Which, inconveniently, meant I couldn’t ask him stuff. It left me two options—Shortcut and Flapper.

“Flapper!” I called out. “Mayday sent us! What’s this!?”

“Capes and getaway drivers. Living cargo in the trucks!”

“What capes?”

“Trial and Error! Trial’s the wheel, crazy strong, but he’s tiring out! You can’t hit Error! She picks one person and they’re fucked. There’s a general fucked effect around her too!”

“There’s an aircraft runway and helicopter landing pad at Westport Stretch!” I warned.

I saw her digest that.

“Does Spright know the rules?” I asked, flying closer to her. I could feel the force of the wing flaps.

“He knows!”

I flew in the direction of the wheel, who was leading the way now. Sveta was keeping pace, but only barely. Ahead of us, Capricorn had his motes of light, ready to form his barricade, if he had to.

Airspace meant restricted flying. Standard operating protocol for getaway drivers was to try to cut through an area where police helicopters couldn’t pursue. Once the aerial was lost, it was that much easier to disappear on the ground. Westport was large enough that it was conceivable that three trucks could disappear, if advance preparations had been taken.

“Wheel is heavy offense!” I called to Sveta, as I caught up. “One truck has a stranger! Trial and Error! Stranger in truck with fucky effect!”

She went for the trucks, leaping onto one cab roof.

“Careful!” I called out.

Traffic was mostly at a standstill, and we were racing past it, to the point it was easy to imagine we were traveling faster than we were. The air was cold, and it was filled with flecks of dirt, in the wake of those guys.

Capricorn’s wall popped into being. Crenellated, styled, with ram-headed men in stoic, stern positions at set intervals along the wall’s length. For the moment, the bottleneck on the real road was made small enough to only let small, regular cars through.

Trial was gunning for the wall now, evading Spright’s harrying fly-bys. Shortcut drew nearer, raised his weapon while skating on the grass, and then leaped—only to skip the follow-through. He ducked and rolled on the ground, got his feet under him, and resumed skidding endlessly on the ground, legs barely moving, while holding his polearm.

I gestured, as dramatically as I could, for Capricorn to get down, my arm sweeping from above my head to down and away.

He jumped off the wall at the same time Trial reached it. Trial unfolded from his wheel form, going high with the final ‘kick’ of the disassembling wheel, and his mechanism became clear—chains. Heavy chains with what looked like telekinetic control slammed into Tristan’s wall and knocked a good chunk of it down like it was a sand castle.