‘Step away,’ I told Richard.
Richard took two steps back.
The futures were steady, calm. My divination was telling me that Richard would let me pick up those items. I didn’t trust it. When he made his move, I’d have only my reflexes.
I walked forward.
Richard stood still, watching. The world seemed to hold its breath.
I was within range for a strike. The sovnya trembled, pulling at me. With an effort of will, I silenced it. Holding the polearm in my left hand, I crouched, reaching down with my right. I didn’t take my eyes off Richard.
Richard looked down at me, waiting.
My hand touched the ring.
The spells around Richard activated. Space magic twisted and he vanished in a bang of imploding air.
Startled shouts and cries echoed around the courtyard. Two shots rang out; a bullet whined past my ear. ‘HOLD!’ I roared at the top of my voice, then spoke into the communicator. ‘Landis! Compass!’
‘Teleport effect!’ Compass called over the comm. ‘He managed to bypass the interdiction field. We don’t know how!’
I was standing alone in front of Richard’s army. A mutter of voices sounded from ahead, angry faces appearing at the windows, the noise swelling.
The futures were only seconds away from violence. If the shooting started again, it wouldn’t stop. ‘Drakh has left you!’ I shouted at the adepts. ‘So let’s try this again! I offer terms of surrender. Who speaks for you?’
Silence. I held my breath. If they chose to fight now . . .
‘I do,’ a voice called from the door Richard had used.
A figure walked out. It was a young man, no older than twenty-five, with a thin beard. He wore patched-together armour and carried no weapons; his hair was dishevelled and blood was on his forehead. He walked forward, eyes boring into mine.
I took one look into the futures and saw what was going to happen. I slipped Richard’s items into my pocket and grasped the sovnya two-handed.
The adept stopped in front of me. He had a look I’d seen before, the blank expression of one who’d watched everything they believed in fall apart. ‘Who’s in command of your forces?’ I asked.
The adept didn’t take his eyes off me. ‘Drakh.’
‘Who’s your second in command?’
‘He was at the front headquarters. You hit him with lightning.’
‘Third in command?’
‘She was at headquarters too.’ The adept’s eyes stared into mine. ‘Trying to get the wounded away.’
Dammit. ‘Fourth?’
The adept’s lips curled in a snarl. ‘That would be me!’ At the last word, glowing daggers appeared in the adept’s hands and he lunged.
I was already twisting aside, bringing around the sovnya. The blade gashed his arm as his rush carried him past. He spun to attack again, and I skewered him through the chest.
The adept jerked. He tried to move forward, but the six-foot polearm held us apart; the blade had gone through his ribcage. I gave the sovnya a twist and yanked it out; the adept stumbled, went down to one knee, then slowly collapsed.
All of a sudden, my fear was gone, replaced by rage. I wasn’t afraid that the adepts would fire. I was sick of everything, sick of killing people and sick of this stupid pointless war, and I turned back to the kitchens and shouted at the top of my voice. ‘I DO NOT HAVE TIME FOR THIS SHIT!’ I kept yelling, all of my anger and frustration boiling over. ‘Every one of the Council soldiers behind me would like nothing more than to just pull the trigger on you all and go home! I come out under a flag of truce to talk and you do this?’ I pointed the sovnya down at the adept’s body; the white flag flapped, stained with his blood. ‘You are not heroes! You were not brought out here to fight for freedom, or justice! You were brought here as cannon fodder for a war you don’t understand! If you die here, you will not be remembered as martyrs for a noble cause! You’ll be remembered as a bunch of idiots too stupid to figure out that they’d already lost!’
The courtyard was tense, silent. I glared from window to window, daring anyone to challenge me. ‘What do you want?’ a small voice called.
‘I want you to surrender!’ I called back. ‘Those still able to walk will come out one at a time, lay their weapons down at my feet, and go past to the men waiting behind. We’ll fetch the wounded later. Co-operate, and you will not be harmed! But if you choose to fight, then the mages behind me will tear that building down right on top of you and I swear to God that once they start they will not stop until every last man, woman and child among you is dead!’
There was dead silence.
A figure appeared at the door. It was an adept, a big, burly guy holding an assault rifle. He walked forward, stopped in front of me, looked into my eyes. Then he laid the rifle down on the stones with a clatter. I turned my head to watch as he walked past the way I’d come.
A second adept appeared, then a third. Through the futures, I could see that they would keep coming. The last faint possibilities of violence flickered, then died away.
I stood there in the courtyard, the sovnya planted in front of me, watching the adepts pass one by one, the pile of weapons at my feet growing steadily larger. The white flag, spattered with red, hung from the sovnya’s blade. Behind me, I could hear Landis and Rain giving orders to organise the prisoners. Only once the adepts at the very end of the line had left the building, limping and staggering, did I give orders for the soldiers to move in.
Luna found me half an hour later.
I was sitting on the roof of the mausoleum, my legs hanging off the edge, looking down into the courtyard below. At the far end, two Council auxiliaries and a mage were talking. Ilmarin’s body had been retrieved from the east roof, but the rest of the corpses, including Vihaela’s, were still there.
Luna walked across the roof and sat down next to me with a sigh. ‘I wondered where you’d gone.’
‘You get through okay?’
‘Barely saw any fighting,’ Luna said. ‘After we got separated, I didn’t have a clue what was going on. Then Ji-yeong got roped in as a medic, and I figured I’d be more use watching her back than trying to catch up with you.’
I nodded.
‘I got there for the tail-end of your speech,’ Luna said. ‘Pretty impressive.’
‘I suppose.’
‘Did Richard really just give you those things?’
I reached into my pocket and took out the ring and the lattice, setting them down on the roof. Luna tilted her head, focusing on them.
‘They’re the real thing,’ I said. I’d already had the chance to study them. The lattice, the Council’s weapon, had been the easier of the two; all I’d needed to figure out was the command word. The ring was another story. Heavy and ancient, made from solid gold, it wasn’t something I knew how to use. But it had bound the marid once, and it might be able to do so again.
‘Then why did he . . . ?’ Luna asked.
‘Hand them over?’ I said. ‘I don’t know.’
‘Landis and Rain are planning the assault on the keep,’ Luna said. ‘They want to know if that weapon’s going to work.’
‘Oh, it’ll work,’ I said. ‘Channel a thread of magic and say the command word, and it’ll project its effect over a narrow cone to a thirty-foot range. But as to whether it’ll stop an ifrit . . . well, it’s not like we’ve got one to test it.’
Ji-yeong appeared in the courtyard below. She exchanged some words with the disposal team, then began picking her way over towards the mausoleum.
‘The security guys are talking like you practically won the battle on your own,’ Luna said. ‘I wasn’t expecting you to be celebrating, but I didn’t think you’d be . . .’