‘You know what your problem is, kid?’ Dexan said as he approached, his massive crocodile lumbering close behind.
‘Bad timing?’
He shook his head. ‘Self-deception.’
‘How do you figure?’
His hand formed the somatic shape for the lightning needles I’d seen him use on Revian’s house mage. I had no idea what it felt like to be hit by those and no desire to find out. He could sense my discomfort. ‘You keep fooling yourself into believing you can be someone other than a spellslinger, Kellen, but that’s who you are. It’s what we both are! Exiles. Outcasts. We’ve got our little scraps of magic and our wits and that’s it. When you forget that – when you let yourself believe you can join the Argosi or fall in love with some rich girl and move in with her and her papa – you lose the one advantage you have.’
‘Which is?’
‘Knowing how the world really works.’
He took another step closer, his hand still holding the somatic shape even as the onyx bracelet on his wrist shimmered again. The crocodile opened its mouth and let out a hissing sound that made my guts go cold.
Reichis and I had spent most of the climb into the hills discussing how we might deal with the beast. Two possibilities had presented themselves, neither of which were particularly promising. In the end it was Reichis who’d made the decision between the two.
I backed away. Quickly. ‘You’re wrong, Dexan. I might be an outcast like you, but that’s not all I have to be.’
He shook his head in disgust. ‘Look at you! Seconds from meeting your own death and yet you’re still refusing to face the fact that this – right here –’ he spread his arms to gesture at the surroundings – ‘this is the best somebody like you or me can hope for. A little money, a nice place, maybe some comfort, at least until our own people hunt us down and take it away from us.’
‘That’s a pretty lonely existence,’ I said, retreating.
‘That’s the life of a spellslinger, Kellen. People either want to kill us or use us as tools. That girl you like? Even if you could cure her, all that would do is make her leave you behind. Why would someone like that want to be with an outlaw spellslinger cursed with the shadowblack? And that woman? Ferius? She’s an Argosi, Kellen. They’re loners, every one of them. Sure, she’ll let you follow her around for a while, but then that “path” of hers? Well, it’ll take her to places you don’t want to go, and when it does, she’ll walk right out of your life and you’ll never see her again.’ He gave a chuckle. ‘Damn, kid, you don’t even have a proper familiar. Just a squirrel cat who probably steals everything he can get his paws on.’
‘Got that right,’ Reichis chittered.
Suddenly something small and shiny hurtled through the air towards Dexan, letting out a high-pitched chime as it struck his forehead. It was the bell from the charm we’d tried to buy.
The distraction was just enough for me to get one steel card thrown. I’d aimed for Dexan’s neck, which was a bad idea since it wasn’t a big target. Still, the card sliced his cheek and I got a loud yell for my troubles. Then he set the crocodile on me.
As the creature advanced, I scrambled backwards, readying myself for what Reichis had dubbed ‘the bloody-tongue manoeuvre’. Just as the crocodile opened its jaws, I flung one of Ferius’s steel cards into its mouth. The first one missed, clacking against the brute’s teeth only to fall to the floor, but I fired off a second one and that one went right inside. Instinctively, the creature bit down, and gave a roar as the sharp steel edges bit into the soft flesh of its mouth.
Dexan was only momentarily distracted, his fingers went back into the somatic shape of the lightning-needles spell. He opened his mouth to utter the incantation, and I knew I was a few syllables away from a rather unpleasant end.
Reichis leaped down from his perch on the glass case, limbs spread wide so that the furry membranes of his glider wings blocked Dexan’s view. The squirrel cat wrapped his paws and feet around Dexan’s face, clawing into him to hang on.
The crocodile was snapping its jaws open and closed, trying to dislodge the card. I didn’t have long before the creature would give up on that endeavour and turn his attention to me, but in the meantime I raced past it and made a running leap for Dexan. ‘Reichis, now!’ I shouted.
The squirrel cat sprang away just as I tackled Dexan to the floor. It felt almost satisfying to be on the attack for once, instead of just being the guy who gets beaten up all the time. But Dexan was a foot taller than me and a good fifty pounds heavier. Within seconds he’d managed to throw me off, and I landed hard against one of the display cases, sending it toppling to the floor, the glass doors shattering into thousands of pieces.
‘You stupid little ingrate!’ he spat, getting to his feet. ‘You think just because I’m a spellslinger I don’t know how to fight?’
I scrambled to my feet. ‘Oh, I’m sure you know how to wrastle,’ I said, ‘but me, I’m more of a dancer these days.’ I held out my hand and showed him what I’d taken from him.
Dexan glanced at his wrist and saw the onyx bracelet he used to control the crocodile was gone. He made a grab for me, but I ducked low and came up on the other side of him, tossing the bracelet to Reichis, who leaped up and caught it in his teeth. The crocodile, mad with confusion and rage, now freed from Dexan’s control, came after all of us.
‘Are you sure about this, Reichis?’ I asked again, preparing to throw another card at the creature’s mouth. I doubted it would fall for that twice.
‘He’s mine!’ Reichis growled, leaping onto the crocodile’s head and grabbing onto the ridges with his claws.
Squirrel cats really don’t like losing a fight, and Reichis is especially prone to acts of revenge. As the crocodile began to flip over to shake off his unwanted guest, Reichis leaped off. The crocodile tried to snap its teeth at him, and in that instant Reichis threw the bracelet into the beast’s mouth.
The crunch of the bracelet shattering inside the massively powerful jaws was followed by the creature suddenly halting its frantic movements. The black swirling inside its eyes stopped and the beast stared at us, gaze clear for the first time. I wasn’t sure what to expect then, whether it would die or perhaps still be just as wild. What Reichis had theorised, and I’d hoped, was that the beast, once free of the magic controlling it, would turn its attention to the man who’d made it suffer for so long.
For once we got lucky.
The crocodile started scrambling along the marble floor towards Dexan, who ran backwards while frantically grabbing for something inside his pocket. Suddenly he pulled out what looked like a small glass figurine which he crushed in his hand, grimacing from the pain of the glass cutting into his palm. The crocodile collapsed on the floor. Blood began to drip out of its eyes and mouth.
‘That’s the difference between you and me, Kellen,’ Dexan said, wiping the tiny slivers of glass from his hand. ‘We’re both spellslingers, we’re both wily, but I’ve been at this a lot longer than you. Did you think I wouldn’t have prepared something just in case I lost control of the beast?’ He raised both his hands and thin tendrils of blue lightning slithered around his fingers.
‘There’s something else that makes us different, Dexan: I have …’
I didn’t get to finish my sentence because at that moment Dexan dropped like a stone, unconscious. Behind him, Ferius, with Seneira at her side, stood over him and slowly closed her extendable metal rod. ‘Oh, I’m sorry, kid,’ she said. ‘Were you going to say something?’
‘Yeah.’ I knelt to let Reichis clamber up my arm to my shoulder then walked over to Ferius and Seneira. ‘I was going to say that the difference between me and Dexan is that I have friends.’
Ferius gave me that smirk of hers. ‘Friends, eh? So why did you take off without us like that?’
‘Because you’d never have let me do this my way.’
‘Damn straight, because I’d have known you’d end up in a position like this.’
I nodded. ‘Just like I knew you’d come find me.’