“Magister Kadah?” Kip repeated. This woman couldn’t be the same one who’d hated and humiliated him.
“Not a magister, not anymore. I’m doing research now, as I’ve always wanted.” She smiled, and looked ten years younger than Kip had ever seen her look. “I brought you these. They were all I could find.” She handed him a bag. It had half a dozen mag torches in it. “Now go. There are people on this floor who would betray you.”
“Is there no other way out?” Cruxer asked, as Teia grabbed the bag from Kip and distributed the mag torches.
“Rumors only. None that I know,” Kadah said.
“Use ’em,” Cruxer ordered the squad. “Fill up now!” The squad instantly began popping the mag torches.
“Magis—I mean, Kadah, why? Why are you helping us?” Kip asked.
She looked at him curiously. “Kip, you saved my life. I was planning to suicide. I’d even picked the day. And then the White summoned me. I’ve spent the last five months trying to figure out how to thank you.”
Kip hadn’t even thought of Magister Kadah since he’d left her class—well, except to think how glad he was that he wasn’t still there.
“No time!” Cruxer said. “Thank you! But we have to go!”
“He’s right,” Kadah said. “Go! And Orholam defend you!”
They barred the door. The squad had already taken up positions on the landing, each one full to bursting with luxin.
“Breaker,” Ben-hadad said, “GBBBoDs?” He said it ‘G-bods.’
“What?” Teia said.
“Great Big Bouncy Balls of Doom,” Ben-hadad said.
“Or Green Bouncy Ball of Doom,” Kip said. “It’s less cumbersome than BGBBoDs, Big Green Bouncy Balls of Doom,” Kip said, distracted. He was already soaking up green.
Winsen was using yellow, filling himself so he could throw flashbombs, and he held it out so Kip could fill himself with that color, too. Despite Mistress Phoebe’s best efforts, Kip wasn’t nearly proficient enough at making solid yellows to draft anything instantaneously in combat, but preparing a weapon beforehand was possible.
Kip soaked up some yellow and flung his hand down, drafting, trying to make a yellow sword as he’d practiced a thousand times.
“Quickly,” Teia said. “Quickly.”
Kip fumbled, and he lost his concentration on the fine mesh point of yellow. The yellow sword broke apart near the hilt, and, unsealed, it all splashed into light.
He cursed. Why had Andross Guile sent men after them now? It was far too early. Had he betrayed Kip, or had something gone wrong?
Andross had expended so much effort making this plan that Kip didn’t think he’d try to have him killed. Maybe the Lightguards had jumped early, hoping to curry favor with Andross by killing his ‘enemy.’ Or maybe it was just another betrayal from the man who specialized in them.
Cruxer offered him a blue mag torch and a green. “Spikes and shield?” he asked.
But Kip’s eye was caught by the insignia of the Mighty: a man with hands outstretched, power radiating in circular waves from his hands. “I have a better idea.”
He drafted green from the mag torch like it was water gushing from a well. “All of you, you’re going to have to run after me as fast as you can. Pick me up. As in, right now.”
While Ben-hadad and Cruxer each got under a shoulder, Kip drafted a disk under his own feet.
“Oh no, I need a bit of orange. But those things cost a fort—”
Teia snapped open an orange mag torch. “Life and death, Breaker.”
He didn’t object. He drafted a green platform, then orange lubricant below that, then green again, starting a curve.
“Oh! I’ve heard of these!” Ben-hadad said. “The ancients called them water balls? Drafted them out of blue so they could see out. Then they’d go out on rivers and lakes—”
“Footsteps. Above and below!” Big Leo said.
One of the squad fired a blunderbuss up the stairs above them. Kip heard the clatter of a man falling to the ground. The other blunderbuss fired. Curses and swearing and screams. Kip tried to filter it out, though with the green roaring in him, he wanted to smash them, shut them up. In moments, he’d drafted the bubble. He sprayed orange around the inside of the bubble before he finally closed it. He sealed it on the inside, putting the nexus of the knot close to the surface so he would be able to get out.
He was inside a vaguely translucent green bubble. His idea was to stand, letting his feet slide on the lubricative orange so that he stayed upright. He could tell immediately that it wasn’t going to work.