Chapter 131: Refraction

Chapter 131: Refraction

Siobhan

Month 3, Day 13, Saturday 1:40 a.m.

Under the ominous flashing of lights and the low moan of the alarm, Knave Knoll’s guards rushed into action, ensuring all the remaining prisoners were locked away and then jogging to defensive positions.

Enforcer Gerard grabbed a young guard as she passed. “Take over here,” he ordered. “When they’re finished, escort the prisoner back to their cell.”

He moved to leave, but the cursemaster called out, spittle flying off his shiny lips as he protested. “Just what is going on!? I was assured of my safety when I took this job. Surely, you cannot be leaving my protection to this woman and a couple of healers. I insist that you escort me away from this place if there is danger!”

Gerard turned back, his expression still as calm and impassive as ever. “Knave Knoll is the safest place you could be. When things have settled down, I promise we will escort you back to your lodgings. In the meantime, please complete the assignment.” He jerked his chin toward the prisoner halfway through receiving their seal, then left, ignoring the cursemaster’s sputtered protests.

Healer Nidson, by contrast, seemed entirely unperturbed. “Shall we continue?” he asked mildly.

The cursemaster gave him a curdling glare, but turned back to the unfortunate prisoner.

Siobhan had to shake her limbs to rid herself of the cold stillness that had settled over her when the alarm started. Per her agreement with Oliver, she could leave if she thought herself to be in danger. But whatever the problem was, she couldn’t hear any sounds of fighting.

The prisoner and cursemaster were both agitated, which made this final seal more dangerous. She might be needed if Healer Nidson had to fight against another seizure. Plus, if she left now, it would be on her own, which might actually be more dangerous than staying put, surrounded as she was by well-stocked and trained enforcers who were ready to handle the danger for her.

‘The situation is dangerous, but it doesn’t yet seem to be a disaster, and doesn’t call for panic or rash decisions. I need more information.’

The cursemaster moved faster than ever, and, with a nervous bow, the guard escorted the prisoner out of the infirmary as soon as it was done. She met no resistance from the Morrow man, who was probably relieved to get away from them.

This left Siobhan, Healer Nidson, and the cursemaster alone in the infirmary.

“We should find out what’s going on,” Siobhan said.

“Yes!” the cursemaster agreed. “I require a safer location, with guards, while the situation is ongoing. Somewhere I can set up wards...”

“I will clean up here,” Healer Nidson said, already moving to arrange the room to his liking. “I have a sense that my service will be necessary. Miss Nakai, please go along to let them know that I will be prepared to assist with injuries as soon as possible, and report the situation back to me.”

With the cursemaster tagging along, superciliously muttering to himself about the lack of respect and professionalism, Siobhan left to find Enforcer Gerard, or whoever was in charge of the security measures.

As she passed one of the small windows on the second floor, where a guard had lowered the glass and activated some kind of hidden mechanism that was probably a ward inlaid into the wall, she paused, peeking out over the man’s shoulder.

To the west, less than a couple of blocks away and moving slowly in their direction, spells lit up the night. And suddenly she could hear the sounds of fighting. It was hard to make out the details, but she saw three wagons retreating along with the first of two separate groups of people. “One of the convoys was attacked,” she whispered.

“If they can make it back, it will be fine,” the guard replied.

Siobhan turned away, hurrying on to the administrative office in the upper corner of the building. ‘This isn’t the low-key mass arrest we planned,’ she thought. ‘This is going to bring the coppers down on us, too. No matter what deal Oliver made with them, there’s no way the Crowns will overlook a secret, independent jail run by a local gang.’

When Siobhan and the cursemaster entered the already crowded room, Enforcer Gerard looked up from a distagram artifact just like the one Oliver had in his home office. The normally stoic man’s expression had grown grim under the weight of the problem.

The cursemaster immediately and loudly complained about his treatment. “I am a man of particular means, and I never forget an enemy,” he added with a yellow-toothed smile that was meant to be intimidating—and it was, but it also made Siobhan have the sudden urge to kill him and thus remove him as a threat.

Enforcer Gerard was more circumspect, sending two of the guards to set the cursemaster up in one of the solitary confinement rooms on the ground floor, where he would be “insulated” from any trouble.

When the distasteful man had left, Siobhan relayed Healer Nidson’s message, sidling closer to the crowded window to see out.

Reinforcements from Knave Knoll had gone out to the convoy’s aid, but the enemy had crippled two of the three wagons, and several dead or dying horses lay across the ground. And then, in the light of one of the bright lamps the enemy was shining to keep the guards half-blinded, Siobhan caught sight of Oliver’s mask as he turned his head to look back. She felt like their eyes met for a moment, and then the bottom half of the wagon he was standing behind exploded.

Oliver went down with it.

His horse fell with him, screaming with a pain and terror that seemed all too human. The sound cut through the noise of the battle for an instant. And then the sounds dampened entirely, as if they’d gone underwater.

Siobhan frowned in confusion as the spell-fire from their side faltered and people began to claw at their faces and throats.

Siobhan opened her eyes and cast.

It took only a second for her Will to climb over the mental hurdle that allowed her to distance the output location, reaching out and grabbing the beacon of his light, gobbling him up inside her sphere of control.

For a moment, she felt like Myrddin.

Sure, with the lack of moon and all the distraction of the fighting, her spell had to redirect so little light that she could still handle it even with the increased strain of this long a distance, much farther than she had ever achieved in practice. And even though she could tell pieces of the refraction dome occasionally faltered, most likely creating mirage-like distortions or making Gerard seem like a chameleon moving just out of sync with the background, those same environmental conditions meant that it would be hard for anyone to notice.

But she felt powerful. Her knowledge and her Will could reorder the natural laws. Even if Professor Lacer had been unimpressed by her lazy workaround, and she wasn’t even strong enough to get all the way through his tests, she could do this.

That sense of triumph lasted for only a few seconds before the strain of continuing to move the output Circle along with Gerard made itself known.

Some tiny portion of her mind caught Oliver’s mussed hair rising again next to one of the crippled wagons, and any peripheral attention she had left focused on him without her conscious direction.

He had climbed up the side of the wagon and was...killing the prisoners?

Gerard had made it to the enemy. Hunching down to seem a little smaller, he cut diagonally across the street, right toward the man in the middle, whose arms were raised dramatically.

The enemy thaumaturge made a violent motion with his fist, and even from this distance, Siobhan could feel the power of it channel through to the world.

The sounds of the battle returned.

A huge, faint ripple tore through the air between the two groups, moving down toward Oliver. It ploughed through the bodies of the prisoners he had been executing and crashed into the wagon he’d been clinging to. The whole mass exploded outward in splintered wood and splattered viscera.

Siobhan’s vision flickered as something in her tried to pull her concentration away from Gerard and the spell to better see what had just happened.

She didn’t know how Oliver could have survived that attack.

The realization sent a wave of static numbness through her mind, and her concentration on the spell wavered once more.

She couldn’t spare a glimpse for Oliver’s remains. Without her, Gerard would die, too, and the enemy would roll forward over all of them. She threw her desperation and worry into the spell, letting it buoy her fatiguing Will. No matter what happened to Oliver, she would continue on. She would live. And for her to live, the enemy had to die.

The sheer violence of the attack had stunned everyone, and the friendly spell-fire that had threatened Gerard temporarily petered off. Probably, people were hiding from a potential follow up, or trying to regain their breath now that the enemy thaumaturge had released his suffocating grip.

The man swayed from the effort of that great blow. Perhaps he had reached his limit, or maybe he was only collecting himself before exerting his control over the battlefield once more, single-handedly carrying the fight for his side.

Siobhan wouldn’t learn which it was, because at that moment, Gerard threw himself forward.

The tip of his machete reached beyond the range of Siobhan’s spell, catching some reflected light for a flashing instant.

The thaumaturge looked up, but Gerard was already bringing the blade down at an angle, the force of his whole body behind the swing.

The machete hit the thaumaturge’s jaw, met the resistance of a ward that flared grey, and instantly overpowered it. The blade continued through, angling down through the jaw, and then the neck, stopping only when it met the thaumaturge’s opposite collarbone.

The man’s head flew off, launched by a geyser of blood.

Gerard stumbled as the full-body commitment to his blow pulled him off balance.

The two closest attackers stood stunned, not immediately able to comprehend what had happened, but Siobhan could feel her grip on the spell slipping. Gerard was too far, and she was too unpracticed. But she mentally dug in her claws and wrapped the weight of her Will around the spell. Her clarity might falter, but her determination remained.

Instead of immediately running away, Gerard swung again, this time cutting off the wand of the closest attacker, along with the hand that had been gripping it.

Gerard took two more steps. As he shoved the gently curved blade of his machete all the way through the chest of a third enemy, the blood spraying out and hitting a fourth in the face, Siobhan lost her grip on his concealment.

She slumped down, fighting back dizziness as she tried to ground herself in the sensation of rough gravel against her cheek and hand, one arm crushed awkwardly beneath her. She hadn’t strained her Will, hadn’t lost control or broken, she’d just given out. She had burned through her mental energy like a wick with no remaining candle, and her mind felt bruised. If she wanted to be safe, she wouldn’t be of much use for the remainder of the evening.

She couldn’t even lift her head to see over the battlements and search for Oliver’s body.