others ran with her. One held a length of sheet.

The youngest, the Water-mage, was on board now.

Two ropes remaining.

He heard the shot the same time he saw the musket ball kick up dirt. The first man to the edge of the roof hadn’t taken the time to aim. Probably wasn’t entirely certain what he was supposed to aim at.

“Captain!”

He turned to find Danika staring down at him.

“Are you coming?”

He hadn’t…

He’d assumed…

He didn’t even know their names. He knew her name and Kirstin’s name, the name of the dead mage, but then they were redheaded, brown-eyed, and youngest.

“If you’d rather die, Captain Reiter, I won’t stop you.”

Another two shots. Not from the roof. There were Shields fighting their way out through the spraying water. He couldn’t get back to Mirian. But he had…
they had
pulled Shields from all over the palace and created one flaming fuck of a diversion for her. She’d be able to slip the Pack out in the chaos. Hide them in clothing as she’d hidden Tomas.

Reiter had been a soldier most of his life. He’d always expected to die fighting for something he believed in. From the moment he saw Mirian in the square, he’d known he was a dead man. He hadn’t actually thought there was another option.

As the balloon broke the final two tethers and surged up into the air, he ran up the stairs and launched himself at the break in the railings. Slamming down on his elbows, he bit his tongue, swallowed blood, and managed to get onto his feet in time to see the roof of the palace fly by.

In time to see two men with raised weapons. In time to dismiss one and identify the other as Corporal Hare.

Hare had been one of the first handed a musket with the new rifled barrel. Greater accuracy over a greater distance, and Hare had already been one of the best shots Reiter’d ever known.

The balloon was basically a big bag of air. Put a hole in it and it was a big bag.

Reiter raised his stolen musket to his shoulder. He might be able to distract…

The sandbag hanging by the redhead’s hip exploded, spraying sand. She stared down at the mess, then up at the balloon. “He missed!”

“No.” Reiter lowered his musket without taking a shot. On the roof, Hare took his time reloading. The wind whistled by, and Danika carried them out of range. “He hit exactly what he aimed at.”