In her mind, she was recalling a scene from millennia past, a blasted landscape of enormous craters — the fall of the Crippled God, obliterating what had been a thriving civilization, leaving nothing but ashes and those craters in which magma roiled, spitting noxious gases that swirled high into the air.
The ancient scene was so vivid in her mind that she could scoop out one of those craters, half a mountain’s weight of magma, slap it into something like a giant ball, and then position it over the sleepy estate wherein lounged her sleepy, unsuspecting sister. And, now that it was ready, she could just. .
The mass descended in a blur. The estate vanished — as did those nearest to it — and as a wave of scalding heat swept over Spite, followed by a wall of lava thrashing across the street and straight for her, she realized, with a faint squeal, that she too was standing far too close.
Ancient sorceries were messy, difficult to judge, harder yet to control. She’d let her eponymous tendencies affect her judgement. Again.
Undignified flight was the only option for survival, and as she raced up the alley she saw, standing thirty paces ahead, at the passageway’s mouth, a figure.
Lady Envy had watched the conjuration at first with curiosity, then admiration, and then awe, and finally in raging jealousy. That spitting cow
Then released a seething wave of magic straight into her sister’s slightly prettier face.
Spite never thought ahead. A perennial problem, a permanent flaw — that she hadn’t killed herself long ago was due only to Envy’s explicit but casual-seeming indifference. But now, if the cow really wanted to take her on, at last, to bring an end to all this, well, that was just dandy.
As her sister’s nasty magic engulfed her, Spite did the only thing she could do under the circumstances. She let loose everything she had in a counterattack. Power roared out from her, clashed and then warred with Envy’s own.
They stood, not twenty paces apart, and the space between them raged like the heart of a volcano. Cobbles blistered bright red and melted away. Stone and brick walls rippled and sagged. Faint voices shrieked. Slate tiles pitched down into the maelstrom as roofs tilted hard over on both sides.
Needless to say, neither woman heard a distant gate disintegrate, nor saw the fireball that followed, billowing high into the night. They did not even feel the thun shy;derous reverberations rippling out beneath the streets, the ones that came from the concussions of subterranean gas chambers igniting one after another.
No, Spite and Envy had other things on their minds.
There could be no disguising a sudden rush to the estate gate by a dozen black-clad assassins. As five figures appeared from an alley mouth directly opposite Scorch and Left, three others, perched on the rooftop of the civic building to the right of the alley, sent quarrels hissing towards the two lone guards. The remaining four, two to a side, sprinted in from the flanks.
The facing attack had made itself known a moment too soon, and both Scorch and Leff had begun moving by the time the quarrels arrived. This lack of coordi shy;nation could be viewed as inevitable given the scant training these assassins pos shy;sessed, since this group was, in fact, little more than a diversion, and thus comprised the least capable individuals among the attackers.
One quarrel glanced off Leff’s helm. Another was deflected by Scorch’s chain hauberk, although the blow, impacting his left shoulder blade, sent him stumbling.
The sky to the west lit up momentarily, and the cobbles shook as Leff reached his crossbow, managed a skidding turn and loosed the quarrel into the crowd of killers fast closing.
A bellow of pain and one figure tumbled, weapons skittering.
Scorch scrabbled for his own crossbow, but it looked to Leff as if he would not ready it in time, and so with a shout he drew his shortsword and leapt into the path of the five attackers.
Scorch surprised him, as a quarrel sped past to thud deep into a man’s chest, punching him back and fouling up the assassin behind him. Leff shifted direction and went in on that side, slashing with his sword at the tangled figure — a thick, heavyset woman — and feeling the edge bite flesh and then bone.
Shapes darted in on his left — but all at once Scorch was there.
Things got a bit hot then.
Torvald Nom was looking for a way down when the tiles beneath his boots trem shy;bled to the sounds of running feet. He spun round to find four figures charging to shy;wards him. Clearly, they had not been expecting to find anyone up here, since none carried crossbows. In the moment before they reached him, he saw in their hands knives, knotted clubs and braided saps.
The nearest one wobbled suddenly — a bolt was buried deep in his right temple — and then fell in a sprawl.
