The Master Watcher turned and looked at Tur Kaysh. Jean looked, too. The Guide’s features were shifting. Anger seemed to swell him, curdle his high brow and the sharp line of his jaw. The Master Watcher staggered and raised a hand to his own face.
“Tricks!” the old man roared. He pulled his lips back and bared his teeth. “Conjuring!”
“Tricks!” the Genius repeated. “Oh, yes. But not the one you think. Is all your storied power, too, only sleight of hand? Old man, you’re as easily fooled as a child! You’ve been looking the wrong way all along!”
He half turned, taking Jean with him. The soldiers on the ridge had drawn aside to reveal a row of cannons that had been hidden beneath the mass of red cloaks.
“Fire!” the Genius called to them. “Now!”
And with a thundering boom, the guns let fly. The wall buckled and cracked, then shattered, as the old man leaped to the sky. But the Master Watcher, still staring at his own hands, tumbled earthward, falling amid a shower of broken glass.
The world crumbled and fell to nothing. Only a single point of light remained — Lan among the shards, wet with blood and a gray cast shadowing his changing skin. Too late, she had seen him drop, too late to catch him with the wind or soften the fall.
Salt and ashes, Laysia thought bitterly. Salt and ashes.
Finish them!” the Genius called, and with a whoop, the soldiers charged past the smoking cannons, a red tide swallowing the land.
Jean spotted the others in the ruins of the wall. Her heart contracted. Max had come, but he couldn’t save her. There were too many of them. It was over. The Genius must have seen it, too, because he let go of her shoulder and came around to look into her face. His teeth had gotten sharp in his mouth, his lips were black, but his voice was velvet again, as if the battle in the hollow had disappeared when he turned his back on it, as if they were alone together in the tent once more.
“Is this illusion, too?” he asked, squatting to touch her cheek. “Pity. I would have liked it to be otherwise, but there’s no use fooling myself. I should have guessed you were too small to be useful.” He made as if to get up but stopped himself, smiling.
“Perhaps we can salvage something from you after all, though. Such a pretty thing. Like the doll you brought, only softer. That was made of sturdy stuff. Tell me, are you the same? Can this pretty illusion survive the heat?”
And he shoved her backward. She toppled, taking Liyla with her.
Jean grabbed her pendant as they fell, holding it as she hit the dirt, while two, three, four of the orbs on Liyla’s neck burst, vomiting fire. Flames ripped across Liyla’s shirt and caught the grass. The heat sent Jean reeling, and the chains still holding her to the girl bit through her skin, but she held her own pendant, arm shaking.
Small, small, small echoed, hateful, in Jean’s ears as Liyla flailed, violently jerking Jean’s arm. Jean slapped at the flames and fought to hold still and felt the hot tears pour down her face as she forced her arm out, desperate to keep the orb away.
No one should be this small! She scrambled in the dirt. Was it her imagination, or was the thing turning hot in her hand? If only it were covered in glass, like the wall in the hollow! Or, better, ice — something to soothe the burns, something to heal the terrible pain racing up her arm!
But wishing was nothing — that’s what Max had said. It wasn’t wishing she needed. It was seeing. Was she too small to see? Was she?
The fire had raced across Liyla’s sleeve now, and Jean felt it sear her wrist. Liyla cried out and the Genius laughed and the silver orb burned against Jean’s palm.
With all her might, she tried to see ice. Hadn’t she known cold aplenty here, even in this terrible summer? Hadn’t she shivered in the tiled room? Awful, awful cold it had been, cold so it hurt.
The screams from the hollow dimmed. The Genius’s laughter, too. In her ears, there was a rushing now that blocked the rest, blotted out the clang of metal, the boom of explosions, the wrenching, terrible sound of Liyla sobbing.
Then suddenly her hand burned, but not with fire.
She opened her palm and stared. The silver orb glittered there, encased in ice, sparkling in the sunlight.
“What’s happening?” Liyla’s voice was thick, but she’d stopped crying. She lay gasping in the dirt, her chest adazzle with ice that had doused the fire and glassed the pendants. “You took them away!” she whispered.
But they were still here, simmering beneath the ice, waiting. Jean could not stomach it. The orb hung at her neck, and with her mind’s eye she flung it away.
The chain at her wrists snapped, and the cord at her neck. From Liyla the cluster of icy silver jerked skyward, the ribbons frayed and shredding.
Away, Jean thought, and a chill shot across her arms. The glassy fire pendants shot out, knocking the Genius onto his back, shot over the lines of soldiers rushing from the wood — so many! Too many to stop! But there had been a song — what had Laysia told her? A water drop and a wave, not different at all, really, because there was no small, there was no big, there was only the song, and seeing . . . The air bit at her skin, and this time a sharp pain shot through her. Shadows filled the sky, pebbling the light on the grass. Jean looked up. The handful of orbs had multiplied into a thousand, and the new-made fire pendants hung overhead, all glittering and slicked with ice. She didn’t wish it this
