I could feel a faint rumble through the concrete: the train was coming. I crouched on one knee, waiting. Above, I saw the glow of lights through the mist. No more attacks, not yet, but if— He was waiting for me to move. I held my breath, keeping very still.
The rumbling grew louder and with a whine of metal the train pulled up by the platform. I still couldn’t see it, or him, but I knew where he was: up and to the left, waiting for me to show myself. The train doors opened with a hiss. I looked to see when they would close, counted down. Nine . . . eight . . . seven . . .
Now.
I ran up the stairs. The air mage detected me, waited for me to clear the top of the stairwell, fired. I checked just as he cast his spell, fire stabbing my side, heard the hiss of projectiles slashing through the mist ahead of me. Three seconds. I ran right, the mist parting to reveal a blue-and-red carriage, curious faces peering out; the doors were just beginning to close and I jumped through. They met behind me with a thud, and with a jolt of acceleration the train started to move.
All of a sudden I found myself in the middle of a scattered crowd of people, all staring. “Excuse me,” I said to the nearest guy, a black man in a peaked cap. He got out of my way, and I began moving forward to the front of the carriage. As I did, I glanced back over my shoulder through the train windows. The mist cloud was a grey patch, fading away on the platform behind. I couldn’t see my attacker.
“Are you all right?” a woman said. She was on one of the seats at the front, twisted around to look. I wondered briefly how I looked to everyone else, and that made me remember my wound. I touched it with my left hand again and drew in my breath. Looking down, I saw blood smeared over my fingers and palm.
“Oh, shit,” the woman said. “You want me to call an ambulance?”
“Might not be the best idea.” Now that I was out of combat, my side was really hurting. I didn’t think it was going to kill me, but it was deep. Not good.
“I’m calling 999,” the woman announced. She pulled out a phone and started tapping.
There was a thump from above, echoing through the carriage. It was hollow, and heavy. It was, in fact, exactly the kind of noise a grown man would make when landing on the roof of a train.
Shit.
The passengers in the train looked upwards. They looked confused rather than worried; I had the feeling that wasn’t going to last. “Hello?” the woman was saying. “Ambulance.”
I held still, scanning futures. The people around were making it harder, their actions tangling with my own. What was this guy going to do, smash his way through the windows?
“Hello? Yeah. There’s a man here, I think he’s hurt . . . I mean, yeah, he’s definitely hurt . . . what? Marie Gilman . . . Yeah, my number’s, wait a sec . . .”
I couldn’t see any futures in which the air mage broke in, but it was looking like he wouldn’t have to. Up ahead, the lights of the shopping centres were getting brighter and I could see what looked like a platform. The next station was barely a minute away. And it was the terminus, which would mean everyone would be getting out . . .
“No, the DLR,” the woman was saying. “What? Hang on, I’ll check. How old are you?”
It took me a second to realise the woman was talking to me. “What?”
“I think about thirty?” she said into the phone. “Oh. Okay . . . Do you have any existing medical conditions?”
I stared at her.
“They want to know if you’ve got any existing medical conditions,” the woman said. “Oh, she was asking if you’ve got any chest pain?”
“No, I have a pain in my side, because someone just stabbed me through it. And you might want to forget that call and get out of here, because the man who did the stabbing is probably on the roof of this train.”
“What?”
The train was pulling into Stratford and the doors would be opening in twenty seconds. Stratford’s not Pudding Mill Lane: the station was well lit, skyscrapers rose up around us, and another train was waiting to go on the other side of the platform. We were still at the edge of the station, but there would be staff farther in—the closer I could get to the main floor of the station, the more pressure there’d be for this guy to back off. Why was he even after me? The only explanation I could think of was that he wanted that focus I’d picked up last night. Maybe he’s planning to take it off my corpse.
The train stopped with a hiss. The passengers got off, filing out through the doors, heading for the stairs down. I followed them, hands in my pockets, head down. My side was hurting badly, but I didn’t let it show and I didn’t look up. It’s hard to pick one person out of a crowd, especially from the back. All I needed was for this guy to hesitate for a few seconds and I’d make it out. I scanned through the futures—he wouldn’t be aggressive enough to attack me right in the middle of a bunch of commuters, right?
Right?
Oh, fuck!
I jumped out of the way as a blade hissed past. The air mage was right on top of me. I’d lost my knife somewhere back in the last fight; I fumbled for another weapon but he was already aiming another spell and I dived for cover behind the struts at the centre of the platform. There was another boom, deafeningly loud and very close; the shock wave made me stagger as something seemed to punch my back.
Shouts and curses echoed from all around. We’d been right at the only exit and suddenly people were scattering, some running away, others standing and staring and trying to figure out what was going on. It would have been the perfect cover, except that the air mage was already there, stalking around to block my way out, another air blade low and by his side. He could see me and I backed up, keeping the platform struts between us. “What the hell is wrong with you?” I shouted at him. “Just go away!”
He didn’t answer, and I felt a trace of fear. Usually I deal with battle-mages by outmanoeuvring them, using my divination to avoid their attacks and putting distance between us. But air mages are the skirmishers of the elementalists, fast and light and agile. They aren’t as strong in a stand-up fight as a fire or earth mage, but they have more than enough power to crush someone like me.
The air mage tried to circle around and I dodged again, keeping cover between us. If I couldn’t outrun this guy, I’d have to outthink him. Was he after that focus? I glanced through futures in which I tested it. With the chaos going on around it was hard to be sure, but I thought it was getting his attention. Maybe he’d seen the auras of the items I was carrying—
“Oi!” a new voice shouted. “You!”
The air mage stopped and turned. It was the woman from the train. She was standing behind the air mage in the mouth of the exit tunnel, but instead of running she’d stopped and was pointing at the air mage and glaring. She still had her mobile phone to her ear. “You back off!”
We both stared at her. I think we’d both forgotten that the bystanders were even around. “You’re the one who stabbed him, aren’t you?” the woman said. “Well, I’ve called the police, so you better back off!”
I looked at the woman in disbelief. “Are you crazy?” I shouted. “Get out of here!”
“Yeah, you’re welcome,” the woman said. She actually sounded offended. “Not like I’m helping you or anything. Now you”—she turned back to the air mage—“you going to beat it, or do I have to get serious?”
The air mage studied her for a second. Other people had turned to watch too, and for an instant everything was still. Then the mage flicked one hand and air struck out in a hammer blow. It smashed into the woman with the distinctive crack of breaking bones and threw her twenty feet down the tunnel, sending her rolling over and over to lie still.