Which, to his credit, might have been true.
“Talon?” Janus gasped.
Talon pressed Janus between him and the carriage, eyes scanning the open stretch of shrubland. “Why is there a wagon here?” He hissed.
“I evoked it.” Janus choked. “There’s one on the roof. An assassin, not a-”
“I know. Stay down.” Whirling around the edge of the slowly rolling wagon, Talon leaned out and immediately ducked behind cover as another bolt whizzed into the wood, narrowly missing his eyes.
Flipping a dagger in his palm, Talon’s bright eyes flicked across the desert before he darted around his cover and threw. A crossbow bolt raked across his arm, tearing a gash in his coat, but Janus heard the sound of steel striking flesh. He must have hit the man on the roof.
“Go.” Talon pushed her.
Releasing her spell, Janus let the wagon collapse into a pile of wood before it faded away. Sprinting for her life, she glanced up at the roof to see the crossbow lowered, a knife sticking out of the assassin’s arm.
Water pooled around her feet, and she nearly slipped. A mirror on the ground reflected her face and the falling rain. A white phantom drifted across its surface, tendrils of mist shaped like grasping hands.
What in Yesharu’s name wasthat?
Skidding through the sand, she sharply turned, darting around the inn’s corner. The porch and safety of the door were just ahead.
Two men waited for them on the porch, crossbows lifted, ready to fire. As soon as Janus entered their sights, the bolts flew.
Janus squeezed her eyes shut, awaiting death.
Clink. The bolts struck metal. Halfway through the rain, they slammed into an invisible barrier and clattered to the ground, broken.
Talon grabbed Janus, throwing her behind him.
Those bolts had struck something. The rain parted, avoiding a small space between them and the assassins. A silhouette shimmered in the storm, blurred, unnatural. It turned, and Janus caught a glimpse of its eyes.
Glassy, inhuman eyes. Flowing white cloth surrounded it, ethereal, like the banners hung from funeral boats. Its gaze met Janus’s, and her blood ran cold.
Blood-curdling screams erupted from the porch. Enormous white spikes rose from the stone, impaling the assassins so quickly Janus hardly registered the broken flesh and pooling blood. Shooting into the air, the spike rose past the roof into the sky, branching apart into something resembling a pair of antlers.
Janus stared at the macabre artwork. What memory could have allowed an evoker to cast such a horrible spell?
Talon’s fingers dug into her arm, but he didn’t move. The shimmering distortion in the rain drifted toward them, gaze locked on Janus. White fluttered behind it, like a maiden’s gown flowing down a chapel’s stairs.
It reached them. And then it was gone, as though it had never been there at all. Rain fell around them, washing away the blood pouring from the white antlers growing from the porch.
Talon must have been stunned, too. But he returned to his senses quickly. Driving Janus ahead of him, he hurried her to the safety of theinn. Kalid and his men met them halfway, bursting from the inn doors, glaives drawn and ready.
Some of them stopped beneath the towering edifices of death. Kalid didn’t. He ran to Janus and collected her. Shielding her, he ushered her back inside.
She paused before the door, just short of the assassin’s bodies, to search for the mirage in the rain.
A glint of silver illuminated the shrub lands as the rain abruptly dried up, and the clouds parted with unusual haste. But no glassy-eyed evoker stood there.
* * *
Janus sat with her back to the hearth, attempting to enjoy the heat without considering its cause. A blanket wrapped her shoulders, and she adjusted it as she sipped the piping hot tea she clutched in both hands.
Talon watched her from across the room, occasionally glancing out the window. A soldier burst into the room, reporting to Kalid.
“Four in total. If there were more, they’ve fled.”
“Find anything identifying them?” Kalid asked.
