The Long Hunt: Mageworlds #5 (32 page)

BOOK: The Long Hunt: Mageworlds #5

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Also by Debra Doyle and James D. Macdonald, from Tor Books

The Price of the Stars
Starpilot’s Grave
By Honor Betray’d
The Gathering Flame

TIME OUT FOR TEA?

“Shh,” Jens said to his cousin Faral. “Here’s the food now.” The cook was coming out of the kitchen with a loaded tray which held a steaming pot of ruddy liquid and a porcelain platter with a pile of small round things under a napkin.

Then, without warning, the cook’s posture shifted and she heaved the tray full of hot tea and pastries straight at their table. Faral threw himself sideways off his chair as the heavy crystal pot flew towards him. He thought he saw Jens ducking in the other direction, but he didn’t have a chance to look. Immer-leaf tea splashed in all directions as the pot flew past where his head had been, and parchant buns pattered down like hailstones.

The cook was still moving, bringing up one foot in a kick that knocked the table over completely. He recognized the move—it was a common one in the hand-to-hand he’d learned growing up back home—but where did a sweet little old gentlelady pastry-cook learn something like that?

Porcelain crashed and broke into splinters, silverware crashed and slid and clattered, and somewhere close behind him a man shouted in surprise and pain. Faral took a chance on glancing up from the floor, and saw a man in tea-soaked blue and white livery clawing at his scalded face. In the next moment, a heavy blaster fired close by. Then another blaster fired near at hand—once, twice, three times—the crimson energy bolts taking the scalded man in the chest and head as he fell.

“Get on your feet, boys,” said the cook, who had somehow acquired a blaster.

This is a work of fiction. All the characters and events portrayed in this book are fictitious, and any resemblance to real people or events is purely coincidental.

THE LONG HUNT

Cover art by Romas

A Tor Book

Published by Tom Doherty Associates, Inc.

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New York, NY 10010

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^®is a registered trademark of Tom Doherty Associates, Inc.

eISBN 9781466802063

First eBook Edition : September 2011

First edition: August 1996