“Young miss, you need to stay back.” Even in the midst of potential catastrophe, the Guard treated people in this district with a level of respect Skate had never received from the armored men and women. “We don’t know what’s going on here. It could be—”
Screams rang out from some of those still refusing to move from the spectacle. A blast of fire enveloped the airborne trio, and sparks from the fire landed on those below. Panic sent the crowd running. Loudest of all was the full-throated roar of Miss Amanda, who saw her friends swallowed by the flame.
As the fire cleared, two forms plummeted the thirty-or-so feet to the ground, though the path was not straight down; it looked like Kibo was trying to keep them aloft, but failing. Tillby’s fine hat was aflame, and he was swatting at the fire coming for his face. Both men’s flesh was red and angry-looking in patches.
Skate looked up to see Belamy, unperturbed by the fire, scanning the windows and rooftops for its source. He reached into the folds of the war robes and took out one of his bottles. Another gout of flame surrounded him, and this time Skate caught a glimpse of something blue and green swirling around the old man as the fires passed over him; his magical protections were still hard at work.
Belamy shot off toward a nearby roof, where someone shouted in alarm. He tossed his bottle down. The tinkling of glass could be heard over the general tumult of the fast-dispersing crowd, followed by a ghastly sound of coughing and retching.
Belamy returned to his position in roughly the center of the courtyard, only to be blasted out of the sky altogether, this time by a fork of lightning from the window of the top floor of one of the inns in the circle.
The snow cushioned Belamy as he fell, but not by much. The thud was strong enough that Skate felt the tremor from roughly fifteen feet away. “Mr. Belamy!” she shouted, running toward where he’d fallen. She could not see him for all the snow he’d ploughed into, but the mound of the mini-crater he’d made stirred slightly.
Skate pulled up short as another blast of lightning fired directly at him from still another location, this time much lower and from the milliner’s boutique. Skate fell over as she tried to back away and looked on in horror as two more forks of lightning assaulted the pile of snow, blasting gouts of the stuff away as powder and water.
A member of the Guard stood nearby, dumbstruck. Skate scrambled to her feet and pulled on his arm. “Do something!”
The Guard just shook his head, mouth agape. “No reinforcements,” he muttered dully. “All busy on the other side.” His voice trailed off into silence again as the spectacle continued and Belamy was struck by yet another two, three, four bolts of lightning. Skate tugged on the arm again before giving up and running toward the old lich again, ready to sustain whatever pain she needed to in order to help him get up.
Wait. Petre’s voice came to her as a whisper carried by wind, but it froze her in place. One more bolt of lightning struck Belamy’s location, and then everything stopped.
The crowds were gone. The attacks had ceased. Some faces appeared in windows, looking down at their handiwork, smirking that they had been successful in bringing down a mighty foe. Skate recognized none of them but assumed they were either members of the Ink or had been contracted by the Ink for the special danger of bringing in a powerful spellcasting undead man.
The silence was broken only by the stuttering sound of sparks and a few hesitant cries of victory.
A tremendous flash seared Skate’s eyes as Belamy shot out terrible lines of lightning. They tore into the shops around the square. The tentative victory cry gurgled into a low groan and then fell silent altogether.
Skate blinked several times to clear her vision. Belamy stood in front of his crater, half of his face a horrific, charred black, though he did not seem bothered by his injuries. The windows around the courtyard were all aflame, and no more lightning shot forth to beat Belamy down.
Belamy nodded and approached the troupe, who had scooted off to the side of the courtyard to avoid the assault.
Skate ran toward him and caught the last part of his sentence.
“—want to leave.”
“Yeah, no kidding.” Tillby winced as he spoke, and leaned on the nearby railing for support. “What’s going on? Who are you?”
“As I said, I approached you because I thought you might be of service in making contact with a dangerous group of thieves in the city. They seem to have found me in the meantime.”
“Yes, and almost killed us in the process!” Amanda was standing rigid, her fists clenched into tight balls of fury at her sides. Her jaw was set in a pugnacious scowl. “You’re responsible for this,” she said, pointing to the burns along Kibo’s and Tillby’s bodies.
“Not quite. I have reason to believe the thieves were following you as well, in order to prevent whatever you were going to do with your captive audience today.”
“Take a cut of the booty, more like,” Tillby said through a smirk that he managed not to turn into another expression of pain.
“Yes, well. In any event, it does not seem they’re terribly interested in you any longer, so I’d cut your losses and escape while you can.”
“You said it.” The huckster and showman stood to his full height with another wince. “Hey, doesn’t that, uh, hurt? That doesn’t look so good.” He ran a finger along his own face to mirror Belamy’s injuries.
“I’ll be fine. Off with you now.”
The troupe members looked to one another, shrugged, and ran as quickly as their injuries would allow. Miss Amanda took the lead, as her instrument had been smashed in all the hubbub, leaving her unburdened. She cajoled and encouraged the other two around a corner, and they were gone.
Belamy turned to greet Skate. She recoiled instinctively; the lightning had burned his flesh to a charred mess on half of his face. One eye was burned shut. Even aside from that, he looked wrong. His undamaged skin was sallow, and his good eye was pale and covered in a gray film. Nevertheless, he smiled at her, as if he were just wearing some sort of grizzly disguise.
“That really doesn’t hurt you, does it?”
“No. I don’t feel pain because of my…condition.” As he talked, the charred skin began to crack. The smell of burning meat made her take a step back and gag.
“My apologies. The spells blasted away my disguise. Why are you still here?” His familiar look of concern was marred by his injuries to become completely unsettling.
“I thought…I thought you were hurt.”
Belamy smiled again, and shook his head. “My body can be damaged, but I don’t experience hurt anymore. You can’t actually hurt a dead person.”
“Did you know I was one of them?” There were still shouts and screams from around the square; the panic had not subsided. Two of the rooms blasted by Belamy’s spell had caught fire, and that was causing an uproar of its own. Despite all of that—and despite understanding that in all likelihood, the Ink was not done with its assault yet—Skate needed to know.
The smile shrank somewhat but did not disappear, leaving a small smirk along the side of his face unburned by the lightning. “Not until ten minutes ago. Rattle told me.”
“Rattle can’t talk.”
“Perfectly true.” Belamy tapped his temple with his index finger. “But he can show me everything he’s seen and heard if I want him to. He flew off after you two split up and met me.” As he spoke, Rattle came into view in the sky, its legs jangling together in their familiar clamor. It came to a floating position at Belamy’s eye level. “You did well to summon Ungor. I’m guessing Petre helped with that?”