“What did you do?” the girl whispered. Frightened to speak but too curious to remain silent. “What happened?”
“I caused them to be distracted,” he whispered back. He probably could have spoken aloud in utter safety, but why push his luck? “When they try to see us, they’ll wind up watching other people, until it’s too late.”
“How long will it last?” Hesseth asked.
He sighed, and rubbed his temples. “Long enough. If we keep to crowded areas, we should be able to make it to the harbor unnoticed; that much’ll stay with us.”
“And then?”
He shut his eyes and allowed himself the luxury of a long, deep breath. An Obscuring like this was a touchy thing, and a thousand and one variables affected it. But one thing mattered more than any other. One single element could be their undoing.
“That depends,” he said quietly, “on if they’re expecting us.”
Night falling. Harbor shadowed. Perfect time for an ambush.
“There they are.”
From behind the bulk of a storage shed—corrugated tin, mottled with rust—the Regent’s soldiers took the measure of their prey. Tucked away in the shadow of the shed they were nearly invisible. Perfect.
“Now?” A soldier whispered, but their leader shook his head: No. Not yet.
There were few enough people on the wharf now that it was possible to make out the strangers clearly. The priest, coarsely dressed, with no sign of rank or vocation other than the sturdy sword harnessed across his back. The woman, lithe and mysterious, swathed in such layers of wool as were reserved for church tradition. And a child, thin and fearful, whose dark eyes swept over the piers again and again, as if searching for something to be afraid of. Her thick dark hair coiled like snakes over her shoulder, and she twisted its ends in her fingers as she gazed at shadows of the harbor.
“Who’s the kid?” Charrel demanded, his voice a hoarse whisper in the darkness.
“Doesn’t matter,” their leader told him. “You know our orders.”
They began to move. Slowly at first, like pack animals testing the ground for solidity. Slipping from shadow to shadow, silent as men could be, their dark clothing all but invisible in the thick, gloomy dusk. Their quarry hadn’t seen them yet, which was good. If they could manage to surround them before they responded-
And then the child looked at them. Straight at them, her dark eyes piercing through the shadows like lances. Her mouth fell open and she trembled violently, momentarily unable to respond to what she had seen. It would only last an instant, the leader guessed, and he was gesturing for one of his men to fire just as a family group wandered across the wharf, fouling the line of fire. He cursed under his breath and hissed, “Fan out! Contain them!” Even as the girl moved. Even as she warned her companions about the danger that was closing in on them, and they began to run.
Damn! The officer thought, holding his weapon close to his side as he moved out into the open. Running now, his hand clenched tightly about the pistol’s grip. Damn! The people on the wharf got out of his way when they saw him coming—as they’d damned well better—but it wasn’t soon enough, it couldn’t possibly be soon enough, the fugitives were running toward the nearest crowd and would soon be lost among them, damn it!
And then he saw one of his men cut them off, herding them back into the open. The child stumbled, and the priest caught her up in his arms. That slowed them. They were approaching a part of the harbor where business was slow, and the crowds that had served them as shelter were thinning. The leader pushed his way by an old woman, nearly trampling a child in his haste. The Regent had said that the fugitives would be boarding a free merchanter, but that wasn’t the direction they were heading in now; he could only assume that the Regent’s source of intelligence had been mistaken, that they hoped to make it to one of the great passenger ships docked at the west end of the harbor, now drawing in their gangplanks to catch the departing tide. Well, you won’t get there, he swore silently, and he pushed for even greater speed. You won’t get past this harbor alive.
And then there was an opening. Charrel had the clearest shot, and fired first; a crossbow quarrel lanced across the space between them and speared through the child’s thigh. She spasmed in the priest’s arm and screamed, and for a moment it seemed to her pursuer that a brilliant light, blood-red, enveloped her body. Then an elderly couple moved out of the way—at last!—and he fired, he held up the pistol and pulled on the trigger and felt the explosive power take root in his hand, to send death plummeting through the air with a force no crossbow could rival. The soft lead pellet missed the priest by inches but took the woman in her side, and she fell; red blood exploded across the white of her robe as she fell to her knees, and
—and—
—and—
His vision wavered. He staggered as though struck, dimly aware that sorcery was the cause. Trying to fight the effect. It seemed to him that the three figures were blurring, as in a drawing whose edges had been erased. Giving up their color, their form, to meld into the twilight. He shook his head desperately, hoping that his men were holding on. He couldn’t lose them now, not when they were so close to triumph. He squinted into the shadowy air as he lined up the second pellet in the gun’s chamber, as he aligned the second priming. It wasn’t that they were becoming invisible, so much as . . . changing. Yes. That was it. The girl’s dark hair becoming a tangle of blond curls, the priest’s formidable bulk shrinking to the middle-aged potbelly of a henpecked bureaucrat, the woman’s robe becoming mere housewife’s garb, blood-spattered . . .
“My God,” he whispered.
And he lowered his gun.
And he stared.
They were cringing now, terrified of him and his men, but they needn’t have been. Not now. Because he knew in his gut as he gazed at them that these faces were the real ones. Not what he had seen before. Not what he had fired at.
He looked about wildly, as if somewhere on the wharf an explanation would be waiting. What he saw, in the distance, was a merchanter setting sail. White canvas leaves dropping to catch the wind, angled sails billowing in the stiff southerly breeze. He struggled to make out the flag that topped the mizzenmast, and when he did he cursed. He knew that symbol, all too well. He had studied it in the Regent’s chamber only hours before.
“What is it?” came a voice at his shoulder. One of his men. “What happened?”
He turned back, saw one of his soldiers tending to the wounded. Trying to comfort the innocent victims, in a voice that must be shaking with fear. He felt that fear himself, like a knot in his gut.
“We vulked up,” he muttered. “We vulked it up good.”
In the distance, safely out of reach, the Desert Queen made for the open sea.
Not until they were safely out of the harbor did Damien feel the knot in his own gut loosen up. Not until the lights of the city were so low on the horizon that a passing wave might swallow them up, and the granite arms that reached out from the mainland to the harbor were all but invisible in the fading light, did he feel that he could relax.
Soft golden Corelight washed over the deck as he made his way to where Tarrant stood and it picked out jeweled highlights on the water beyond. About and above them the sailors scurried to make the most of what the wind had to offer, and Damien had no doubt that if the wind held in their favor the Desert Queen was capable of outrunning—and probably outmaneuvering—any possible pursuit. Wasn’t that the one capacity a smuggler needed most?