“Don’t make me kill you, Thekk. Donor has no escape. Step aside,” I said. He answered me with a shower of stone. I wasn’t going to kill him. As much as I wanted to, I refused to gut him with the spear. The stone against my back grew hot as his essence poured into it. I had to make a move. Bracing myself for the pain of the darkness, I tapped my body essence and raced toward him as the walls slumped to either side.
I was on him before he realized what I was doing. I grabbed his arm and jumped. We landed beside Eorla on the sidewalk in front of the Rowes Wharf Hotel. Above us, golden essence shimmered in the air. From across the street, elven archers with Donor’s insignia threw elf-shot at the shield barrier that Eorla had raised over the hotel. Rand spun toward me, his sword out and bloodied. He relaxed when our eyes met.
“Have you brought help?” Eorla asked.
“No, sorry. Just more trouble for you. Donor’s getting away. Can you keep this guy under guard for me?” I said.
Without argument, fine filaments of essence spun from her fingers and wrapped themselves around Thekk. “Of course. What’s happening at the Guildhouse? We’re hearing reports it’s under siege,” said Eorla.
“They’re saying you’re doing it,” I said.
She gestured across the street. “I’m otherwise occupied at the moment.”
“Donor’s got people wearing your colors. He’s setting you up to take a fall, Eorla. Whatever you do, stay here. I think Donor’s crazy enough to kill you,” I said.
She turned away. “I will take that under consideration, Connor. Pray, be safe.”
I jumped back to Meryl. She hugged me as I swayed on my feet. “You can’t keep doing this,” she said.
I held her close, burying my nose in her hair. “One more time, I think. They had Thekk Veinseeker with them.”
She spun to the keyboard. “Now the path makes sense. He designed the original building specs.” She skimmed through the schematics. “They have a pretty clear path to the roof, but you can make it faster from the tower across from the conference tower. Can you picture it?”
I peered at the screen. “Yep. Got it. It’s where Ceridwen held her hearings.”
I jumped and landed in the empty hall outside the conference rooms. A broad expanse of windows faced the Guildhouse. Danann fairies filled the sky like angry hornets, their black uniforms darting in and out of clusters of winged solitaries. Down on the street, the elves disguised in Eorla’s livery drew the brownie security away from the building. From this vantage point, I realized Donor’s strategy: keep Eorla pinned and prevent her from coming to the Guildhouse’s defense while making it appear she was actually attacking it. It didn’t matter. It was all a distraction for his escape.
Thekk’s knowledge of the Guildhouse went stale a century ago. The executive offices were fifty or so years old but still new compared to the rest of the building. He wouldn’t know that. I cut across the short bridge to the main part of the building and ran into the stairwell. I jogged up the stairs, taking them two at a time. Shudders ran through the stone, and the lights flickered.
I shouldered through the roof door without stopping, stumbling into bright sun and roaring wind. A jumble of parapets and support buttresses, odd turrets, deep roof valleys, and steep gables spread out before me. The shield dome had parted at the top of the building, and essence-fire was reaching the roof. Guild agents wheeled overhead, trying to contain the damage. I clambered over a low wall and made my way toward the original section of high-peaked slate and verdigris copper.
The conference-room tower was toward the middle of the Guildhouse, rising above older setbacks. Smoke and fire billowed from lower areas near Park Square. The roof vibrated with stress as the essence supporting the more whimsical additions weakened.
The original main tower was about fifty feet away, a broad expanse of pavers surrounded by decorative turrets. I climbed a low parapet. Jumping with the spear such a short distance probably wouldn’t hurt too much, but it would hurt. Below me, a series of buttresses like splayed fingers joined the next roof. Heights didn’t bother me—even a threehundred-foot drop. The age of the buttresses without essence support was another matter.
I set my foot on the top of the nearest one, seamed stones barely a foot wide. It felt firm. I kept the spear ready for an emergency jump, took a deep breath, and stepped from the parapet. Wind tugged at me as I struggled to keep my balance. Someone fired at me, and I lost my footing. I slammed on my back and grabbed the edge as I rolled. The spear flew free, disappearing into the fires below. I swung my leg up and pulled myself back. Elf-shot arced from a nearby tower. I hugged the stone and shinnied down the rest of the way, taking cover under the cornice of the main building. The buttresses swayed and cracked. The conference tower leaned away from me, glass shattering from its windows. Without the help of the faith stone, the Guildhouse was held together with little more than spit and glue.
I climbed the cornice, worrying my fingers in the gaps in the bare strips of stone, and pulled myself over onto the flat expanse of pavers. As I caught my breath, I reached my hand up and said the command for the spear. “Ithbar.”
With a jolt, the spear appeared in my hand. I leaned on it to get to my feet. Teleporting was tearing my body apart. My joints ached, and muscles burned with exhaustion. Small blood vessels beneath my skin had ruptured, leaving deep red traceries of veins on my arms, probably my face, too.
“Took you long enough,” a voice said.
I spun. In the static of essence swirling about, I hadn’t sensed Joe at all. He perched next to an ornate chimney pot that belched black smoke. I relaxed and leaned on the spear. “I got sidetracked. Where’ve you been?”
“Well, last night I was at a party. Can you believe they ran out of seaweed?”
“How’d you know where to find me?” I asked.
“Banjo said it’s a day for roofs and that he saw me with some naked guy,” he said.
“I hope it wasn’t me, ’cause I’m kinda in the mood to keep my clothes on,” I said.
“Well, when everything started falling apart, I figured this roof might be the one he was talking about and at least would have an interesting view. Then I found this guy.” He fluttered up from the chimney pot. Behind him sat a gargoyle, a chubby naked figure of a man, overly endowed. With a single eye beneath a short spiral horn, he stared with disinterest at the sky. I had named him Virgil long ago when he first appeared outside my Guildhouse office window.
“You can’t stay here, Joe. Vize is on his way,” I said.
“The last time I left you alone with Vize, he almost killed you.”
“Well, this time I’m returning the favor, only I intend to accomplish the goal,” I said.
Joe tilted his head with a wry smile. “It’s going to be one of those days, isn’t it?”
Touch the sky.
The words formed in my mind with a dry rasp, like the opening of an ancient vault. Gargoyles didn’t talk much, and when they did, the conversation was cryptic. I hadn’t figured out what Virgil meant in any of the times he had spoken to me in the past. The common thread in all our interactions was trouble. Something about catastrophe brought him to my side to murmur dire warnings I never understood. Like now, with every gargoyle long gone from the Guildhouse, he alone remained on the roof, the very roof I stood on, the one that Vize and Donor were heading for. How Virgil could predict such a thing had to have an explanation, but one was never forthcoming. Instead, I tried my own gibberish, treating his words like riddles.
“The roof touches the sky,” I said.
“Poetic-y,” said Joe.
Hearts like stone. We shall stand and turn the tide in the hour of need.
The faith stone was shaped like a heart, and the current hour had a lot of need going on. If he was talking about the other gargoyles, they were all hanging out elsewhere. That wasn’t going to help me. “Who’s standing, Virgil?”