Luna and Ji-yeong moved instantly towards cover. Hermes disappeared with a flick of his tail. ‘Who?’ Luna asked.
‘It’s Sam, isn’t it?’ Ji-yeong asked.
‘Sam, or Aether, since you said that’s his mage name now,’ I said. I looked at Luna. ‘Lightning mage. He’ll be coming from above, shooting on sight. Stay out of view.’
‘So she got him too,’ Ji-yeong said with a twist of her mouth.
‘You knew him,’ I said. ‘Any advice?’
‘He hates fighting up close,’ Ji-yeong said. ‘You get in range, he’ll lightning jump away. You can’t catch him, but you can hold him off.’
‘Board the lift as soon as it arrives,’ I said. ‘Ten seconds.’
Silence fell. Ji-yeong and Luna were sheltering behind the buttresses that jutted from the wall. I stayed in the shadows of one of the doorways. Night had fallen and the courtyard was cloaked in shadow.
How many times had I waited like this? Keyed-up and still, seconds dragging by. Then the shift in futures, the scrape of a footstep, the lunge, futures splintering into the chaos of combat.
It was very close now. Was that a sound up above? Sam must have flown in silently, alighted on the rooftop. He should be coming into view of the courtyard right about—
I snapped my eyes shut as the courtyard went white. The flash was bright enough for me to see it through my eyelids, and a numbing jolt went through me as the courtyard rang to a deafening crash of thunder. Air rushed past, blasting my hair, then everything was still.
I opened my eyes. From a dozen places in the courtyard, faint trails of smoke were rising. The blast had been concentrated near the lift shaft. The mechanism was still moving, though I couldn’t hear anything except for a faint whine. The air stank of ozone.
Nothing moved. Luna and Ji-yeong had been smart enough to stay hidden. There would be no way for Sam to know how many people were waiting in the shadows, and that would make him cautious. Mages from the air sub-family don’t like to drop down into close quarters. His first instinct would be to wait, to keep his distance—
Sam dropped down into the courtyard.
Surprise skittered along the edge of my thoughts, but I was already moving, closing on Sam in a silent rush. Sam spun, electricity crackling around his hands, and I narrowed my focus to the next couple of seconds. The first lightning bolt went wide; the second would have hit but I pushed with the fateweaver and felt hot air wash over my head. Before he could strike again, I was on him. I could see his shield, hardened air crackling with static, but air shields are more flexible than strong; an enchanted weapon like the sovnya would cut through like paper. I started my swing and took in the futures in a wide-angle glance, a single glimpse with a hundred variations of the next half-second, searching for one in which the polearm cut through cleanly so that I could use the fateweaver to—
There wasn’t one.
The sovnya hit the side of Sam’s shield and bounced off, the shock vibrating down my arms. The impact made Sam stumble, but he recovered almost instantly and looked at me with flat, shadowed eyes from less than five feet away.
Sam fired a lightning bolt into my chest.
8
The Alex from ten years ago would have died in that courtyard. The lightning would have burned straight through his body, killing him instantly. The Alex from five years ago would have survived the first blast, but the shock would have left him stunned. The follow-up attack would have killed him a few seconds later.
But I was very different from my younger self. I had my imbued armour, and the fateweaver’s magic. More than that, I had its mindset. The fateweaver had been designed to command a battlefield, and the battlefield was where it was most at home.
In the split-second before Sam fired, I took in hundreds of possible futures. Nearly all of them saw me die in the next ten seconds. The first blast wouldn’t kill, but it would daze me enough that Sam could easily finish me off. In a few futures I was able to hurl myself out of the worst of the blast, but I’d still be caught by the edge of it. There were no futures in which I dodged: I was too close and the fateweaver couldn’t nudge Sam’s aim far enough off course.
But there was one future in which I broke away.
The lightning burst out from Sam’s hands, blindingly bright, and I pushed with the fateweaver, straining for the future I needed. The lightning forked as the fateweaver guided it, finding pathways in the air. Some of the charge went around me; more crackled through my armour. But there was too much power in the bolt to guide it all away, and instead of trying, I took the hit on my lower body, letting the electricity go through my legs and into the ground.
Every muscle in my legs and feet spasmed, and I kicked off from the courtyard like a gymnast. I did a full mid-air somersault, hit the ground, rolled and came up as another blast of lightning lashed the stone.
Sam was more than twenty feet away. It was hard to make out his features in the darkness but he looked surprised. When you hit someone with lightning, you don’t expect them to jump like a kangaroo. He recovered immediately, but the second’s pause had been enough and I was on my feet and dodging out of sight behind the courtyard machinery.
‘Alex!’ Luna shouted.
No! I snapped at her through the dreamstone. Break left!
Luna had stepped out to attack, her whip coming out in a swing, but as she heard my warning she dived sideways. Lightning crashed through the space where she’d just been.
He’s too strong, I sent telepathically. Ji-yeong, you too.
Ji-yeong had been circling around for a flank; now she halted. So what, then? she asked.
All three of us were briefly out of Sam’s line of sight, the tangle of machinery at the centre of the courtyard blocking his vision. Ji-yeong, stand there, I said, sending the image of the spot I meant. Luna, behind the buttress. When he comes over, hit him from all sides.
Telepathy is much faster than speech: we’d had the whole conversation in two seconds. Now that we weren’t poking our heads out, the futures forked. In some of them, Sam blasted the courtyard blind; in others, he advanced or jumped over.
I reached out for the strands of the future I needed and tapped an iron wheel in front of me with the butt of the sovnya. A faint clang echoed around the courtyard.
Lightning magic surged and Sam came soaring over the machinery in a thirty-foot leap. I was already moving and his strike split the paving stones behind me. Sam landed with a thud, tracking me as he prepared to fire again.
Luna and Ji-yeong came out at the same instant, the three of us forming a triangle with Sam at the centre. Luna’s whip snapped out and silver-grey mist lashed into Sam’s body. At the same time, Ji-yeong and I charged him from both sides.
Sam was midway through his next attack when he realised what was about to happen. If he blasted either of us, the other would get him in the back. As my sovnya began its thrust, Sam’s body went white, becoming blinding energy that flashed upwards in a lightning bolt.
Ji-yeong and I skidded to a stop, our blades halting inches from each other. Behind, I sensed the movement of the lift change, and I pointed towards it. Get in.
Ji-yeong obeyed instantly, breaking into a run. What about you? Luna asked.
I’ll follow.
You can’t—