The Unmaking (The Last Days of Tian Di, #2)(38)

“I dinnay think you should come,” he told Nell, knowing perfectly well it was useless.

“You’ll nay find it without me,” said Nell.

Ander put on his aviation headset and gestured for her to do the same. They fastened their seatbelts and he opened the throttle all the way. The helicopter had not been flown since Missus Brock’s heart attack four years ago. It had been old and unreliable even then. But the rotary blades began their slow spin and, as they spun faster, the helicopter began to feel light, swaying slightly and giving a couple of awkward jerks. Then it lifted off the ground and Ander powered it forward. They skimmed along the alley for a few seconds then swooped upwards, leaving Holburg behind them.

“South!” shouted Nell, pointing.

In the back of the helicopter, Charlie tried to say Nell’s name but the noise drowned him out. He couldn’t hear his own voice. He could feel his life draining out of him. It seemed such a waste of effort, roaring off in this noisy machine. He just wanted her to sit with him while it all faded to black.

~~~

As Charlie was making his final desperate, wounded flight over the archipelago to Nell, powered only by Swarn’s potion, Eliza was a few hundred miles southeast of Kalla, breaking into the Republic’s top military command centre.

Flying across the country on Ka’s dragon, she had tried to think of the ways it might be possible to get in touch with General Malone. She concluded that face-to-face was best. It could take hours or more to convince somebody to let her speak to him. Once he saw her he would remember her and would listen.

The dragon, with its mighty wings, was much faster than a gryphon. Still, it was dark by the time she caught sight of the command centre, a vast walled complex on a high plateau. She wished she’d had the foresight to mix up an invisibility potion while she’d been in the Citadel but it was too late now – she’d find no invisible eels to use in the wilds of Di Shang. She didn’t dare fly too close, so she instructed the dragon to land east of the command centre, in the wooded foothills. She would have to go quite a distance by foot but a dragon approaching would be too obvious and would almost certainly be viewed as an attack. They would see her coming, too, but might hold off firing on a girl. From the foothills, she jogged down into the valley and then half-scrambled up onto the broad plateau. Once on the plateau she could not escape being seen and the important thing was speed. She sprinted straight for the high concrete walls. She was surprised to feel, as she approached, that they were protected by enchantment. The Mancers must have done this to help protect the complex from a Tian Xia attack. This would require more effort than she had thought. She pressed her hand to the wall, knowing full well that somebody would be watching her do so. The barriers were fairly simple. She made the symbol with her hand to conjure a door and then pushed.

She could feel the danger before she heard it and drew her dagger in a sweeping motion over her head, deflecting a hail of bullets. The wall groaned, a door opening into it. She created an empty space the size of a cupboard, stepped inside, and sealed herself in to catch her breath for a moment.

She didn’t want to just emerge on the other side, where no doubt they would be waiting for her. She would have to walk through the wall a little ways. She closed her eyes. The wall was concrete and she could separate its parts in her mind – gravel, broken stone, sand, cement (which was oxidized lime and clay), and water. She needed to separate them, but in a precise enough way that the wall didn’t just collapse on her. Her heart began to pound in her chest. She was not terribly good at separating elements and had certainly never done so while there was a risk of being crushed to death. She took a deep breath and let her Magic flow into the wall – Undo, be pure, be what you were – pulling element from element. For a moment, she was able to hold each part where she wanted and she felt space opening up before her – and then the fleeting thought, Where’s the sand? interrupted the flow. The entire structure began to crumble. Without thinking she jammed the elements back together. The wall closed on her, concrete filling her ears, fitting itself around her limbs and face, pressing tighter and tighter around her. She could not move her hands to make a door and in a moment it would crack her into slivers. With her last ounce of strength she pulled the elements around her apart again and leaped forward as the wall around her loosened. She tumbled out of the wall in a small avalanche of sand and pebbles and slimy clay and water, and was fired on immediately. She rolled aside, gasping a simple barrier spell against metal. It would do for bullets but her barriers never lasted more than a minute or two. She had barely a moment to take in where she was. There were soldiers on the wall above her and soldiers running towards her as well, fast dark shadows. She ran straight for a squat concrete building in front of her while the wall collapsed behind her. No time to find the door, she would have to make one – she made the sign and leaped through the wall of the building as it opened and shut behind her.

She landed in an empty hallway. A siren was blaring now, alerting everyone to her presence. This was not at all how she had intended to find General Malone. The best thing to do would be to hide and send a seeking spell, which would be less visible than her. There was a supply closet in the hallway, so she stepped inside it and shut the door. Ignoring the sound of heavy boots outside, she sat cross-legged and spoke the spells of Seeking. Great beings could work these spells across vast distances but as yet Eliza was only able to seek within a radius of a few hundred feet. If General Malone were not nearby, she would have to move and try again.