“Come on,” Jace urged. “I grabbed the money and some food.”
“Bye, Bertram,” Cole said. “Thanks for the holiday.”
Bertram gave a nod. “You’re a fine grandnephew.”
Cole stepped out of the autocoach.
“Are those tears?” Jace asked.
Cole wiped his eyes and glanced away. “No.”
“He isn’t real,” Jace said. “He’s a semblance. He was constructed.”
Cole sighed. “That almost makes it worse. He’ll just sit there thinking he’s supposed to be on vacation with us.”
“He’s not thinking,” Jace said. “He just blabs the kind of stuff Declan taught him to say. Don’t be sad for him. Just be sad we lost our ride. Let’s go find Mira.”
“What about the guys you took out with your rope?” Cole asked. “Should we check if they’re alive?”
“No chance,” Jace said. “They tried to kill us. I didn’t hold back.”
“They had armor.”
“Armor won’t protect you from falling off a cliff. I threw them hard. Joe wasn’t worried about them.”
“Joe was in a hurry,” Cole pointed out.
Jace exhaled sharply. “Fine. You take that one.” He pointed toward the man closest to them. Jace’s rope coiled like a spring, then uncoiled, launching him over to where the farthest of the two fallen riders had been thrown. The rope coiled ahead of him to soften his landing.
Cole trotted over to the other rider. The front of his helmet and breastplate were badly dented from the impact with the boulder. The figure didn’t move. Cole knelt beside him and put his ear by the helmet, listening for breathing. He heard nothing.
“Die!” a voice said as hands grabbed Cole by the shoulders from behind.
Cole jumped and turned, startled enough to make Jace laugh.
“The other guy is no longer with us,” Jace said. “We’re wasting time. Let’s fly.”
His rope coiled again, and Jace shot up the slope. Cole pointed his sword, spoke the command, and whooshed upward.
No matter how many times Cole did it, jumping with the sword remained exhilarating, partly because he always felt a little out of control. Landing tended to be the trickiest part. Cole had learned that if he immediately took another sword-assisted jump instead of coming to a full stop, the impact was greatly reduced. So he strung together some jumps up the slope, over to the bridge, and along the road until he saw Twitch and Mira waving at him from up ahead.
Pointing his blade at a spot near his friends, Cole shouted the command again and flew through the air toward them. The sword slowed him at the last second, but not enough to prevent him from stumbling to his knees on the dirt road.
While bounding with the sword, Cole had passed Jace, who was using his rope to grab trees beside the road and slingshot himself forward. Jace caught up by the time Cole rose to his feet.
“You need to practice those landings,” Jace said.
“You need to work on your speed,” Cole shot back.
Jace gestured toward the side of the road. “What’s that supposed to be?”
Cole turned to see a misshapen brown lump the height of his waist rocking back and forth on two uneven legs. Perhaps sensing the attention, the ungainly object hobbled toward them.
“Mira tried to shape something for us to ride to Carthage,” Twitch explained.
Jace exploded into laughter. “That? It looks like a walking mud ball.”
Cole tried not to laugh. The description was pretty accurate.