Chapter 24
Chapter Twenty-Four
Calya was utterly uncharmed by anything, always. But Lowe storming right up to her, his wind snapping at his hair, sorely tested her resolve. He cupped her face between his hands, his eyes searching hers, bright and intense, as if he had to convince himself she was truly there.
His lips parted, the beginning of a sound emerging when his head whipped to the side. He pulled Calya against him, using his body as a shield between her and Brint’s wildly fired magic.
Brint fucking Avenor. Calya glared at him, stepping around Lowe. Her ranger tried to block her, his arm raised in defense. She nudged it aside, giving him a reassuring squeeze before she faced Brint unimpeded.
The golden boy of the illustrious Avenor family was looking positively rumpled.
His handsome features, already marred by Anadae’s frost protection spell, had picked up several more scratches from their struggle.
A bruise was beginning to bloom on his cheek, creeping above his beard.
He was starting to look winded, too, chest heaving, mouth agape, which gave Calya a touch of smug satisfaction.
Nice to know she wasn’t the only one not conditioned for fighting.
He obviously wasn’t accustomed to such explosive magic use, if the sweat staining his brow and the slight shaking of his hands were anything to go by.
“It’s over, Brint,” Calya said. “Roll on the Coalition and maybe the Upper Council will—”
Light flared around Brint’s hands, and he bellowed, not so much words as the sound of rage and desperation blurring together.
Lowe pushed Calya behind the desk for cover and grabbed the chair, throwing it at Brint. It exploded as Brint’s magic hit it, scattering wood and magic as the force sent Brint staggering back.
A stray chunk of wood hit the brazier, spilling embers across the floor. The rug beneath the desk caught fire.
Calya scrambled back, slapping out a few sparks that landed on Lowe’s clothes. Brint stared at them from across the room, his eyes widening as the fire eagerly spread onto the nearest books.
The books. The evidence. All the physical ties she needed to prove his and the Coalition’s treachery.
Brint seemed to realize it at the same time—and, apparently, decided that stymying her was worth having less reference material for the new site he still believed was within his grasp.
He lunged for a bookshelf near the outer wall and scattered more papers onto the flames.
Then he bolted outside, half running and half falling down the stairs, heading for the pit.
“Stop him!” Calya cried, arm flung out after him. “He can’t open that thing.”
She had nothing to go on but a hunch, a sense of foreboding that Brint putting a hole in the sphere, intentionally or not, was tantamount to releasing the poison.
Lowe hesitated, visibly torn between wanting to chase Brint and take Calya to safety.
“Go,” she said, giving him a push. “I’m right behind you.”
“Get out of here, Calya.” He gave her a severe look before he charged down the stairs.
It was advice she fully intended to take. But not empty-handed.
Calya dropped to the ground, crawling on the floor as the flames crackled above her and licked along every surface.
For a room underground, made entirely from stone, it sure was filled with flammable shit.
Logbooks burned on the shelves, the map on the wall reduced to ash that joined the smoke in the air.
Brint’s treachery, the Coalition’s plans, and the resources at their disposal—the full extent might never be known now that so much was lost.
But she could salvage a piece. That would be a start.
She had to grab something useful, get Lowe—then she could dwell and have hysterics and shock and a bodily shutdown. Not a moment before.
The small lockbox she’d seen in her vision from the wind. It was somewhere on Brint’s desk. It had to be, and within were the seals Matthias had saved, correspondence with the Coalition.
Box. Lowe. Out. Calya repeated the thoughts in her head as she crawled toward Brint’s desk. Box. Lowe. Out. That was it. Three things. She could handle three things.
More bolts of Brint’s errant magic shot through the air. One hit the narrow, spiraling staircase outside, and a harsh shriek of metal tearing and the resultant crash told Calya her exit options had just narrowed.
Another small jet of white-hot light came through the broken window, ricocheting off the ceiling to smash into the corner of Brint’s desk.
The wood, already weakened from the fire steadily eating through its legs, collapsed with a groan and showered Calya with sparks.
She yelped, raising her arm to protect herself.
A thump sounded, audible even over the building flames, as something heavy landed next to her.
Calya stared for a moment, unable to make sense of what she saw. The poison culture lay on the ground, its ice brick container now covered in crazed lines. Lines that resembled—
A crack sounded, a new fracture nearly as long as Calya’s thumb forming along one corner. Though still fixed in the center, the blob of poison was slowly beginning to move, shifting a minute amount as though breaking out of stasis.
Calya reached for the brick, fingertips hesitating for a split second as intention and memory clashed. She’d already been branded by the thing. It couldn’t do it again, right?
With a hasty prayer to the Goddess, she made herself grab the block.
It was hot, but not the same searing pain as when Brint had forced her bloodied hand against the ice-glass. More surprising was the weight, the way the block resisted her efforts to drag it closer.
“Why are you so heavy?” Calya hissed, straining to slide it across the floor a few feet to the wall. Casting about for anything that could help, she saw the bag Brint had been stuffing with Matthias’s notes—and there, beneath a journal, was the lockbox.
She lunged, snagging the bag’s strap and yanking it toward her as the bookshelf next to it gave way in a cascade of sparks and books turned burning orange by flame.
The lockbox skittered away, not having been fully secured within the bag.
Calya dumped what remained of the bag’s contents, most of which was on its way to becoming ash.
Her fingers screamed in protest as she seized the poison brick and forced it into the narrow confines of the bag.
Pain blared up as her nails tore from the pressure, but she didn’t let up.
Gritted her teeth, a hoarse cry ragged in her throat, as she made the stiffened leather stretch the last little bit.
The bag was so impossibly heavy with the poison brick inside, yet still she heaved herself and it over the broken window ledge.
Flopping onto the other side, she leaned against the wall, gasping in the slightly cleaner air.
New points of pain spread all over her body.
Calya was certain she’d cut herself on the window.
She was probably sitting on glass right now, but she couldn’t find it in herself to care.
Below, Lowe wrestled with Brint, whose hands blazed with his light… but in a haphazard, guttering way, like a candle on the verge of being snuffed out. He moved with desperation fueled by exhaustion, as if he knew death awaited the moment he let up.
Lowe looked worse for wear, too. Though the wind screamed around them, even from Calya’s vantage point it was clear that the element didn’t deal the same physical damage as Brint’s magic.
Maybe if Lowe’s gifts had been more for storm-calling or wind-shaping than divining he could have used his magic for a direct kind of violence.
Those shortcomings aside, it didn’t seem like it particularly mattered. Where the wind lacked, knuckles made up the difference.
Lowe punched Brint, and he fell heavily, head cracking against the stone floor. His light magic flickered, a few weak sparks floating up from his fingers before they went out.
Staggering forward, Lowe dropped to a crouch, his knee slamming into Brint’s chest. The ranger grabbed Brint by the collar and raised his fist.
Calya flinched, forcing herself to stand.
Glass shifted beneath her and scattered as she did.
By averting her eyes, her gaze went back into the burning office—and landed on the lockbox.
It was several strides away, partially buried in burning rubble, but maybe, just maybe, she could get to it. If she went now.
The sound of Lowe’s fist against Brint’s face reached her ears. It made her look down… and her eyes caught on the leather bag, the strap still clutched between her fingers.
The bag was already full to bursting with the block of poison. She could never fit both it and the lockbox.
Lowe drew his fist back for another strike.
Calya squeezed her eyes shut. She could reach the lockbox. She’d seen herself reaching for it.
She’d also seen that choice ending in flames.
But how could she turn away? The lockbox was what tied the site, the poison, all of it, to the Coalition.
Yes, Brint had been willing to sacrifice Graelynd, and who knew how many lives had been ruined in the process—the only sentence befitting his crimes was death—but what did bringing him down matter compared to bringing down the Coalition?
Brint wasn’t enough. He’d carried on with the Coalition’s horrific plan out of fear of defying them.
He’d as much as admitted it, right after trying to seal her into the same fate.
He wasn’t evidence; he’d be the Coalition’s scapegoat.
And even if Calya got out with the poison, there was no explicit link between it and the Coalition.
Besides circumstantial evidence, all she’d have was Brint’s word, maybe the Sylveren mages’.
She’d have witnesses, but witnesses lied.
People could be bought, could be turned.
People failed. The Coalition were the masters at finding the fractures in people and pressing until they broke.