Instead, about a half-dozen voices said “You!” in tones of varying incredulity.
“That’s right,” I told them. “And I bet we’re all heading for the same place.”
“See?” said the Lion, between pants. The reason he was panting had a lot to do with the fact that they had just been chased headlong down several twisted streets, only managing to elude their pursuers by seizing a quick route to the nearest rooftop after rounding the latest corner. Even the Lion had decided against making a stand to fight them all single-handed after the fellow with the crossbow had appeared, although they’d surely hear his complaints about their poor supporting work later.
Now the chase was clattering away beneath the very tree whose overhanging branches had proved so timely. “See what?” demanded Karlini. “I’m not up to this nonsense any more.”
Indeed, Tildamire didn’t understand why Karlini wasn’t unconscious again yet; he was clearly exhausted enough for it. But her father was looking away from them, beyond the peak of their perch’s slightly canted roof and the low buildings across the next street. “There,” he said, pointing.
And indeed the lane two streets over was clearly the site of his recent rampage; the twisting avenues had brought them back around to a close overlook of the renewed fires. “Yeah?” said Karlini. “So what? So as an arsonist you’re a success.”
The Lion spared him a contemptuous glance. “Another menace is crushed. Thanks to direct action, not a useless magician.”
Karlini sighed. “Okay, so what about all the screaming coming from that direction? Don’t tell me it’s all people you burned out of their houses. Sounds like it’s extending a pretty good distance downwind.”
“Perhaps my scourge failed to reach far enough,” the Lion said thoughtfully. Off beyond the fires, there was suddenly an abrupt flicker of lacy green, as though a ground-hugging lightning strike had ramified its way down a street. “Are you ready yet to do your part?”
“I don’t care if you use your scourge on me,” said Karlini, “I’m still burned down to a crisp. What about you, Tildamire?”
Tildamire shrugged. “I wish,” she said.
Karlini glared at the Lion. “Are you going to hit me with your sword if I tell you we’d better get out of here and get hold of some help?”
CHAPTER 23
If Leen hadn’t quite liked the idea of opening her Archives up to visitors earlier, when each of them could be evaluated on an individual basis, she had never considered the idea that matters could quickly get a lot worse. There was no point in not admitting it: she hated having all these unvetted people tramping through her domain. But there was no point in dwelling on the situation either, since it was clearly far too late to be complaining. But still. It wasn’t a single guest here and another there. This was an out-and-out convention.
Even the Archive guardians had been cooperating, though not necessarily through any voluntary decision on their own. She’d have thought the guardians would have just fried the lot of them and be done with the affront. The guardians, though, had proved barely in evidence, revealing their presence only by the barest background murmur. Aside from randomly glowing patches of wall and errant wisps of steam, too, the path into the Archives - so fraught with danger and exacting maneuver under normal circumstances - proved merely a maze of twisty passages, a coiled slide, and a short staircase, although the entrances and exits from the individual chambers were still as likely to be found in awkward locations halfway up a wall as in the normal aspect ratio for doorways or arches.
If this sort of thing was the rule throughout the city - and there was no reason to presume it was not, given the other widespread evidence of the impact of Arznaak’s attack - then there would be any number of banks, treasure troves, and strongboxes whose wards and alarm systems would be out of order; a paradise for thieves and reavers, in other words. And the palaces of the gods! - their masters laid low, their special defenses disabled, their whole rationale undermined... whole wars could be sparked over that plunder. But then...
The Archives were a treasure house of the first rank, too. And their defenses, as she had just seen, were at the moment more hypothetical than anything else.
Of course, what she did have on hand, in this motley congregation, was a resource rich both in cunning and in serious brawn. She helped them sort themselves out and let them set to work, some on preparing a substitute defense against assault, some on ministering to the worst-off among the gang, the rest bent over tasks they set themselves.
What Leen also had on hand, rather to her surprise, were her brother and Shaa’s sister, along with the freshly extracted Tarfon. The surprising part was that for once in all this business someone had decided not to go rushing madly about, but to wait and assess the lie of the land first. Of course, they had had the run of the Archives, too, and no Archivist around to slap their hands.
Leen, realizing futility when she saw it, was also forced to give up on the idea of rounding up every errant browser who sidled away down an aisle or into a side room to check out the Archival materials stored therein. She still felt like finding a reinforced wall and bouncing her head off it repeatedly. The Archives were her responsibility, after all, having been handed over to her care as the successor to the generations of Archivists who had come before, and now she was the first to have betrayed her trust to this grave an extent, external events notwithstanding. There just didn’t seem to be anything more she could do.
The last days had been too much, she realized. She was drifting, in a numb haze, a state that wasn’t helped by the level of Arznaak’s punch she had felt herself. People floated up and wafted away, disconnected pieces of incidents would register while others had obviously slipped past without notice. She wasn’t quite comatose, however. She remembered how the detective fellow - the one who was apparently Byron - had bolstered his claim to that identity by first leading her to the secret computer room, and then by speaking to the display wall in the language Max had haltingly attempted, although pronounced in his mouth fluently and flowingly, followed by the room lighting up around them from the sudden rush of glowing pictures and overlapping blocks of text.
He had gazed at the images with puzzlement, followed by a sudden rush of comprehension. “I don’t know about this,” he’d said, mostly to himself.
“You created all this?” Leen asked. “You know how everything really works?”
“More or less, I’m afraid.”
“Then isn’t there something simple you can do? Some way to send the nasties to Zinarctica or something?”
“It’s an interesting thought,” he’d said. “No, unfortunately things never work that way when you’d like them to. Let me see if I can get a handle on how bad the mess is, and whether I can come up with any mechanisms of action that still might work.”
Then he had sent her away, and in some manner barred the door from within, to the great frustration and consternation of those who had been clustered around the entrance waiting to force their own way down the stairs. Particularly and to no one’s surprise, Max. “Maximillian,” she had told him, “we desperately need to have a talk.” But then the next time she looked he had gone off to work on the defenses, or something, and in any case she was scarcely well-constituted at the moment to discuss anything as serious as her and Max with anyone as slippery as Max, anyway.
It was with some surprise sometime later to walk by the area she had set aside for their dispensary and realize she was seeing new and unfamiliar faces. The one sprawled on the floor with the general pallor and overall ill-used look so many of them bore, she was told, was the Great Karlini, while the reclining fellow arguing with him and quaffing from a foaming mug fresh from the sack of supplies he had dragged down the stairs was known, improbably enough, as the Lion of the Oolvaan Plain. No, the former Lion; fancy that.