Chapter 14 #2
“There’s no time at which I can’t flirt,” he shouted back, trying to dodge the birds while still positioning his body between them and Alina. “I’m extremely talented.”
“Xavier—” Alina cut off her own exasperated words. Her voice dropped to a mumble. “They’re producing a potent kind of Dust. If I can just—”
The next contact actually did knock Xavier down, Alina’s hand slipping from his in the process. Zuzu launched from his arms as he fell, taking to the air with an offended hiss. Xavier ignored the anzu, springing to his feet on a cry, fear thundering through him as he searched for Alina.
She was still there, her eyes unfocused as she tried to wrestle with the chaotic Dust swirling from the alicanto’s movements.
It was so strong, even Xavier could sense it with ease.
But he didn’t like to see Alina standing vulnerable as creatures he could barely see swooped around her. Fortunately she wore no metal.
As it turned out, Alina didn’t need to intervene.
Zuzu had apparently had enough, and she flapped her way toward the action, her movements clumsy as her avian wings tried to compensate for her over-heavy feline head.
Xavier caught a flash of an alicanto’s camouflaged wing, watching in amazement as Zuzu opened her mouth and released the biggest spurt of water he’d yet seen from her.
It doused her opponent, and suddenly a large, spindly bird came into full view.
It had a bulging belly, so it had clearly gotten some chameleon steel before they unintentionally drove it from the refinement site. But not enough to ground it, evidently.
The alicanto had a long and alarmingly sharp beak, and its talons were slim but vicious.
It was larger than Xavier had expected, closer to a stork than the goose-like bird he’d pictured.
Zuzu flew in a wide circle, spewing water all over the scene, and a moment later, another alicanto was revealed.
The two birds let out grating screeches before winging away into what was now definitely the approaching sunset.
“Well.” Xavier flipped sopping hair from his eyes. “That was exciting.”
Alina stumbled to him, her eyes as wide as they’d been when his guards chastised her. He put out his hands to steady her, holding her shoulders firmly as she searched him.
“Are you all right?” she asked. “Look, you’re bleeding!”
“It’s fine,” Xavier assured her, amused by her concern. “Just a small beak puncture. What were you saying about the alicanto leaving us alone?”
Alina winced. “Clearly I don’t know much about alicanto.”
“Me either,” Xavier said comfortably. “I don’t even know as much as I thought about my own magical bird. I had no idea Zuzu’s water could undo whatever magic made the alicanto’s wings camouflage.”
“Nor did I,” Alina agreed. “But I’m grateful.” She leaned down to where Zuzu had landed on the sand, giving her a scratch behind her ears. “Good girl,” she said approvingly.
Zuzu purred in appreciation, rubbing her face against Alina’s leg while one of her taloned feet scratched at the sand.
“You’re a strange creature,” Alina said in an unsteady voice. She looked around them at the empty nothingness. “I don’t feel like we can stay here now, but I don’t know what else to do.”
“We’ll have to stay here,” Xavier said. “Now that it’s getting dark, wandering around the desert would be an even more idiotic idea. It’s going to get cold, though, especially since we’re wet. Do you think you can make a fire using magic?”
“Yes,” Alina assured him. “I just need to find a way to generate some movement.” Her eyes fell on Zuzu, and she brightened. “Actually, if Zuzu will let me use hers, that will make it much easier. Movements of magical creatures always produce a disproportionate amount of Dust.”
“Let you?” Xavier repeated. “Can’t you just harness it whether she likes it or not?”
“I can,” Alina acknowledged. “But it will work much better with her cooperation. And if I’m going to shield us all night, I’ll need to make it as easy as possible.”
Xavier had been examining a twisted, stunted tree that snaked along the ground nearby, but at that he looked up. “You can’t shield us all night. You’ll drop dead from exhaustion.”
She dismissed his protest with a flick of her hair. “No, I won’t. I’ll be fine.”
“Alina, that’s too much energy for one person to expend,” he said.
“I have an unusually high capacity for energy,” she assured him earnestly. “It’s really my only talent, given I have no proper training in shaping the magic. Let me do something useful.”
“I’d love you to do something useful,” Xavier said firmly. “By using magic and that gnarled branch over there to start a fire. But maintaining a shielding enchantment through the night? Absolutely not.”
“And if a flock of alicanto come back to snack on your attire?” Alina asked dryly.
“I’ll fight them off with this,” Xavier said, drawing his sword and sizing up the sad little tree.
“Which they’ll probably just eat,” Alina retorted promptly.
He grinned. “Let them try.” Raising his sword, he swung downward at the horizontal trunk, his arm already in motion when something emerged suddenly from under the wood.
“Xavier, don’t look!” Alina let out a scream of warning. “It’s a—”
Xavier locked eyes with the small, sand-colored snake, and a frisson of nausea so thick he could taste it poured into his body. He let out a whimper, his knees locking, then his legs failing. He toppled over onto the sand, his sword slipping from his slackened hand.
“—basilisk,” Alina finished her warning unnecessarily. “Oh dear. You poor thing.”
The sympathy in her voice did nothing to help Xavier’s bruised dignity as he lay in a fetal position on the sand, clutching at his stomach. Pain was shooting through it at regular intervals, and it was a struggle to keep down his lunch.
Alina moved forward, shifting his sword to a safer distance, then feeling his forehead with the back of her hand.
“This is going to be a long night for you,” she said apologetically. “Without a physician to treat the symptoms, we’re just going to have to wait it out. You should be more or less fine by morning, but you’re going to feel as sick as a dog until then, I imagine.”
He could already feel the fuzziness of the basilisk’s magic thickening his head and stealing his ability to think clearly. But not so strongly that he had no capacity for vengeance.
“Did you kill it?” he moaned.
“No, it slithered away,” Alina said, busily shifting him into a better position.
He gave another groan, not fighting her efforts. “Just perfect. Why didn’t you kill it?”
“Oh, well, you know basilisks,” Alina said matter-of-factly, as she gingerly lifted his sword. “They’re more scared of us than we are of them. It seemed mean-spirited.”
“Well, I’d hate to be mean-spirited toward the poor, defenseless, little thing,” Xavier grumbled as a fresh wave of agony lanced through his stomach.
He watched through a haze as Alina looked carefully between the sword and the tree, then shook her head.
“I doubt I can lop it off,” she muttered to herself. “Better to just set fire to it where it is, maybe.”
Zuzu curled up against Xavier’s side, purring gently and apparently untroubled by his plight.
“Get up, you lazy creature.” He prodded her with a weak finger. “You need to fly around so Alina can use your Dust to start the fire.”
“Oh yes, would you mind, Zuzu?”
Alina asked the question as if the anzu was a human, and it seemed to work.
Zuzu’s feline orbs shot a look full of offense in Xavier’s direction, but she strutted toward Alina with every appearance of cooperating.
The next moment, she’d taken to the air, flying in surprisingly graceful circles around them.
Xavier closed his eyes, his head too thick and his insides roiling too much to be able to focus on Alina’s craft as she manipulated the anzu’s Dust. A moment later, he felt heat flicker against his skin. Squinting through the fog of his mind, he saw the tree being engulfed by steady flame.