“I’m going to eat you,” Finch said, rage coupled with anticipation, “and then I’m going to ass-fuck your little spic ghost.”
“Hey, watch the racial slurs,” Rondeau said. “You fat bastard.” That was the effect of the Cornerstone, Marla thought—people saying what they meant. She held her own tongue.
Mutex still didn’t move. Neither did Marla. Finch was formidable—he could deal with the bird-man. Marla had her eyes on the Cornerstone, and the birds that were slowly carrying it away. She ran for the Cornerstone, leaping, her dagger of office in her hand, slashing out for the silver chains.
Hummingbirds swooped down to block her blow. When her blade hit the birds there should have been blood, and feathers, and the sudden cessation of swiftly humming wings, but instead her dagger spun out of her grip as if she’d tried to stab some viciously whirling piece of heavy machinery. She looked at the birds, which looked back at her with a thousand pairs of tiny black eyes, then went for her blade, which was now lying in the dirt by the tree line.
“Shit,” Rondeau said. “They’re tough little mothers, aren’t they?”
Finch, meanwhile, had transformed into a bear. He looked wholly natural among the trees, with Mutex as the obvious interloper—and obvious prey. Finch had two feet of height on the skinny magician as he stood upright and roaring, his fur bristling and matted. He dropped to all fours and advanced on Mutex, ready to maul him, or eat his entrails, or do whatever it was angry bears did to the objects of their anger. Marla had never observed a grizzly up close, only behind bars at the zoo, where they had a fat old one that mostly slept. She was curious to see what sort of damage Finch would do when he killed Mutex. Marla hoped that once the skinny sorcerer was dead, the hummingbirds would revert to more natural behavior, and either drop the Cornerstone or be dragged down by its weight—at the very least, whatever protective spell Mutex had cast on them would be broken, and she could dispose of the birds in a straightforward fashion.
Mutex smirked as he watched Finch approach. It was an expression Marla would be glad to see clawed off his face, though it worried her. Mutex clearly thought he had some trick in reserve, but Finch as a bear was more formidable than either a sorcerer or a wild animal. He had all his magical abilities—at least, those that didn’t require good pronunciation—in addition to claws, teeth, and a physical constitution unmatched in nature. Bears were symbols of tremendous strength and ferocity, and Finch now embodied that symbol.
Mutex lifted the lid from his wicker basket and, in an almost casual gesture, tipped its contents out on the ground.
At first, Marla thought he was dumping out gold nuggets, a cascade of small, shining yellow objects, but then she saw them moving, and recognized them for what they were—tiny yellow frogs, like the one that had hopped out of Lao Tsung’s mouth.
Well. That question was settled. Unless there was another sorcerer running a frog show in town, which seemed unlikely, Mutex was the one who’d killed Lao Tsung—doubtless after torturing him to find out the location of the Cornerstone. Hardly surprising, but it was nice to have confirmation.
The frogs did not attack Finch; they did not appear to take any notice of him at all. They simply spread out on the ground, hopping about randomly, bumping into one another, still disoriented by being dumped from the basket. The basket, Marla noted, was still full to the brim with squirming frogs, which meant there was some topological crumpling going on inside there, too; it was possible Mutex had a whole miniature ecosystem inside, filled with poisonous frogs.
Finch, still on four legs, tried to retreat from the frogs, clearly recognizing them for what they were—tiny hopping biohazards. Deadly poison with legs.
“Look out!” Rondeau called, but it was too late. Finch’s rear left leg came down on top of a frog, and he roared, lifting his paw and shaking it, stumbling in the process and brushing against several more of the frogs. He gave a nearly human scream, and did an ineffectual hop of his own, as if trying to jump clear of the widening pool of frogs, but he only landed on more of them.
Rondeau started forward, but Marla laid a restraining hand on his arm. The frogs were spreading out throughout the whole clearing now, scores of them, spotting the grass and churned dirt like yellow wildflowers, and Finch was surrounded. Rondeau and Marla couldn’t help him. The frogs were like mobile land mines. Finch stumbled about, swiping at the frogs, but his strikes grew slower and slower, his movements more sluggish. Even his magically enhanced bear’s constitution failed to stand up to the frogs for more than a few seconds, and Marla thought about the welts that had risen up on Lao Tsung’s dead body—just how poisonous were these creatures? Marla felt a pang for Finch—he’d been a bastard, true, but she’d respected his power, and, ultimately, he’d acknowledged hers. That was as close to friendship as most sorcerers could afford to come.