Aldric Thornmoor's Arc

Chapter 9 of 16

The dark window told Aldric everything. The councilor knew they were here. Wanda's fire had lit the whole block. Now boots were moving on gravel behind the gate house, more than two pairs, and a shout carried from the far side of the wall. Guards. The flame had pulled them off their rounds like a bell. Wanda pressed her back to the bakery wall. Her palm still held a low flame. "Four at least. Maybe six. They'll come around both sides." Aldric wrote on his stub and turned it to her: WE CANT FIGHT THROUGH. She nodded once. He looked at the lit street between them and the gate house door. Twenty steps of open ground. He would not cross it. He would be cut down halfway. He looked up. The gate house had a stone wall. A second-floor window. A voice trained to carry through stone did not need a door. He grabbed Wanda's wrist and pointed to the bakery roof above them, then to the gate house wall across the way. She understood faster than he could write. She cupped her hands. He stepped in. She threw him up. He caught the bakery gutter and pulled. His wound tore open again. He got a knee onto the tiles and lay flat. Below, the first guard came around the corner with a short blade drawn. Wanda stepped out to meet him. Fire bloomed between her hands, wider than before, the last of the mermaid's light burning off her knuckles. The guard flinched back. She drove him into the alley and out of sight. Aldric crawled to the roof edge nearest the gate house. The lit window was dark, but he could see the shape of a man behind the glass, listening. Aldric filled his chest. He had no voice. He had only the shape of one, and the shape of the proclamation he had carried folded against his ribs since the day they cast him out. He pulled the folded page free. He laid it flat on the tiles. He could not read it aloud. He could not read it at all. Below, a second guard rounded the bakery. Wanda's fire answered from the alley, but weaker now, guttering. The star magic was almost gone. Aldric did the only thing left. He tore the proclamation in half. He wrapped one half around a loose roof tile. He hurled it through the councilor's window. Glass broke. The page landed on the councilor's floor with his name on it, in his own hand, folded to the passage naming the thumb in the wax. The councilor screamed. Not in fear. In recognition. Aldric slid off the roof into the alley. Wanda caught his arm. They ran. Behind them the councilor was shouting for his guards to bring him a lamp, bring him the page, bring him the man who threw it. The councilor had read his own name. That was not the proclamation. But it was a start.