It was too crowded to be graceful and her clothing was still an obstacle. By the time she had gotten to her feet, she had managed to pull off her high-heeled shoes. She looked up at the pink-eyed man just as a second guard tackled him from behind.
Mr. Naylor went down like a sled under the momentum of the flying guard. He slid across the carpet, crushed down and howling with rage. It looked so painful that Sena nearly screamed with disbelief when the guard was lifted up on the back of the rail-thin man like an enormous pack.
Mr. Naylor turned around, his head transfixed with metal, his arms pinned at his sides, a great pink rug burn trawling down the middle of his face. Despite the man encumbering his back, his powerful grasshopper legs moved him with ease over the fallen bodies toward Sena.
A second crossbow quarrel struck the opera house manager in the chest. This one took him to his knees. But the guards had no interest in anything other than getting the High King’s mistress out of the opera house unharmed.
The man riding Mr. Naylor’s back let go, grabbed Sena and pulled her toward the spot where Zane Vhortghast was motioning to a window.
The stairs were choked with people. But there was more to it than that. Sena saw why the spymaster had herded them toward the casement. Two other tall thin men with glassy strange-colored eyes were closing in on their position. The newcomers had bald heads and open mouths and seemed by their strange exaggerated motions to be climbing across the level floor, clawing at the air with arms in a bizarre mantis-like posture.
One of the guards pulled his trigger and a crossbow bolt plunged into the lead creature’s shoulder. Another bolt from the second guard pierced its head. Neither one slowed the thing down.
Like in a nightmare, the monster took hold of the quarrel in its face and pulled it out, tossing it aside carelessly.
Zane Vhortghast was shoving Sena through the window while his men drew their swords and engaged the seven-foot scarecrows in desperate melee. One had powered up his chemiostatic sword and touched the enemy with a vital thrust. There was a flash. The creature shivered as fire darted from its skin both where the electricity entered and from the explosive wound that appeared instantaneously on its foot.
Its ankle ruptured. The tibia burst through like a whitened spike. Still the thing came, walking on the knife-like point of its destroyed leg, dragging its foot behind.
The guard tried to power up his sword again but the superhuman hands were upon him, long thick fingers lifting him in a vise-like grip. The creature tossed him aside, searching for Sena.
Zane Vhortghast took one last look at the fearless almost-human-thing behind him before following Sena out the window. A fire escape clattered down in switchback fashion to a small wooden dock where Caliph, having been dragged off against all effort, stood furious but relieved to see her safe outside.
More men had pulled up in thin slender gondolas at the rear of the theater. They hauled Sena and Caliph on board as something thin and powerful emerged on the fire escape above. Crossbows thumped and a cloud of bolts converged on the creature, filling it like a pincushion. It fell from the metal stairs and landed brokenly at Mr. Vhortghast’s feet.
Sena thought she saw something pale and large jackknife with lethargic grace below the dark water as she passed from the dock into the boat. It vanished before she could get a proper look.
“There’s something down there! There’s something in the water!”
As she spoke the second gondola jerked sideways, throwing men in flailing profusion and great splashing blossoms of foam. The boat capsized and promptly began to sink.
“Out! Out! Out!” shouted the spymaster. He grabbed Sena’s wrist and pulled.
Caliph made a dangerous leap and hit the dock. Awkward. Bashing his shins against the planked edge. He yelped and cursed. Someone pulled him to his feet and shoved him toward a two-foot cornice.
The tremendous foundation from which the building sprung poked above the waterline, a vast slab that extended just beyond the dimensions of the opera house proper. It formed a ledge all the way around the lower extremities of the structure and allowed Vhortghast to goad Caliph through the darkness around the north side.
Caliph would have none of it. He was fed up with being steered around. He turned and shoved his way powerfully back to the