desk-sized pods that had chased Kashkari and Iolanthe all over Cairo.
In Cairo they’d had the advantage of the urban landscape. Here it was open and flat, with no places to hide—and not even darkness to help them disappear.
Already, despite the tailwind she’d applied to the carpet, the pods were closing in. She willed the soil beneath a clump of trees to loosen, hoisted the trees with levitating charms, and sent them toward the pods.
The pods dodged her missiles.
She summoned the water of the Thames and erected a wall of ice. One chariot ran smack into the wall, but the others pulled up in time.
Instead of throwing up another ice wall, she ripped apart the existing one and threw boulder-sized shards at her pursuers. Two of the chariots were hit broadside and knocked off their trajectory. But the rest extended their mechanical arms and either caught the ice chunks or swatted them aside.
And there were so many of them, an entire swarm. Where was the brewery? If they didn’t find it now, they might never be able to.
Even more pods fell from the sky, a particularly pernicious hailstorm. Their long mechanical arms reached for Iolanthe from all directions, and Kashkari was already flying them as low as possible without scraping the ground.
“Do something!” cried Kashkari.
But what else could she do? She looked about wildly and saw nothing but claws and metal underbellies.
“Vault!” Titus’s voice rang out, clear as a church bell. “You are out of the no-vaulting zone now!”
Kashkari’s hand already grasped her arm. She closed her eyes and thought of the inside of the brewery. The next instant she and Kashkari were crashing to the floor of the brewery, thrown against a pile of old barrels by the residual velocity of their carpet.
Before they’d come to a complete stop, they were already hauled to their feet. Titus—and Master Haywood!
“Come on. Hurry!”
The door to the laboratory was open, light spilling out of the familiar interior, with its long worktable and walls upon walls of shelves and cabinets. They raced inside. Titus entered last, slammed the door shut, and shouted, “Extinguatur ostium!”
Iolanthe clung to Titus, her entire person shaking, her breaths in fits and wheezes. He all but crushed her in his arms.
“Fortune shield me,” he said, his voice hoarse. “For a moment I thought they had you.”
Now she was hugging Master Haywood. He kissed her face and caressed her hair. “I thought there had to be some archival magic I could wield. But I drew a complete blank. I was scared witless.”
“We’re all right,” she answered, gasping. “Don’t worry. We’re all right.”
She also embraced Kashkari, who, like her, was still panting heavily. “That was some very fine flying, old bloke. You saved us.”
“I thought we were done for. I thought that was how—”
He stopped speaking abruptly. An unease that was becoming all too familiar coiled around her heart, but he only raised his hand to his temple and gingerly felt around the cut that must have resulted from his having slammed into a cider cask head-on.
Titus had already dampened a cloth with some potion. He ordered Kashkari to sit down. “And are you all right?” he asked Iolanthe as he cleaned Kashkari’s wound. “Any headache, nausea, or weakness?”
“I’m fine. Are you sure all connections between the brewery and the laboratory have been severed?”
“Yes.” When he had affixed a bandage to Kashkari’s temple, he extracted several vials from various drawers and handed them to Iolanthe. “Take these to be on the safe side. You were not supposed to vault within seven days of any trauma severe enough to require panacea.”
She’d forgotten about that altogether. After she had poured the remedies down her throat, Master Haywood once more enfolded her in his arms, his heart thudding a staccato beat against her chest. “Fortune shield me. I think I’m still scared witless.”
“I’m safe now. We are all safe now.”
Inside the folded space the laboratory occupied, they could not be traced or found.
Eventually she let go of Master Haywood and presented Kashkari to him. All the men shook hands.
“What happened?” asked Titus. “How did Atlantis find you?”
Iolanthe dug up a charred Validus, handed it to Titus, and recounted the anomaly involving the diamond-inlaid crowns along the length of the blade wand.
Titus’s expression turned grim. “Unless I am very much mistaken, Atlantis now has access to Validus’s daughter wand.”
“What’s that?” everyone else said in unison.
“Most blade wands come in pairs, a mother wand and daughter wand. The daughter wand is not particularly remarkable—it does not amplify