"Celestine!" Rick’s voice sounded far away. It had a tinge of panic. She tried to open her eyes, but they were sealed shut.
"Celestine! Where are you?!" His voice cut through the shouting, the alarm bells, and the sound of hungry fire.
With great effort she peeled open her eyelids. It was like ripping one piece of cloth into two. She looked at the blurry shapes around her, trying to make sense of them. There were table legs, overturned chairs, and the remnants of a baked Alaska melting rapidly nearby. A cafe? Only a moment ago they were in an empty stretch of land, with nothing around for miles.
Her head ached as she tried to remember. They had made their way through Spellwind, they had gotten to the King’s Road, and then...
Her body snapped to rigidity as she remembered the stranger that appeared out of nowhere. The flashing knives, the strange carnivàle mask with its wicked grin.
"Rick!" she croaked, pushing herself to her elbows with all the strength she could muster. The left side of her head throbbed and stung all at once. It felt hot and wet. "Richard!" she shouted, then fell into a fit of coughing as she realized that the café was rapidly filling with black smoke.
Suddenly Richard appeared and pulled her to her feet. The cane he normally carried was missing, and there was a smudge of blood from his cheek up to his dark hairline. Without a word he pulled her out of the smoke, through the broken glass doors, and onto the street.
"What happened?" Celestine asked. Fear replaced her disorientation.
Rick didn’t seem to hear her. He looked around desperately, trying to figure out which way to go. People ran in every direction as the buildings around them expelled their occupants into the crowded streets. Horses pulled a fire engine around the corner, their thundering hooves added to the deafening noise. Rick headed for a break in the crowd and narrowly avoided being knocked over by a large man who carried a steamer trunk on his shoulders overflowing with photographs and clothes.
Rick laid Celestine down on the cold stone of an alcove and she shivered violently. He took off his rifle coat and draped it around her shoulders. She noticed the camel color was streaked with black and red.
"What happened?" she repeated.
"I had to make an unprepared jump, I’m sorry. It was the only way to get you out of there."
She nodded, remembering. The stranger in the mask had surprised them on the King’s Road and immediately pounced on Celestine, trying to cut her to ribbons with two long golden knives. She remembered thinking Who would make knives out of gold? It’s such a soft metal. Perhaps they’re actually bronze? Under stress, her mind always did that—turned to analysis.
She’d been surprised enough when he slashed her coat, but then he hissed her name like a snake out of prophecy, so low and menacing she wasn’t sure at first she had even heard it.
He must have been the same hunter who ended Elowyn, she thought.
When Rick had grabbed her out of the storm of flashing golden blades, she had felt a pull and a snap, as if her body had been quickly drawn through the eye of a needle and popped out on the other side, trying to stretch in all directions at once.
She’d never been through such a nauseating, slapdash jump before. Normally a spatial jump would have more easing to give the body a buffer, but this felt like a leap from a running horse. Her muscles ached and her bones felt crackly.
"I’m sorry," Rick repeated. Worry creased his brows. "It’s disorienting, I know. I didn’t realize the hunter was a spatialist…I should have been more prepared." He held his handkerchief against the side of her head.
She looked to the side as people fled past. "What’s happening?"
Rick frowned. "I don’t know. We were supposed to arrive at the library where the others are waiting for us, but something re-routed us mid-space. There was an explosion nearby, and several buildings are on fire—"
His voice was drowned out as thundering horses pulled another fire engine past them. An enthusiastic young fireman yanked the bell.
"Come on, let’s get out of here."
She stood and found it was easier now that the dizziness had subsided.
A flash of gold caught her eye, quicker than a sparrow, and slid across Rick’s neck. Blood shot toward her as Rick’s eyes widened in surprise.
Strange, the analytical part of her brain kicked in again. Blood doesn’t spray like in the plays I’ve seen. Mummers exaggerate everything. The thought ran through her mind without permission, but her mouth reacted differently—she screamed. Richard slumped over her and they both tumbled to the ground.
He flailed, trying to put himself between Celestine and the masked stranger, who stood ready to strike again. The effect was to pin her under a roiling mass of limbs and blood. Stop being so chivalrous and give me room to breathe! she thought in aggravation toward Rick’s rapidly dying body.
The stranger raised his knife, Celestine raised her hand, then all went still.
She was weak, and disoriented, and quite a bit miffed at the turn of events. As such, turning back time felt like pushing a loaded horse cart up a cobblestone hill, by herself, in the rain. She strained desperately, pushing everything back in the other direction. Or more precisely, she pushed her mind in the other direction. To turn back the whole world required more power than all the temporal masters in existence...which apparently, she was.
Her grip slipped for the barest moment, and the knife flashed forward again. She dug in and strained even harder. It stopped, a mere millimeter from her hand.
She pushed hard at the unforgiving current of time around her, willing it to release its hold on her. She built momentum until it finally rolled back, slowly at first, then more quickly. The scene played out again in excruciating detail, this time in reverse.
The masked stranger stood with his golden knives, ready to strike again. Rick’s flailing body was heavy on top of her. They tumbled up from the ground. She leaned into him as he slumped over her. She screamed. Rick’s eyes widened in surprise as blood seeped back into his body. A flash of gold slid across his neck. She was on the ground again in the alcove, Rick’s camel-colored coat draped over her. His mouth formed words: "Ereh fo tou teg s’tel, no emoc." An enthusiastic fireman yanked the bell of an engine that thundered by, pulling its horses.
Celestine stopped. Once again the dizziness washed over her. She wondered for a moment if she should go further, but brushed that thought aside. She couldn’t afford the strain, and strange things happened when you let a temporal event get too close to a spatial event, such as Rick’s jump only minutes ago. She knew better than to risk that.
"I don’t know," Rick said. "We were supposed to arrive at the library, where the others are—"
"—Behind you!" Celestine ripped the handkerchief out of his hands and shoved him aside.
The masked stranger stalked across the street, gold knives glinting under his dark cloak.
She flung the blood-soaked kerchief and hit him square in his gleeful ceramic grin, leaving a splat of her own blood on the pale mask. He stumbled backward in surprise, then recovered and ran toward them.
Celestine struggled to her feet, but Rick was already up. His cane reappeared in his hands and he barely had time to draw the rapier hidden within before the stranger’s first knife slashed into it with a bright clang!
"Run!" Rick yelled.
She tried, but this latest effort had fully winded her, and she slumped back to the floor of the alcove.
As Rick slashed back at the stranger, Celestine tried to hold on to the memory of a future that would never be, but it was already fading like a dream. Why had she just spent so much of her reserve power to do something as wasteful as turning back time? Whatever the reason, it must have been bloody important. Blood…that was it, something about blood and…mummers?
The clang of metal and a shout of pain behind her finally forced Celestine to her feet, and she stumbled forward, out of the alcove and into the bright sunshine. She stumbled up the cobblestone street, gaining momentum with each step, until she hit a dead run.
She found the main thoroughfare again and was swallowed by the crowd. Panic and the acrid smell of smoke filled the air. The streets choked with people who fled the fire that threatened to consume the tightly-packed buildings in the dense city center.
Celestine looked up and down the thoroughfare for any sign of the library. Richard had said the rest of the Star would be waiting for them there. If she could just find it…but she didn’t even know which city she was in.
“Excuse me,” she grabbed the shoulder of a young man as he trudged by, but he flatly ignored her. She tried again with an older woman who had two children in tow. “Pardon—“
The woman shoved Celestine aside, dragging a small child behind her.
“Really now!” she exclaimed to no one in particular. “A crisis is no excuse for losing one’s manners!”
“Look around you, lady!” a gruff laborer chided her in a heavy accent. He dragged a handcart full of furniture behind him. “The city’s burnin’! It’s everyone for themselves!”
“All I want is to be pointed to the library.”
He guffawed as he past her, then called over his shoulder, “do I look like I read?”
Celestine let out a huff of annoyance at the impassable nature of the crowd. She could handle streams of time which pulled her into the past or the future. Streams of people were much more difficult.
This was exactly why she hated the city.
She maneuvered her way to an empty storefront, out of the way of the human flood, and breathed deeply. Her head ached, her limbs trembled, her stomach still danced, and after losing so much energy she felt weaker than she had in ages. Still, she calmed her mind and thought.
That man’s accent combined with the style of architecture and clothing of the people made a Kappurian city likely. Kappur only had two cities large enough to justify a full fire brigade: Ang Kappur and Fendamm. Both had a similar ambient atmosphere (raging fire notwithstanding), population, and central thoroughfare. Both were on the edge of the sea.
She caught her breath. Kappurians praised the sea as much as knowledge—at least, most Kappurians. She frowned in the direction of the man with the cart.
They liked their government, schools, and laboratories to be near the sea. Why not their libraries as well?
She opened her eyes and looked upstream of the crowd. Most of the population wouldn’t have private sailing vessels. To leave the city, they would have to head away from the sea.
Celestine took a deep breath and dove back into the crowd, fighting her way upstream every step of the way.