“Yeah, but…”
“It’s a big bag of air.” He glanced at Danika now staring up into the balloon. “Trust me, it’s that easy for them.”
Four ropes hit the ground, the balloon surged up against the four remaining. The brown-eyed mage grinned, chips flying from the mahogany railing as she wielded the ax.
Maybe it was the grinning. Maybe it was the ax. The aeronaut jerked free of Reiter’s grip, put two fingers in her mouth, whistled a complex pattern, and ran. The others ran with her. One held a length of sheet.
The youngest, the Water-mage, was on board now.
Two ropes remaining.
He heard the shot the same time he saw the musket ball kick up dirt. The first man to the edge of the roof hadn’t taken the time to aim. Probably wasn’t entirely certain what he was supposed to aim at.
“Captain!”
He turned to find Danika staring down at him.
“Are you coming?”
He hadn’t…
He’d assumed…
He didn’t even know their names. He knew her name and Kirstin’s name, the name of the dead mage, but then they were redheaded, brown-eyed, and youngest.
“If you’d rather die, Captain Reiter, I won’t stop you.”
Another two shots. Not from the roof. There were Shields fighting their way out through the spraying water. He couldn’t get back to Mirian. But he had…they had pulled Shields from all over the palace and created one flaming fuck of a diversion for her. She’d be able to slip the Pack out in the chaos. Hide them in clothing as she’d hidden Tomas.
Reiter had been a soldier most of his life. He’d always expected to die fighting for something he believed in. From the moment he saw Mirian in the square, he’d known he was a dead man. He hadn’t actually thought there was another option.
As the balloon broke the final two tethers and surged up into the air, he ran up the stairs and launched himself at the break in the railings. Slamming down on his elbows, he bit his tongue, swallowed blood, and managed to get onto his feet in time to see the roof of the palace fly by.
In time to see two men with raised weapons. In time to dismiss one and identify the other as Corporal Hare.
Hare had been one of the first handed a musket with the new rifled barrel. Greater accuracy over a greater distance, and Hare had already been one of the best shots Reiter’d ever known.
The balloon was basically a big bag of air. Put a hole in it and it was a big bag.
Reiter raised his stolen musket to his shoulder. He might be able to distract…
The sandbag hanging by the redhead’s hip exploded, spraying sand. She stared down at the mess, then up at the balloon. “He missed!”
“No.” Reiter lowered his musket without taking a shot. On the roof, Hare took his time reloading. The wind whistled by, and Danika carried them out of range. “He hit exactly what he aimed at.”
When Mirian blew the door open, one of the guards had tried to run. Tomas, less distracted than the others by the rich meaty scent of fresh blood on his muzzle, had slammed him to the floor, closed his jaws around the back of his neck and crushed his spine. By the time he spun back to the mass of bodies by the door, growling low in his chest, the screaming had stopped and the feeding frenzy had begun.
Not unexpected.
The guards didn’t smell like Pack, or power.
He’d been warned, entering the Hunt Pack, that this happened in war. He was the younger Lord Hagen, and he’d sworn to himself he’d never…
They smelled like meat.
The guards had taken strength away. They could give it back.
Then Nine—he wouldn’t change again and tell Tomas his name, if he even remembered it, so Nine—Nine had lifted his head. Lowered it. Scrubbed his muzzle on the shoulder he straddled. Lifted it again, and howled.
By the time the howl had faded, the whole Pack was running.
A man.
Over the scents of metal, and death, and piss, and lamp oil, Tomas had been able to catch the very faint scent of a man. Not one of the lingering scents of the many men and women who’d been through these halls. Fresh. A man standing somewhere close. Waiting.
Whoever he was, he was more than merely a man to the freed Pack.
He’d been enough to pull them from food.
Not far down the hall, Nine had turned, dove through what looked like an open cage with gears and pulleys up above and chains running down through holes in the floor, and into a white-tiled room.
“So you got past the guards.” The man standing alone on the upper level had peered down through the bars into the room. He looked short, but that might have been the angle. When Tomas, caught up in the attack on this final enemy, had nearly sunk his teeth into the toe of a glossy boot, he’d danced back, but he’d seemed pleased rather than frightened or angry.
Then Mirian’s scent had brought Tomas up onto two feet. Attention split between the enemy and the Pack, he’d gone to the hall to get her.
He lifted the boy up into his arms as she walked carefully into the room, adding bootprints to the smeared red pattern on the floor. The boy nuzzled up against his throat, soft tongue licking along the line of his jaw.
“Stop it.” Tomas reached across with his free hand and pushed the boy’s head away.
The boy whined and snapped at Tomas’ fingers, trying to push his face back to…
To the blood.
“Fine. But no biting.”
The Pack, exhausted, sat panting. And twitching. Except for Nine. Nine paced. Back and forth. Through the resting wolves. He brushed against Mirian’s skirt hard enough to leave a dark, wet stain behind but not so hard she stumbled, so Tomas let it go. He understood the need to move. The frustration at not being able to take this final enemy.
He sucked blood off his teeth, shifted the boy to his other hip, and leaned closer to Mirian’s ear. “Twelve o’clock. Up about fifteen feet.” Her chin lifted. “Alone. No visible weapons, but he smells like power.”
“Mage?” she asked quietly.
“No. But sort of similar. Not a guard. Expensive clothes. Very expensive boots.”
The man looked at Mirian like she was his. Tomas growled. The boy in his arms echoed it. Nine picked it up and then, one by one, the other seven. It grew, filled the room, until Mirian said, “Enough.”
“Fascinating.” He smiled like a schoolteacher Tomas had particularly disliked. “So you’re my sixth mage, are you?”
His sixth mage? Tomas tensed. The boy whined.
Mirian’s lips pulled back off her teeth. “Ignore it. Reiter said the emperor was insane.”
“Are you encouraging her to use mage-craft against me, abomination?” The emperor rocked back on his heels. Tomas wanted to snap the approving smile right off his smarmy face. “Well, that’s definitely a good idea, credit where credit is due and all that, but she’s already making the attempt. I can feel all six of my protective artifacts heat up. Actually…” Reaching into his trouser pocket, he pulled out a ceramic disk and slipped it into his jacket. “That was getting a little uncomfortable. Now…” Even at this distance, his eyes were so brilliant a blue Tomas thought for a moment he had mage marks. And mage marks on this man would be wrong for so many reasons. “According to the report from Abyek, you can use—and I think it’s fairly and unfortunately obvious why I say use and not control, isn’t it?—fire, air, water, metal, and earth. And then Tardford gave us healing.” His smile stretched into broad approval. “Six in one. As happens far too often I’m afraid, it seems the Soothsayers were misinterpreted. You’re the mage I was looking for all along. And let me tell you, understanding that makes it a lot easier to accept that the others have escaped. There is, of course, still the unborn child beginning it all to deal with, of course, but if that’s not a factor currently, I’m sure we can arrange things. Although, this time…” He wagged a finger at Nine who snarled and took another leap at the ledge. “…we’ll do it scientifically.”