‘Can we just kill him?’ Chimaera demanded.
‘Kill me?’ David shouted. ‘You think you can kill me?’
From all around us, objects rose into the air. Sticks, knives and pieces of jagged metal floated up from where they’d been lying scattered on the floor, then darted towards us.
A bubble-shaped shield of air came up. The pieces of debris slammed into it and bounced away. ‘Okay,’ I said. ‘That wasn’t in the records.’
‘David Winslow was originally an air adept, if you recall,’ Ilmarin said.
‘Oh right,’ I said. ‘This thing has some amplification abilities too, doesn’t it?’ The projectiles picked themselves up off the floor and hurled themselves at us again, with a similar effect. ‘Nice shield, by the way.’
‘Yes, although as I understand it, that may simply be an alternate use of mind magic. There’s always been a theory that proper use of mental spells can take an existing talent and—’
‘Screw this,’ Chimaera announced, and lifted a hand. Flame roared upwards.
David disappeared in fire, but as the spell ended, he reappeared, unharmed. With my magesight I could see a tightly woven shield of air around him; it wasn’t as strong as Ilmarin’s, but it had been enough. ‘I won’t be defeated!’ David shouted. ‘Not again!’
‘Can we hurry this up?’ Saffron asked.
Chimaera sent another blast of fire up at David with the same result as the first. Another volley of projectiles bounced off our shield in turn. Air magic tends to be a lot better at defending and evading than it is at attacking; fights between air mages can take a long time. ‘That shield looks like it’d soak up kinetic strikes as well,’ I noted to Ilmarin.
‘It does, doesn’t it?’ Ilmarin agreed.
‘You’ve crossed my path for the last time!’ David shouted. ‘I’ll take all of you! You hear me? I’ll—’
Ilmarin wove a spell, sending a hammer blow of hardened air curving around David to strike his shield from behind. David flew forward off the catwalk, slammed into one of the jagged pieces of machinery, and hit the concrete floor with a thud. The crown bounced free, rolling across the floor to spin and rattle to a stop. All of a sudden, everything was quiet.
‘You couldn’t have done that earlier?’ Saffron asked.
I walked forward and bent down next to David. His eyes were open and staring, and he wasn’t breathing. I didn’t think he’d hit hard enough to break his neck; more likely it had been the shock of the crown’s connection being severed. I felt a little regret, but not much. Maybe David hadn’t had much choice about his actions by the end, but those thralls he’d been commanding had had no choice at all. ‘Little,’ I said into my communicator. ‘Civilians giving you any trouble?’
‘Not since thirty seconds ago,’ Little’s voice said into my ear. ‘The conscious ones were fighting like crazy, then all of a sudden they all spaced out. Now they’re just staring.’
‘Get them into the van,’ I said. ‘Then call the healer corps and tell them they’ve got some patients incoming.’
‘Roger that.’
I broke the connection and looked at Saffron. ‘Thralls have stopped fighting. Are they going to recover?’
‘Probably,’ Saffron said. She nudged the crown with her foot. ‘We taking this?’
Ilmarin stepped up next to her, taking out and opening a small metal box that radiated time magic. A flow of air lifted the crown up off the floor to float down into the box, where it fitted snugly. Ilmarin closed the lid, I felt the spell around the box change, and all of a sudden the atmosphere in the room seemed to lighten somehow, as if something oppressive had been lifted. ‘And that’s that,’ Ilmarin said.
I nodded. ‘Search the place, then we’re going home.’
With the crown and its bearer gone, the factory felt empty, a fortress without an owner. We found crude sleeping quarters, as well as a room that had presumably been David’s. Unlike the dormitory for the thralls, it had an actual bed, but it still wasn’t the kind of place any normal person would live in by choice. Apparently by the time he moved here, David had been sufficiently under the crown’s control that it had no longer felt the need to waste time providing him with creature comforts.
‘What are we looking for?’ Chimaera said from behind me.
‘Any other items he might have collected, and any other thralls who weren’t caught up in the fighting,’ I said without turning around. And to give me a few minutes alone with you. I didn’t think Chimaera had noticed that I’d arranged things so that the two of us would be up here, out of earshot of Saffron and Ilmarin. He really was young.
‘There’s nothing here,’ Chimaera muttered. He looked around at the rotten desk, the dirty bedsheets. ‘Who’d live in a place like this?’
‘Barrayar should have covered that at the briefing.’
I felt Chimaera shoot a glance at me, suddenly wary. ‘What?’
‘The crown’s goals are to accumulate power and thralls. Comfort of its bearer is not a priority. Like I said, this was in the briefing materials.’
‘Captain Rain gave us the briefing.’
‘Oh?’ I said inquiringly. ‘I thought Mage Barrayar had been the one to recommend you for this assignment.’
I felt rather than saw Chimaera hesitate for an instant, the futures shifting as he decided what to say. ‘No.’
‘My mistake.’ I nodded at the desk. ‘You see the map there?’
‘What map?’
I pointed. On the wall above the desk, several pieces of paper had been tacked to the plaster. ‘The street map.’
‘So?’
‘You’re not even looking at it.’
‘Okay, I see it. So what?’
‘You see the black circle marking the factory?’
Chimaera turned his head to look at the map, obviously annoyed. ‘Yeah, I—’
The knife flashed past Chimaera’s face to stick into the wall with a tchunk. Chimaera jumped back with a yell, tripping and sprawling.
I lowered my hand, looking down at Chimaera. ‘Exactly how stupid do you think I am?’
Chimaera scrambled to his feet, a shield of flame flashing up around him. ‘Now you bring up a shield?’ I asked him dryly. ‘You’re not very good at this. And don’t bother with the fire bolt.’
‘Yeah?’ Chimaera asked. He was in a combat stance, eyes narrowed and set. ‘Let’s see how good that armour is against a real spell.’
‘Ilmarin is listening to this entire conversation right now,’ I told Chimaera calmly. ‘If you want to be sentenced to death, then go right ahead and take your shot.’
Chimaera hesitated, and the futures of violence splintered. Direct threats wouldn’t have deterred him, but the prospect of being caught attacking a Council member did. ‘That was just to get your attention,’ I told him. ‘If I’d wanted you dead, I would have put it through your eye.’ Actually, I would have just shot him – knife-throwing’s a terribly inefficient way to kill someone – but I didn’t see any need to get hung up on details. ‘Now let’s talk about what really went on between you and Barrayar.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘You think I don’t know about the bounty?’ I said. ‘Whoever gets rid of me can go to Levistus and name his reward. I suppose Barrayar dangled a few.’ I studied Chimaera, tilting my head. ‘He could have offered something political, a junior aide position, but that wouldn’t really have been appropriate for someone so young. He probably talked about promotion, didn’t he? Making sure you only spent a year or two as a journeyman Keeper, instead of five to ten.’