Wait a minute.
“I told you we went to Jattapore,” I say, putting it together. “You ratted us out. You’re the reason we got ambushed at the professor’s house. And at the train station. It’s your fault the professor and his husband were almost killed. That I could have been killed.”
Davon shakes his head. “They wouldn’t have hurt you, Diz. They were under strict orders not to.”
I snort. “Yeah? Well, it sure felt like they were planning on it when they had me on the ground with weapons and spells pointed at me. Sorry, I’m just not really feeling the forgiving vibes.”
But we got out of that situation. I annoyed people, the others fought, and we lived. Barely. There are double the guards here, though.
Can we pull that off again? Do we have another choice?
I turn to the others and take in how they’re being held, where they’re facing.
They have Remi by the biceps, but their fingers are free. Mistake.
They’re clearly favoring Jaesin’s right side, expecting the most struggle to come from there. Mistake.
They have Ania’s arms much more firmly secured, two hands locked around the ware on her wrists. Her feet though, with their heavy-heeled shoes, are unsecured. Mistake.
There’s a chance. Just a chance, but . . .
I pull myself together and take a long, deep breath in through my nose.
“I’m learning all kinds of things today,” I say, loud, so every guard can hear me. “Thing number one.”
I hold up one finger and meet Remi’s eyes. The corner of their mouth quirks, and the faintest, tiniest thread of dark maz slithers out of their necklace, under the collar of their shirt, and down their sleeve. I need to keep the attention away from them, so I spin dramatically and point a finger straight at Davon. The guards all tense at my sudden movement, raising their guns, but I press on, my heart racing. No tremor in my voice, no hesitation in my step, and absolutely no looking back toward the others.
“Number one,” I say again, staring into Davon’s eyes. “You’re a tool. I thought you were the best person in the world, my brother in all but blood, but I guess you’ve drunk the MMC poison. Tragic.”
I pace to the left, then the right, moving around to keep all eyes on me. How long will Remi need? No way to tell. The guards are twitchy, looking uncertainly from me to Davon to their captain, clearly unsure how long they should tolerate my antics. I draw it out as long as I can.
“Number two,” I continued. “Professor Silva, who you may remember as a genius maz researcher who was unceremoniously fired from MMC eight years ago, is an utterly delightful man who knows a whole lot of interesting things about this place. For instance,” I say with a grand gesture, meeting every guard’s eyes, willing them to focus on me. I’m a mess, look at me, look at me. “Did you know that MMC caused the spellplague? True story! It’s caused by this stuff they don’t want you to know about called maz-15. A new strain of maz, big deal, right? The world should know! Except for that spellsickness bit.”
The guard captain rolls her eyes. “What a load of conspiracy theorist, tinfoil-hat-wearing bullsh—”
“And!” I interrupt. “The same thing that causes the spellplague? Totally responsible for the earthquakes and hurricanes too! Funny how those all started right after the spellplague, don’t you think? See, MMC made a little drilling mistake ten years ago, right here in this very facility, and they let something out that was never supposed to be free. But did they clean up their mess?”
The guards on the left side of the room are drifting, their attention waning, eyes rolling, so I twirl toward them with a flourish.
“No!” I declare dramatically, stomping my foot and pointing randomly at one of the guards. “They figured out they could profit off their mistake, so what did they do? They kept drilling for the same maz that killed off your friends and family.”
A sure bet. Because everyone in Kyrkarta lost someone in the plague, unless they came to town afterward, and even the newbies have a healthy respect. I risk a quick glance back at the others to make sure their guards are still paying attention. Remi has their hands gently cupped behind their back, and they lower their chin in the faintest nod. Yes.
“That drill shaft, by the way, is somewhere behind that door, bringing more and more plague into this world every day,” I say, pointing behind me. Who knows, maybe someone here will actually believe me. If we die in this attempt, someone needs to know.
“And finally,” I say, willing my body not to give the plan away. One . . . two . . .
“Three!”
I drop to the floor, and the room explodes.
The spell goes off at the guards’ chest height, spreading out in a painfully bright disk that throws the guards and Davon back and holds them fast to whatever wall caught them, stuck flat against it like a living mural. Jaesin, Remi, and Ania lurch to their feet as soon as the spell passes overhead, Jaesin snatching his gun back from the struggling form of the guard who’d held him. Remi immediately begins to weave a new spell, this one an odd, intense blend of colors threading together so quickly I can barely catch them, red and gold and violet and black.
“Get to the door!” Remi shouts. “Just blow it open and get inside, Ania. I think we’re past trying to be stealthy.”
Ania promptly obeys. She’s awful at explosives normally, but this time she doesn’t need finesse, just raw power. She whips up an explosive cocktail of magnaz and firaz as we run and, twenty feet out, throws the spell at the door.
BOOM!
The door stays stubbornly closed.
The wall around it, however, now features a nice human-sized gap. When in doubt, make your own door.
I shove Ania and Jaesin through first, then turn back to check on Remi. Davon is still pinned to the wall, recovering from the stun hit, but the spell is wearing off enough for some of the guards to reach for their weapons. Remi tosses a furious look over their shoulder at me.
“Get behind the wall!” they shout, whipping their spell into a frenzy over their head, weaving in more and more gold and glowing violet. I crawl through the gap and press my back against the wall next to it. Right as Ania throws a barrier over the opening, the thought right on the tip of my brain finally clicks.
A color of maz I haven’t seen much. Only twice, in fact.
The intense violet shade of maz-15.
“Remi, no!” I shout, launching myself off the wall.
Too late.
Twenty-Six
THE BLAST FEELS LIKE ALL the air being sucked out of the room, like a sudden vacuum swallowing all of existence. Then—BOOM!
A whomp of pressure slams into the wall at my back, the tremor nearly knocking me to the ground even from this side, the flash of violet light shining through the crumbling gap we came through. Debris rains down, dusting our hair gray and coating my throat. I stumble back to standing with a hacking cough and peek around the corner.
The guards—and Davon—are all flat on the ground, sprawled with their various complexions washed out in the pallor of illness, blood pooling around a few who hit their heads in the fall. The onset of spellsickness? Or just an effect of the spell? Their chests still rise and fall, mostly. Davon’s does, at least. Stars, Davon . . . is he spellsick now? Do I even care, now that he’s completely betrayed me in the worst possible way?