Magical healing beyond the most basic first aid required a medical degree before they even let you try. Walden certainly did not want to go poking around in a potential concussion. She looked up, intending to offer Kenning support.

And then she took a moment to watch in frank admiration.

Kenning was very good.

It wasn’t that she was strong, although she was. Indeed, she was throwing around quite a lot more raw power than Walden would have been in her position. Her spellwork did not have the stripped-back precision of an academically trained magician; it shimmered at the edges, and drew lines of thaumic aftershock through the raw magical ambience of the demonic plane. In any case, simple magical power did not impress Walden. Any demon had it, and any talented schoolchild. She herself had been strong to start with—not a true sorcerer, but strong—and she had spent decades since then becoming expert. Very few people these days could call on more magical power than her.

It was the way Kenning used what she had.

She cast wordlessly, or in brief staccato syllables, relying above all on gesture: hands, feet, the motion of her body. It was the motion that arrested Walden’s attention, the smooth flow from one stance to another; the way the magical sword, blazing with white light, functioned as an extension of the Marshal’s right arm; how she wrapped the ambient power of the demonic plane around herself and turned it into traps and tripwires for the archdemon’s groping tentacles. Kenning’s face was set in calm, concentrating lines as she battled the monstrosity. This was hard work for her, but in the way that a marathon was hard work for a serious runner. Walden could tell she wasn’t needed at all.

She did gasp when the archdemon disarmed Kenning. The sword clattered on the stone flags of the kitchen floor, its light blinking out. But Kenning didn’t panic, didn’t flinch; the white blaze reappeared in bunches gathered around her fists and feet. Walden watched her force the archdemon back with blow upon blow: fast kicks, jabs with her fists, even her elbow. It was losing its grip on reified physicality, the tentacles evaporating one by one, leaving a quivering pink core. Kenning lunged forward and tackled it flat, letting out a shout—ha!—that was mostly a sharp explosion of breath.

The archdemon writhed and struggled under her, but Kenning was now striking repeatedly at that quivering core, magic shining around her fist. Before long it collapsed into fine pink mist, which evaporated.

Kenning picked up her sword, got to her feet, and caught her breath. Walden caught hers too. Good grief, she heard herself think.

“You, er … know karate?” she said.

“MMA,” said Kenning. She wiped sweat off her forehead. “How is he?”

“He’ll live,” said Walden. “If we get him out of here fast enough.”