The Burning Page

However, what the Language could do was stop magic working. It was wholesale and unconditional, which sometimes made it a poor tool for delicate thefts. But for breakouts like this, it was perfect.

‘Magical barrier, deactivate,’ she said. Her words ground in the air like millstones, heavy with a current of power, and the shield fizzled and vanished. She was sweating as though she’d been running uphill. ‘Steel bar door, unlock and open.’

The lock clicked and the door swung open, hitting the wall with a thump that rattled the tiles. Kai was already moving, dragging Irene along with him as she panted for breath. This place made using the Language hard. Everything was too settled, too real, too orderly. If she’d had the breath, she would have complained to anyone who’d listen.

They ran down the corridor, away from the central hall and in the direction of the outer walls. A guard turned the corner ahead of them and stood there, shocked, raising a hand for them to stop. Kai let go of Irene, caught the man’s extended wrist and spun, slamming him into the wall, before catching Irene’s shoulder again and pulling her on. He barely missed a step.

‘Halt!’ several voices were yelling from behind them. Well, if they had any doubts about us, we’ve now convinced them.

They turned a corner. It was a dead end. Offices lined the walls on either side, but the end of the corridor was solid stonework, without even the luxury of a window.

‘You’re sure it’s outside, on the other side of this?’ Irene demanded ungrammatically. Well, she was in a rush.

‘Absolutely,’ Kai said. He glanced over his shoulder towards the noise of approaching booted feet. ‘Though I don’t know how thick the wall is.’

‘Let’s just hope the support structure holds,’ Irene said. She stepped forward and set her hands against the cold stone surface. ‘Stone wall directly in front of me, measured by my height and my hands,’ she said, trying to define it as specifically as possible, ‘crumble to dust all the way through to the outside.’

For a moment Irene thought it wouldn’t work. Doors were made to open and did it all the time, but stone was not friable by nature. It seemed to shiver under her hands, as though it was trying to throw off her command as easily as a human could refuse an order.

No. She was not going to let it disobey. She bent her will on it, focusing, summoning her determination, gritting her teeth as she stared at it. And slowly – far too slowly – the surface grew rough and pitted as she watched, and dust began to cascade down over her hands.

‘Irene!’ Kai shouted, sweeping her off her feet. The two of them tumbled to the ground together, as a spray of cross-bow bolts sliced through the air above them at waist height.

Irene felt as if her bones were having a temporary holiday and had been replaced by jelly, but the situation couldn’t be postponed until she felt better. ‘Crossbow strings, break!’ she shouted.

Dust came cascading down over her and Kai. He rolled to his feet, balanced and ready, as the guards approached. Irene coughed and pulled herself upright less elegantly, turning to check on the wall. There was a roughly person-sized gap in it by now, and she could see clear sky on the other side. ‘Time to go!’

‘You first!’

There wasn’t the time to argue. Irene ducked her head and shuffled through the hole – it was about five feet long, suggesting very thick outer walls. On the far side, it came out on the first-floor level of the building, meaning that there was a drop of ten feet to the ground below. People were already gathering and pointing.

Irene bent down, grabbed the lower edge of the hole and let herself drop, landing safely on the pavement. Those tumbling lessons had definitely been worth it. ‘Kai! Now!’

He followed her down in a swirl of dust, another spray of crossbow bolts rattling above his head and into the building opposite. They must have restrung in double-quick time. ‘Which way?’

‘Just a moment. Dust, gather in a cloud in that hole in the building!’ The eroded rock dust drew together like time-lapsed fog, blowing backwards into the building. ‘All right. Now—’

Irene looked around, gathering her wits. The street was full of people: pedestrians on the pavement, small carriages and riders in the road, and all of them looking at her and Kai. This seemed like yet another situation that could be resolved by running away.

It was.

Two streets later, having outpaced any witnesses, she and Kai slowed their run to a casual stroll – pausing to look in the occasional shop window. The back of Irene’s neck was prickling with paranoia. Even if they’d been miraculously lucky in their escape – mostly because the guards hadn’t expected them to break out, and nobody had foreseen them blowing a hole in the sleigh-port wall – the local police equivalent had to be on their tail by now. Or, worse, the Oprichniki. She expressed this in a murmur to Kai as they stared at a wedding-dress display.

‘The Oprichniki?’ Kai frowned. ‘Oh yes, their strangely obvious local secret service.’

‘Why strangely obvious?’

‘They all wear long black coats,’ Kai said.

‘Those are probably just the ones that get mentioned in the newspapers.’ Irene pursed her lips at the dress, as if she was considering herself in white silk. ‘We need to break our trail, we need cover, we need a plan. You know, I should be asking you for more ideas. I am supposed to be mentoring you.’

‘But your ideas are usually better than mine,’ Kai shrugged. ‘Why waste time asking me, when we can simply go straight to whatever you have in mind?’