For once, Mircea didn’t have to pull me out of the way; the crowd was already doing that for him. It parted into two halves, surging into the road or back against the pub. Mircea and I ended up in the road, and then had to shuffle back even farther because the little carriage was weaving drunkenly all over the place.
I didn’t know how much my mother knew about horses, but I didn’t think her driving was the problem. That was more likely the two war mages in the coach behind her, firing spells that she was doing her best to dodge. She wasn’t entirely successful, which probably explained why the roof of her carriage was on fire, and why her horse had the walleyed look of the totally panicked.
Although the horse looked positively calm compared to the kidnapper, who was sitting in the covered area of the coach, hands braced on either side, screaming his head off.
“Those idiots! Are they trying to kill her?” I demanded, as another bolt of what looked like red lightning flashed between the carriages.
It missed her, but only because she’d jumped the sidewalk at the same moment, scattering pedestrians and overturning a vendor’s cart. Apples rolled across the street like oversized marbles, tripping people and sending them sliding on the icy road. Unfortunately, the mages’ horse managed to avoid them just fine, and thundered after her.
“It would appear so,” Mircea said grimly.
I stopped staring at the chaos long enough to stare at him. “What?”
“From what you know of the Circle, dulceat?a?, which do you think they would prefer—a fully trained heir in the hands of a dark mage, or the same heir deceased?”
A finger of ice ran down my spine. Because I didn’t have to think. I’d just spent more than a month dodging the Circle of my time, who had been convinced that I was a threat thanks to my parentage, my vampire connections and a couple of dozen other things. And their solution had been what it always was—kill it, then kill it again.
Goddamnit!
There was a walkway over the road ahead, and I shifted us onto it, putting us momentarily ahead of the chase. It wouldn’t be for long. The light weight of the vehicles allowed them to zip past the larger ones lumbering down the road, most of which were trying to get out of the way, anyway. But one wagon, piled high with barrels, was too heavy to move fast enough. And a spell that missed my mother by a fraction didn’t miss it.
Whatever was in the barrels must have been pretty flammable. Because they exploded in a wash of light and heat and eardrum-threatening sound, setting the wagon ablaze and sending several of the smaller casks shooting heavenward, like wooden cannonballs. And if I’d thought the street had been chaotic before, it was nothing compared to this.
Horses don’t like fire, noise or unexpected events, and every horse on the street had just experienced all three. Pandemonium broke out, with bolting animals, running people and fiery barrel parts raining down from the heavens. One of the latter took out an awning over a tobacconist’s shop, which the owner hadn’t remembered to roll up for the night. The dark green material went up in flames, right by a couple more horses.
That might not have been so bad, except for the fact that they were hitched to a double-decker bus. It had been about to let off a group of passengers, only they had to cling to the railings instead as the spooked horses took off at a dead run. I caught sight of my mother again as she and the bus raced side by side for the bridge, and Mircea grasped my arm.
“Can you shift us onto her coach?”
I stared at him, wondering at what point he’d lost his mind. But he looked perfectly serious, maybe because he thought this was as good a chance as we were going to get. It didn’t help that I agreed with him.
“I’m not . . . I don’t . . . It isn’t so easy shifting onto moving things,” I explained. Particularly ones that were all over the road and on fire.
“Then we’ll have to do it the old-fashioned way,” he told me. And before I could ask what that meant, his arm went around my waist and we were running for the side for the bridge, and then we were—
“Oh, shiiit!” I screamed, as Mircea threw us over the side just as mother’s coach thundered underneath.
Only she must have moved again, because when we landed, hard enough to rattle my teeth, it was on the top of the bus.
Mircea managed to keep his feet, but I went sprawling into a big woman clutching a little dog, which tried its best to bite my nose off. And then I was pushed backward onto the lap of an astonished-looking man, who appeared less flabbergasted by my sudden appearance than by the brief outfit I was wearing.
“What? You’ve never seen a calf before?” I demanded, as Mircea pulled me up. Only to get us almost trampled by a crowd of panicked people trying to get down the stairs.
Several managed it by falling off, several more almost did and a lot of parcels and umbrellas and hats went flying. That included someone’s bicycle, which bounced riderless off the back of the bus and continued down the street, looking oddly steady. Or at least it did until the mage’s vehicle crashed into it, sending it sailing into a storefront and then careening into us.
The bus shuddered under the impact, and most of the people who had gotten back to their feet were thrown onto their butts again. But the mages hadn’t emerged unscathed from the crash, either. The light gray horse pulling their ride broke free of its harness, neighed in terror and then took off back down the road.
So they grabbed the next convenient means of transportation.
Which happened to be ours.
It was Mircea’s turn to swear as they jumped onto the bus, knocking people aside, and, in some cases, off the side as they vaulted up the stairs and onto the roof. And then flew off it again as Mircea grabbed the backs of two seats, swung up and kicked. A couple thousand bucks’ worth of fine leather left muddy imprints on their shirts as they rocketed backward, arms flailing and bodies flying.
They landed what looked like half a block down the street, which should have ended that. But they’d no sooner hit pavement than they were back on their feet. I saw them shake their heads, dart into the crowd and kick into enhanced speed—and then I didn’t see anything else, because Mircea was dragging me toward the front of the bus. “Did they have shields?” I asked, confused, because I hadn’t seen any.
“No.”
“Then how did they—” I began, only to stagger and go down when the bus suddenly swerved dangerously.