Tamas lit a match and set it to the end of a quick-burning fuse. The spark traveled like lightning out the window, following the fuse between the tenements, above the heads of the guards.
One of them noticed the spark, shouting and pointing upward. By the time any of his compatriots had looked up, the spark was gone through the window of the tenement now filled with a dozen or more cabal guards.
Tamas lifted his musket again, sighted toward the carriage waiting at the end of the street, and pulled the trigger. The shot blew through the window, and the carriage rocked from the motion of a body collapsing against the wall. Chaos erupted.
Guards shouted in confusion, pointing at Tamas’s vantage. He reached out with his senses and touched the powder in each of the eight muskets, causing a volley to pepper the street. A second roar of muskets erupted from the windows across the street as Erika touched the powder of her own small firing line.
Cabal guards threw themselves through tenement windows and doors, looking for cover. Most of them wound up in the building at the end of the cul-de-sac, trying to regroup with the bulk of their platoon.
They did so just as Tamas’s fuse hit the stack of powder barrels in the tenement basement.
Tamas had dropped his musket and sprinted for the far end of the apartment, when the explosion blew him off his feet. He went right through a flimsy plaster wall, landing in a heap in the room next door.
He got to his feet, coughing on plaster dust, hoping that Erika was all right. His head pounded and his vision took a moment to clear. They had, it seemed, overdone it on the powder.
He went to the window and looked down into the main avenue on the other side of the tenement from the cul-de-sac he had just attacked. The street was lit by flames caused by the explosion, and a few passing night laborers stared open-mouthed before running off at a sprint, shouting about the fire.
A few dark shapes did not run away from the fire. Cabal guards crossed the avenue, and Tamas heard the door below him kicked open.
“Go around,” a gruff voice said, “Keep your eyes open! You two, see to the Privileged!”
Tamas didn’t bother with the window. He backed up and ran at the wall, shoulder first, bursting through the aged brick and plaster and soaring out into the cold night air. He hit the avenue below and rolled.
His shoulder ached as he regained his feet, and he questioned the wisdom of that maneuver even as he whirled to face the two cabal guards that rushed toward him. He drew his sword, waving dust out of his face, and parried the first swing of a guard’s heavy saber. He drew his belt knife with his off-hand and stepped inside the man’s guard, opening his throat.
The second guard was more wary. She circled Tamas, crouched, eyes shifting as she watched for his next move.
Tamas didn’t have time for this. Once she’d made a half circle, Tamas turned and sprinted, followed by the guard’s startled shout. He turned at the next intersection and surged ahead.
Privileged Dienne’s carriage nearly flattened him. The two horses, eyes rolling in fear of the explosion, plowed forward while the driver frantically tried to get them under control. Tamas threw himself out of the way of the panicked animals, then changed directions to chase after them.
Catching the carriage while in a full powder trance took little effort. Tamas leapt onto the running board at the back, snatching the rail with one hand, swiping at his pursuer with the sword in the other.
His swipe missed, but the guard could not hope to keep up as the carriage careened ahead. Tamas sheathed his sword and climbed on top of the carriage. Holding the roof rack, he swung feet-first into the compartment.
Tamas came into the carriage ready to grapple with an enraged, wounded Privileged. He drew his knife the moment his hands left the roof rack, and he landed heavily on the cloaked figure on the bench, ready to plunge the weapon into Dienne’s chest.
He needn’t have worried. The body below him was still as a corpse, shirt soaked with blood. Tamas’s bullet had ripped through her heart and lungs, killing her almost instantly.
The only problem was, the corpse was not Privileged Dienne.
It was a young woman with auburn hair, too young to be a full Privileged but wearing the gloves. Dienne’s apprentice, perhaps.
“Oh, pit,” Tamas said. He leapt for the door, throwing himself from the moving carriage only a moment before sorcery tore it in half.
He landed in a clumsy roll, feeling his ankle turn beneath him. He forced himself up, a sharp pain shooting up his leg, and ran for the nearest alley, batting at his ass to put out the flames on his greatcoat.
He searched windows and alleys for Dienne, trying to determine the direction of the next attack.
Two cabal guards emerged from the alley, putting themselves in his path. He drew his sword at a dead run, trying his damnedest not to fall from the pain in his ankle. If he stopped moving Dienne would kill him with the merest flick of her fingers. That thought was the only thing that made him fling himself to the side just a moment before the cobbles erupted in a geyser of flame.
He gave a triumphant shout that turned into a scream as his ankle turned below him. He fell, slamming his knee hard enough to rattle his teeth. His sword was pinned beneath him, and he rolled, trying desperately to free it as the two cabal guards closed in on him.
Erika arrived like a flash, her sword a blur. She took one with the flick of her sword at his neck and the other in the belly, just below the cuirass. She spun toward Tamas and snatched him by the arm, dragging him to his feet even as he tried to wave her off.
“Dienne’s still out here!” Tamas said.
“I know.”
Erika yanked him into the mouth of the alley where Tamas snatched at his kit, cracking a powder charge and shoving it into his mouth. The pain in his knee and ankle gradually subsided, reduced to a distant throb. He gingerly put weight on the ankle.
“Can you run?” Erika asked.
“No. I won’t be able to do much more than hobble.”
“All right. But we have to move.”
Tamas nodded his thanks, cursing himself for allowing Dienne to trick him. He had depended on the king’s assurances, on her not bringing any other Privileged into the conflict. He hadn’t even considered an apprentice.
“Guards?” he asked.
“All accounted for,” she said. “We got more than we expected in the initial blast and the rest were easy to clean up in the confusion.”
Tamas noticed there was a thin cut beneath Erika’s eye and her sleeve was black with blood.
“It’s nothing,” she said. “I can still move it.”
Limping, Tamas took point, leading her down the alley and into the next street. “Did you see where she was?” he whispered.
“The sorcery came from above. She’s on one of the tenements. Why hasn’t she just leveled the whole block yet?”
Tamas shook his head. “Trying not to hit her own men, maybe. Cabal guards are hard to replace.”
“How long until she realizes they’re all dead?”
“Not long enough.” Tamas swore. “I lost my pistol.”
Erika drew hers and shoved it into his hand. “I have two,” she said.
Tamas checked to be sure it was loaded, pan primed. “We have to split up,” he said. “It will make it harder for her to track us. We flank her and wait for an opportunity. Don’t risk a shot to the chest. If you miss her heart she’ll kill you before you reload. Go for the head.”
“Are you sure we should separate?” Erika glanced at his leg.
“I’m sure,” he said. “Stay off the tenements. It makes too easy a target. She can just blow the roof off like that.” He snapped his fingers.
“I’m ready,” she said.
He reached out and took her hand. It trembled slightly, and he gave it a squeeze. “Whatever happens …”