Kell landed hard on his knees and one hand. The lights were brighter. The air smelled of perfume, sweat, and a thousand pastries. The Kiss of Enduring Love lay on the floor, not so shiny, not so fascinating. Saeldian sat on the floor shivering, their illusory mask restored, and narrowly avoided extending their long, elegant hand to pick it up. Kell laced his fingers together behind his back. Jubilee scrabbled away from it.
Lorzok muttered another spell, and Kell felt the pull of the gem break like a bit of thread. Then Lorzok slipped a silk pouch over one hand and picked it up, pulling the bag around it. He pulled the drawstring shut and stared at the prize swinging from his fingers.
“You’ve caused quite enough trouble for one day, little stone,” he said.
“I lost count. How much time do we have?” Saeldian was back in their gently perfected face. Not literally perfect, but better than that—fascinating. Kell had watched this face evolve over the years. He’d thought it had summed Saeldian up completely: nothing that detracted from what they wanted a mark to see and believe.
But that was wrong. Saeldian had been at their limits without this illusion. Without it, they’d been afraid—no. Distressed, as if they had been in a nightmare.
“Not enough,” Lorzok said. “Let’s not push our luck any further.”
He didn’t look at Kell.
“Lorzok, I’m sorry. We were trying to reach you. Saeldian couldn’t send you a message without copper. The only spell I could use was—”
“Vicious Mockery,” Lorzok said. “The spell worked.”
Kell felt like boot scrapings. If Lorzok would just punch him, he’d deserve it. But Lorzok wouldn’t hurt a fly. He would explain to mosquitoes that Kell got hives from their bites. He’d negotiated the equitable distribution of their food pack with a bear last tenday. Lorzok wouldn’t hurt anyone if he had another choice, because he wasn’t a monster.
But Kell was.
“I’m sorry.”
But Lorzok wasn’t paying attention to him. “Guards are coming.”
Boots thumping on stair risers. Genial conversation Kell couldn’t make out, but the tone was relaxed. They hadn’t been caught, but they were about to be.
“Scatter,” Saeldian hissed.
Lorzok tossed the pouch at Kell and fell to all fours.
Kell caught the bag. Jubilee bolted to the alcove where they had waited for Lady Tarm and her servants to set the spells. She bent over the doorknob and slipped inside, closing it behind her.
Lorzok shifted into the form of a house cat. He trotted down the stairs on the opposite side of Jubilee’s escape, meowing at the top of his tabby-striped kitty lungs at the guards, whose voices Lorzok had distinguished from the music and chatter before the rest of them.
“The handsomest fellow, aren’t you?” a guard said, delighted with Lorzok’s feline antics. “Who’s collecting petting tax? Is it you? Oh yes, it is you!”
“I swear, you and cats,” the other guard said.
They had only a moment. Would the guards split up, each of them going up one staircase to the top? Smart guards would, so they would. They couldn’t follow Jubilee, Saeldian couldn’t cast any more major spells, he had…nothing that would get them out of this cleanly.
Only one thing left. “Diversion.”
Saeldian’s form shifted. Human, with bronze-brown hair, summer-sky eyes, freckles over an upturned nose, and…a wide, low gown that couldn’t stay up without the most sizeable assets Kell had ever seen Saeldian illusion. She (definitely she, right now) tugged him toward the alcove closest to the guards’ voices.
“Best kind of caught?” she asked, and before he could answer, he was against the wall with Saeldian pressed against him.
“Knave’s gambit, accepted,” Kell said, and caught the delicate jaw Saeldian had sculpted in two hands, gazing into their eyes as he brought them closer, closer, until their eyelids slipped half closed. They melted into him, and those assets pressed firmly against his chest.
A mannerly guest shouldn’t be canoodling near the gallery, but there was no time to fix it now. He smiled, lazy and warm, and focused all his attention on Saeldian’s pretty disguise.
He chuckled. “If I didn’t know better, I’d say you knew perfectly well this exhibit was closed, Saer…”
“Thezra,” Saeldian said. Kell nearly jumped at their light, airy voice. “I did deceive you. Was that…terribly wrong?”
“You’re already forgiven.”
“Good.”
