But even Heaven’s thunder was no match for the wrath rolling through these masses. Two copper-haired men broke from the group and charged Bringham without a care for their own safety.
“Archmage—” Sciona started, imploring, but she didn’t even know what she meant to beg for. Do something? Do nothing? Just don’t kill them?
Bringham swept his staff in a half-moon before him, and a shockwave exploded from the conduit, blasting both would-be attackers back into their fellows. Along the fringes of the crowd, Kwen staggered from the force. A woman Aunt Winny’s age fell to the cobbles, but most were only slowed for the few furious heartbeats it took to get their feet back under them.
“Burn in Hell!” A woman in a maid’s kerchief hurled a brick at Sciona.
A turn of Bringham’s fingers on his staff, and the brick shot back the way it had come with twice the force. It caught the maid in the shoulder, audibly cracking bone. As she screamed, her voice was one of many. The Kwen roared as one—as though collectively struck, and then surged on the two mages from all sides, silver eyes wild in the dark.
Sciona wished she could dehumanize their anger—tell herself it was as monstrous and senseless as it seemed in her fear—but she couldn’t because it wasn’t inhuman. It was Carra, knuckles white as she gripped her knife. It was Thomil crashing her spellograph to the floor, eyes clouded with tears as he spoke of his sister’s death. This was the most righteous, most logical, most human anger that could fill a soul.
A second shockwave crashed through the crowd, and Sciona heard more bones snap, more cries of agony. But the Kwen didn’t stop coming. Why should they? Their ancestral land was ravaged, their kin Blighted, their future stolen. What did they have to lose? And who in the wide world could tell them to stand down?
The woman who had cast the brick was back on her feet, her broken right arm dangling uselessly at her side, a chair leg clutched in her left hand. Sciona locked eyes with the maid and saw a face her own age but lined with hardships Sciona had never experienced.
There was primal terror to facing someone who wanted you dead more than they wanted to live. But the deeper terror was knowing that there was nothing Sciona could say, no truth she could offer them to make that anger go away. She had already done what she thought was right, and look where it had gotten her. Look where it had gotten them all.
Bringham’s next shockwave hit the maid full in the chest. Sciona felt as much as heard the woman’s ribs break as she and several other Kwen fell back on the street. This time, the Kwen woman did not get up.
Sciona hated the part of her that was grateful for Bringham’s staff—his stolen magic, bought with human lives—between her and that wall of righteous anger. He reacted to each wave of Kwen with speed and precision that could only have come from years of training. Here, he blasted them back with a bone-breaking shockwave. There, he cast a wall of fire that caught on those who didn’t pull back fast enough. He struck a particularly big man with lightning, burning a hole in his great chest.
“Keep moving,” Bringham urged Sciona as he beat back the Kwen, “and stay close.”
An Archmage’s staff was the ultimate conduit, built to channel energy from the Reserve to almost any purpose, depending on cues only the wielder knew. Most mages Sciona had read about wielded their staffs with voice commands—‘Fire!’ ‘Lightning!’ ‘Wind!’—but Bringham seemed to control his through hand position. Each time he turned, his hands shifted minutely on the shaft of his weapon, fingers opening and closing in distinct configurations—the left index finger raised for fire, both fists closed for a shockwave—but even if she were to memorize the hand positions and get the staff from him, Sciona suspected it would do her no good. The conduit likely responded to the size and shape of Bringham’s hands, meaning no other person could wield it.
The first mage’s staff in recorded history had belonged to Archmage Stravos. The crippled, Kwen-raised founder had turned his walking stick into a powerful multi-purpose conduit, which had inspired Archmage Leon to create similar weapons for the rest of his disciples in their holy war against the Horde of Thousands. Ironic, Sciona thought as Bringham yanked her onward through the pandemonium with his staff extended before him, crackling with light. Even this, the most quintessentially Tiranish instrument of conquest, was ultimately stolen from the Kwen.
By the time Bringham reached the end of the block, he had single-handedly repelled the Kwen, incapacitating those too stubborn to flee.
Stepping over a bleeding boy, he pulled at Sciona’s arm, prompting her to do the same. “Don’t worry,” he told her. “We’re almost to the rendezvous point.”
“Where’s the—” Sciona cried out as something jerked at her body. The bleeding boy had grabbed onto her skirt with an iron grip, powerful, like Carra’s, from labor too demanding for a child so young.
“You’re—” the boy cut off with a scream as Bringham’s staff came down on his hand, shattering bone.
Sciona started to kneel to make sure the Kwen child was alright, but Bringham had clamped an arm around her shoulders, pulling her to his body. “I told you I’d protect you.”
They reached the corner in a few strides, and Bringham was peering into the dark down the block. “Come on, Duris,” he muttered in agitation. “Any day now.”
The street was gutted. Homes and businesses burned, windows smashed, streetlamps toppled.
“Hey!” a voice shouted with a Kwen accent. “There are mages over here!”
More Kwen were rounding the corner, a few of them running to attack. As they closed in, an unearthly mechanical thunder swelled from the opposite end of the street, contrasting sharply with the human roar of the rioting Kwen, and Bringham smiled. “Ah, here we are!”
“What is that?” Sciona demanded as a machine unlike any she had ever seen barreled down the street toward them, weaving between fallen streetlamps with impossible speed.
“That’s our ride.”
The vehicle screamed to a stop in front of Bringham and Sciona just before the Kwen reached them. It was a horseless carriage but unusually low to the ground, with a coating of shining metal armor and robust wheels made of a strange matte material Sciona had not seen before.
Bringham blasted fire from his staff, making the Kwen reel back just long enough for himself and Sciona to reach the vehicle. The side door opened without anyone touching it, and Bringham shoved Sciona in so hard that she tumbled across the squashy seats and nearly hit her already-bruised forehead on the opposite window.
“Go!” He shouted as he clambered in after her and slammed the door against the mob.
“Thanks for scorching my car,” Duris said sourly from the front seat. “You know, this is a brand new paint job.”
“Well, those monsters will do worse to your precious paint job if you don’t get us out of here,” Bringham said, gesturing to the Kwen hammering their fists on the armored exterior of the magic-drawn carriage, hauling at the locked doors.
“Ahead of you.” Duris lay hands on an incomprehensible control array before him, magical engines roared to life, and the vehicle shot forward as fast as a train—faster, squashing Sciona and all her skirts back into her seat.