Brave the Tempest (Cassie Palme) - Karen Chance Page 0,229

one of the older gals had stuffed herself into a too-small, high-necked, white lace dress that looked terribly familiar. Oh, no, I thought.

No, please.

“I saw you duel,” the tiny, rotund woman told me, rheumy eyes bright. “So many years ago now. Well, so many for me. You were the best I ever saw—”

“You never saw me,” Hilde said, crawling back down to join us.

“No, you’d already left the court by then,” the tiny old woman agreed, like we were having a pleasant conversation over tea.

“No,” I told Hilde, before she could say anything. “No, get them out of here!”

“You said to bring them round for an interview—”

“This isn’t a goddamned interview! They’re going to get themselves killed!”

“They are if you don’t give them their power back,” she agreed.

“I can handle this! I don’t need—”

“Then I suppose you can tell me what spell Johanna is using?”

“Shards!” I snapped, mentally thanking Gertie.

“And how to break it?”

I glared at her. “I don’t need to know that! I just need to kill her!”

“Yes, you do. And the longer it takes, the more the timeline suffers. How long until we can’t repair it at all? How long before a world falls because you don’t work well with others?”

“Now, now, that’s not fair,” tiny grandma said, patting my hand. “Don’t listen to her. She tends to get excitable when she’s nervous.”

I stared at her. And then I transferred the look to Hilde, who was already puffing up. “I’m not nervous!”

She also wasn’t wrong, I thought, as a hail of spell bolts streamed toward us, causing me to hit the roof again. They were blown off course by the howling wind—fortunately. Because they’d looked like the kind a war mage might throw: thick and sturdy and unlikely to be stopped by any shield I might throw up!

Not that I could afford the power drain, anyway. Pritkin had given me what he could, but both of us had been bottomed out. Would that be enough for Jo?

At a guess, no, I thought, as several more chimneys exploded.

The winds snatched the bricks and sent them streaming off into the wind, like they were odd-shaped leaves. The women must have been shielding or we’d have been blown off ourselves by now. So they had some magic, at least. But damn it! I didn’t need any more people to die for me!

Or to betray me, not that that was a big concern right now.

Jo was perfectly able to kick my butt all on her own.

“It’s hard, I know,” tiny grandma said. “I never could have done your job, not that it would have gone to me. My mother is a mage, but my father was human. I age faster as a result, and could never have borne such power. But I can support you, in the burden you must bear. If you will let me?”

I looked around at all of them, these women who didn’t have to be here, who probably had comfortable lives back home and didn’t have to help me. But who inexplicably wanted to anyway. I didn’t know what to say.

But I guess my face must have been enough, because Hilde nodded briskly. “Good, that’s done, then.”

Which is how I ended up with a posse.

Which was lucky, all things considered. Because a lightning strike scattered the women’s shield a moment later, and a savage gust blew me off the roof and onto another. Where I clung to a weathervane and tried not to look down while attempting to regain my footing.

I failed. But not because of my two left feet. But because Jo was gleefully sprinting across the rooftops, like she was immune to lightning, while throwing bolts of her own.

I stared at her, in the brief glimpses the lightning offered: the crazed face twisted by hate and fiendish glee, the wet blond hair almost glowing under the strobe-like lightning, the lithe form ignoring the pelting rain and the sharply pitched roofs and the wind that lashed and blew like a wild thing, trying to pluck our tiny bodies up and send them spinning off into the darkness.

None of which she seemed to notice.

When you’ve already died a couple of times now, I guess it just doesn’t have the same effect.

And then the roof I was on exploded.

It took me a moment to realize that I hadn’t gone with it, because somebody had shifted me back at the last second. Hilde, I thought, grabbing her ample form. “You have to say it!” she yelled, shaking me.

“Say what?”

“You have