The Prophecy Con (Rogues of the Republic) (20 page)

“
Kun-kabynalti osu fuir’is.
”

“You’re here now,” Desidora said, turning to Ululenia and the golem that still clung to her. “That’s the important thing.”

Ululenia shifted into a bird again, trying to escape this time, but the golem caught her in one red-glowing hand. It raised its other hand to crush her, and Desidora caved in its facsimile of a face with one great blow.

Ululenia fell free, then shifted into her human form. Her horn still shone strongly, though she stumbled, and her snowy white dress was spotted with little sooty spots like burns. Desidora steadied her with her free arm.

“Grab Pyvic,” she said to Ululenia, looking at the golems. “These things may not be able to die, but I can make certain that it takes them some time to put themselves back together.”

The first golem was already back on its feet. “That will not be necessary,” it said, lifting up its bladed arm.

Desidora raised Ghylspwr. “You surrender?”

One of the two red-handed golems was back on its feet. The other was still pulling itself back into shape on the ground.

“No,” said the first golem, and lunged at her.

Ghylspwr blocked the strike, and his counterstrike ripped cleanly through the golem’s chest. It broke open like a sack full of marbles, but even as it did, its other arm gripped Desidora, pinning her.

The red-handed golem lunged at Ululenia, and Ululenia turned, but not in time.

A glowing red claw lashed out, and Desidora saw too late that the golem coming at
her
had just been a distraction.

The red-glowing golem struck, not at Ululenia, but at the pocket of her snowy white dress.

As Desidora wrenched herself free of the collapsing golem’s grip, the other golem held
Ruminations upon the Unutterable by the Queen of the Cold River
up in one glowing red hand. The golem’s body fell away, scattering into dead stones, and a small red bird made of crystal flapped off down the tunnel with the book clutched in its talons.

“No!” Desidora threw Ghylspwr, and he slammed into one of the support walls, which creaked ominously, but the bird was already gone. A moment later, a snowy white bird flapped after it.

Desidora raised a hand, and Ghylspwr sprang back into her grasp. She looked towards the golems on the ground. Both were gone, leaving only a pile of shattered rubble behind them.

“I’m sorry,” Pyvic croaked, pulling himself back to his feet. “Not much of a rescue.”

“No.” Desidora reached out and helped him up. “You did fine. All of you.” She looked at the golems again, then at the hammer in her hand. “This is on me.”

“So,” said Tern as the Knights of Gedesar raised crystal-tipped maces. “Baby. Help?”

A brilliant light blazed behind her, casting an enormous shadow of Tern down the length of the car to where the black-armored warriors were standing. The knights staggered, shielding their eyes, and Tern raised her crossbow and fired. Her bolt burst open in midair, splitting into a mesh of thin weighted ropes that snared her target, tangling his arms and legs and sending him crashing to the roof of the train.

“Do you really think non-lethal force is still absolutely necessary?” Hessler yelled behind her.

“They’re people!” Tern shouted back, winching her crossbow. “I try not to kill people if I can help it!”

The other knight raised a crossbow of his own and fired.

His bolt did
not
split into a mesh of thin weighted ropes to snare targets. It did, however, rip a hole in Tern’s sleeve as she dove to the floor.

“I believe we’re past that point,” Hessler shouted.

Tern looked up to see the knight running at her. “Okay! Got another illusion?”

“More than just an illusion!” As Hessler finished, Tern felt energy crackle around her, building in the air.

The knight reached her, and his mace came up.

A blast of raw magical power slammed into his armor and sent him crashing to the roof of the car as well.

Tern blinked. “Wow.” Impossibly, the Knight of Gedesar pushed himself back to his feet, his armor glowing dimly where he’d been blasted. “I’m thinking
yvkefer
-alloy armor.”

“That was my assumption, yes!” Hessler yelled. The knight readied his mace, and another blast of energy slammed into his armor, and then another. “Speaking of assumptions, I assume you were told I only did illusions, sir knight!” The knight staggered under the blasts, but didn’t fall. “This must be very disappointing for you!” The stone roof of the car began to vibrate beneath Tern’s fingers.

“Hessler, wait!” Tern’s crossbow was only half-winched, and the knight was closing in on her. She lifted her hands. “Wait, wait, I surrender!”

The knight kept coming. “No prisoners!” he growled, even as another blast of energy knocked him back a half-step. His armor crackled with energy now, and the roof of the car thrummed with latent power.

“Your loss!” Tern touched a button on the cuff of her dress, and a dart spat out and caught the knight in the thin leather joint at his shoulder.

The knight winced, paused, and pulled the dart free. “Sorry, girl! We’ve built up an immunity to—”

Tern lashed out with a steel-toed boot and kicked the knight hard in the ankle, and he crashed to the roof, bounced, and rolled off the side of the car.

“I
did
offer to surrender!” she shouted, rising to her feet to make sure that he was actually
off
the train and not hanging from the edge, waiting to come back and club her to death with his mace.

The car heaved beneath her feet as an explosion on the ground below rocked the train.

Tern hit the roof
again
, slid, and felt the stone give way to empty air beneath her. She flailed desperately, clipped a handrail with her boots, spun, slipped free, and went headfirst over the side of the car.

It was angled, and for one bright moment she thought that maybe she could slow her fall, but though it had seemed like a wide angle from
inside
the car, it was nowhere near flat enough to do that, and she fell helplessly down the side of the car, stone rough on her dress and skin as she slid.

Light flashed in front of her, and her hands hit something, and she clung desperately, blinked, and realized that she was looking through a window, upside down, and had caught hold of the top of the seam on the bottom of the window with her fingers.

It looked like a nice suite inside. A wealthy merchant and a woman who was either a young wife or a mature mistress were sharing drinks, looking around as the train jostled and rocked. The woman wore an expensive gold necklace that didn’t match her silver gown, but they probably cost enough that matching wasn’t the point. Looking at them was a
lot
better than looking down at the moonlit silver tracks humming along a few feet from Tern’s head.

For one wonderful moment, Tern hung there upside down, precariously balanced, fingers straining, heart hammering hard enough to make little gasping noises pop up from her throat even though she didn’t think she was breathing, and thought that she might actually be all right.

Then she felt herself sliding to the left, tried to lean, overcorrected like she always did when Icy tried to teach her how to do a headstand, and felt her sweat-slicked right thumb slip on the seam. Sliding down, Tern looked down at the tracks humming by so fast that they blurred, glowing blue with little red sparks shooting out, and opened her mouth to scream.

Then she choked out a cough instead as something grabbed her boot. Something also brushed her braided ponytail as it hung down, and Tern realized that it was
the ground.
She immediately brought her eyes to look at anything but that, and found herself staring at the underside of the dwarven railcar, where rainbow crystals hummed and sparked as they held the car aloft. She held very still
.

“Hang on!” Hessler shouted,
entirely
unnecessarily.

As the
best boyfriend in the world
pulled her back up, Tern used her hands to walk herself up the side of the train. The rich merchant and his wife were looking at her open-mouthed, and Tern gave them an upside-down smile as she slid back up.

Then Tern was back on top of the train again, rolling onto her side and coughing. Hessler, sitting beside her, was breathing hard.

“You jumped over,” she said after a moment. She didn’t get up. Her legs weren’t working yet.

“You slipped,” Hessler said.

“I’m really proud of you,” Tern said. It was hard to talk over the wind whipping in her ears. The whole “top of the train” thing was feeling a lot less fun than it had a few minutes ago.

“I have some unfortunate news,” Hessler said, and Tern looked up to see several more Knights of Gedesar rappelling down onto the roof of the train. Hessler followed her look. “Not them.”

“Seriously?” Tern wasn’t sure where her crossbow was. She’d never finished winching it after last time, either. The knights were still unclipping themselves from the line.

“Remember that explosion? I think the armor of that guy I hit with the magic blasts built up a thaumaturgic charge, and when it hit the tracks, it may have arced over into the power grid for the railcar crystals, which are powered by—”

Something behind them roared loudly enough to get Tern rolling back to her feet. She looked at what was, as far as she could tell, a large humanoid cloud of living fire.

“Fire-daemons?” Tern asked.

“Fire-daemons, yes,” Hessler said, “and the energy discharge may have freed one of them.”

“You think?” Tern looked back at the Knights of Gedesar. “Hey, guys, truce?”

A silver-tipped crossbow bolt whizzed past her face and struck sparks as it plinked off the roof of the car behind her.

“Just checking!” Three knights ahead of them, one fire-daemon behind them. “Hessler, just in case I don’t get to tell you later, I really appreciate you rescuing me.”

The other two knights raised their crossbows, and Tern, with no weapon of her own and nowhere to run, winced.

Something sailed out of the nighttime sky and slammed into one of the knights, blasting him cleanly off the roof.

It was, Tern saw, another grappling line. The hook trailed for a moment, then caught on one of the handgrips.

“What in Byn-Kodar’s hell?” The other two knights turned in shock.

“Sorry I’m late!” came a voice from the night, along with what Tern recognized as the sound of someone coming sliding down a zipline. “Your mother always wants to cuddle after!”

Kail hit a second knight full-on, and another armored figure went flying off into the night. The third swung at Kail with his mace, and Kail ducked and unclipped something from his armor. “Any time you two want to help!”

“Oh, sorry!” Hessler said, and gestured. A flare of light flashed in the knight’s face, and he stumbled back, momentarily blinded. “I thought you had things under control!”

“You did just kind of take out two of them!” Tern added, risking a glance back. “Fire-daemon’s probably a priority, Hessler!”

“I took out two of them with surprise and a really great line!” Kail knocked the crossbow out of blinded knight’s other hand as it swung up, then ducked
another
swing of the mace, unhooked the grappling line from the handrail, and hooked it to the knight. “Icy, we’re good!”

He dodged back as the knight lashed out with an armored backhand, and then the Knight of Gedesar was sailing up into the night sky, yelling and flailing.

Sweat beaded on Hessler’s brow in the moonlight, and he frowned, gathered his energy, and then made a series of passes with his hands. Finally, he flung them out at the fire-daemon with a muttered phrase.

The fire-daemon flinched back, roaring. It was on the rooftop of the car behind them, and the stone was starting to melt from the heat. It looked at them balefully—at least, Tern thought it did; it didn’t have a whole lot of face to speak of—and then darted back to the back of the car and slid like liquid fire through the gap in the ringmail that Tern had left open when she’d led Hessler up onto the roof in the first place.

“Nice work.” Kail was grinning widely. “Man, I’ve always wanted to do a job on the back of one of these things!”

“Yeah, I used to think that,” Tern said. “Hey, can we undo the grappling cable for the bad guys before more of them rappel in?”

A roaring ball of fire sailed past them in the night sky as the Knights of Gedesar opened up with their flamecannon.