All Spell Breaks Loose by Lisa Shearin Page B

mage’s face a lovely shade of blue.
    Carnades cut his losses and dropped the knife. Piaras dropped Carnades—on his face. His boot lodged firmly in the elf mage’s back would keep him from getting any more bright ideas.
    The entire fight happened too fast for anyone to jump in, though everyone knew I’d wanted that fight for a long time and that I didn’t want any help.
    Nath started toward me. I held out a hand, stopping him. “I’m fine, take care of Tam.”
    Nath glanced at Carnades’s face. The elf mage had the beginnings of a beauty of a black eye.
    “Nice,” he said.
    I panted and gave him a winded smile. “I take pride and joy in my work.”
    Mychael was on his feet, supporting a mostly conscious and all intact Tam. Mychael gave Piaras a quick nod of approval. Piaras tried not to smile. That wouldn’t have been Guardianly.
    Carnades spit out a mouthful of dirt, and if looks could have killed, we all would’ve dropped dead.
    “Nath, where we’re going, is there a place secure enough for our prisoner?” Mychael asked.
    I didn’t miss Carnades’s change in status, and neither did anyone else.
    Nath smiled wide enough to show his fangs. “Oh, yeah.”
    Raine doesn’t have any magic. Oh hell.
    It had to be what everyone was thinking, but no one was saying. We didn’t have time to dawdle for questions.
    Tam’s anti-magic not only destroyed the Magh’Sceadu; according to Jash, it also wiped our trail clean. Unfortunately, the sudden absence of four Magh’Sceadu wouldn’t go unnoticed.
    That would tell whoever was monitoring that particular Magh’Sceadu pack that the hunters had become the prey. That would most definitely get the Khrynsani’s attention. Not to mention the flare of magic that had gone up courtesy of Mychael. None of it could have been avoided. Though at least for the moment, there was no sign of pursuit.
    Nath set a fast pace and we more than kept up. With Tam still trying to literally get his legs back underneath him, and Mychael and Jash all but carrying him, Imala took it on herself to keep Carnades motivated to keep moving. By the time we took our second and all-too-brief break, Tam was walking on his own and hadn’t wanted to stop, but Mychael insisted. If he hadn’t, I would have. Tam was leaning against the tunnel wall, the stone at his back barely keeping him upright. His head was back and he was panting.
    Imala started toward him, but Tam waved her away.
    “I’m fine,” he managed.
    “Bullshit.”
    “Don’t… touch.”
    His skin would still be crawling from the spell’s contact; the last thing he wanted was anyone touching him, especially anyone he cared about.
    “If you fall flat on your face, may I touch you then?” Imala’s voice dripped with sarcasm.
    Tam gave her a weary smile. “Please do.”
    Regor’s sewers were like the sewers in every other city I’d ever been
in. I’d ended up in pretty much all of them, and they all looked the same: brick or rough-hewn stone usually covering dirt. Sometimes you got lucky and a ledge had been built on one side for maintenance workers to keep them from having to go wading. The maintenance workers in this section of Regor weren’t lucky. No ledges. On the upside, there also wasn’t anything to wade through. The stone pavers beneath our feet were stone dry.
    “At least it’s not wet,” I noted. “And relatively rat free.”
    “This section isn’t used much anymore,” Nath replied. “The walls aren’t in the best shape.”
    “Yeah, I’ve been trying to ignore that.”
    “A new system has been built either parallel or above these. The rats don’t have much to eat down here, so they stick to the new system.”
    “So do the Khrynsani,” Jash added.
    “Vermin with vermin,” Prince Chigaru muttered. “How appropriate.”
    The tunnel sloped gradually upward. I saw light up ahead, streaming down through a barred grate on the street above. Nath held up his hand. We stopped.
    Tam’s brother crept forward in