Tes’s hands jumped, and she held her breath, afraid the spell would trigger then and there, but mercifully it didn’t.
“Fucking saints,” muttered Bex. “If only someone would hire me to kill you.”
“Don’t act like you haven’t tried for free,” said Calin, kicking the metal box aside. “I’m as hard to kill as the king himself.”
“I heard he has a spell on him,” said Tes, gingerly attaching the final thread and doing her best impression of someone with plenty of work still to do.
“I guess we’ll find out,” said Bex.
Another box went crashing to the floor, and the woman closed her eyes and clenched her teeth. “If you drop one more fucking thing…” she snarled, but Calin wasn’t listening.
He was staring at the space in front of the shelves, head cocked to one side.
“Kers la?”
Tes followed his gaze, and went cold. He was staring straight at the remains of the door she’d made. He made a cautious circle, squinting at the spot, and though he couldn’t see it fully, not the way she could, he had clearly noticed something—a shimmer in the air, a wrongness.
“Hey Bex,” he said, large hand drifting toward the echo of the spell. “Come see this.”
Tes’s heart pounded as the other killer sighed, rising from her chair. She was out of time, and as soon as Bex turned away from the table, Tes made her move.
She hefted the object she’d been working on, the one that was not, and would never be, a doormaker, and lobbed it into the center of the room. As it fell, Tes grabbed the owl and ducked beneath the counter, curling into a ball around Vares and the bundle of disassembled parts left over from the real doormaker.
The wooden box—which, as she had told the killers, was really only a container for magic—hit the workshop floor of Haskin’s shop and shattered, and as it did, it triggered the wind spell she’d coiled within.
Which exploded out with sudden, violent force.
Tes had never made an elemental bomb before, had no idea if she’d given the magic enough kick, not until the air slammed out, splintering wood and shattering glass and shaking the entire building.
Even the counter, bolted to the floor, groaned beneath the percussive force of the explosion, and in the ringing aftermath she couldn’t hear the assassins, didn’t know where they were, if they’d been killed by the blast or merely rattled.
But Tes knew better than to wait.
She grabbed the bundled doormaker and the dead owl and hurled herself out from behind the counter, toward the back of the room and the curtained doorway that led to her quarters. There she stopped, and looked back, saw the woman, Bex, tangled in the limbs of a buckled metal shelf, the man, Calin, slumped against a far stone wall. But they were both still alive, and already starting to recover.
Tes slammed her hand against the doorframe, and the spell she’d woven there. The first thing she’d ever built in Haskin’s shop, and it wasn’t for a customer, it was for herself, in case she had to run again.
Tes loved the shop, but it was just wood and stone and a painted door, and she didn’t hesitate. She laced her fingers through the threads and pulled, as hard as she could.
Cracks ran out from her hand, shooting across the walls and over the ceiling and through the floor. As they did, Tes turned and bolted through the curtain and the narrow quarters at the back of the shop, past the little table and the lofted bed and the life she’d made there, and out the back door, just as the entire building sagged, and the roof caved in, and the whole place came crashing down.
VI
Over the years, a great number of people had tried to kill Calin Trell.
His body was a map of failed attempts, times he’d been stabbed and burned, hacked at and cursed. He’d broken most of his bones, lost a good deal of blood, and been buried more times than he could count.
Which was to say, it would take more than a fallen house to keep him down.
The girl had been quick, he’d give her that. The blast of wind had slammed his head into the wall, rattling his skull, and in that ringing second, he’d almost missed the follow-up assault—almost, but not quite. He’d had just enough time to throw his power out and up, blocking most of the stone and wood and metal as it came crashing down.
Now Calin stood among the settling debris, a mountain of rubble to every side. Blood ran into one eye where something sharp had found the skin over his brow, but otherwise, he was unscathed. Let Bex Galevans keep her steel, with all its flourishes, he thought. Earth work was blunt, but effective.