fireball would take. He ducked and rolled, then came back to his feet. She fled, clattering and sliding across the clay-tiled roof.
Taniel cleared the next gap easily. He lost sight of the Privileged with the slant of the roof, then found her again as she crested the next roof over. He fired off a shot.
He hit her once again, but once again she didn’t go down. It had been a square shot, right to the spine. She should have been dead, or at the very least wounded and bleeding. She hardly stumbled.
Taniel snarled. He put away his pistols and swung his rifle into his hand. He fixed his bayonet. He’d do this the hard way.
A powder mage in a full trance could run down a horse. He was within feet of her in two more buildings. She leapt between roofs. Her toe barely caught the lip of the next. She slipped and fell, grabbing the tiles.
Taniel cleared the roof with space to spare. He skidded to a stop and turned, ready to put his bayonet through her eye. She let go of the roof and fell to the street below.
Taniel swore. He hesitated only a moment before jumping after her. Even in the height of a powder trance his knees ached and his body shivered when he hit the ground. He landed in a crouch next to the Privileged, who was already on her feet. He reacted on instinct, thrusting his bayonet. He felt it slide home.
The woman slumped above him, her gloved hand a mere foot from his head. She had the face of an aging woman who’d once been very beautiful, her skin now lined and weathered, crow’s-feet in the corners of her eyes. She let out a gasp, then jerked herself off the end of Taniel’s bayonet.
“You’ve no idea what’s going on, boy.” Her voice was a deadly whisper.
Taniel heard the jingle of Gothen’s weapons as the magebreaker ran up beside him, his pistol leveled.
Taniel felt the earth rumble.
“Get down!” Gothen leapt between Taniel and the Privileged.
The ground splintered and cracked and fell out from under them. Taniel’s whole body screamed at the pressure released. He felt as if he’d been jammed into the bottom of a cannon and used as fuel for an explosion. His ears popped, he felt dizzy. His head pounded.
Masonry rained down all around them.
When the dust began to clear, Taniel saw Gothen still crouching over him, his face in a grimace. The magebreaker opened one eye. His lips moved, but Taniel couldn’t hear a thing. The whole world wavered. Taniel got to his feet and looked around. Ka-poel approached him through the haze. Julene was not far behind. The buildings on either side of him were completely gone, leveled to their foundations, damp basements filled with rubble and hovering curtains of dust. There were smears of blood and bits of flesh in the debris. There had been people in those buildings—people who hadn’t had a magebreaker standing between them and the explosion.
Taniel drew a shaky breath.
Julene marched straight up to Taniel and knocked him off his trembling legs with a shove. Ka-poel slid in between them, her silent glare driving Julene back a step. It was several moments before Taniel could hear well enough to know what Julene was shouting.
“… let her go! You let her get away! You bloody fool!”
Taniel climbed to his feet. He gently pushed Ka-poel out of the way by the shoulder.
Julene stepped forward and punched him full in the face. His head jerked back. He reacted without thinking, grabbing her next blow out of the air and twisting her hand. He slapped her. “Back the pit off.” Taniel turned and spit blood. “She’s dead. There’s no way anyone could have lived through that.”
“She’s not dead.” Julene’s cheeks were flushed, but she made no move to continue the fight. “I can still feel her. She got away.”
“I ran her through with three spans of steel! She wasn’t walking away from that.”
“You think steel can hurt her? You think it can really hurt her? You don’t know shit.”
Taniel took a deep, calming breath, then a snort of powder. “Ka-poel,” he said. “Is she still alive?”
Ka-poel hefted the end of Taniel’s rifle in her small hands and drew her finger through the blood along the bayonet’s edge. She smeared it between her fingers. After a moment she nodded.
“Can you track her?”
Ka-poel nodded again.
Julene scoffed. “I can’t even track her,” she said. “She’s covered her trail. Even wounded she’s far more