Chương 168: Chapter 164. Kingmaker

While still unseen, Adom came down off the dais without a sound, and put himself at the messenger's shoulder.

"Don't look at me," he said in low, before the man could startle. To his credit the man didn't — only went a shade stiffer, eyes fixed politely ahead, giving no sign at all that he was taking orders out of empty air. Beside him, Sam had grown used to this over the years and kept his gaze on the rock.

"Tell me about the estate," Adom said.

"Who's there? Mages, soldiers? How many, and how good?"

"Not mages, sir." The man spoke barely above a breath, lips hardly moving.

"Soldiers. Good ones, Fluid-users, the prince's own household guard turned or bought or swapped out, I couldn't say which. They're not there to kill him. They came to take him alive, and hold, same as they're holding Lord Oberys."

"And prince Kazimir?"

"On his way here as we speak, sir. There are guards around him, and—" he gulped "—mages among them. He means to draw the sword himself, sir, before the prince ever sets foot in the square." So that was the shape of it. Veyslav pinned at home by men come to cart him off, Kazimir bearing down on the one place that could crown either of them, mages at his back, knowing the lock was sitting open for whichever hand closed on the hilt first. Fine. Those were shapes Adom could work with.

He turned — habit, since no one could follow the motion — to where Karion and Damus stood by the rail.

"K and D, can you guys get in the estate, get Veyslav loose, and get him here?" Karion pushed off the rail and rolled his shoulders, already half somewhere else.

"Household guard with Fluid, huh? How many?"

"Enough to take a prince, I suppose, but perhaps not enough for the pair of you, if you move fast and don't get clever about it." Adom kept it plain.

"Don't try to hold the place. Reach him, break him out, bring him to me. Leave the rest standing if you have to."

"We can do that," Damus said. So they went, peeling off the dais and into the crowd. Which left Sam.

"I need you for the hard part." Sam breathed out.

"Why does that sound like a compliment and a death sentence in the same breath?"

"When Kazimir arrives there'll be a crowd, and his mages will be in it, and I'll need to quietly take care of them while everyone else looks somewhere else." Adom watched the avenue feeding into the far side of the square.

"Make me a commotion, please. Something big enough to pull every gaze in this place, but the eyes have to stay. Don't send anyone bolting for the gates; the rite's worth nothing without a calm crowd still here to witness Veyslav draw the blade. Their attention, S. Not their fear. Can you give me that?" Sam was quiet a moment, turning it over.

"A diversion…" he said slowly.

"One that doesn't frighten anyone. Just... takes the room, right?" His eyes drifted, the gears catching behind the glasses.

"... Yeah. Actually — yeah, I think I've got something. Give me a few minutes and a clear stretch of square."

"You're a good man, Sam."

"I'm a nervous man about to do something foolish in front of a thousand strangers," Sam said, already moving off.

"Not the same thing." Adom let himself briefly smile, and climbed back up to the rock. From the top of the dais the whole square lay open beneath him: thousands of heads in the churn of an ordinary day, not one of them knowing how soon that was going to change. He set his back against the stone, and fixed his eyes on the mouth of the avenue, waiting for the prince to come. The avenue gave him nothing for a while. Plenty of foot traffic, but none of it what he was watching for; Kazimir wasn't on it yet.

So Adom stopped waiting on the one road and looked at all of them at once. He touched two fingers to the rim of his glasses and fed a thread of mana into one of the smaller enchantments worked into the frame. The lenses answered at once, the glass clouding for half a breath before the distant ridge snapped into sudden clarity. His gaze swept slowly across the crowd, over the heads, the stalls and the bright drifting tour-parties, reading the square a slice at a time. There.

A cloaked figure at the north mouth of the square, hood up, moving against the easy drift of the crowd. He seemed too purposeful for an idler, and skipping all the small distracted things idle people do with their eyes. Adom held on it a moment, then moved on and found another. South side. Then one coming in past the fountain. Then two by the eastern arch, drifting apart the instant they cleared it. Not one direction, he realized, but every edge at once, spaced wide, each of them unremarkable on its own.

He counted, lost it in the crush, started again, and settled on somewhere around thirteen before he gave up on the exact figure. Thirteen mages closing quietly on an open square was already a good deal more than the question needed. Right. Time to start—"HEAR! HEAR!" Adom's head came round. Down in the middle of the square, where a breath ago there'd been only flagstones and foot traffic, Sam stood with both arms flung wide and his chest puffed out like a man twice his size, bellowing at the open sky.

"HEAR ME, O CITY OF SEVEN WINDS!" Heads were already starting to turn.

"HAVE YOU EVER HEARD," he shouted, "THE TALE OF THE HERO WHO CAME BACK IN TIME?!" Haha… Sam was off now, and surprisingly, he was magnificent. He threw up a hand and a ribbon of coloured light went corkscrewing into the air, and the story came pouring out after it: a hero, a doom, a desperate bargain, a man flung backward through the years to do the whole thing over.

The ribbon climbed and became a tower, the tower a ship, the ship a great bird that burst apart into sparks and rained glittering down over the upturned crowd, and Sam's voice rode all of it, cracking and soaring, every line screamed like it was the single most important thing anyone in that square would hear all year.

"AND DO YOU KNOW WHAT HE DID NEXT? DO YOU? GATHER ROUND, FRIENDS, FOR YOU WILL NOT BELIEVE IT!" And he'd got musicians. Adom had no idea how but Sam had found two or three of the square's buskers, talked them out of whatever corner they'd been working, and stood them up at his back, so that now a drum and some bright stringed thing kept time beneath the tale, swelling when he swelled, dropping to a hush when he leaned in low to bait the hook. It was a whole production.

Story, music, and light all at once, all of it deafening, and a crowd thickening around it by the breath. Every eye in that quarter of the square had swung off the edges and onto the gloriously ridiculous spectacle at its heart, exactly as Adom had asked. Knowing just how shy Sam was, Adom promised himself that he'd find a very good way to pay this one back. Then he turned from his friend to the thirteen, and got to work. First, the sound.

[Invisibility] hid him from eyes, but a man dropping out of the air onto stone made noise whether or not anyone could see him do it, and these were not people he could afford to let hear him coming. So he laid a second weave over the first: a close, careful hush that swallowed every sound he made before it could leave him — footfall, breath, the rustle of cloth, all of it folded down to nothing. Two spells at once, held steady, and that cost him next to nothing.

A first-circle core was a colossal thing, and Adom stood right at the edge of the second; so, carrying a handful of spells at the same time was well within him. The limit was never whether he could hold them. It was that none of them came free. Each one drew twice as much on his reserves, deep as those ran, and, harder to notice but no less real, each one took a sliver of his focus to keep true. The author's tale has been misappropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon.

Mana he had in abundance, but focus did not pour from a well. A man could mind only so many things at once before the edges of one or another began to slip, but Adom did not complain. This was actually good practice. So he weaved a third spell with [Flight], and stepped off the rock into the air.

He rose silent and unseen out over the crowd and picked his first pair: the two who'd come in by the eastern arch and drifted apart, standing a dozen feet from each other now at the edge of the gathering throng, both turned toward the racket at the centre of the square like everyone else.

"What's that, over there?" someone below was saying, up on their toes.

"What's he doing?" Sam's voice carried even out here, soaring over the drums while Adom dropped down between the two mages with nothing to mark his coming, raised a hand over the crown of the first one's skull, and let the spell go. [Stunning Arc] It wasn't much to look at: a small, contained discharge, the barest crackle of white, set right at the top of the head where it would do the most for the least. A clean jolt to drop a man and keep him down a few minutes, no more.

The mage went rigid for a single heartbeat, every muscle locking at once, and then the strings cut and he simply folded. Adom caught him under the arms before he could meet the stone, eased him down, threw [Invisibility] over him, and had him three steps into the mouth of the nearest alley before the second mage finished turning toward the small sound at his side. He never finished the turn.

Adom was already at his shoulder, another touch, followed by a crackle, and the body going stiff then loose, then caught and hidden quietly out of the square. Two down, eleven to go. He patiently worked his way around the ring of them, taking each the same way: in silent from above or behind, the discharge at the crown, catch the fall, hide the man, move on. None of them saw him, and none heard the one beside them drop, because by the time they thought to wonder, Adom and the body were already gone.

The crowd laughed and roared at Sam's story and never once looked to the edges, which was the whole point of it. Soon, three turned into five, then eight. But it mounted all the same. He was minding a great deal at once now — the invisibility, the silence, the flight, and a fresh jolt flung out at each new mage besides — but however deep the reserve and wide his attention, neither was bottomless.

By the ninth he could feel the strain of it: not the well running dry, nowhere near, but his focus drawn thin across too many threads, each spell a fraction harder to hold steady than the one before. He came in on the tenth the same as all the rest, but the tenth felt him. Shoot. The mage spun, eyes going wide on empty air, and his hand was already up, weaving a [Push] spell. Adom had half an instant to answer it, but with everything he was already holding, taut across every thread, half an instant fell short.

One more spell, conjured from nothing, right now; that was the single thing more than he could add before it arrived. The spell took him full in the chest and threw him off his feet, the hush shattering, the flight guttering, the invisibility tearing away all at once, and he hit the flagstones hard and skidding, this time fully visible." THERE!" the tenth mage roared, and the cry went up and out to all the others at once.

"There — he's here, he's—" Adom didn't let him finish. With [Propulsion], he went off the stone like a loosed arrow, the air behind his heels cracking out in one hard, violent gust that knocked a woman flat onto the flagstones, and he crossed the gap before the warning had cleared the mage's mouth. One hand clamped over said mouth, folding the shout back into the meat of his palm. The other caught the rising wrist and shoved it up and away, just as the fire spell already gathered there let go.

It tore up into the open sky instead of into Adom's chest, a great roaring column of flame that bloomed and boiled overhead, and every face in the square that wasn't already turned upward snapped to it at once. That was bad. A thing like that frightened people, and frightened people ran. But Sam was faster.

"AND LO!" His voice cracked out over the crowd, somehow bigger than before, climbing right over the fire as though he'd called it down himself.

"THE HERO'S RAGE SPLIT THE VERY HEAVENS! BEHOLD!" A fresh storm of his own light went spiralling up, and the crowd, caught between two wonders at once, decided in the space of a breath that this was all one glorious show. So they laughed, roared, and turned back to the man who seemed to be running it. It bought Adom the second he needed. [Stunning Arc]. The current leapt from his palm into the mage's skull, and the man went out before he folded. Adom eased him down, straightened, took one breath, and took stock.

Ten down. Three left. And the three weren't hunting him at all. They were running past the spot where he'd been seen, shoving hard through the thickening crowd for the centre of the square, for the rock, and the blade standing in it. And if they were running for it with that much purpose, the odds were good one of those hoods had Kazimir under it.

He hadn't sent his mages on ahead to wait politely; he'd come in among them, one cloak in a knot of cloaks, meaning to be standing at the stone with a hand on the hilt the moment it was safe to pull. Which gave Adom an idea. He didn't go after them. He filled his lungs instead and threw his voice out across the square.

"PRINCE KAZIMIR! It's Prince Kazimir!" A ripple went through the nearest part of the crowd, then a few heads turned, not up at the fire now, but around, side to side.

"Where?"

"Did he say a prince?"

"Where, who—""There!" Adom called, helpful as anything.

"The black coat; the hooded ones running, you see them? That's the prince himself, come down to the square! Quick, before he's gone!" And that did it. He'd been on the wrong end of this exact rush more than once in Arkhos, during tourist season, when someone spotted the Ghost. So that was how it felt, huh? Nice.

Nothing pulls at an ordinary person quite like the news that someone extraordinary is standing close enough to touch; and a square packed with tourists who'd crossed oceans for a glimpse of wonders had that hunger in spades. The word leapt outward mouth to mouth, a prince, one of the four, right here, the one in the dark cloak, and the crowd that had been a loose and gawking thing a breath ago turned all at once into something with purpose. People surged, necks craning, children hoisted onto shoulders for a look.

A press of bodies began closing on the three hooded figures from every side, hands reaching, voices calling, every last one of them wanting to see the royal who'd appeared in their midst. The three slowed, then stopped, then started trying to shove free of a thickening ring of admirers who would not be shoved and only pressed in closer, delighted and oblivious, asking which of them was the prince, was it true, could they see his face.

And then a hand in the crowd, reaching for a better look, caught a fistful of hood and dragged it down off the tallest of them. There. The square got its prince.

"It's him — it's really him, that's Kazimir!" The recognition went off like a struck match and tore through the press, a hundred faces lighting with the thrill of it. Kazimir stood bare-headed in the middle of his own subjects with his cover gone and his whole plan coming apart, and Adom watched him work out, in real time, that he could not be seen losing his temper in front of this many witnesses on a day like this one. So he smiled.

He smiled and inclined his head to the people crushing in on him, gracious as you please, and beneath the smile he was shoving them off with both hands, white-knuckled, scarlet to the ears, fighting to tear free of the very adoration Adom had dropped over him like a net. Then his head snapped up, because he seemed to have seen something. Naturally, Adom followed his eyes and saw it too.

A figure was quickly running up the far side of the square toward the rock, threading the gaps in the crowd, with Karion a stride ahead clearing the path and Damus tight at his shoulder. The runner flung back his own hood as he came, and even at this distance there was no mistaking the amber of his eyes. Veyslav. They'd done it. They'd brought him. Kazimir's composure tore straight down the middle. He rounded on the hands clutching at him.

"Get off — get the fuck off me—" and then, to his mages, half a shriek: "Stop him! Kill them, kill all three, don't let him reach the sword!" The two mages nearest Veyslav's path moved on the order, hands snapping up, spells already gathering, but they never got them off. Karion hit the first like a falling wall — one clean shot across the jaw that dropped the man mid-weave and sent the gasping ring of onlookers reeling back.

Damus took the second a breath later, with an elbow in the jaw, the victim's body folding to the flagstones, and the crowd that had been crushing in to see a prince lurched back all at once into a startled, delighted roar, certain they were watching the finest piece of street theatre of their lives. Kazimir clawed forward through the bodies and got nowhere at all. The crowd he'd hidden inside had become the wall keeping him out.

And then, from somewhere down near the front, a small, nasal, deeply familiar voice rang out clear over the whole roaring square.

"Daddy! Daddy, he's doing the pull! Look — look! The pull!" Adom looked and so did half the square. At the rock, Veyslav had both hands on the hilt." THERE!" Sam's voice came down over everything, hurling a great fan of light up above the stone so that no eye in the square could miss it.

"BEHOLD, THE MOMENT! WATCH, FRIENDS, WATCH!" He pointed, and ten thousand eyes ran down his arm to the prince and the sword. A hush fell over the front ranks. Someone spoke it half to themselves, into the sudden quiet.

"... Did the sword just move?" It had. A finger's width of blade no living soul had seen stand above that stone in any account ever written, sliding up clean and bright into the daylight. Veyslav set his feet. And pulled and at long last, the sword came free. It rose out of the stone in one long ringing draw, the whole length of it flashing up over his head into the sun; and for a single heartbeat the entire square stopped breathing at once.

Then the gasp went through them, thousands of voices catching as one, the sound a crowd makes only when it has watched the impossible happen with its own eyes. Someone had pulled the unpullable sword free of the stone. Back in the crush, sunk to his knees among his own awestruck subjects, Kazimir was screaming. His face was wet with it, rage and ruin together, no mask left to hold.

"NO. NO! NOOO!" No one was listening to him, though. Every soul in that square was looking at their new king.