Mutex watched Finch lurch about and die by degrees. The skinny sorcerer nodded thoughtfully, as if he were attending a lecture on fiscal policy or civic planning. Marla drew her non-magical, workaday dagger and held it by the blade between her thumb and forefinger. The knife wasn’t weighted for throwing, but at this distance, with sufficient force, she could probably wound Mutex grievously in the throat. She drew back her arm and, in a smooth motion that would have pleased Lao Tsung, let the dagger fly.
Before the knife went a foot, it struck a hummingbird. The animal had intercepted the blade in a blur of ruby wings, moving faster than Marla’s eyes could follow. The knife bounced back and gouged a divot in the ground at Marla’s feet. The bird hovered for a moment, unharmed, and looked at her with tiny black eyes, then flashed away to rejoin the flock that was slowly but steadily carrying the Cornerstone away.
Marla looked to Mutex, who waved farewell and turned away. Finch was now an unmoving heap of brown fur, sprawled on his side among the frogs. The Cornerstone drifted after Mutex, into the trees.
“Want me to Curse?” Rondeau said, but Marla shook her head. It was too dangerous, too unpredictable, especially with so many lethal creatures nearby. The frogs still hopped, some of them jumping on Finch’s dead bear-body. Marla looked after Mutex, but he’d vanished. The birds were gone, too, and the stone with them, all hidden by the folded space around the island. She couldn’t follow them, either. The frogs made the clearing impassable, and if she went into the trees to skirt around them, she’d just be wrapped up in folded space herself, and might even wind up farther away from Mutex than she was now. When things got non-Euclidean, there was little hope of hot pursuit.
“We should leave,” she said, but she stood still for a moment anyway. Because where would she go once she left this island? How would she track down Mutex and the Cornerstone? In her own city, she had access to innumerable contacts and wielded considerable influence. She had seers, sibyls, and oracles, and while their information might be obscure and cryptic, she could usually glean something useful from it, especially when she sought more than one reading, engaging in a sort of psychic triangulation. But here in San Francisco…the only person she could ask for help now was a snake god who hated her guts, and besides, he didn’t know how this city worked, who the players were, or how to find the sort of people who were good at finding people. Sure, she could tell Ch’ang Hao to find and kill Mutex, and he’d do it eventually, but gods worked on their own timetable, and he wouldn’t do it fast enough.
Marla would have to wander around, try to sniff out magic, try to find other sorcerers and tell them about Mutex, and convince them he was a real threat. But she didn’t have time. Susan wouldn’t wait. She was putting her spell together, making the proper arrangements, and preparing to loosen the couplings of reality and seize control of Felport. Marla had to find the Cornerstone, and soon.
“Um, frogs, Marla,” Rondeau said, and, indeed, they were still there, still spreading, hopping incuriously in their direction.
“Shit,” Marla said. Because, yes, the frogs—even if she did manage to track down Mutex, she had to contend with his toxic menagerie, didn’t she? Tiny killer frogs were rather outside her realm of expertise. Still, Mutex didn’t fear them, which meant there had to be some antidote, or antivenom, or charm—something. If she could find out how to protect herself from the frogs, she would at least stand a chance when she went up against him. Maybe if she wore her cloak with the white side out, its healing powers surrounding her, then the frogs wouldn’t hurt her…but one look at Finch, turned into a feast for flies, convinced her otherwise. The cloak’s healing powers wouldn’t make her any tougher than a sorcerer with the totemic power of a bear, and Finch hadn’t lasted long.
“Let’s go,” Marla said. She still had the frog she’d found by the gallery, safely wrapped in a plastic bag. The frogs probably couldn’t survive for long outside the steamy, magically balanced environment inside Mutex’s wicker basket. If she could just find someone knowledgeable, get some information…maybe she could get Langford to fly out here. Though without access to his lab and library, she wasn’t sure the biomancer would be able to tell her anything. She couldn’t think of anything else, though. She didn’t know any San Francisco area frog-experts.
“That sucks about Finch,” Rondeau said, subdued. “He should have climbed a tree or something.”