14 #2
More cells already crowded the small room. The stench of vomit was thick on the air. Myria’s stomach lurched.
No time for that. Get him out. Quickly.
She fumbled at the clasps to the cell, pulling, then rattling harder when they wouldn’t give. Why weren’t they unlocking? Damn, she couldn’t see. There was no light but the psychedelic blaze from the arcana pipes.
“It’s arcanically sealed,” Leo panted. He glanced around and snatched a passing medic. “You. Unlock this one. He’s dying.”
“But we’re not supposed to—”
“Now!” he snapped. “Unless you want to explain to the Praetorium that we can’t fuel the castle anymore, because all the blasted prisoners died of arcana poisoning!”
The young man blanched, then pulled a sealing stamp from his pocket and pressed it to the center of the cell. The locks released with a soft hiss.
“Now get that door open!” Myria added with a violent motion to the service corridor. The medic hurried to obey. A hot breeze raced in from the courtyard as the door swung open, cutting through the reek of vomit. Someone shouted in relief.
They levered open Lysander’s cell. Leo pulled the thericist’s limp body from the steel frame that held him up. Myria twisted his other arm over her shoulder before he could drop straight to the floor.
They dragged him through the thicket of glass cells, concealed by the din and darkness.
The wind came booming in through the service door, beckoning her on.
Myria shoved an eternity cell with her foot as she struggled past, then another, forcing them into a barricade behind her.
Then, at last, they broke through into the service corridor. Just thirty yards to freedom.
Time to run.
A flash of lightning seared the jail. An answering bolt lit Myria from fingertip to toe.
She hauled Lysander down the corridor with Leo at her side.
The man was barely conscious, a dead weight in her arms. The wind was thundering, loose papers rattling like dead leaves down the hall.
Then her foot was on the threshold, and the back doors of the night soil phaeton opened dead ahead of her.
She pulled Lysander bodily inside. They hit the wagon floor in a heap. Leo leapt in behind her and pulled the doors closed, shooting home the bolts. The phaeton was rumbling out across the courtyard before she took a second breath.
For a moment, she could hear nothing but the thudding of her heart inside her head. Then, it broke in battle with the storm, the roar of the engine and the aftershocks of pure adrenaline. Buzzing numbness filled her fingers.
“Well, I’ll be damned,” said Leo, struggling upright in the muggy darkness. “It work—”
“I’m not a superstitious woman, Leo, but . . . don’t,” Myria panted. “The chemicals. Quickly.”
Leo slipped a syringe from his belt and pricked it into Lysander’s shaking wrist. Myria fumbled out a vial of white salts and tapped a measure into his mouth.
She snatched a bottle of illuminary vapor and sprayed a dash across the air. Ghostly light filled the wagon. It cast a cold gray sheen across Lysander’s face and carved out shadows in his hollowed features.
His eyes snapped open. He launched up like a cuckoo from a clock, breath coming fast. For a moment, he stared hard into the dark.
“Lysander?” she breathed. Her gut twisted. He looked like a living corpse. If she’d come too late . . .
“Present and correct,” he said distantly. “Is that . . .”
“It’s me, old boy. Myria.” She clasped his hand as gently as adrenaline would allow. “We’re rescuing you. Sorry it took so long.”
“I don’t recall . . .”
She shot a glance to Leo. He shrugged and took a second syringe. Myria tensed. Another dose of stimulants would put Lysander in dangerous territory. Still, they didn’t have time to coddle him; they needed the man awake. The tracking furies would be on his trail in moments.
“You’ve been in the eternity cells for three years,” Leo said, then drove the syringe into Lysander’s wrist. “Time to wake up.”
Lysander’s body jolted. He blinked hard. Then, his gaze turned sharp and snapped to Myria. A radiant smile spread across his face.
“Incandaeum, my dear?” he said. “You do know how to rescue a fellow.”
“Lysander. Got your wits?” she asked, chasing the tremor from her voice.
“Of course.”
“There’s a pity. Here,” said Leo, tossing him a third syringe. Lysander caught it in one hand and studied it.
“Is that a satyrius virus?” he asked, frowning at the glimmering brown chemicals inside. The virus did to the arcanic faculties what a burn did to a thumbprint. It would rewrite his imprint in minutes.
“It’ll make you sick as a dog, but it’ll work,” said Myria. “It won’t take them long to realize you’re missing, and the moment they do—”
“They’ll have the tracking furies after me. I know,” Lysander said, coming to his feet, “but I’ve a better idea. You never know what you’ll end up with after one of those. Scarred faculties, at the least. A spot of surgery should do the trick.”
“Surgery?” Leo and Myria exclaimed in unison.
“Got it in one. Those are therical tools, aren’t they?” he asked, glancing to the kit arrayed across the wagon floor.
“Yes, but—”
“First-rate. Stand aside.”
Myria gaped, then shut her mouth and did as she was bid. Lysander sifted through the instruments with thief-quick fingers, plucking out what he needed.
“Perhaps we shouldn’t have given him incandaeum,” Leo murmured. Myria crossed her fingers and said nothing. At the best of times, the drug made arcani think they could leap buildings in a single stride. The stimulants would’ve hit Lysander’s desiccated body like rum to an old maid.
Still, if anyone could perform arcanic surgery on himself in a moving phaeton, fresh out of Haideum . . . it’s him.
Moments later, Lysander came upright with tools in hand. He looked every bit the mad thericist, pale and wild-eyed in the lightning flashes, still dressed in the finery in which he’d been arrested three years past.
He flicked his fingers, and a turquoise tracery of light dashed outward from his body.
The image of his arcanic faculties sketched itself in midair, spreading out like phantom veins and capillaries.
Lysander raised a scalpel in one hand and slim silver forceps in the other—and, with that, he set to work.
Myria watched in half-revolted fascination as he began to nudge and twist the channels. Some, he clamped closed; some, he twisted with wire; some, he nicked with the blade.
She’d stolen enough of an education in the sixth science to know what he was doing. An arcani’s imprint flowed from the shape of their faculties. Change that, and the trace changed with it.
“There . . . narrow the flow through the sanguis majora . . . a few tweaks to the refraction . . .” Lysander murmured. “I’ll do a more refined job later.”
“Does it hurt?” asked Myria.
“Yes and no. Hard to describe. Like . . . trying to explain taste to someone without a tongue,” he said. Myria shrugged. Fair enough. She’d not had arcanic faculties in all her living memory.
Then, a thump from the driver’s perch snatched her attention.
“Beg pardon,” she said. She exchanged her white coat for an oilskin cloak and scrambled up through the top hatch.
The elements struck her at once—the wind booming through the narrow backstreet and the thunder crashing close above. She scampered along the roof, pelted by hot rain, then struggled down beside the driver.
Myria’s hand leapt for a knife when she saw a bearded man sitting where Cassia should’ve been. Then she shook herself and caught her breath. That is Cassia, you splitwit. Her friend must’ve borrowed the real driver’s countenance.
“Is he alright?” Cass called over the gale, water streaming down her stolen face.
He’s out of his mind on dangerous stimulants and performing surgery on himself in a moving vehicle, fresh off three years of arcanic torture.
“Fine, old girl,” she said. “Where are we?”
“Three-quarters of a mile out. Umbria Lane.”
“Damn. I thought these things were faster.”
“Too heavy. Narrow streets. Can’t be seen racing away from the scene of a crime . . . Pick your favorite.”
Myria bit her lip. Back at Haideum, the first lightning strike of panic would have passed.
The guards would’ve begun to regain control.
Even if they hadn’t yet realized that anyone was missing, they’d have done the sensible thing and called the prefecture.
Any minute now, a cordon would be closing around the castle. If they were caught inside it . . .
The phaeton thundered on, and so did the storm. Rain fell in silver darts from a blackening sky. Myria’s nerves worked like a spinning frame, the threads stretching, tensing, thinning.
They reached the one-mile mark. No curse arrested them. No black arcanic furies came streaking from the castle. In the darkness of the wagon, Lysander worked on.
Four minutes. The streets grew thinner, until the wagon’s sides almost scraped the brick. Cassia slowed the phaeton to a crawl. Her knuckles whitened on the wheel, and her gaze locked straight ahead.
Then, a copper blaze shot into the sky. It started in four pillars at each point of the compass, the nearest one a quarter mile ahead. A blazing wall rushed out between them. In moments, it had carved a sun-bright square around the castle.
The cordon was up—and they were still inside.
“Damn,” said Cassia. Admirably succinct, really. Something more creative seared through Myria’s head. A quarter of a mile, and they’d have been free. Infuriation burst against panic in her chest. It clawed its way toward her head, her wits, her fingertips . . .
Calm, she told herself. Calm, like Hadria had always been. The storm could rattle all it liked. The prefecture could draw their little wall. Where there was a wit, there was a way.
“Myria?” called Leo. He came scrambling up through the hatch, newly dressed in workman’s brown, then stopped dead at the sight of the cordon. “Curse it. We’re not far enough from the castle for me to cut a gateway.”