“Oh, pit.”
She made an angled chopping motion with one hand.
Taniel squeezed his eyes shut. Nothing. He cracked one eyelid. The world was moving. From beneath him, he heard the terrible grinding sound of stone on stone.
Taniel’s heart leapt into his throat. The tower was falling. Clutching his rifle, he leapt from the window.
He opened his mouth, but found he had no breath to scream. The glass panels of the botanical garden rushed to meet him. His feet hit first, legs crumpling beneath him, and then the glass shattered. He fell the last twenty feet and landed on his shoulder. He rolled onto his back and gasped. Shards of glass as big as a man lay everywhere around him. He was lucky none had landed on him.
Powder mages were stronger in a trance. They could withstand far more damage than a regular person, and ignore far more pain. Yet a fall like that should have killed him, or at least broken bones.
The ground rumbled. Taniel felt himself rolled by the shock wave as the entire top half of the bell tower slammed into the building beneath it. Stone ground together, wood splintered. Taniel threw his hands over his head.
When he looked up, the dust was settling. He slowly climbed to his feet.
His rifle lay twenty feet away. He stumbled toward it, stepping over rubble and broken glass. His body ached, but nothing was broken. He checked his kit for his sketchbook. It was still there. He retrieved his rifle. “You and I are surviving far too much these days.”
Another thunderclap made him stagger. He limped out of the garden and into an adjoining building, avoiding the debris from the tower. He found a hall where he could look out onto the quad. The end of the hall had been destroyed – the tower had landed on the administrator’s office. He hoped no one had been inside.
He threw his back to the wall just beneath the window and listened. Another thunderclap. Someone was laughing. Julene. He gritted his teeth at the eerie sound, reloaded his rifle, and stood up.
The quad had been destroyed. Ground was torn up everywhere, more dirt than a hundred men could move with shovels in a day, piled up as if scooped from the ground by a god’s hand and then patted into hills. As he watched, a thin line of fire sprayed from beyond one of the mounds and tore through Banasher’s Hall across the way. Taniel saw faces watching the battle from windows. They were gone in an instant, their final looks of horror frozen in Taniel’s mind as the entire facade of the building crumbled.
Taniel dropped back down behind the wall and took a deep breath. This was no normal fight. No, he’d seen Privileged fight before, on the battlefields in Fatrasta. They tossed fireballs and ice and lightning. But nothing like this. Both Julene and this other Privileged were using forces far beyond Taniel’s comprehension. By the power they showed, they both should have been heads of a royal cabal.
Taniel wondered where Ka-poel was. His head rang after another thunderclap, and his thoughts seemed distant. Hadn’t he sent her off after the Privileged? He hoped she hadn’t done anything stupid. He hoped she was safe.
He peeked out once more. He could see the Privileged. She stood on the top steps of a building kitty-corner to his own. The museum, he thought. He slowly lifted his rifle.
The Privileged’s fingers danced. She thrust one hand outward, fingers splayed, toward the center of the quad. That thin fire erupted from her palm. Julene was lifted up from behind the newly formed hills and thrown bodily into the remnants of Banasher’s Hall. Stone folded around her as she hit, the rest of the building crumpling like a house of paper.
The Privileged wiped her hands on her academic gown and went inside the museum.
Taniel leapt to his feet. He was halfway down the hall before he bothered to question himself. What was he doing? These were forces above his ability to fight. No sense in going after her. What could he possibly do?
He thought of the destruction on the quad. Privileged got tired. Privileged couldn’t go on forever. She couldn’t have much left in her.
The building he had taken shelter in was attached to the museum by a narrow, raised stone walkway. Taniel stole a glance, then dashed down the walkway and leapt through a door. He was in a short hall, practically a custodian’s closet with mops and brooms. Another door, this one open, led to the main hall. He caught sight of galleries filled with ancient relics: mummified corpses, the bones of ancient beasts, pottery from some prehistoric civilization, and stones sparkling with gems. He heard the brisk sound of footsteps on marble.
The Privileged marched through the main gallery. Her shoulder still bled from Taniel’s only solid shot. She glanced to either side. She didn’t seem to see Taniel. She definitely didn’t see the movement of the magebreaker above her.
Gothen leapt the banister of a gallery above and landed on the marble not five feet from her. He came up, face alight with victory, a small sword in his hand.
Taniel gave a yell. Yes! He jumped from cover. They had her now. She couldn’t…
The Privileged threw her arms wide. The academic gown fluttered, then began to glow. Gothen’s eyes grew wide.
Taniel halted. He took one step back as Gothen began to shimmer. Taniel tried to yell for the man to finish the job.
The magebreaker fell to his knees. He opened his mouth in a scream. No sound came out, and his mouth kept opening farther. His jaw fell, and then the rest of him began to drop like a wax figure melting before a blazing fire. His clothes burned off, his sword dripping to the floor as molten steel. His body dissolved into a puddle at the Privileged’s feet.
Taniel leapt behind a pillar. He wondered what good he could possibly do, even as he felt for more powder. He spilled powder all over his hand, brought it up to his nose and snorted. He looked down. There was blood on his hand. It was dripping from his nose. He felt the calm of the powder trance steady his hands.
He gritted his teeth and slid the ring bayonet from his belt. He fitted it over the end of his rifle. His hands began to shake again almost immediately. He double-checked his pistols to be sure they were loaded, and prepared to leap to his feet.
Taniel felt something brush his head.
The Privileged stood beside him. She had one finger pressed against his head.
He let out a trembling sigh. “Do it,” he said.
This close, he saw that she was tired. Her hair was soaked with perspiration. The crow’s-feet in the corners of her bloodshot eyes were deep, lines of exhaustion tugging at her face.
“I want you to stop following me,” she said.
“You killed my friends.”
“The powder mages at Skyline? That was a mistake. No. Not a mistake. I’d have killed them all if I’d have arrived in time to stop Tamas and his foolish coup. I was only there to warn the royal cabal, but I was too late. When I saw that it was finished, I just wanted to be gone.”
“Who the pit are you?”
“My name is Rozalia.”
“What are you?”
She let out a long sigh. “I’m one of the few remaining Predeii. Or I used to be. I’m not in very good shape these days.”
“That means nothing to me.”
“You’re just a foolish boy. You’re all just foolish boys. Privileged and powder mages. None of you know a thing.”
“Then kill me.”
“If I do that, your father will turn out every one of his powder mages. I’ll never be able to rest again.”
Taniel snorted. So she knew who he was.
Rozalia said, “Tell your savage sorceress to stand down. I don’t want to fight her.”
“Pole?” Taniel looked around. No sign of her. “Get out of here,” he called. He thought he caught a glimpse of red hair behind one of the display cases.
“Let me leave in peace,” Rozalia said, “and I’ll leave the country tonight. I swear it. I’m done here.”
“As easy as that?” Taniel’s mind raced. Julene had to be dead after being thrown through an entire building. Gothen was a puddle on the floor. What threat could he possibly be to her? Was she that scared of his father?