The Conjurer (The Vine Witch #3)(23)
She opted to appear unimpressed as she caught her breath. “Not one for taking in the view as you travel, I take it.”
Jamra ignored her as he stared with his arms folded at the tree where he’d stashed their prime transportation. The rolled-up tapestry was gone.
Someone or something had removed it from the branches while they slept. The treachery clearly rankled him as his jaw muscle pulsed with repetitive grinding. His bad mood could also have been the effect of the hangover from the wine and the spell, but Elena wasn’t going to bring it up.
“The wind?” she said and made half an effort to scour the grassy hillside for evidence of the lost tapestry. She thought it more likely some resourceful scrounger had found her lovely wool wall hanging, a beautiful mix of olive-green and powder-blue flowers with that gorgeous red fox running through a field of gold, and taken it for themselves.
“A thief!” Jamra answered. “I would punish him with the flames of eternal torment for this action.”
“Couldn’t we . . . ,” she began, then borrowed Yvette’s phrase when she couldn’t think of the right term, “. . . poof off like we just did?”
“I cannot carry you that far in the ether without killing you. Believe me, I’ve tried it with your kind before. You would die a choking death with your lungs withering from the inside out before we got more than a few miles away.”
Elena pressed a palm against her chest. “Ah, thank you for thinking of me, in that case.”
“Your directions will do me no good if you’re dead too soon.”
Too soon?
Calculating their location using the position of the daylight stars, she judged they weren’t quite halfway to the coast. She supposed the beast could simply conjure up another ride from, oh, a bit of thatch or a wooden crate perhaps, but if so, why was he so upset about the loss of that particular textile? She was the one who had ample reason to be heartbroken over the theft, not him.
“Did you protect it with a spell to prevent discovery?” she asked on a hunch.
“It would have been invisible to any mortal,” he said and walked around the tree, keeping his eyes on the branches before searching the ground. Jamra sniffed the air as if trying to follow a familiar scent, then lost it again just as quickly. “Enough. We must leave this place,” he said as he cast a last glance at their surroundings. For what, she didn’t know, but he hurried like a man afraid.
Curious. Something had spooked him. Or someone. Elena tried to detect anything amiss on the air, but there was only the damp from the river and the scent of fish. And maybe the moldering smell of worms turning in the moist ground beneath their feet.
Again, he held out his sleeve. Recalling what he’d said about withering lungs, she reluctantly took hold. Before Elena had time to reconsider, Jamra whisked her away in a blur. He returned them to the old part of the town, reanimating inside an arched walkway that connected one building to another. A traboule. He hurried her along the corridor until they arrived at a shop window displaying bolts of fine silk. The shop wasn’t yet open, but that did not dissuade him from barging in through the front door with a shove from his hand to create a detonation. Honestly, he was absolutely reckless with his magic.
Inside, he unfurled a bolt of red damask silk so it rolled out on the floor. The color and texture were exquisite, too fine to touch with their unwashed hands, let alone to be spread out on the floor. Yet he yanked a good ten feet off the roll, grabbed a pair of enormous scissors, and sliced through the cloth, leaving the frayed remains of the rest of the bolt on the floor.
“Get on,” he said.
“Oh, you’re not serious. The cloth is much too flimsy. It will never hold us both.”
Between the hangover and the theft, the jinni had been confronted with one too many difficulties that morning. His anger boiled over and his eyes simmered with something dangerous. Jamra’s arm swung around to attack, either with magical intent or a physical blow with the back of his hand. Elena flinched. But just before the strike made contact, she felt a tug at her back and was swept away in another blur of intense motion.
This time bright lights flashed in her periphery until she landed in yet another covered traboule. She stood in a maze of red stone arches before a row of small windows that overlooked the train station. She saw no one in the covered hallway, yet she knew she wasn’t alone. A ticket for the train appeared in her hand, and in her ear someone whispered, “Get on!”
“I can’t,” she said to whoever was there, thinking of Jean-Paul and the jinni’s hex still controlling his mind. “What if I escape and my husband dies?” But whatever force had magicked her away from Jamra wasn’t taking no for an answer. A gust of wind blew hard out of the north, concentrating like a funnel inside the corridor. Elena was nearly pushed off her feet as it forced her toward the stairs to exit the traboule.
She didn’t want to run, not like this, but instinct told her to obey whoever or whatever was manipulating her escape, and so she did. The high-pitched whistle sounded a moment after she boarded the train. A plume of gray smoke trailed over the rooftop as the engine pulled out of the station. Steam billowed out from the pistons below to envelop the passenger cars in a cloud of white. Though partially obscured by the veil of vapor, Elena dared to peek out the window for any sign of Jamra on the platform. The steam prevented a clear view, so she lowered the window a few inches to listen for threats or angry curses as the train chugged forward. When she heard none, she closed the window uneasily, but not before spotting a large shaggy dog sitting at the edge of the platform, his eyes on the passenger car. Before she could sense for any hint of shadow in the animal, the train gained speed and she was off in a puff of smoke.