become every day sights, including magical ads that could jump off their billboards and follow you down the street.
They were “drawn” onto the side of a building by a gun-like object that contained a reservoir of magic and a spell to animate it. You sketched whatever you wanted on a little screen, pointed the gun, and presto! An instantly mobile, and occasionally vocal, advertisement.
Thanks to a buttload of magic supplied by a crazy war mage we’d met, Ray and I had managed to use the gun to animate ourselves a little help. Giant ads had become warriors in a very strange battle, and while their fighting ability had been debatable, they’d served admirably as a distraction for our attackers. But a distraction wasn’t what I needed right now.
I drew a figure, aimed the gun at a wall, and pulled the trigger.
A second later, what had been bare bricks had a glowing, golden stick figure on them, the size of a six-year-old child. I waited, biting my lip and hoping this would work. Ray and I had taken the idea of the makeshift weapon we’d put together on the fly in Hong Kong to a master wardsmith—the father of a friend—who liked to tinker with crazy magic. He’d refined it, upgraded it, and added some special features.
Including that one, I thought, as the “child” started spilling off the wall like an accordion, not one figure anymore but dozens.
“Thought you were an artist,” Ray said, checking out the toons’ oversized, lopsided heads and mismatched eyes.
I ignored that. The dial control on the device was as hard to use as an Etch-a-Sketch, which probably explained the rug. I pawed through my oversized purse, which Ray had slung over his back, pulled a picture of Louis-Cesare out of my wallet and held it up in front of the nearest little glowing stick figure. It had been toddling around aimlessly along with the rest, having received no instructions yet.
So, I gave it some.
“Find him—fast—and signal me when you do.”
The lopsided head got a little more so, tilting in an almost human-like way as it regarded the picture with its big, missing eyes. I hadn’t bothered to fill it in much, so it was mostly just a collection of glowing lines, showing the darkened city scape beyond. But there was obviously something at work inside that empty head. Because a moment later the stick guys were gone, just golden blurs against the night, shooting off in all directions.
“Get on!” I told Ray, while clambering back onto the rug.
“Yeah.” He eyed it. “Only I was thinking maybe you could make another one. I was kinda in a hurry and—”
“It’ll do. Come on!”
“—it ended up too small. And lopsided. And—”
“Ray! The magic cartridges are $10,000 a pop—”
“I know that—”
“—so I’m not making another one. And, anyway, we don’t have time. Get on!”
Ray was not getting on. Instead, he was backing up, his eyes on the tiny sort-of rug that I was straddling like a motorcycle. He did not appear to want another go.
“Did I ever mention I get airsick?”
And then a couple of jackals jumped onto the roof, and Ray screamed and threw himself at me. “Go! Go! Go!” he yelled, which I guess was all the command the little rug needed.
It took off like it had been shot out of a cannon, with Ray’s last word being exaggerated into a single long line that I thought might actually be his last word, as we dodged spears and flipped over and somersaulted in mid-air, which had me wanting to scream, too, only I was the master.
It wouldn’t have been dignified.
We finally stabilized high over the city, with Ray in front and me holding on behind. Old Town was spread out in a warren of broad avenues and narrow alleyways below, through which my tiny golden men were flickering. Not running down the streets as humans would, but appearing briefly on walls, on parked vehicles, and on the shuttered side of shops, the corrugated metal making their distorted shapes even more so. But they were flickering fast.
“Come on,” I breathed, watching them. “Come on.”
And then I saw it: a little man who was no longer golden. He was red—blood red. And no sooner had the color washed over him than it spilled outward to his closest brothers, who turned unerringly on his location. And then more did and more, until I had a bright red arrow spread out below me, fritzing like a neon sign in the darkness—