“It took me all night to find you, but I’m scrying you now.”
Laurence paused, walked backward to me, and pointed to my silver cuff. “Are you scrying someone who’s scrying you?”
“She’s scrying me,” I said. “But yes.”
“Good.” He hummed and tapped the silver cuff wrapped around the entirety of his left ear. It was always impossibly full of magic. I didn’t understand how his ear hadn’t worn away yet. “Two midnight artists are better than one.” He winced. “No, not you. You’re obviously the best of the two,” he said, waving his hands at the air as if he could shoo his midnight artist away. “Follow me exactly, unless your scryer tells you something different.”
“You are scrying me. Badly, but still. I’m scrying the soldiers around you,” Annette said in a tone my mother would have been exceptionally proud of. “I can’t divine the exact seconds you would need to anticipate an attack, but I can at least tell you who’s about to attack you.”
“I am happy with whatever you can offer,” I said. “Is Estrel Charron divining for Laurence?”
“Must be. I don’t know anyone else who can do this.”
Laurence and I hung back as the chevaliers and soldiers attacked. They tore through the guards around the city in a flash, Chevalier du Ferrant only suffering a single slash across his forehead from an arrow. Sébastien healed it with a quick channeling. Laurence stiffened.
“Run,” he and Annette said at once.
He sprinted down the hill to our right, and I took off after him. In the distance, a screech echoed across the land, black alchemical smoke pouring from town, and I felt the gathering of immense power. Blades stored with the noonday arts sparked as they hit each other, shearing off iron and igniting it. Fire flared where the chevaliers had been.
Thornish artists.
Something tore past my left with a whistle. Flames licked at my back.
Laurence healed a soldier’s burned leg as we raced by him, and I channeled enough magic into him to get him moving again. We wove between trees and sheds, Laurence healing the worst of the injuries and me healing the easiest. A Thorne, hiding, nursed a twisted ankle, and I fixed that too.
Ahead of me, Laurence sidestepped left. I did too, and a volley of arrows rained into the area we were running from. Another whistle, another tightening of the magic around me. I could feel the world unsettling, hearts speeding up, veins tearing open, and I dove into the wounds without seeing who they belonged to. Deme, Thorne—none of it mattered if we were all dead. Skin was simple. It was almost always the same. Scabs bloomed as quickly as I ran.
“Duck.”
Laurence and I ducked at the same time, and another whistle flew overhead. I had never been interested in stories of valiant chevaliers, honorable battles, and the destructive powers of the noonday arts, and had no idea what we were up against. Laurence was untroubled, though. Prescient, he dodged left.
“Right.”
I darted right. Another bead of lead whistled past me, burrowing into the tree we had used for cover. The air shivered, and stored magic burst into the world. The iron sheared from the bead and, still lingering in the air, combusted. The oxygen rushed out of my lungs and into the reaction. Breathing grew heavy.
No, no, no—the mortal body produced plenty of things that decomposed into oxygen. Magic wove through Laurence’s skin, and I copied his arts without thinking, dragging up fresh blood. Blood beaded across the palm of my hand. I cupped it over my mouth.
“Three steps, you’re out. Five steps, stop him.”
One. Two. Three. Air!
Stop who? The world was chaos, and I was not prepared for this. A crossbow bolt caught a Deme soldier in the shoulder. Laurence dove for him, air hardening next to Laurence’s forearm like a shield, and knocked another bolt aside. A chevalier’s apprentice in the cover of a nearby tree took aim with a longbow.
“Stop him.”
I was a physician’s assistant. I was never supposed to hurt anyone.
“Look.”
I glanced down at the cuff and saw a Thornish soldier running away, raising the alarm as they ran, a crossbow in their hand. They were retreating.
The apprentice’s arm tensed. Alchemistry was too slow; I couldn’t put him to sleep, but I was already in his veins and my magic coursed through him. An old scar on the back of his hand ripped open. Blood splattered across his face.