Mercedes Lackey: Changes

Whites made him stand out here and would make him a very visible moving target.

He worked his way from door to door, shop to home, exerting himself to form every word correctly, so he didn’t sound like someone easily dismissed. There was no trace of his accent in his speech, and he held himself as tall and straight as he could, copying, as well as he could, the Captain of the King’s Guard. Everyone answered him; the uniform got him that. They might snarl, or eye him belligerently, or look as if they would like to insult or even hit him, but they answered when he showed them Ice and Stone’s portraits and asked, “Have you seen these men hereabouts?”

They were good likenesses. The same Herald who was going to help Bear with his bone model had made it, taking Mags’ memories and turning them into a double portrait. She was the one who worked for the City Guard and Constables, taking the images of criminals out of victims’ minds and drawing them. And Mags figured that the two men would probably have someone other than themselves answering the door—that Healer, provided they had the man sufficiently cowed to be trusted to do so, or someone they’d hired to run their errands, so they didn’t have to leave Amily. Every time he showed the picture, he was watching for the flash of recognition before a blanket denial; when he got it, then, following the plan, he would walk away and wait for them to go for the bait. Their door watcher would certainly go tell them that here was a Herald looking for them, and they would come out to deal with him. There would be a few moments before Ice and Stone realized who he was and went for a pursuit rather than just murdering him where he stood; those moments, he reckoned, were going to be the ones of highest risk. He had steeled himself for them. He was going to have to be... well... very, very good at dodging for what he hoped would be a very short period of time... .

So when he knocked on another nondescript door and started to go into his speech, then looked up into the face of Stone himself, there was a single moment of mutual paralysis.

The word he was going to say came out in a squeak, and he was certain that he was going to die, right then, right there.

But he broke the spell first. And now, the long hours he had spent mentally rehearsing this plan, over, and over, and over, gave him the reactions of a ferret and put wings on his heels. He ducked, whirled, and ran.

Stone’s grasping hands met on air. Mags was already gone. But not running down the street, oh, no. He’d already scouted his path: a dash to the opposite side of the street, up a rainbarrel, swarm up the drainpipe, and up onto the roof.

Pause. Look back . . .

Stone was just about to the barrel. Ice was three paces behind him.

Holy... They were fast!

Now it was fear putting wings on his heels. He couldn’t yet judge how quick they would be over the rooftops, where he had the advantage of being light. He had to keep them engaged in the chase and not thinking of anything else. No matter what happened, he had to keep them running after him long enough for Nikolas, Sedric, and a group of hand-picked Heralds and Guards to storm the house, take down any opposition, and get Amily out of there.

That meant he had to stay just frustratingly out of reach. And he had to do it without being able to read their level of frustration.

He scrambled over the rooftree, took a couple running steps down the other side, and leaped for the next house. He kept his breathing and his pace even—timing his breaths with his acrobatics. He could not afford to get winded. This one had a bit of flat roof, enough to make a good landing platform; his landing was solid, and he scrambled up the next roof using hands and feet. He didn’t have to look back now, he could hear them, hear their feet on the thatch, since most of the buildings here had thatched roofs.

His heart was absolutely pounding—and if he hadn’t been able to hear them, he would never have known that they were there at all; they were completely “invisible” to his mind.

A tiny sound behind him was all the warning he had that one of them was about to try something.

He took a gamble and leaped sideways, hit the thatch on his shoulder, rolled down to the very edge of the roof, timing the roll so that his feet were under him when he got there and made a huge leap out into thin air—

But he knew where he was, and his hands closed on a bar that had once supported a sign. He swung on it twice, then kicked for the balcony farther along the wall. Nothing fancy, and he barely made the catch, but make it he did, and he was off again, using a stanchion to get back up to the roof.

There were still behind him, but he’d gotten a little breathing room.

Then movement in the corner of his eye warned him something was going on. He risked a glance. Ice was on the next roof over, a flat one that was easier to run on, using that fact to get ahead of him.

Aight. Two can play thet.

He swerved toward the other roof, the very one that Ice was about to leave; Ice was so intent on getting ahead of him that he didn’t notice what Mags was doing. He made a leap for the next roof to intercept Mags—

—except that Mags was leaping for the roof he had just vacated, landing and sprinting back in the direction he had just come from. Doubling back threw both of the men off; by the time they recovered, Mags was two roofs ahead.

Now he took just a moment to get a good look at them, and guage their intentions.

Without stopping, of course.

He leaped for the next roof, landed and rolled. Looked over his shoulder as he sprinted for the next.

Still comin’—

This one would be a two-footed landing and an upslope scramble. He got a second look as he crested the ridgeline before he slid down the other side.

No weapons. No obvious ones, anyway. Probably knives somewhere on them, but they weren’t going to throw knives at him on a run like this, even if they did want him dead. Odds were he’d dodge it under circumstances like this one, no matter how good they were, and no one with any sense throws his weapon away, even if he has a second or a third.

Well... thet’s—

::Mags!:: Dallen called. ::They have her! She’s safe!::

That was possibly the best thing he had heard in a year.

And that meant he was free now to go to the next—and far more risky—part of his plan.

He angled his flight so that Stone got a chance to cut him off; he skidded to a halt on the edge of his roof, stared for a heartbeat, then dashed between them and hurtled over the side.

There were balconies there; he caught the railing of the highest, got his feet on it, bounced off, and let go. Caught the railing of the second, bounced off. Let go. Dropped down to the street, rolled to break his fall, and ran like a scorched stoat back in the direction he had come from.

This was a big risk. He knew they could run faster than he could on a flat and level surface. He just had to hope that they would take enough time getting down from the roof that they wouldn’t be able to catch him.

He had to be street level for this. So did they. He could not risk them getting even a glimpse of what waited for them.

Just before he reached the square in front of the house they had taken, Dallen dashed out of a side street, decked out in his Kirball gear. Mags grabbed the saddle on the run, jumped, and bounced into it. And as the two of them turned on a penny-bit to face the two Karsite agents, he was in fantastic position to see their faces as they skidded to a halt and saw what was waiting for them.

All of the members of the four Kirball teams. All wearing Whites.