I felt absolutely ridiculous. Running down the street like this made me feel like a kid in some kind of bizarre race. While we sprinted towards the next road, I glanced over at the poison mage next to me. There was a smug smile on her lips, as if this strange idea of hers had been pure genius, but lingering excitement from the fight also made her eyes sparkle like gems.
As we skidded around the corner and darted towards the next one, I had to admit that this was a faster way to transport Lance. I slid my gaze back to the brightly painted wheelbarrow that I was pushing in front of me. Lance’s legs flapped up and down where they hung out over the edge and his head jerked from side to side as I steered. Yes, it was fast. But it still made me feel ridiculous.
Explosions echoed from the other side of the city. Whatever that gang of diversion experts were doing, it was working. We hadn’t run into a single constable after that last battle, so they were all probably running towards the booming noises, thinking that was where we were trying to escape.
“Two more streets,” Audrey called over her shoulder as she veered around another corner. “Then we—”
She slammed into a tall man with a silver helmet as he ran around the corner from the other side. The force of the collision sent them both sprawling. Screeching to a halt, I set the wheelbarrow down as seven other people rounded the corner as well.
A wave of exasperation rolled over me. Why did I have to jinx it?
The seven constables who were still on their feet stared in shock at us and the unconscious Binder that we had stuffed into a bright yellow wheelbarrow painted with smiling sunflowers. While they were still trying to recover, I threw a spinning force arc at them.
Five of them had the presence of mind to duck. The other two lost their heads.
Fire and lightning crackled through the air as they hurled attacks back at me. I timed my force wall so that I could knock the attacks away in one fell swoop. Flames exploded against the house to my right as the fireballs hit it instead. A moment later, white lightning cracked into the pale stone, leaving black spidering marks in its wake.
On the ground, the eighth constable had rolled on top of Audrey. She jerked her knees up and slammed them into him, but he was almost twice as big as her so it only made him wince slightly.
I threw another arc at the others while simultaneously trying to block their attacks. They were starting to coordinate them to the point where blocking with only one wall was becoming difficult.
One of them dropped to his knees next to the brown-haired man that Audrey was wrestling with. Working in tandem, they grabbed her wrists and kept her arms spread wide while they yanked her to her feet.
Flicking my wrist, I shoved two more fireballs off course with a force wall while jumping aside to evade the lightning bolt that I hadn’t been able to block. Spinning back to face them, I threw an attack between their strikes and cleaved two of the constables right down the chest. The other three started up a merciless barrage while the two who had finally straightened began hauling Audrey away.
She kicked and thrashed against them, but without being able to bring her palms together and summon magic, she was no match for their physical strength.
Indecision flashed through me.
I stole a glance in the direction of the smuggler’s tunnel while I continued parrying the hail of attacks from the other three constables. We were so close to the tunnel now. I could easily make it out with Lance at this point, even if I didn’t have Audrey’s magic to keep him knocked out.
This had been my original plan. To sneak into Eldar, get Lance, and then leave Audrey Sable to be captured by the heroes and stripped of her magic. So what had changed? Wasn’t this the better solution? The easier solution?
Fire roared through my soul. No. I might hate Audrey more than anything, but she was still a dark mage. As my mind flashed back to Lance’s speech in the Rose Hall, I realized that, regardless of our internal wars, I would always have other dark mages’ backs against these insufferably self-righteous heroes.
Lightning cracked against the house on my left as I redirected two more bolts.
My eyes found Audrey’s across the street.
Since I had no way of telling her what I was about to do, I just had to hope that she would come through for me.
Slamming my palms together, I hurled a vibrating arc of force magic at the two men holding on to Audrey’s arms. Since they were taller than her, it flashed through the air above her hair and severed their heads without touching her. However, that move had left me completely exposed to attacks from the other three constables.
The moment their grip on her arms slackened, Audrey rammed her palms together and summoned a poison cloud so large that it filled the whole street almost all the way up to me.
Fire and lightning died out as the three constables who had been about to take me out instead gasped in a lethal breath of her magic. She turned slowly. For a few moments, she just stood there inside the swirling green cloud, watching as the three men choked to death on her poison. I knew that she could have killed them instantly if she wanted to. But apparently, she didn’t.
Long black hair rippled down her back as she raised her chin and stared down at the men who had now collapsed to the street. I could only see one side of her face from where I stood, but by all hell, I swore that she looked like death incarnate right at that moment.
The constables twitched on the ground at her feet for another few seconds. Then they stilled and the glittering mist disappeared as Audrey turned back to me.
Only the distant sound of explosions broke the silence for a while as we just stared at each other across the street full of corpses.
At last, she jerked her chin towards the two men who had grabbed her. “Nice shot.”
I nodded at the ones who had died from her poison before their attacks could hit me. “Nice timing.”
“Yeah.” She dragged a hand through her hair and then slid her gaze to Lance. “Shall we?”
Tearing my eyes from her, I strode back to where I had left the yellow wheelbarrow and the limp Binder inside it. After grabbing the handles, I pushed it in front of me as I followed Audrey the final distance to the smuggler’s tunnel.
The entrance was located in an abandoned building, so I dumped the wheelbarrow a short distance away to avoid attracting attention to it, and then carried Lance the last stretch. While I dropped him on the floor, Audrey changed out of her dress and into a pair of riding clothes. When she was done, we hoisted our packs and then moved towards the trap door.
Audrey held it open for me while I slid Lance down the ladder. He hit the bottom with a thud. When he woke up, he was going to have a whole lot of bruises. But at least he was still alive. Though, when we finally got to our destination and I could get started on breaking him, he was going to wish that he wasn’t.
Once I had climbed down after him, Audrey followed and then closed the trap door above us. Darkness fell.
We remained motionless in that cramped space, standing chest to chest, while we let our eyes adjust to the faint light of the crystals that had been set into the tunnel walls.
“I’ll drag and you push,” I said when I could see a bit better.
She nodded. “Alright.”
Dropping to my hands and knees, I crawled into the low tunnel before turning over so that I sat on my ass. Then I grabbed Lance by the arms and dragged him in with me. Audrey’s face came into view as she crouched down as well and placed her hands on the Binder’s legs. While crawling after us, she helped push his weight forward.
Sweat ran down my spine as we worked to haul the heavy body through the narrow tunnel. Carrying him across the city had sapped my strength more than I wanted to admit. When we came up with this plan, I had assumed that Lance would be a gangly teenager and that I would have no trouble lifting him. I supposed that leaving the academy at fourteen had made me forget that all those young students actually became adults in time for the graduation ceremony.
My leg muscles groaned in exhaustion as I scooted backwards once more and dragged Lance with me. We still had an entire night of riding ahead of us before we got to The First and Last Stop inn. But after that, I would need a few hours to recover.
The tunnel opened up into the circular space that housed the other ladder. I blew out a deep breath as we heaved Lance into it. While Audrey crawled into the space as well, I got to my feet and climbed up towards the trapdoor before pounding my fist against it.
“John!” I called.
Barely half a minute later, something metallic slid across the surface above, and then the trapdoor was lifted open.
John barely had time to see who was inside before I climbed up.
Straightening, I turned to face him. “Get some rope.”
“Uh, yeah. Sure.” He drew his hand through his dark disheveled hair and then hurried to grab a long coil from one of the hooks along the stable wall. “What—”
“Are the horses ready?” I interrupted as I snatched the thick length of rope out of his hands.
“N-no.”
My gaze snapped to him and I was pretty sure he saw his death reflected in them because he paled visibly and staggered a step back.
“I mean, they’re here,” he pressed out while raising his hands. “They’re just not saddled.”
“Then saddle them.”
Before he could reply, I turned back to the tunnel and dropped the rope into it. While John scrambled away to saddle our horses, Audrey looped the long rope around Lance’s chest and under his arms before throwing both ends back up to me.
As I grabbed them, it struck me that I hadn’t even needed to tell her what I was going to do. She had just immediately understood how we were going to get Lance up the ladder and had stayed down there, waiting for me to throw some rope down, while I talked to John.
With a firm grip on the ends of the rope, I started pulling our unconscious prisoner upwards. Audrey climbed onto the ladder and helped push him up as well. I would never admit it to her face, but I was incredibly thankful for that because my muscles were already trembling with exertion after this night.
Lance’s body created a rut in the scattered straw on the floor as I dragged his legs the final bit above the edge. As soon as he was out, Audrey climbed up as well and closed the trapdoor behind her.
A horse snorted from somewhere close by. I was just about to open my mouth and tell Audrey to help me get the ropes off the Binder’s body when hurried footsteps closed in from the long corridor running through the stable.
“The horses are…” John trailed off as he skidded to a halt next to me and stared down at the floor. The small trace of color that had returned to his face drained right out of it again as his eyes widened. Staggering a step back, he whipped his head between me, Audrey, and the body on his floor. “Please, please, tell me that’s not Lance Carmichael.”
I locked hard eyes on the middle-aged smuggler. “You didn’t see anything. Because if you did, your family will pay the price. We just abducted Lance Carmichael from the heart of Eldar… Imagine what we could do to a simple smuggler’s family.”
“N-no, I…” John stammered.
“That is, if Chancellor Quill doesn’t execute you for high treason first. I don’t think he would be very understanding of your involvement in kidnapping his precious Binder if you were to come clean about it. Do you?”
He swallowed. “No.”
“Exactly. So what did you see?”
“Nothing.”
“Indeed.” I jerked my chin at him. “Now, tie him to the third horse.”
This time, I let John do all the work of dragging Lance to the horses and hauling him up across the saddle. Since John was a muscular guy himself, he accomplished the feat relatively easily.
Once he had finished tying the blond hero to the saddle, I reached into my pack and pulled out a pair of handcuffs. They snapped shut around Lance’s wrists with a metallic click that seemed to echo into the candlelit stable.
Next to me, Audrey rolled her shoulders and stretched out the muscles in her arms.
After checking to make sure that Lance’s hands were firmly secured and kept apart by the metal rod in the middle, I walked over to my horse while throwing a glance over my shoulder. “Let’s go.”
“Don’t give me orders,” Audrey replied, but there was less poison in her words than usual.
I huffed out a low chuckle and instead just swung myself up on the horse. While Audrey did the same, John used a rope to tie the reins of Lance’s horse to the back of my saddle. Then he hurried over to the door and opened the wide ones to let the horses out.
Clicking my tongue, I pushed my heels into my horse’s flanks and urged it forwards. The horse behind me followed as we moved. Audrey brought up the rear.
“Remember,” I began as we rode past the smuggler.
“I didn’t see anything,” he finished for me.
“Exactly.”
I spurred my horse on, taking off into the grasslands. Faint booms still came from somewhere inside the city, but the night out here was dark and quiet.
“Keep the gates closed,” someone called from what sounded like the other side of the city walls. “We’ll keep them trapped in here until we find them.”
“What’s that booming sound?” another guy called back, and this one sounded like he was standing atop the walkway over the gate.
“They were trying to blow their way out through the walls on the other side. The constables are fighting them now.”
A smug laugh built inside my chest as we sped straight out into the darkness. They had no idea that there was another way out so they would waste days searching inside the city before they realized that we were no longer there. And by then, it would be too late.
Only moonlight illuminated the grasslands as we made our way farther out. We had to cut across the grass for a few more minutes before we could ride back onto the road when we were far enough away from the gate.
As we at last reached the Valdan Road, Audrey fell in beside me. I glanced over at her where she sat atop her dark brown horse.
I couldn’t believe that we had actually pulled this off.
Letting my eyes drift over the poison mage beside me, I studied the expression on her face and the way her lips curved in a sly smile. Wind whirled through her hair and made it ripple behind her like liquid shadows, and the silvery moonlight glittered in her green eyes.
I had to admit, Audrey Sable was actually a damn good person to have at your side in a fight.
