Chapter Nine
I stared at the thin,
vaguely horsey features and pale blue eyes of the mage in front of
me, and hoped I was imagining things. He looked a little different
in a well-fitted tux instead of seventeenth-century slops, his
sandy blond hair slicked back instead of falling messily around his
face. But it was him. The guy I’d once helped Agnes apprehend
before he could blow history to kingdom come.
If I’d had any
doubts, they were erased when he suddenly gave a screech, knocked
the tray of drinks at me and bolted. A choking mass of thick,
blue-black smoke boiled through the room as I stumbled back.
Someone fired a gun and someone screamed. And then everything
slowed down—literally.
The whole room
suddenly looked like it was on slowmotion replay. I fell back into
Mircea, my gown fluttering lazily around me, as the serving tray
arced high in the air above. Glasses scattered, golden liquid
sloshed and the silver surface flashed in the candlelight for a
long moment....
And then sped back up
and hit the floorboards with a crash. But it was barely audible
over the sound of rapid-fire gunshots, breaking glass and the
collective panic of a crowd unused to danger. Not that I was having
much of a different reaction, and I was plenty used to it. I hit
the ground instinctively, only to have Mircea grab me around the
waist and jerk me back.
That was lucky,
because the crowd took that moment to decide on the better part of
valor, and there was a stampede. Ladies in fine gowns and men in
tuxes forgot about elegance, threw away decorum and fought to be
the first out the door. The place where I’d been kneeling a second
ago was suddenly a mass of swirling hems and pounding
feet.
“What happened?”
Mircea asked, pushing me behind him.
“Agnes,” I gasped.
The smoke burned at the back of my throat, making it hard to talk,
hard to breathe. “She can manipulate time for short periods, stop
it . . . slow it down . . . and she must have recognized
him—”
“Recognized
who?”
“The guy from the
Guild,” I said, desperately trying to spot him in the crowd. But
the smoke made it difficult to see anything, and most of the guests
were taller than I was. I hiked up my skirts and scrambled onto a
nearby table.
“What guild?” Mircea
asked, but I didn’t answer. I could see over the crowd now, but not
through the smoke. But there was something going on near the back
of the room—spell fire lit up the haze in spots, like strobes on a
dance floor. And most of the colors were in the red and orange
range—offensive magic, war spells; not the soothing blues and
greens of the protective end of the spectrum.
I hopped off the
table and ran.
Mircea grabbed me
before I’d gone a yard—and then flung us to the floor as a stray
curse blistered the air overhead. It crashed into the window behind
us, shattering the glass and sending fire running up the brocade
curtains. More smoke, thick and smothering, added to the mix,
threatening what little air was left in the room.
“Let me go!” I
choked. “He’ll kill her!”
“Kill
who?”
“My
mother!”
“Who
will?”
“The asshole from the
Guild!”
“Listen to me.” Warm
hands framed my face and dark eyes met mine. I felt the usual
reassurance Mircea’s presence caused ramp up a few notches,
soothing my fears, calming my mind—and depriving me of my edge.
“Whatever is going on, it doesn’t succeed,” he assured me. “Nothing
of importance happened tonight. My men were told
specifically—”
“Nothing did happen,” I said, furious because I no longer
was. “But something is happening. And
if you don’t listen—”
But Mircea wasn’t.
He’d pulled me to my feet as we argued and slipped an arm around my
waist. And now he started to push his way through the crowd toward
the nearest exit.
And then, just as
suddenly, started to back up again.
I found myself
walking backward, too, unable to control my body’s movements
despite the fact that they were the exact opposite of what I wanted
to do. I tried to talk but I couldn’t do that, either, except for
some garbled sounds that didn’t make sense. For a moment, I
panicked, sure I was possessed again—until I caught sight of the
drapes.
A minute before, the
dark red damask had been a border of flame around the window,
embroidered designs standing out harshly against the rapidly
darkening fabric, fat tassels writhing as they were quickly
consumed. Now the opposite was true. Clean, whole cloth blossomed
out of flames that were shrinking, falling back, forming into a
ball that flew through the air back to whoever had cast
it.
The fleeing crowd was
also moving the wrong way, panicked faces streaming away from me as
I jumped on the table, jumped off, hit the floor and then was back
on my feet, staring at a wide-eyed mage with champagne on his
shirt. And then I was in Mircea’s arms, facing the window as if
nothing had ever happened. Because it hadn’t yet.
Time juddered and
shook, trembling around me for a long second before reversing
again. And this time, I didn’t hesitate. I threw off Mircea’s hold
and tackled the mage.
We went down in a
thrashing heap, my arms around his waist and then his leg when he
tried to shake me off. Smoke bloomed around us, harsh and stinging,
as he threw something to the ground. But I held on—until a shiny,
booted foot caught me upside the face, sending me reeling. But by
then Mircea had him by the collar and jerked him up—
And was blasted
through the air as if shot out of a cannon.
I didn’t see Mircea
hit the wall, recover and launch himself back at our attacker,
because it all happened faster than I could blink. But I did see
him freeze in the air, midleap, as time shuddered to a halt. At
least it did for me, Mircea and everybody else—except the goddamned
mage, who shrugged it off like an old coat and bolted into the
crowd.
I started after him,
pushing hard against the power freezing me in place, but it felt
like trying to swim in a river of cold molasses. Time swirled
sluggishly all around me, weighing my limbs, slowing my breathing,
keeping me back. Away from him. Away from her.
Until I pushed, breaking free in a rush that sent me
sprawling into the statuelike crowd, disoriented and breathing
hard. A woman toppled over, stiff as a board, her red, red lipstick
smearing across the shirt of the man beside her. Another woman
teetered back and forth on her high heels, but was unable to fall
because of the people pressing her hard on all sides.
They were pressing
me, too, but that was a good thing, because they were also slowing
down the mage. I could see his blond head bobbing through the
crowd, shining under the lights. He was easy to spot, being a good
three inches taller than most of the guests and the only one
moving. But even if I caught him, I couldn’t take down a crazy dark
mage on my own.
And Agnes couldn’t
help me. I didn’t know what kind of weird shit was going on with
time, but I knew this maneuver. Stopping time was the biggest
weapon in the Pythia’s arsenal, a trump card. But it was also a
one-shot deal. The only time I’d done it—by accident—it had
completely wiped me out for the rest of the day.
And I was a lot
younger than Agnes.
It frightened the
hell out of me, because she knew the cost better than I did. She
wouldn’t have used it if the danger to her or her heir wasn’t
acute. But it wouldn’t work this time, and might even backfire.
Because if the mage could throw it off, he could hunt them while
they thought they were safest, and while she was weakened with her
power diverted elsewhere.
I had to follow him,
and I had to have help.
And there was only
one place to get it.
I looked up to where
Mircea was still suspended in the air, amber eyes slitted, staring
at the place where the mage no longer was. I grabbed the front of
his shirt, the only thing I could reach, and gave a pull. And like
a big, Mirceashaped balloon, he floated a little closer to the
ground. But he was still frozen, still useless.
It hadn’t
worked.
I stood there with
tears of pure fury burning in my eyes. I hated the fact that I
didn’t know how to use my power, that no matter how much I studied,
how much I practiced, what I needed was always something I didn’t
know how to do. But if I’d done it once, goddamnit, I could do it
again. No stupid mage from some squirrelly little cult was going to
beat me at my own damn game.
I fisted my hand in
Mircea’s shirt, and fisted my power in the current swirling thickly
between us. And pulled.
For a long moment,
nothing happened. He didn’t even move toward me this time, not an
inch. But while he wasn’t moving in space, he was moving through
something. Because I could feel the resistance dragging on him,
tugging him back, wanting to fix him in place while I was doing my
best to yank him out of it.
It was unbelievably
difficult, far harder than it had been in my own case. I started to
shake, and sweat broke out on my face, and for a second, I almost
lost him. It was like time was slippery and he was oiled, and along
with the sheer physical strain was the stress of keeping my wobbly
grip. But I could feel time peeling away from him, layer after
layer, as if he were shedding some kind of strange
skin.
And then suddenly I
was hitting the floor, with a hundred and eighty pounds of
freaked-out vampire on top of me.
Mircea jumped back to
his feet and then ducked into a crouch as I lay there, panting and
half-sick. God damn, that had sucked.
He seemed to think so, too, because he was staring around, minus
his usual sangfroid. Mahogany silk whipped around his face as he
took in the motionless crowd, the frozen clouds of smoke and a
glass that had been caught midfall a few feet away, the contents
spilling out like a champagne waterfall.
He put out a tenuous
hand and touched it, and then jerked back when it wet his fingers.
He looked at me, dark eyes wide. “What did you do?” he asked in
wonder.
“Never mind that.” I
staggered back to my feet, wondering why I felt like throwing up.
“We’ve got to get to him before he finds her.”
“The man who attacked
you?”
“Yes.”
“He’s trying to harm
the Pythia?”
“Yes!”
“Why?”
“Because Agnes and I
stopped him on his last mission. And because that’s what the Guild
does—they disrupt time!” And killing a Pythia and her heir would
definitely do that.
It would also do
something else, I realized. My mother was still the Pythia’s chosen
successor, still the good little Initiate preserving her virginity
until the all-important transfer ceremony. She had yet to meet my
disreputable father, yet to run away with him.
Yet to have
me.
Suddenly, my skin was
too cold, too tight, and my lungs couldn’t seem to pull in any air.
“Mircea—” I grabbed his sleeve.
But I didn’t need to
explain. I saw when he got it, and I’d never been more grateful for
that whip-fire intellect, which rarely missed little details. Like
the fact that if the maniac succeeded, he wouldn’t take out two
Pythias tonight.
He’d eliminate
three.
Mircea didn’t ask any
more questions. He caught me by the waist and surged ahead, cutting
a swath through the motionless crowd faster than I’d have thought
possible. But the mage had a sizable lead, and in the few moments
it had taken to get Mircea on board, I’d lost sight of
him.
It didn’t help that
smoke hung heavy in the air like a thick, dark fog. I thought it
would get better as we moved farther from the source, but the
opposite seemed to be true. The far end of the room was a sea of
clouds, darker in some areas and lighter in others where lines of
spell fire crisscrossed in the gloom.
The clouds were
annoying, but it was the spells that had me worried. They were
frozen in place like neon tubes at a bad ’80s disco, but there were
a lot of them. And while they wouldn’t slam into us with time the
way it was, if we hit them—
I didn’t know what
would happen if we hit them. But I didn’t think it would be
fun.
“Can you shift us
across?” Mircea asked grimly.
“Not without seeing
where I’m going.” And the smoke pretty much excluded
that.
“Then we’ll go
around.”
“There’s no time!
He’s already—”
“Then I’ll go,” he
said, putting a heavy hand on my arm as I dropped to the floor,
preparing to crawl under the nearest beam.
“You can’t manipulate
time, and he can! He can freeze you and kill you before you know
what’s happening.”
“I’ll take that
chance.”
“Well, I
won’t!”
His jaw clenched
stubbornly, and I felt like screaming. “Mircea, you’re going to
protect me to death!”
He stared at me a
moment longer, and then cursed inventively and dropped beside me. I
took that as assent and started forward. But it wasn’t nearly as
easy as it sounds.
A bright beam
sparkled in the air above our heads like a frozen column of
raspberry ice. Frost spell, cold enough to burn, cold enough to
freeze any skin it touched. Cold enough to kill. I made very sure
to hug the floor as I slithered below.
It was marginally
safer down here, because most of the spells were higher up, forming
a brilliant lattice above our heads. But even though the smoke was
thinner down here, visibility was actually worse, with gowns caught
in midswirl everywhere and a forest of men’s trouser legs. I
scurried forward anyway, careful not to topple any of the living
statues in my path.
“I thought only
Pythias could manipulate time,” Mircea said, from behind
me.
“So did
I.”
“Then how is he doing
it?”
“I don’t know,” I
said, aggrieved. “Agnes didn’t say anything about the Guild being
able to do something like this. They’re supposed to be time
travelers, but she said that most of them are losers who manage to
blow themselves up attempting dangerous spells they can’t
control.”
“And yet this one is
different.”
“He didn’t seem that
way,” I complained. “At least not when Agnes and I were after him.
He was kind of an idiot. He couldn’t shoot worth a damn, and he
kept running around screaming, and running into—”
I stopped because I’d
slammed into something, hard enough to hurt. It turned out to be
the faint green bubble of a protection spell, so dim against the
glowing colors that I hadn’t seen it. An older man was underneath,
his hand up, projecting the shield over himself and the woman lying
beside him. Her gray chiffon evening gown, silver hair and
colorless pearls blended perfectly with the frightened pallor of
her face.
“Let me,” Mircea
said, taking the lead. I didn’t argue, because his sight was about
ten times keener than mine. “And tell me about this
Guild.”
“I don’t know much,”
I said, hugging his heels. “Just what Agnes told me. She said
they’re some kind of freaky cult. They think they can make history
better, solve humanity’s problems, if they can identify where we
screwed up and then go back in time and change it. Only they’re the
ones who get to decide what was a mistake and what
wasn’t.”
“Fanatics.” Mircea
sounded disgusted.
“She called them
utopians.”
“Same thing under a
different name.”
“She said they could
be dangerous—”
“They always are.
Anyone who can only see their point of view is. Once a group
decides that their way is the only way, it is an easy progression
to vilifying anyone who doesn’t agree with them. And once someone
has been demonized, has been characterized as opposing the good,
killing him becomes a virtue.”
He sounded like he
knew firsthand, but I didn’t get a chance to ask. Because we’d
reached the middle of the room, where a dark red stain spread over
the floor, like someone had dropped a bucket of paint. But paint
didn’t simmer like the top of a boiling pot, with potion bubbles
rising from the surface to spill into the air. They were sluggish
now, like gas trapped in viscous oil, but they wouldn’t stay that
way for long.
“What is it?” Mircea
asked.
“It’s
fading.”
“What
is?”
“The spell. It takes
a lot of energy, and no one can hold it for—”
“What spell?” Mircea
asked sharply.
“The one I pulled us
out of.”
“The time
spell?”
“Yes.”
“You’re telling me
that time is about to start back up?” he demanded.
“Yes.”
“When?”
“Now?” I said,
watching a crimson bubble rise almost a foot before bursting with a
little pop.
And then I wasn’t
watching it anymore, because Mircea had thrown me over his shoulder
and taken a flying leap over the puddle. He landed hard and I
gasped, partly because it had hurt and partly because we’d hit a
woman in a bright pink evening gown. I grabbed her by the hair
before she could topple into the stain, and Mircea thrust her back
into the arms of a mage behind her. And then we were sprinting over
and under and through the maze at a pace that was definitely not
safe.
But then, neither was
this.
A spell flashed
across our path, hit somebody’s shield and ricocheted back,
striking the parquet floor in front of us and sending a hundred
little wooden slivers whirling up into the air. Another brilliant
beam slammed into the ceiling, causing a cascade of plaster dust to
sift down like snow, and a third exploded through the French doors
at the end of the room. And then we were bursting through what was
left, into darkness and crisp autumn air and the night sounds of a
city.
And the sight of a
mage dragging a girl in a tacky blue dress.
They were halfway
down the street and moving fast, probably because they were being
chased by four war mages. The men must have been outside, sneaking
a smoke or something, because they obviously hadn’t been caught in
the time bubble. They were still half a block back from the running
couple, but then they put on a burst of magically enhanced speed,
blurring their figures as they tore through the night, hands
outstretched, bodies leaping for the fleeing mage and his
captive—
And then the whole
group disappeared in a flash that lit up the surrounding buildings
like a single strobe.
For a moment, I just
stared in disbelief. Because I might not know everything about my
office yet, but I damn well knew a shift when I saw one. And the
entire group had just fled, not through space but through time,
shrugging off the fragile grasp of the moment as easily as most
people would walk through a door.
But while their
bodies were gone, something else remained. I clutched at it
desperately as Mircea cursed behind me. “What the devil . . .
?”
“I can still feel
her.” My hand clenched on his arm, hard enough that it would have
hurt a human.
His head whipped
around, scanning the empty street. “You’re saying they’re hiding
under some kind of glamourie?”
“No. I’m saying I can
feel her.”
And I might even know
why. The holders of my office had to train replacements somehow,
and one method was on the job. But that required being able to
locate an heir who had landed herself in trouble, no matter when
she happened to be. At least, I assumed that was why I could sense
where she’d gone, like a glimmering golden thread in my mind, tying
us together.
A thread getting
rapidly thinner as she moved farther away.
“What does that—”
Mircea began, but I shook my head.
“Hold on,” I told
him. And shifted.