But I disregarded it all with embarrassing readiness. It was chased from my skull by the image of Lewis struggling through a dark museum, hunted by soldiers. The sadness in his dying eyes, as there had been in Geoffrey’s.
“I shall not abandon you,” I vowed. I had intended to sound aloof, but there was a softness in my voice that I did not expect—my hearing was properly returning now, though I still endured a constant, distant ringing.
I added, “You agreed to escort me to Ilandrume. And how would I find your forger without you?”
“You would manage.”
Not without a penny in our pockets, a quiet voice murmured at the back of my mind. But now, of all moments, was not the time to admit the police had seized our savings.
I slipped an arm under his shoulders and we set off, slipping out of the hallway just as the foyer doors opened and voices drifted inside.
“Ottilie, go,” Lewis urged in a low voice. “If Pretoria gets her hands on the artifact first, you may not see it or her again.”
I tightened my arm about him, refusing to let go. “I am more concerned with Wake at the moment. Is this your top hobbling speed, Illing?”
“It is.”
“Then you will be winning no ribbons, good heavens.”
Lewis made a strange sound, and it took me a moment to realize it was a laugh. I looked up at him, an inane, completely inappropriate smile on my face.
“I had forgotten how ridiculous you are under duress,” Lewis said as we hastened on, ducking around displays ofgreat hairy elephants and passing beneath several dozen suspended birds, swinging vaguely against the painted ceiling.
A shout came from up ahead, beyond theHall of Natural Historywith its myriad displays of stuffed creatures: Pretoria, vengeful and frustrated.
“Would you prefer I flew into hysterics?” I whispered.
“Those are your only options?”
Another flurry of shouts and curses came from up ahead, and here and there crashes and twisted bursts of sound.
“Faster, Lewis,” I urged.
We rounded one corner, then another, and entered another exhibit—Weapons of Antiquity.
Glass-fronted cabinets glinted out at us, their armaments dormant in their cradles, upon their hooks, and within their velvet nests. Several cabinets were already shattered, the floor strewn with glittering shards. A row of cannons I had noticed upon my last visit hulked in the center of the room, facing the windows and the blazing headlights from vehicles in the courtyard beyond. The lavishly adorned ceiling looked down upon it all, its river spirits and imps rapt in their lascivious play.
No one had seen us yet—we remained hidden in the entranceway, watching the scene unfold.
Madge lay strewn beneath the creatures’ stone-eyed gazes, struggling and failing to find her feet in a sea of shattered glass. She was covered in blood, streaks and patches punctuating the pale blue of her dress and the gaunt white of her skin. The artifact lay on the floor nearby, surrounded by glittering shards.
Pretoria advanced on her, a saber in hand, glass crunching beneath her boots. Moran stood between them.
The air blurred as Moran threw out a hand. Pretoria shuddered, bracing as the skew hit her. Her whole body froze—every smooth black hair, every ripple in her skirts, every flicker of expression and spark of light across her blade.
Pretoria broke free with a vengeful sound and hurled a skew right back at him—tendrils of blurred air, warping the light and twisting off her sword, towards her enemy.
Moran moved. I blinked, losing sight of the both of them before they reappeared on the run.
If one has never witnessed two Starlight mages duel I must apologize, for I am no Bronze, and I can do the act little justice. Events became nearly impossible to follow. They fought with time, in blurs and skews cast from their free hands, Pretoria’s sword, Moran’s cane, and the movement of their bodies. They seized one another in their magecraft and shattered one another’s holds. Constant distortions of time turned the thud, shift, and skid of their feet into a mind-bending, disjointed trommel, and blurred the thin light into a sheen like frozen river fog on a winter’s morning.
A flicker of movement jerked my attention to the side. Wake stepped from the shadows behind a cabinet and started across the floor, making for the artifact, Madge, Pretoria, and Moran.
“Wait here,” I urged Lewis, and took off. I cannot say what I truly ran towards. Was it Pretoria, fighting for her life? Was it Madge, wounded and traitorous and perhaps, in the end, just trying to protect me? Or was it the artifact and the ever-thinning hope that, with its acquisition, Lewis and I might finally be free?
Pretoria caught sight of me. Her attention was only divided for a moment, but it was enough to alert Moran. Without so much as turning, he threw a hand in my direction and clenched his fingers.
My lungs seized, suspended outside of time. I staggered.
