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work some mojo. I know this train must have a lot of power stored up in it, spinning
like a prayer wheel all this time, and you’re going to need to tap into that. Hold him like
a bug in amber, put ice crystals in his muscle mass, break every bone in his body, blow
off his kneecaps, I don’t care, but drop him. And keep him alive.”
“Not a problem,” Bethany said.
Marla held herself at the ready as the train slowed to a halt. She was prepared to reverse
her cloak—there was no other option, not if Mutex was still moving so fast—though she
greatly feared the consequences of using the cloak twice in one day. A period of
inhumanity was preferable to death, but only just.
The train stopped. The doors hissed open without any instruction from Bethany, which
made her snarl. Marla tensed.
No one tried to enter the train. The platform beyond was dark. In the faint red light from
the train, and with her night-eyes using every available speck of brightness, Marla could
make out something covering the floor of the platform, a silent, undulant mass of—
“Frogs,” she said. “Shit.” The platform was inhabited by hundreds of tiny golden yellow
poison dart frogs, though in the red light they glowed witch-light orange. Marla
considered her options. She could probably generate a fireball or a sheet of flame to
scour the frogs. She’d have to suck the energy for the fireball from Bethany, though,
which would put her out of commission. Marla couldn’t take the thermal energy from
the frogs themselves. They were amphibians, only as warm as their environment, and
down here, underground, it was cold, which might explain why they seemed less
inclined to hop and caper than they had on the surface. It was just as well. Conjuring
flames in a confined underground space wasn’t a good idea, especially since magical
fire didn’t much care if there was no immediate source of fuel—it would burn anyway,
for somewhat unpredictable amount of times, and that could make this place an oven.
But she had to do something. If the frogs were here in their lethal hundreds, a whole
army of them, then their general, Mutex, must be nearby, too.
Something alerted Marla—the distant hum of a generator, a static crackle, something—
and she squinted her eyes an instant before the floodlights on the platform came on. As
she squinted, she registered movement and twisted, throwing her leg up and out in a
side-kick. Mutex, moving almost too fast for the eye to track—but far slower, Marla
noted, than he’d moved at Dalton’s, which was heartening—slammed his solar plexus
into the bottom of her heavy boot. The shock of impact vibrated up her leg painfully,
but her bones were laced with trace amounts of cold iron and almost unbreakable, and
she’d cast an inertia-enhancing spell on her boots, so she didn’t lose her footing or slide
back. Mutex bounced, the inevitable result of an almost irresistible force hitting an even
more immovable object. He landed flat on his back, scattering his near-torpid poison
frogs beneath him, doubtless squishing a few. He still wore his cape—which Marla now
realized was made of insect wings somehow intricately woven together. It was fitting
raiment for the king of frogs, she supposed. His never-ending-frogs basket hung on a
strap on his back. She wanted to attack him now, while he was down, but the frogs all
around him were too dangerous. But if Bethany could wound him, or knock him
unconscious, then the two of them together could probably levitate him up onto the
train, safely away from the frogs. Mutex started to sit up, touching the spot beneath his