All four of us run down along the corridor that suddenly feels much longer now that I’m in a hurry. We’re absolutely not a team. What have they been up to while I was gone? I should ask them at some point.

  We reach the fruit room and Mandollel wiggles his fingers at the door, a similar complicated gesture as Lictor used. Of course he can do magic too. The door doesn’t open, though.

  Mandollel frowns, but Rworg pushes him aside and kicks at the door. The thump echoes around the corridor, but the door stays shut. He frowns as well.

  Mandollel adjusts the cuff of his left sleeve with his right hand, the fingers of his left hand stretching in preparation. “Well protected. It will take a moment to draw a spell powerful enough.“

  Rworg grabs onto both my and Mandollel’s shoulder and takes a step back. His grip is like Ral’s. He could probably break my collarbone by squeezing. He kicks at the door again, putting all of his body behind the kick, pushing us both off balance in the opposite direction. His boot lands square in the middle of the door.

  The door flies into the room. It topples the table and sends fruit flying across the floor.

  There’s a moment of silence, the three of us stunned, Rworg looking pleased. A bent hinge dangles from the doorframe before dropping down and clattering onto the stone floor.

  “There,” Rworg says. “Booted ajar.”

  “Quite,” Mandollel murmurs, running his hand over the splintered wood. Finna gives Rworg a thumbs-up and grins.

  I push between Rworg and Mandollel to get into the room and start throwing pillows off the sofa. “We’re looking for a jewel about the size of a large coin in diameter. It’s probably hidden only enough not to be noticed if people aren’t searching for it.”

  “What’s the point of hiding anything like that?” Finna says, but starts to search as well. She has her own way to do it, ripping holes into pillows with her dagger, knocking on walls, and looking at the undersides of chairs.

  “We will look at the other rooms,” Rworg says.

  After a moment, the sound of wood ripping and crashing echoes from the corridor.

  I’m left alone with Finna. She has ripped the cushioning off the chair and throws a handful of white fluff over her shoulder. “There’s nothing here.”

  I shift through the fruits, looking for the teratome gland. Just in case. “You’d think they have some way of tracing something that important.”

  “They are a bunch of idiots,” she says. “I once saw a wizard shrink a spoon by magic, so it wouldn’t poke him in the eye when he was drinking coffee. Instead of, you know, taking the spoon out from the cup. Made fencing them impossible.”

  I haven’t heard her talk so long or tell any story before. Maybe she’s getting used to me. “So, what happened with Lictor earlier? With the diversion?”

  Finna grins. There’s a tooth missing at the corner of the smile. “Mandollel dragged him around the room for a solid five minutes. It was great. Then Rworg grabbed Mandollel, and they wrestled for a while. He wasn’t in on the diversion, but it worked out.” Then she scowls and looks away. “Then it happened like you said. He talked us into it. The bastard talked us into it.”

  She kicks the ripped up chair, and it tumbles to the ground, spinning to the corner.

  I consider putting a hand on her shoulder, but decide against it. “Finna, of course he did. Listen, even the wizards upstairs fear the Janitors.”

  She takes a fluttering breath, but the moment passes. Her eyes zip around the room, taking final stock of it. “It’s not here. And he is not here, either. Where is he?”

  “Taken care of,” I say, slipping the gland into my pocket. I finally found it under the sofa. The spikes dig into the thumb on my palm and I yank out my hand to check if it broke skin.

  “What the hell happened to you? You’re cut to shreds and you have… those.”

  I stare at my palm, feeling numb. “I got caught between wizards fighting. The thumbs are because of the Rides. I think I’m stuck with them.” It’s easier to say than I thought. If I’ve understood things right, they can still disappear once I’m off from this Ride.

  “Rides can do that to you? Damn.”

  There’s a knock at where the door used to be. Mandollel is standing there, knocking on the wrecked doorframe. “Did you find anything?”

  I shake my head.

  “Neither in the other rooms. None of the rooms have that many potential hiding places and we looked everywhere.”

  Finna rolls her eyes. “I’ll go and take another look.”

  Rworg leans in over Mandollel’s shoulder, his large face solemn. “We were very thorough.”

  Finna snorts and pushes between them out to the corridor.

  “We were, though,” Mandollel says.

  I can’t help chuckling at how crestfallen the two men look.

  I’m not chuckling anymore. The Gem is nowhere to be found and Corum is tapping her foot at the end of the corridor. She calls at us, waving a hand toward the room behind her.

  I clench my teeth together and my hands into tight fists. “Where can it be?”

  “There were no guarantees that it was hidden poorly to begin with,” Mandollel says. There’s a tremor to his voice. His cheeks are flushed.

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  Rworg slaps us both on the shoulder, nearly bowling me over. “Nonetheless! We must do what we must do!”

  I guess Lictor really did talk them into it, at the end. Even Finna walks toward Corum, though all the groaning and muttering make it clear she’s not happy about it.

  I consider making a run for it, but I know it’s useless. The Gem was not there. “Where could he have hidden it?” I say out loud.

  “Maybe it’s in his pocket,” Finna says. “He keeps fiddling with something in there.”

  “That’s silly—“ Mandollel says, but stops. He puts a finger on his nose, pressing it down toward his pouted lips. “He does, now that you mention it.”

  “We have minutes,” Corum barks from the door. She keeps tapping her foot and waving her hand toward the room, trying to hurry us up.

  “We have to find him and get it!” Finna shouts.

  Corum’s face is tense, her eyes hard and grey as steel. “This is on your hands, uncle,” she mutters.

  I point toward the stairs. “It won’t take that long!”

  “No. We’re out of time. The Etherthorn Weave is about to happen. You’re already late, so take that into account when you get there.”

  “We can still do it travelling over land,” Mandollel says.

  Corum doesn’t answer. She’s drawing a gesture in the air with her right hand, the shapes hanging on the air as shining streaks of blue.

  I look at her, and her eyes move to avoid my gaze.

  Does it mean something?

  Wait.

  I’m not sure, but we should have more time before the Weave happens. And how can we be out of time here, of all places? I gasp, taking a step toward her. “You said you looked into how the device works! Did you go on a Ride earlier? You could have searched for the Gem and gotten it for us!”

  Corum’s jaw tightens. “You really are quite sharp, aren’t you? I did. The Gem was in his pocket. It’s brittle. Destroyed in the fight. I’m sorry, but you still need to go.”

  Mandollel growls, teeth bared. His hand snaps toward her. I dodge to avoid whatever is going to happen, but nothing does. Mandollel’s hand hangs in the air, his mouth open, one eyebrow raised, and one eye half closed. A soft yellow glow dims around him, leaving him standing in place.

  Corum shifts her left hand to point at the rest of us. “Please don’t move. I don’t want anything left behind. Teleporting a group like this is finicky.” Her eyes flick to the runes she’s drawing with her right hand and return to watching us.

  A soft, long wheeze escapes from Mandollel. His eyelids creep to cover his eyes painfully slowly.

  I try to follow Corum’s right hand, but it’s hard to concentrate on it, when her left is hovering before my eyes, trailing my every move. How can she do both at the same time, if I have trouble just watching her do it?

  She clicks her tongue, satisfied. The glow around his right hand gets brighter.

  “Bastards,” Finna says, as the world winks out.

  This time I appear in the air. I drop and regain my balance as I land on the soft forest ground. Finna lands softly, Rworg heavily. Mandollel, on the other hand, drops stiffly, arm still reached out. His legs bump into the ground and he starts tilting. He falls like a plank, his legs bouncing first up and then down when he hits the ground. It would look funny if I didn’t see him land into the coarse path face first. At least his eyes were still closed. His groan lasts twice as long as I could breathe out.

  “The mage froze him,” Rworg says.

  Finna’s sigh is almost as long as Mandollel’s groan was. “Yes, she did. Maybe it’s better this way. He would have thrown a tantrum about the jewel.”

  There’s an angry, drawn-out gurgle from Mandollel.

  Finna slides her hands under the elf and looks up at Rworg. “Help me out so he doesn’t suffocate on moss or something.”

  I recognize the unfamiliar type of forest. The evergreen trees and the large boulders are the same. I can make them out in the dark, even though it’s later than we’ve been here on the earlier Rides. I leave Finna and Rworg rolling Mandollel around and go scout our surroundings. He is still stiff as a board, one arm pointing to the sky, so we can’t do anything before he can move again.

  I push away the branches from my face as I go. I’m not sure why I stick around. I’m maybe too confused and hurt by the whole thing. I’m angry at Corum. She did what she knew to be necessary. She would have seen what telling us about the Gem would do. Maybe we wouldn’t have gone. Maybe Mandollel would have killed someone. At least she admitted everything at the end.

  I’m still angry.

  I clench my fists together and yelp when the extra thumbs get caught in the middle. I haven’t even touched my bow yet, mostly because I fear finding out how hard it will now be. The teratome gland is in my pocket, poking me with its spikes through the cloth.

  I ignore it. Better try to learn as much as possible, now that I still have this one chance.

  I soon find the lights of the camp. It’s the same one, again. The Kertharians themselves are all in different places than I anticipated. Obviously they would have moved as we’re here much later than before, but it still comes as a surprise, making me feel dumb. The mages are nowhere to be seen this time. Silhouettes moving inside the command tent, painted by the light shining inside.

  Maybe the mages are all there together. This might make things easier or harder. I don’t know mages. Will they fight as a unit or get in each other’s way? After seeing Corum and Lictor fight, taking on three mages by myself is a much scarier thought. I have a feeling the Kertharians are not in the same league as those two, but I still better get the drop on them.

  As I return to the others, Mandollel gasps and goes limp. His hand slaps him on the face, finally dropping from its pointing position.

  Finna grabs his other arm and starts to pull. “Finally! Now get up, we have to get moving.”

  Mandollel gurgles and wheezes. Finna manages to lift him from the ground for a bit, but he falls back down the moment she lets go of his hand. “Wait,” he croaks. His face is scraped from falling down on it on the path and there’s dirt in his hair. With every movement, he makes small involuntary noises. When he bends his knees, they crack, and he lets out a groan that’s half pained and half satisfied.

  “Comfy now?” Finna asks. “Can we go?”

  “I’ll need a moment,” Mandollel says. He hugs his knees to his chest and stretches his shoulder blades back, popping all the way.

  Rworg points toward the forest. “Movement and lights. Large group. An attack is happening.”

  Small flickers of orange light shine in the forest, appearing and disappearing between the trees. I watch them, chewing my lower lip. Mandollel sees the lights too and pushes himself into a sitting position.

  Rworg raises a fist before his chin. His jaw is set and his eyes fixed to a point above the horizon. “We will face my kinsmen proudly. We—“

  Finna kicks him behind the kneecap, cutting his announcement off and making him wobble. “Of course we won’t. This isn’t a practice run. This is for real.”

  Rworg pouts, but then turns to help Mandollel, who’s reaching a hand up to him.

  “She’s right,” he says, grabbing Rworg’s hand and letting him pull him up. “We can’t risk the mission for this. Only thing worse than accomplishing what we’re doing is failing in the attempt.”

  Rworg’s face twists and his eyes glisten, like he’s about to cry. “There’s no telling where they will go, who they will kill!”

  Doesn’t he know? Maybe Lictor didn’t have a chance to brief them this time at all, as he spent his time running after me and getting killed by Corum.

  Mandollel reaches to squeeze Rworg’s shoulder, his slender and pale fingers shining against his tan skin. He pats him a couple of times and then his arm flops down and he grimaces. “I can’t even lift my arm yet. I grieve for every single life lost, and yet we can’t throw away this one chance that we have.”

  There’s a rustle from the forest. An animal? Or a step? Rworg doesn’t react, but Mandollel and Finna become very still and quiet. I freeze too. Listening for something in the quiet makes it clear my ears are still ringing a bit. The sound’s going to make me mad before long.

  “What?” Rworg asks.

  “Shh!” Mandollel shushes him.

  Finna slides daggers out from her sleeves and into her hands. The movement is completely silent, not even a hiss. At least nothing I could hear with the stupid whining in my ears.

  The thought is cut short. The forest explodes with screaming. The mad wailing cuts through the night, chilling me to the bone.

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