I was pulled ten feet to the side in the blink of an eye just before glowing sawblades spun through my last location. My boots hit the ground, and by the time I slid to a stop against the railing, I’d pulled out a handful of screws and tossed them.
TheScrews of Chaosignited in midair. There was a shimmer around Gerzog as a few of sparked off of his protective charms. He simply took a few steps back into the shadow of the pillar and vanished.
I spun around, but wherever he’d gone, it wasn’t behind me. From the way he wasn’t leaking blood from the many stab wounds Dathka had put in him above, he probably took a healing potion and was pausing to take another dose.
I used that opportunity to reload my pistol. I broke it open, fished out the spent paper, and went to pluck another from my belt. I’d practiced that move a lot and gotten to where it was rather smooth and fast, but I hesitated… and moved my hand to pick a different cartridge at the other end of the loops. I stuffed that one in, then snapped the action shut.
Dathka was down and looked to be in bad shape. He’d clubbed the snot out of her. I could hear the lift approaching, which meant the paladins from below were probably on their way up, and it was likely they could stop the thing at whatever level they wanted. I could also hear noise above us too, which meant more of them were on their way down to find the source of the incredible light burst. It was get out now or never.
“We’ve got to jump. You’re going to have to hold on to me again.”
Dathka had gotten to her feet. I didn’t think it was possible for a deadlander to get any paler, but she’d managed to do so. “I can’t. I think my arm’s broken.”
It took only a brief glance at the awkward angle of the bone beneath her sleeve to know that was true. I couldn’t hold on to an awkward box and an injured woman and still control aDescent. I’d be sure to plant us all in the ground.
“It’s alright. Get the lamp to Carcalla. I’ll be fine,” she said.
“Half a dozen priests just witnessed you attempt a murder on holy ground. You willnotbe fine.” I looked around desperately but couldn’t see any other options. “Hang on.”
I ran over and scooped up the box, then took it to the rail and looked over the edge, the lift quickly approaching. “I sure hope these church guys will put this Permanence to good use.”
“No, don’t. I’m not worth it.”
“Oh shut up.” I didn’t want to go through all this just to break the damned thing, so I picked up Gerzog’s blackened priest robes, wrapped them around the box, and dropped it as gently as I could over the side.
“You fool!”
It weighed a lot less than Dathka and me, so it didn’t break the pane of glass it landed on, but thethumpwas enough to cause the paladins inside to immediately stop the lift in placeright below us. It would take them a minute to figure out what that noise had been.
I ran back to her. “You can stay here and be mad in jail, or we can go.”
She was furious about losing the treasure, but she had the sense to not stick around and cry about it. “Let’s go.”
“We’re going to try and float as far from here as possible. Just know I’ve never tried to hold this spell for that long.” We went to the outside edge, and even in the dark, it looked like alongway down. “I’ll aim for those rooftops, and I think we’ve got the angle to get there, but I don’t know how good this is going to work.”
Chest to chest, she wrapped her good arm around me, and I put mine around her waist and squished her tight—if Azarin saw us like this, somebody would be getting electrocuted, that was for sure—and then we went over the side.
I activated theDescentspell, and focused on those rooftops as best as I could. That’s easier said than done when it feels like you’re falling to your death, and the wind is howling in your ears, and your eyes are blinking away involuntary moisture, and a deadlander is screaming with her face shoved into your neck. It took everything I had to keep our feet under us, because at this speed, if we landed headfirst, we were going to die.
I’d been worried that someone below would see us, but that turned out to not be a problem, because one of the paladins must have opened the box. There was so much light shooting out of the lift shaft that nobody on the ground was going to be able to see a thing.
Problem was, neither was I.
Ithinkwe were still going the right direction.
I tried to remember everything Azarin had taught me about air magic, understanding the Clear, and the nuances of flying. Then the mental strain of keeping up the spell pushed all of that aside, and it was all I could do to keep the spell going. It was likesuspending yourself from a bar and holding on as long as you can as your fingers burned more and more, and your muscles shook, until you just couldn’t hold on anymore… only with my brain.
Except the spell broke before my concentration. We’d long wondered what the limits of this spell were. Welp… I found them.
My enchantment abruptly died. The Clear was all used up. We went from a haphazard, slightly slowed fall in a useful direction, to a total freefall at the mercy of gravity.
To my great surprise, that only lasted about two seconds before we crashed into someone’s shingles.
Forty-Five
We were lying there in the dark on someone’s roof. Dathka was on top of me.
“That was kind of you to cushion my fall.”
