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Caleb looked like he’d have liked a chance to explore a little. He looked like the proverbial kid in the candy store, only without any money. I felt kind of bad for him suddenly.
But I didn’t think hanging around would be too healthy.
“What?” I asked.
“The incubi came from here to earth, right?” he asked.
I nodded.
“And this place came first. So I’d say the incubi brought bits of this culture to earth, not the other way around.”
“Yeah, but why these bits?” I asked, still trying to dig one out of my ass.
Caleb just looked at me. “Really? You have to ask why incubi would encourage an outfit like that?”
I sighed. “It’s just . . . once, you know? Just once, I’d like to go on a mission without my butt hanging out, or getting shot, or otherwise being an issue.”
“Look at it this way,” he said, handing me up to the back of the semiwrecked chariot we were about to steal. “Maybe the guards will be too busy staring at it to pay us any attention.”
“Yeah. Maybe.” Or maybe we were about to make Rosier’s job really, really easy. But at least the shop owner wasn’t trying to stop us, even though Caleb’s outfit was striped and the other guy’s had been plain, and even though his skin had been a different color, and even though I was a blonde and the driver had left with a brunette.
Of course, he was an incubus, so I supposed that last one could be explained.
But nobody was asking about the other stuff, either. Nobody was even looking directly at us, as if our glorious presence was too much for them to bear. In fact, Caleb got a little too close to a porter when he was fighting with the camel things, who had been contentedly grazing on the shopkeeper’s wares all this time and were in no hurry to leave. And the man turned over his wheelbarrow, scattering packages everywhere, rather than brush up against the hem of Caleb’s robes.
Damn it, I hadn’t been here an hour and I already hated this place.
I really hoped I wasn’t going to be a permanent resident.
“All right, then,” Caleb said, gathering up the reins. And then he just stood there.
“All right, then,” I agreed.
“All. Right,” he said again, his lips pursing, as we continued to go nowhere.
“Is there a problem?” I asked, after a few seconds.
He shot me a glance. “You don’t, uh, know how to drive one of these things, do you?”
I looked at him. “Do I know how to drive a chariot, Caleb? Is that what you’re asking me?”
He sighed. “Yeah. Me, neither.”
He fiddled with the reins some more, until one of the camel things turned around and gave him a withering look. Caleb glowered at it. “You know, they don’t cover this in war mage training!”
“Do they cover stunning spells?”
“Yeah, why?”
“Because I think the owner wants his chariot back.”
And I had to give it to Caleb. He might not be rivaling Ben-Hur anytime soon, but there was nothing wrong with his reflexes. He spun and thrust out a hand, and the pissed-off demon who had just lurched out of the bar went flying. Literally—the spell tore the guy off his feet and sent him sailing back at least five yards, crashing through the open front of the tavern and scattering chairs and tables and patrons everywhere.
And normally, that would have been that. Except for the fact that we weren’t anywhere normal. So what happened instead was that a now super-pissed-off incubus rose out of its unconscious host and came for us, at about the same time that a dozen or so guards who’d been searching shops down the street realized they’d just hit the jackpot.
Well, this part’s normal, I thought, and grabbed the reins. And Caleb started firing off spell after spell in what in a lesser mage might have looked like a panic. But war mages didn’t panic. Or if they did, they made sure everyone in the vicinity was right there with them.
And there’s nothing like the threat of imminent death to turn formerly meek people into a raging mob. A few fire spells setting half the street alight, a few pulse-types causing all the overhead lanterns to burst in a colorful rain, a few hammerlike percussion blows to wagons and piles of goods and tables outside eateries, and suddenly, the guards had more to worry about than us. Like being trampled as everyone on our end of the street, all couple hundred of them, suddenly decided they wanted to be somewhere else.
