Aquitaine gave a twitching shake of his head, then extended a hand toward the bull-shaped wood fury and ground his teeth. “Unknown,” he said, his voice strained. “Not long. If there are any survivors out here when they are freed, they won’t have a chance. If you would kindly cease jogging my elbow with this farspeaking...”

Amara grimaced and recalled Cirrus and sensed the presence coming at her back as a ribbon of ice laid over her spine. She didn’t waste time looking back. She flung herself forward, off the five-story roof, and dropped like a rock.

The stone edging of the roof behind her exploded into a cloud of gravel. One stone struck her hard in the back, another in the thigh. She grimly focused through the pain, calling upon Cirrus to cushion her fall, spun her body in midair, and, supported by the fury, landed in a catlike crouch. She leapt forward into a rolling dive, and an instant later a heavy boot slammed down onto the surface of the plaza with enough force to send cracks through the stone for ten feet in every direction.

Amara drew her sword even as she came to her feet and raised it to a high guard position. She found Cantus Macio staring at her with blank eyes.

“Macio,” she said, her voice shaking. “Hello. Do you remember me? From the Academy? Amara?”

He tilted his head, watching her.

Then he lifted his hand, and fire rushed at her in a swirling vortex.

Amara called to Cirrus, raising a wall of wind to stop the onrushing fire, but Macio was simply far more powerful than she. The rush of wind shoved back against her with tremendous force as it tried to slow the onrushing firestorm, and Amara found herself tossed back like a leaf.

Rather than fighting the motion, she spun into it, calling out to Cirrus again to take to the air—only to see the shimmer of something moving behind a windcrafted veil, and to feel a shock of stunning pain as an unseen fist slammed into her jaw.

Amara staggered, her concentration upon maintaining flight shattered, and tumbled down. Fortunately, she’d had little time to gather altitude or speed, but even so, her landing upon the hard stone of the plaza was an acutely painful experience. Training let her turn her motion into a rolling one, but it still slammed her limbs brutally. Her weapon was knocked clear of her hand, and she counted herself lucky not to have wound up impaled on it.

She struggled to push herself up, panicked. Speed was her only chance. She didn’t have the power she would need to confront Macio and his veiled ally directly. The only way she could survive would be to take the battle to the open skies. She found the wall of one of the buildings framing the plaza and used it to help herself stand.