by Karen Chance
I felt him drop his hand and step back. He must have knocked the mud off the orb, because its light suddenly danced on the glasslike rocks in front of me. The transparent stone and the orb light startled a small creature that had made a burrow under the post, sending it scurrying away into the dark.
I could feel Pritkin's gaze, ruthless and uncompromising and focused as it ran over the back of my body, like a phantom touch. I wanted to shift again so badly I could taste it, but even if it had been possible, where would I go? I needed the Codex, and Pritkin had it. At least he'd better have it, or I was going to kill him. Slowly.
"Turn around," he said after a moment.
I hugged the invisible fencepost, telling myself I was being stupid. Get it over with, and maybe he'll listen to you. Just do it and don't think about it—great advice, except that it was Pritkin and, despite everything, that made it different. Weirdly enough, I thought a stranger's eyes would have bothered me less.
"I don't have the map," I repeated, trying not to notice that it was really cold and that my body was reacting predictably.
"I regret that I cannot take your word for that," he said stiffly, and it almost sounded sincere. It also sounded implacable. When I still didn't move, I felt him come up behind me. "I find this distasteful. Do not make it more so by forcing me to search you physically." His tone left me in no doubt at all that he'd do it.
I took a deep breath. "I'll make you a deal. I'll show you mine if you show me yours."
"What?" He sounded confused. I guess they didn't have that saying in English yet.
"Do the reveal thing on yourself and I'll turn around."
"I'm not hiding anything!"
"Neither am I! And fair is fair. Or are you just looking for an excuse to do that search?"
Pritkin muttered something that sounded fairly vicious. "My clothes are warded! Even if I wished to accede to your demand, it would not work on them."
"Then strip."
"I beg your pardon?" He sounded almost polite suddenly, as if he believed he couldn't possibly have heard right.
"Take them off."
"And let you curse me without protection?" I couldn't see his face, but I could hear the sneer in his voice.
"You'll still have your shields," I pointed out. "And if you're so worried that I might overpower you, keep your weapons on." There was silence for a long moment. "If you're any kind of gentleman, you'll do it," I added, getting desperate.
I held my breath, sure that it wouldn't work, that he couldn't possibly fall for that old line. But I guess it wasn't so old in the 1790s, because the next moment I heard more muffled swearing and the soft sounds of clothes being pulled off. "Very well," a pissed-off voice said after a few seconds. "Now will you turn around?"
"How do I know you really did it?"
"Are you questioning my honor?" He sounded incredulous.
"Let's just say I'm not feeling especially trusting. Make the post opaque again, and come around front. If you haven't lied to me, I'll step out from behind it and we'll get this over with."
Pritkin didn't bother to swear this time. The rocks suddenly went opaque and he stomped around in front of the post. He was carrying a gun in one hand and still wearing a knife in a sheath strapped to one calf, but he hadn't bothered with the rest. I guess that was meant to make a point about how unlikely my beating him in a fight would be.
"Now keep your part of the bargain," he said through gritted teeth. Or maybe he'd clamped them to keep them from chattering. He did look cold, I thought with no sympathy whatsoever.
I sized him up as green eyes glared at me past a curtain of red-gold hair. He made no attempt to cover himself. How noble. Then I got a good look at him, and my eyes widened. Despite the temperature, he didn't really have any reason for modesty.
"As soon as you turn around," I finally managed to say. He started to argue, but I raised an eyebrow. "It's only fair."
Pritkin threw up his hands, but he did turn around, flashing those fascinating dimples. This time I didn't pause to admire the view. As soon as his back was turned, I grabbed his clothes and the orb, tore open a ley line and disappeared.
Chapter 22
It hadn't been difficult to snag the line with the orb's help, especially when I already knew where it was. Getting anywhere, I soon discovered, was a little harder. With Mircea, I'd thought of the lines as rivers of power, but this one was more like the rapids, with bumps and currents and eddies battering me every which way.
The bubble of protection provided by the orb kept the energy stream from frying me, but that was about it; there was no steering wheel, no seat belts and, worse, no brakes. I was slammed against first one side and then the other, before the thing flipped totally upside down, dropping me the length of my body before I was caught by the bottom of the sphere. It was the carnival ride from Hell, and I didn't know how to get off.
I gathered my stolen booty into a wad and hastily tied my skirts around it to keep it from getting slung all over the place. Then I set about trying to figure out how this thing worked. Through trial and error, I found that I could maneuver the small circle of protection by pressing on one side or the other of the orb, although it was nowhere near as easy as Mircea had made it look. A small rotation could cause me to go careening off in that direction for what felt like a mile. I quickly learned to scale back my movements, caressing the orb with tiny motions of my thumbs.
It was about as easy as trying to guide a plastic beach ball through the incoming tide using chopsticks, but slowly I got a little better. I managed to position myself close to the side of the line, which is where people seemed to enter and leave. The current was rockier there, not as stable as in the middle of the stream, and I got buffeted about even more as I tried to bump the bubble back into my world.
The ley line seemed to have a kind of skin stretching over it formed of extra-thick bands of power that made leaving even trickier than I'd expected. Every time I pushed at the line, it pushed back, forcing me to have to spend time maneuvering back into position again. But finally I managed to rock just the right way and half of the bubble cleared the energy field.
Which is when things went from bad to really, really bad.
The orb kept my feet and legs in place, suspended in the bucking, whirling energy stream, but I guess it didn't operate beyond the confines of the lines, because the part of me that was outside was totally exposed to the elements. I found myself hanging upside down, my hair blowing in a fast breeze, as I tore over the darkened city. My eyes were flooded with tears from the slap of frigid air, but if I squinted, I could see the Seine glittering far, far below, twining through Paris like a silver snake. I'd forgotten: ley lines didn't always follow the ground.
I couldn't scream, there was too much air in my face, and I could barely see. The pouch I'd made of my skirts ensured that they weren't in my face, but it kept bumping into me, hard enough to hurt. Damn it, what had he been carrying, anyway?
Even worse, although whatever gravity field the line exerted was keeping me from plunging to my death, it wouldn't hold once the orb slipped completely free. It didn't feel like that would be long in coming, because more of my body was coming into view all the time and I didn't know how to stop it.
I also didn't know how to use my rudimentary shields as a parachute, even if they were strong enough to bear my weight, which I doubted. War mages apparently learned all kinds of uses for their personal protection, but as I'd once reminded Pitkin, I wasn't one. I watched the pulsing river of power all around me and wondered if I'd just completely screwed myself. Then the ley line took a sudden plunge, like an invisible roller coaster, and headed straight for the ground.
I did scream then, although the sound tore out of my throat and away before I could hear it. My ears were filled with rushing wind and vertigo, as the line twisted and turned and suddenly headed back up again. For the next few minutes, it climbed and dove, spun and plunged, until I was so dizzy, I didn't even know which way was up anymore.<
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Dangling by only one leg, my body almost free of the small protection the orb afforded, I saw a huge, dark shape rushing toward me. I could see the line up ahead, and it was climbing again, high, so high, over the city that, if I fell, there would be nothing to catch me. Whatever the shape was, I had to grab it.
I pulled and yanked, freeing myself by inches as the dark blob grew bigger. It was a building of some kind, but I couldn't make out details. My hair was in my eyes, obscuring what little vision the wind and panic-induced tears had left me. I put a hand out blindly, and out of nowhere, a horned creature with a bored expression jumped in front of me.
My foot slid free of the line, and all my weight was suddenly hanging from my arms, arms that had grabbed the monster in a death grip and weren't letting go. My feet swung out over nothing, before slamming with the force of inertia into the side of something hard. The impact caused a shudder to rack my body, and for a moment my grip loosened. But the creature never moved, never so much as twitched, and carefully, I renewed my grip.
After a few seconds gasping for breath, I peered through a curtain of tangled hair to see a leering, doglike face sticking out its tongue at me. I blinked at it, but its expression didn't change. After another few seconds, my brain caught up and informed me that whatever my hands were clutching, it wasn't alive.
I was suspended from a stone gargoyle that looked out over what would probably have been a panoramic view of Paris had it been daytime. Below, tiny lights occasionally lit up bits of the world between the shadows, and a sliver of moon danced on the Seine. I was on top of Notre Dame. Somehow I'd come full circle.
My arms were tired, my shoulders ached and it was a very long way down. With a lot of muffled swearing, I hauled my body over the side of the parapet and dropped onto the floor. My knees gave way and I abruptly sat down, clinging gratefully to the heavenly feel of a non-moving surface. The stone floor was cold and wet with half-melted snow, but for a second I seriously thought about kissing it.
The stars seemed to be spinning around above me, so I sat there, panting, until they stopped. The orb had landed a few yards away, and I watched it pulsing its strange light against the high stone wall of the parapet. At least Pritkin couldn't follow me, I realized, and the idea cheered me up immensely.
I started searching the area for Pritkin's clothing, which had scattered everywhere when I landed and the knot in my skirts came loose. I collected it into a small bundle in front of me and set about carefully examining each piece. I'd gotten away with a pair of woolen trousers, a white linen shirt with drawstring ties at neck and wrists, a potion-studded belt, a pair of sturdy leather boots and some warm woolen socks.
I regarded the latter with a twinge of guilt. I hadn't expected him to be so literal, to even remove his footwear. Apparently, he'd believed that a bargain was a bargain, and I hadn't made any exceptions to my demand. Or maybe he'd felt bad about subjecting me to that. Maybe he'd thought he deserved a few cold toes, at least…Okay, no. Probably not. But still, the socks made me feel a little bad.
Not bad enough to keep me from putting them on, though. The boots were too large, but I pulled them on as well, lacing them as tight as I could. I'd lost my shoes somewhere over Paris, and I wasn't going to search for Mircea barefoot.
I looked through everything twice, then went back through it one more time, checking every seam for hidden compartments. I even held the little potion bottles up to the light, just in case he'd somehow stuffed a slip of paper into one of them, but no dice. The map wasn't there.
Of course not, I thought furiously. I'd hoped that he'd been so ready to assume I'd stolen it that he hadn't checked thoroughly before accusing me. But it looked like he'd been telling the truth. He really had lost it. And that meant it could be anywhere: still on the barge, trodden underfoot in the battle, or dropped as he dangled from his shields ten stories above the city. I would never find it.
I got up on tiptoe and leaned over the parapet, to see if anything might have fallen below. For the most part, the sky was brighter than the city, with buildings casting black shadows that wiped out everything in their path, like big slices of the world were just gone. But the famous rose window glowed as brightly as a searchlight against the black sky, illuminating the cobblestone expanse in front of the main doors of the cathedral. Nothing was there.
I was still standing there, trying to think what to do, when a brilliant yellow flash lit the night sky. I looked up to see half of an enraged, naked war mage leaning out of a ley line, his hair whipping across his livid face as he shot straight at me. I yelped and stumbled back, cursing myself. It looked like Pritkin wasn't as exhausted as I'd thought. And with his shields intact, he didn't need clothes or toys to access the ley lines. I scooped up his weapons in my transparent skirts and ran for it.
He landed right behind me, his eyes wild, his hair smoking from the energy that had leaked through his overtaxed shields. For the first time he looked like his father's son. I looked around frantically and spied a single wooden door inside the bell tower. Mercifully, it wasn't locked.
I saw Pritkin for a split second as I spun around to close it, silhouetted against the dim gray arches leading out to the parapet. He was almost to the door already, just a few steps behind me, as if he hadn't even broken his stride in leaving the line behind. I didn't try reasoning with him; his expression told me how well that was likely to go over. I slammed the door in his face, threw the bolt and fled.
The winding, claustrophobic staircase was so narrow that my dress brushed it on either side, and it was completely black except for the orb's dim glow and occasional tiny elongated windows that showed slivers of the slightly less black outside. I could see maybe two steps in front of me as I wound my way downwards, trying to hurry without slipping on stones that were already slick with hundreds of years of wear.
I heard a crash behind me, and burning bits of wood cascaded down the steps along with a lot of sparks. It looked like Pritkin had used a fireball spell on the door. Luckily, the curves of the staircase shielded me from most of it, while he had to traverse a minefield of fiery splinters in bare feet. Unluckily for me, he seemed to manage it just fine.
He grabbed me when I was barely halfway down the stairs, and the impact made me lose my footing. We tumbled, half falling, half rolling down the narrow, twisting spiral. I'd been holding the contents of his potion belt in the folds of my dress, and as I fell, little vials were slung everywhere. Some tumbled along with us, while others exploded against the walls, flooding the stairwell with a pungent stench that immediately brought tears to my eyes. Something must have splashed on Pritkin, because he cursed and let go.
I heard him falling, but I couldn't help him. I lost my grip on the orb, which went bouncing down the stairs, disappearing around a turn and leaving the stairwell in complete darkness. The only reason I didn't follow it was because I'd gotten my fingernails into one of the narrow windows, the only possible traction. The stench from the potions was unbelievable, but the cold night air from the window allowed me to breathe. I clung there, straining to hear over my own gasps, but there was no sound other than the wind outside.
"Are you hurt?" I finally yelled, but only echoes answered. I didn't hear so much as a groan from below. The stairwell was suddenly eerily quiet.
I bit my lip, but there wasn't really anything to think about. Even if I hadn't been worried about Pritkin, there was no other way out. There was only one staircase from the bell tower and I was on it. And ley-line travel was impossible, even if I was willing to risk that again, with the orb at the bottom of the staircase.
After another deep breath, I took the plunge, through a miasma of fumes and shattered vials that crunched under my boots. At the bottom of the stairs, the orb had halted at a wooden door, presumably leading outside. Next to its small puddle of light, Pritkin lay on his side in a crumpled heap, not moving. I forgot about caution and ran down the last few steps, kneeling in the small area before the door, desperately feeling for a pu
lse under the skin of his neck.
He was warm, which I took as a good sign, but for a long moment I couldn't feel anything else. Heavy strands of hair had wrapped around his neck, and I tugged them loose before trying again. I almost sobbed with relief when I finally found it, a tiny pulse that beat strong and sure under my fingertips. But a sticky wetness dripped off his jaw onto my hand, and after a little exploration, I found a nasty-looking cut on his scalp and another on his upper arm.
I propped open the door to let some of the vapors out, and turned back to find Pritkin on his feet. "It's only fair," he said nastily, before grabbing me by the shoulders and slamming me back against the unforgiving stone of the wall.
"Let go of me!" I twisted and fought, but he held me there while his eyes did a visual strip search by the faint light of the orb.
"Give it to me!"
"I don't have it!"
"No more lies!" Pritkin hissed.
"I never found it!" I yelled, pushing at him but getting nowhere. "Now let me go or I swear—" He shut me up by kissing me, hard and angry, so angry that I didn't know what to do except let him, silenced by him swallowing all my air. It was oddly like he was yelling at me in a new way, since all the old ones hadn't worked. I felt the scrape of stubble and the indent of his fingers through the silk, pressing me closer, then he tore away, those icy eyes vibrantly green.
"Tell me!"
Startled out of fighting for a moment, I stared up at him, panting. There was drying blood tightening the skin on his forehead and a blooming bruise on his chin, but his eyes were glittering brighter than I'd ever seen them. A sweet, heavy warmth started to spread through me, and despite the cold I could feel sweat springing to the surface of my skin. Suddenly the idea of Pritkin as half incubus seemed plausible for the first time.
The suggestion surged through my veins, almost like a drug. "I was looking for it when you attacked me," I said, not fighting it. I was telling the truth, and I needed to save my strength to escape. "I thought you had it on you, but it wasn't in your clothes."
