The instant they saw me move, they all activated them, and each one linked up with the ones on either side, split open, and started launching a massive net of interlaced beams of light. I was trying to fight off the groggy heaviness of the music well enough to work out the best way not to kill them all when Orion glanced up—not jerking free of the spell, just lifting his head from the random tourist brochure he’d picked up, as if he hadn’t been caught by it at all. He reached up and grabbed the net with a hand, and the whole thing pulled loose from the tubes and went into him as if he’d sucked it up with a straw.
I gawked at him at least as much as our unwelcome visitors did. But then one of them dropped his tube and went for another weapon. Orion got up and started to—move at him, and everything went hideously wrong. It looked as though Orion was taking a step, but there was something off about it, the air distorting around him as if he wasn’t really taking a step, he was just swimming through reality somehow and the step was only my own brain trying desperately to fill in with something that made sense.
It wasn’t only my reaction; the man went sickly greenish, and all the other wizards on that side lurched back away in unison, breaking the perfect curve of the circle. The other half of them were yelling panicky instructions that I understood no bother: hold the line, don’t let them break out, get up a shield, et cetera, only the people backing away were the smart ones, because nothing else was going to make this work out even decently for them. Or for Orion. I knew if he touched them something unbearable was going to happen.
I planted one foot and called an old vicious spell that someone had meant to drown an entire fishing village, drag it down into an ocean maelstrom, only I threw it into the air instead and whirled round in a circle with my hand cupping the power, a scream of protesting wind following me round. It started grabbing at all of them, whipping their clothes like snapping flags, sending the tubes flying out of their hands. I turned round once more, and it was dragging them off their feet, the air starting to churn into visible streams as it picked up dust and leaves from the ground, then a couple of stray chairs in the way, and the third time round it took them all off their feet in a howling vortex, and I shoved the whole thing up and away onto the roof.
Our visitors must have herded the hostel staff and all the other guests well away from the courtyard before making their approach, but launching a tornado and dumping eighteen people onto the roof was still a bridge too far. Mundanes started to stick their heads out of the windows and doors to see what on earth was going on, which meant that none of the wizards I’d just flung onto the charming slanted roof could cast anything to stop themselves rolling straight off and plunging the two stories straight down to earth. But that was a good bit better than whatever else had been about to happen to them, even if they landed on concrete, so I wasn’t fussed.
“Come on!” Aadhya yelled. She was hauling up Liesel, who hadn’t had a mouse to wake her up and was still fighting off the grogginess of the musical enchantment. Orion was just standing there, and I ran over and shoved him until he started moving in the right direction with his legs like a human being again. We went past the one wizard left standing—the woman with the instrument, who hadn’t processed the sudden change of situation well enough to panic yet—and we ran through the hostel and into the street, my bag with the sutras in their case thumping against my chest.
I don’t know where we were going, we barely knew where the nearest metro station was, but we didn’t have to work it out. By the time Orion and I got out into the street, Aadhya and Liesel were beckoning us wildly into a waiting minivan taxi, and when we jumped in, Liu’s cousin Zheng was in there, huddling back into a corner so he couldn’t be seen from outside and visibly scared to bits.
The driver had already been told where to go, apparently with some urgency; the instant we had the door slammed behind us, we took off careening into the streets at the top speed the traffic allowed and somewhat beyond it. “Where’s Liu?” I demanded. “What’s going on?”
“I don’t know,” Zheng said. He started crying as though he’d been crying very recently and had only briefly had it on pause; he wiped his face. “We haven’t seen her for five days.”
“Are you under the compulsion?” Liesel said sharply. “The enclave spells—”
He shook his head. “Me and Min aren’t old enough, and Nienie is too old. We didn’t go to the exchange ceremony. And nobody from our house came back. One of our other cousins came to our hotel room and told us we only had to be patient and everything would be okay, but we knew it wasn’t true. He looked really upset.” His voice was breaking. “And Liu’s myna keeps coming to the balcony and telling us to help her.”