Gio clambered into the back, shoving Javic over to make room. The magician glared at him through a mop of tousled hair as Gio gagged him loosely with a strip of shirt.
"You've been making my life a living hell for years, so don't expect too much sympathy."
As Max drove, Gio began to feel lightheaded. It took him a few moments to realize that it was in fact internal and not something Javic had done to him. He'd been drawing heavily on his body's energy reserves in the fight, pushing well beyond any of his previously established limits. And all of a sudden, he ran to the end of it.
He opened his mouth to warn Max, but it hit him too hard and too fast. He was barely aware of slumping over.
MAX
Max sawGio's head vanish from sight in the rear-view mirror.
Alarmed, she pulled off. With no other traffic on the one-lane track and empty country all around, there was no shortage of places to stop; she could easily have simply braked in the middle of the road. However, a convenient location presented itself, a flat place beside the road.
Max skidded into the clear space and braked sharply. She jumped out and wrenched open the rear door.
As it turned out, both Gio and Javic were pressed against it in a heap. They spilled out into the dry grass, Gio completely limp and Javic squirming in frustration.
Max pulled Gio free of the tangle and laid him gently in the shade of the car. His pulse was weak and rapid, but his breathing was steady. She poured a little water into his mouth from the canteen and brushed her hand along the side of his face.
"Mrrrph!"
"I'm getting to you!" she snapped at Javic.
Thoughtfully, she looked around. They were on top of a mesa looking down at a dry river valley. There was no cover here, but it looked like she might be able to ease the car farther off the road, behind some scrubby trees.
So much for her carefully selected, nice and shady interrogation spot. The gas station even had some old bathroom fixtures. She glanced up at the bruiselike color deepening in the sky. It looked like they were going to be camping out tonight.
"If you don't settle down, I'll drug you again," she told Javic.
Heaving Gio into the backseat took all her shifter strength; he was a big guy. Then she dragged Javic around and hoisted him inside. Charred pieces of his robe sifted off when she touched it. The skin beneath, however, seemed intact.
"This will be uncomfortable but not for long," she informed him. Above the gag, he looked alarmed. "Stay put."
She went back to the driver's seat, put the car in gear, and eased down the sloping ruts of a road in even worse repair than the one she had been driving on. Old washouts from past rainstorms and cracks from years of baking in the sun turned it into a roller coaster, over which she carefully navigated with loud creaking from the Jeep's beat-up suspension.
After about ten minutes of careful driving, she was well below the level of the road. Here, some of the scrubby shade trees she had seen from above were growing on a relatively flat patch of old drywash gravel and sun-baked mud. Max drove under the trees, pulling the car as close to the side of the gully as she could. She put on the parking brake, shut off the engine, and got out.
It was shockingly quiet, and in that silence, she could hear trickling water. A few steps took her to a spring bubbling up from the grove and rushing across the road. Past flooding had caused a steep washout that she wouldn't have been able to drive through anyway. Later in the year it would probably be dry, but this early in the spring, the water ran fresh and clear.
Max walked back to the car. "Camp time," she announced.
She reached in to feel Gio's pulse again, and left him where he was for now. Javic, however, she lifted out and set on the ground under the trees. He writhed to sit up and glared at her. Max rearranged his bonds so that his hands were tied to the tree by a loop of wire above his head, then took the gag out of his mouth.
"How's your headache?" she asked, without a great deal of sympathy.
Javic coughed. He leaned his head back against the tree. "What are you going to do to me?"
"Nothing, if you cooperate. In the interests of that cooperation, can you work magic with just words?"
He hesitated.
"If I'm not sure, or if I don't believe you, this gag goes right back in."
Javic sighed. "No, I can't, not really. I can control stoneskins with commands once I've already made them, but it's mostly gestures and symbols."
Max studied him. She was uncomfortably aware that she had no way to prove or disprove anything he told her.
"Maybe I'll gag you again just to be on the safe side, 'til Gio wakes up," she decided, and pulled it back into place.
