“It’s over, Brint,” Calya said. “Roll on the Coalition and maybe the Upper Council will?—”
Light flared around Brint’s hands, and he bellowed, not so much words as the sound of rage and desperation blurring together.
Lowe pushed Calya behind the desk for cover and grabbed the chair, throwing it at Brint. It exploded as Brint’s magic hit it, scattering wood and magic as the force sent Brint staggering back.
A stray chunk of wood hit the brazier, spilling embers across the floor. The rug beneath the desk caught fire.
Calya scrambled back, slapping out a few sparks that landed on Lowe’s clothes. Brint stared at them from across the room, his eyes widening as the fire eagerly spread onto the nearest books.
The books. The evidence. All the physical ties she needed to prove his and the Coalition’s treachery.
Brint seemed to realize it at the same time—and, apparently, decided that stymying her was worth having less reference material for the new site he still believed was within his grasp. He lunged for a bookshelf near the outer wall and scattered more papers onto the flames. Then he bolted outside, half running and half falling down the stairs, heading for the pit.
“Stop him!” Calya cried, arm flung out after him. “He can’t open that thing.”
She had nothing to go on but a hunch, a sense of foreboding that Brint putting a hole in the sphere, intentionally or not, was tantamount to releasing the poison.
Lowe hesitated, visibly torn between wanting to chase Brint and take Calya to safety.
“Go,” she said, giving him a push. “I’m right behind you.”
“Get out of here, Calya.” He gave her a severe look before he charged down the stairs.
It was advice she fully intended to take. But not empty-handed.
Calya dropped to the ground, crawling on the floor as the flames crackled above her and licked along every surface. For a room underground, made entirely from stone, it sure was filled with flammable shit. Logbooks burned on the shelves, the map on the wall reduced to ash that joined the smoke in the air. Brint’s treachery, the Coalition’s plans, and the resources at their disposal—the full extent might never be known now that so much was lost.
But she could salvage a piece. That would be a start.
She had to grab something useful, get Lowe—then she could dwell and have hysterics and shock and a bodily shutdown. Not a moment before.
The small lockbox she’d seen in her vision from the wind. It was somewhere on Brint’s desk. It had to be, and within were the seals Matthias had saved, correspondence with the Coalition.
Box. Lowe. Out. Calya repeated the thoughts in her head as she crawled toward Brint’s desk. Box. Lowe. Out. That was it. Three things. She could handle three things.
More bolts of Brint’s errant magic shot through the air. One hit the narrow, spiraling staircase outside, and a harsh shriek of metal tearing and the resultant crash told Calya her exit options had just narrowed.
Another small jet of white-hot light came through the broken window, ricocheting off the ceiling to smash into the corner of Brint’s desk. The wood, already weakened from the fire steadily eating through its legs, collapsed with a groan and showered Calya with sparks. She yelped, raising her arm to protect herself.
A thump sounded, audible even over the building flames, as something heavy landed next to her.
Calya stared for a moment, unable to make sense of what she saw. The poison culture lay on the ground, its ice brick container now covered in crazed lines. Lines that resembled?—
A crack sounded, a new fracture nearly as long as Calya’s thumb forming along one corner. Though still fixed in the center, the blob of poison was slowly beginning to move, shifting a minute amount as though breaking out of stasis.
Calya reached for the brick, fingertips hesitating for a split second as intention and memory clashed. She’d already been branded by the thing. It couldn’t do it again, right?
With a hasty prayer to the Goddess, she made herself grab the block.
It was hot, but not the same searing pain as when Brint had forced her bloodied hand against the ice-glass. More surprising was the weight, the way the block resisted her efforts to drag it closer.
“Why are you so heavy?” Calya hissed, straining to slide it across the floor a few feet to the wall. Casting about for anything that could help, she saw the bag Brint had been stuffing with Matthias’s notes—and there, beneath a journal, was the lockbox.
She lunged, snagging the bag’s strap and yanking it toward her as the bookshelf next to it gave way in a cascade of sparks and books turned burning orange by flame.
The lockbox skittered away, not having been fully secured within the bag. Calya dumped what remained of the bag’s contents, most of which was on its way to becoming ash. Her fingers screamed in protest as she seized the poison brick and forced it into the narrow confines of the bag. Pain blared up as her nails tore from the pressure, but she didn’t let up. Gritted her teeth, a hoarse cry ragged in her throat, as she made the stiffened leather stretch the last little bit.
The bag was so impossibly heavy with the poison brick inside, yet still she heaved herself and it over the broken window ledge. Flopping onto the other side, she leaned against the wall, gasping in the slightly cleaner air. New points of pain spread all over her body. Calya was certain she’d cut herself on the window. She was probably sitting on glass right now, but she couldn’t find it in herself to care.
