The Whitefire Crossing - By Courtney Schafer Page 0,144

and showers of sparks, and bang loud enough to shatter eardrums. We learned quick that the instant you see that shit, you run, and pray to Khalmet a wall doesn’t fall on you, he’d told Cara.

Ninavel fireworks were specially made mage lights, but Sulanians used mixed powders that exploded when exposed to open flame, with different mixtures giving different colors. Alathians loved them, since they held no potentially illegal magic. The Sulanian traders I’d seen on the day I brought Kiran through the gate had carried a crate of fireworks as part of their cargo to sell, and I’d managed to find the Alathian importer who’d bought their wares. I’d had to pay twice what the fireworks were worth, since the old crone had seen I was in such a gods-damned hurry, but a good dozen hand-sized bags of powder and a set of pre-made fuses now sat in my pack. I was hoping that if magic could look like fireworks, the reverse was true as well.

I slithered down a gully between cliffs, heading for the valley floor. Even in the gathering gloom, each pine twig and pebble stood out sharp in my vision, the slightest noises loud in my ears. Fear fell away, leaving only the stark clarity I remembered from countless dangerous climbs and Tainter jobs. My blood sang and I grinned, tight and fierce.

The darkness was deeper amidst the valley pines. I slipped through the forest, placing powder sacks in a widely spaced arc leading toward the cabin. Beside each sack, I laid one of my precious store of Ninavel-made defensive charms, primed and ready; and before I moved on, I lit the twisted cord of the sack’s fuse. The Alathian merchant had assured me that once lit, the fuses were both slow burning and difficult to put out.

With the last firework in place, I eased up to the edge of the meadow. Flickering firelight lit the cabin windows, and a sharper, steadier silver glow spilled onto the grass from beyond a bulwark of rock at the meadow’s head. The angle was wrong for me to see the source, but no question it was magelight—and far too bright to be cast by something simple as a lightglobe.

I slid off my pack and drew out one last woven cloth sack, smaller than the others, with a fuse cut down to almost nothing. The merchant had said I’d have an hour’s grace with the length of fuses she’d cut for the fireworks I’d set in the forest. That time had to be almost up, now.

A great rose-colored flash speared toward the sky, with a violent bang that sent birds squawking from trees. Close on its heels, a startled shout rang out from the cabin. The gray-haired guardsman charged out the door with a long-barreled Sulanian hackbut in his hands.

Simon’s dark silhouette appeared against the magelight. The guardsman stopped, hackbut raised, and glanced Simon’s way.

Come on, you bastard, I urged Simon silently. Go investigate. As the fireworks exploded, the charms I’d laid next to them would spark, in a mimicry of mages fighting. Simon would sense the magic, but if the amulet worked as Kiran said, he’d be unable to sense any people within the valley’s confines. Kiran had implied that proximity to a strong source of magic—like whatever threw off all that magelight—could mess with a mage’s senses, like a night sentry standing too close to a bonfire; and everything I’d seen of Simon said he was the careful, controlling sort who’d be driven crazy by uncertainty. Surely he’d be tempted to move away from his spellwork, in hopes of figuring out what the hell was going on. He wouldn’t be so dumb as to go far, or leave for long—but I meant to seize even the slightest opportunity.

A second Sulanian firework exploded with a deafening bang. Golden sparks shot up over the tops of the trees. Simon raised his hands. A sickly yellow halo of light shimmered over his body.

“Stay here. Shoot anyone you see,” Simon snapped at the guardsman. He stalked toward the trees. I held my breath.

Another explosion, this one closer. Simon picked up his pace and disappeared into the forest. The moment his yellow glow faded from sight, I sparked the fuse on the sack in my hand and tossed it straight at the guardsman.

He saw it flying toward him and jumped back, but not far enough. The little firework exploded right in front of him. Small as it was, it popped rather than banged,