were a style of narrow, two and three-story row houses, but the legionnaires passed them by until finding something even smaller. The structure they settled on was built low to the ground and only had two rooms, a larger one in front that seemed to have been a shop floor and a smaller storage area in the back. It looked as though someone else had used the place before as a camp at the last Opening, as the wide gaps for windows facing the street were sealed with old shelving and bric-a-brac crammed into them. A huge old desk was beside the hanging front door, suitable to wedge it shut.
The legionnaires did so once inside. They only lit a single candle as there was not wood for a fire without pulling the barricades loose from the windows. The four men and one woman sat around the candle, shivering as the dark night outside brought a numbing chill to the barren city. They choked down cold rations of middling quality with the brackish water.
There was no dinner conversation. Afterwards the Sarge lit a second candle and looked around the back room. He returned and hauled the Duchess roughly to her feet by the bindings around her wrist. Claudja gave a startled cry and Phin leaped to his feet beside her. The Sarge smirked and shoved the Duchess into Phin’s arms.
“No point in posting guards, as we wouldn’t see anything coming until it was bashing in the front door.”
The Sarge cut a strap off a now empty ration pack and tossed it to Phin.
“There is an old drain pipe in the back wall. Tie her Grace to it so that she can’t get her hands at the knot. Don’t want her creeping about in the dark, looking to slit our throats.”
Claudja’s steely eyes flashed at the man. “You would be first, Sergeant.”
He grinned at her and winked. Phin started to move Claudja with a hand on her arm but she jerked away, spun, and spit in his face.
“You will be second,” she sneered. She turned regally on her heel and strode into the back room with her chin held high.
The legionnaires cackled and Phin felt himself blush as he wiped off his face with his sleeve. He followed the Duchess into the back and found her already seated against the back wall, next to the candle sitting on the floor under a ceramic pipe that at one time must have drained a basin or sink. She put her bound hands next to the pipe, about head high as she was sitting, and whispered as Phin knelt beside her.
“That was for their benefit. I am trusting you, Phinneas Phoarty.”
Phin blinked. He had not spoken his last name to her, but of course the legionnaires had called him by it. The Duchess was paying close attention to everything around her.
He laced the strap around the bindings on Claudja’s wrists. There was a hole in the top of the pipe through which he could have threaded the end to bind it securely, but he only looped the strap over the top. She noticed.
“Don’t try anything,” Phin said, loud enough for the others to hear and looking Claudja in the eye so that she knew he did mean it. For now. She nodded.
“Where is the knight who was with me?” she whispered before Phin rose. He had no idea who she meant.
“I don’t know,” he said as he turned to leave the room. The Duchess made no further sound.
Phin took off his coat, which was big enough to do Claudja for a blanket, and dropped it within her reach. He picked up the candle and took it with him back to the main room, leaving her in the dark.
The legionnaires chuckled as he returned, and Ty asked “You see what being nice gets you?” Phin ignored them and set down the candle by his backpack. He was the only one who had managed to take any luggage from the Dead Possum inn, apart from the Sarge’s satchel. Phinneas Phoarty withdrew the long gray robes of Abverwar from his pack, and slid them on over shirt and trousers.
There was a drama to the outfit, which was really the whole point. Phin shrugged his shoulders and the long gray folds whispered together mysteriously as they settled and the voluminous sleeves obscured his hands. Phin did not raise the deep hood that would have shadowed his face, but as he turned to look down his nose at the legionnaires the three of them looked back with more trepidation than they typically showed his way.
“Give me the book,” Phin said. Without fully being conscious of it the familiar garment had brought back the rasping tone to his voice. The voice of a Wizard.
“What book?” the Sarge asked.
Phin looked at the man as he would have a foolish child.
“The book with which you mean for me to transport us all to Ayzantu City. I heard Horayachus’s words in the inn, Sergeant. Before the place fell on his head. Something about the priests there giving us all the gold we can carry, or else the Burning Man’s wrath finding us all.”
The Sarge smirked, and patted the satchel at his side as if it were a small dog. “When the time comes, Wizard. Not before.”
Phin narrowed his eyes. “Are you unacquainted, Sergeant, with the simplest tenets of magic?”
The Sarge stared back. “I know there’s a lot of muttering. And some wiggling fingers.”
The Sarge wiggled his own, and Phin tried not to look at the lonely two on the man’s left hand.
“It is a bit more complicated than that. Even for an incantation in a book, I can not simply read a spell from a page and have it function. Not a spell as powerful as what we are discussing. I must first learn its elements, the sum of its parts, and more. Otherwise, it can go dreadfully wrong.”
“How wrong?” Rickard asked. Phin looked at the sandy-haired Beoan.
“We are discussing a spell that could teleport five people from this place over the many, many miles to Ayzantu City. Picture your entrails spread between here and there, hanging from tree branches and the like. Or imagine how the five of us might look were we fused together as a single mass of limbs, flesh, and bone.”
Rickard paled and Ty muttered, “Gods, Phoarty. I just ate.” The Sarge only narrowed his eyes.
“How long will it take you to learn this thing right?”
“Depending on the complexity, quite a while. As of now I am unsure even as to the nature of the spell in question. It could be an invocation to activate an enchanted aura or item, or a free translocation dweomer that only functions in a particular place. Whatever it is, it is surely powerful magic.”
The Sarge did not look pleased, but Phin’s last bit of jargon seemed to decide him. He opened the satchel and stood up, holding out the heavy book Phin had only seen once before, when he had read from it briefly to prove to the legionnaires that he knew the old incantation language of Tull.
Phin accepted the dark leather volume but the Sarge held on to his end with his mangled hand, thumb beneath it and two fingers on top next to the hacked nubs of ring finger and pinky.
“You will have maybe two days,” the Sarge said. “Less if we are lucky.”
“I will see what I can do,” Phin said. The Sarge let his end of the book go, but he had noticed how diligently Phin kept his eyes off the mangled hand. The renegade reached out with it, brushed something that was not there off of Phin’s shoulder, and straightened the collar of his wizard robes with two fingers.
“This should not have to be said,” the Sarge spoke lightly. “But just so we are clear. If you get cute in any manner and we, say, appear somewhere other than the streets of Ayzantu City…”
The Sarge patted Phin’s cheek smartly.
“Let’s just say there is more than one way to get entrails into a tree. Do you follow me, Phoarty?”
“I do.”
“Outstanding.”
The three legionnaires moved to settle against the walls without blankets or anything to rest their heads against other than their own breastplates. Phin blew out one candle and took the other to a corner. He hiked his robes to sit down with his back to the room and set the book in front of him. The candle sitting in a little tin dish was thin and would certainly not last long. Phin blew it out, licked a finger and thumb, and pinched the wick. He whispered a short phrase, not a true spell but only a cantrip so simple it did not require memorization, and a steady blue flame appeared between the tip of his thumb and finger. It gave off a meager light but no heat at all, and Phin fastened it to the wick where it stayed without burning. He set the candle down above the book and opened to the first page.
Phin was still reading hours later when a tremendous roar shook the whole city to its foundations, hunched over with his face close to the words on the pages and so engrossed that he never heard the deafening sound. He made no move until Ty grabbed his shoulder and hauled him over backwards, shouting his name.
“Phoarty, what was that?” the legionnaire screamed.
