They slowed as soon as he closed the Seal. The ground rose to meet them; the landing was unkind but not deadly.
Zen stumbled and righted himself. Next to him, the girl lay sprawled on the street. Her skimpy performance robe was spread across the road, drawing looks from passersby. She lay still, as though she had lost the will to stand again.
Ordinarily Zen would never have risked revealing his identity for a songgirl indentured at some high-class bordello in an Elantian stronghold.
But common songgirls did not kill Elantian soldiers in the blink of an eye. Zen had felt it from downstairs: the shockwave of qì that had ripped through the Teahouse, detectable only bytrained practitioners. It had been a qì full of shadows and darkness, ofyinenergies without balance.
It had been the qì he’d been following from Old Wei’s shop—the one that had become too faint for him to track in the crowded space of the Teahouse.
The problem was, he wasn’t the only one who’d sensed it.
Movement from above; a shadow appeared in the broken window, lantern light staining his pale armor red. The silhouette raised a hand, and the air around him began to tingle. The scent of burning metal choked down Zen’s throat.
Magic. Elantian metalwork magic.
Whereas Hin practitioners borrowed the energies of qì from all elements of the natural world, Elantian magicians harnessed the power of metals to create their magic. Each type of metal, as far as Zen knew, yielded different strengths and weaknesses, and each magician was born with a connection to one, which they wore around their forearm.
Very few, Zen had surmised, had the ability to workmultiplemetals.
The man hunting them was a rare class of magician known as an Alloy. The more metal cuffs an Alloy wore, the more metals they could control, and the more powerful they were.
This man’s forearm was a rainbow of ores. Zen had no wish to face him in combat, especially with a deadweight by his side. One who had smashed porcelain into his head.
Zen traced a series of strokes. A whirl of shadows exploded from his Seal like black flames, clouding the area around and hiding them from view—a trick he’d learned from a master who’d served as an imperial assassin.
He turned and hauled the girl up by her armpits.
Questions remained: her allegiance, for one. The only surviving Hin practitioners, as far as Zen knew, were hidden away with him at his school. But he could interrogate her on thatlater. Right now it was imperative that he kept her out of Elantian hands before she became another weapon they could use to gain access to Hin practitioning.
Zen ran a thumb over the scars on his hands—a motion that had grown habitual over the cycles. The girl would be better off dead than having to go through the things they would do to her.
“We have to leave,” he said. Around them, people were screaming as his black smoke rolled over them; it wouldn’t be two minutes before the patrols would be upon them. “Please.Move—”
He heard the whistle of metal behind him too late.
Zen turned, but the glint of a blade flashed past him, followed by a searing pain in his side. He let out a sharp exhale, his knees buckling with surprise. When he put a hand to his midriff, it was warm and wet with blood.
He knew immediately that the blade had been poisoned, coated with some Elantian metalwork spell that began to seep wickedly through his veins. Essence of mercury, perhaps, or arsenic or antimony.
His mind blurred.
Small, firm hands wrapped around his waist. He felt his arm slung over a bony shoulder, silken hair brush against his chin. Smelled, amidst the aroma of burning metal and bitter blood, the perfume of lilies.
With some difficulty, he focused his vision. The girl was dragging him forward along King Alessander’s Road. The auric lights were blurring; sweat slicked down his cheeks as the world thudded with the pounding of his steps. All that kept him anchored was the feel of the girl’s arms around his waist, the scent of lilies drifting in the fog smothering his mind.
Gradually, the crowds thinned, the stalls grew sparser, and the roads darkened as lantern light faded.
They swung into a narrow side street, shoes splashing on grime. The pungent odor of kitchen waste and sewage permeated the air…mixed with the briny tang of ocean water.
The girl slowed at last. Zen was grateful as she propped him against a wall. The burning in his side had faded somewhat with the distance they’d put between themselves and the magician. The longer the distance, the weaker the magic’s hold—or the more powerful its wielder had to be. That, at least, was one principle Hin practitioning had in common with Elantian magic. It was frightening how little the handful of surviving Hin practitioners had learned of Elantian metalwork in twelve long cycles.
Zen raised a shaking hand to wipe the sweat from his forehead. It came away mixed with blood. He blinked for a moment, stumped by where that might have come from—and then nearly laughed when he remembered.
The girl had smashed a teacup on his face.
“Are you all right, mister?”
Her voice was like song: sweet as silverbells, clear as a halcyon sky. He looked up to see her peering at him, moonlight draping her pale outfit like a pure spill of milk. Her chin-length hair was slick with sweat, but she was lovely. He’d noticed back at the Teahouse—he hadn’t been able to help himself. Lips bowed over a sharp chin, dark lashes sweeping over smile-curved eyes that were currently studying him just as he studied her.
