“Hold the horses,” Gabriel snapped and dismounted, cursing the deep pinprick in his left underarm and all the pain in his hand—and head.

He went into his palace and determined that he had little more than his reserves of ops and that his wounds were nothing—and that Amicia was indeed deep in the burning wreckage.

He set his feet and cast—a wind

water—

and a cloud of bees.

He wove gold and green into a net, and cast all three at once.

Then he followed Amicia into the smoke.

The two children were the two Amicia had slipped past when first she climbed the stands—days ago, it seemed. The beam was the structure’s main supporting beam, and it pinned them across their broken legs—massive fractures.

The fire was an inferno, hell come to earth.

As a little girl, Amicia’s village had a bonfire for All Hallows. She could remember it—the making of it, the anticipation, and her horror as she saw its power, not just in the real, but the aethereal. Fire. Fast, and ruthless and without intelligence.

The fire had all the fuel of the royal box—hangings, painted with oils, and tapestries and wood partitions, furniture and beams and bleachers. It had an aethereal component, too. Someone—something had pushed the fire.

The two children were heartbeats from death with the smoke and fire—and the girl could not stop screaming. Her brother had already fainted.

Amicia lacked the potentia, after healing, and a foolish struggle with death, to both lift the beam and hold the fire. But her trust in God was so absolute that she drained herself, holding the fire at bay, while four brave normal men—a father, and three of his servants—heaved with futile intensity at the beam. The father was weeping openly at his own impotence.

“Why?” he screamed.

Amicia pushed on the flames.

Something on the other side pushed back, and laughed.

“Got you,” Gabriel said at her shoulder. He put his hands on the beam and it moved.

A sudden gust of wind, like the back of a storm god’s hand, slapped the fire away from Amicia.

She was knocked to her knees—instantly soaked to the skin, and steam rose, scalding, and stopped on her shield.

The bigger servant pulled the girl clear.

Gabriel grunted.

The father, his fine clothes ruined by smoke, got his son by the shoulders and pulled, and the boy screamed, denied the mercy of oblivion as his broken legs were wrenched from under the heavy wood.

They retreated the length of a house, and Amicia knelt. “Give me—” she demanded.

Gabriel put a hand on her shoulder.

“I’m out,” he said. “Now get on my horse.”

“You saved us all,” the man said. “I’m—oh, my God—”

“Get on my horse—Nell!” he shouted.

The crowd had thinned—men-at-arms could be seen on the other side of the smoke.