So much for any lingering faith I had in Rian. Goddamnit! If she had a neck, I’d wring it, I thought, glaring through the space under his arm at a bunch of guards who were pulling off veils and jerking robes apart and generally acting like none of the people had any damned rights at—
My thoughts screeched to a halt, just like something else had recently. Something else that was still poking out of a ruined shop front. Because around here, you were either a have or a have-not, and it looked like the haves could do whatever the hell they damned well pleased.
And nobody questioned it.
“Come on,” I told Caleb. “I have an idea.”
* * *
“You’d think we’d get more for a fine camel thing than that,” I grumbled at Caleb, ten minutes later.
“Ever since the XP-38 came out, they’re just not in demand.”
“What?”
“You don’t get cultural references, do you?”
I frowned. “I get them. You just have weird ones.”
“That was from Star Wars. It wasn’t weird.”
“I’ve seen Star Wars and that wasn’t in it.”
“In the first movie, when they’re in the desert?” he asked. “When they have to sell Luke’s speeder?”
“Oh. You mean the old ones.”
“The old ones? The old ones? You mean the only good—” He saw my expression. “Never mind. What did we need more money for?”
“So I could get an outfit like yours,” I said, looking enviously at the rich green woolly fabric of his long, caftanlike garment. It was warm. It was attractive. It covered his ass.
“What’s wrong with the one you have on?”
“Other than the fact that I look like a hooker?”
I tugged at the back of the tight pink panties I was wearing, but it didn’t help. They were still at least two sizes too small and riding up my butt. But they’d been the closest thing the merchant we picked had that we could afford. And we hadn’t had time to comparison shop.
Of course, it didn’t matter if you were in a nice, all-encompassing robe like Caleb’s. It was a little more problematic when it came to sexy slave girl attire, particularly when the only thing I had on besides the ass-baring panties was a pair of diaphanous, slit-up-to-heaven harem pants and a top that wasn’t covering as much as my bra had. But it was the pants that were really bothering me for some reason.
“You look like I Dream of Jeannie without the ponytail,” Caleb said, helping not at all.
“I think it looks like they copied it from a low-rent Aladdin,” I snapped. “Along with everything else.”
“If there was copying, I’d say it was the other way around,” Caleb said, glancing a little longingly at the buildings we were passing. The people here might not have wood, but they’d used what they had to full advantage, carving lintels, columns, stairs, even elaborate grills over their windows, all out of the same red stone.
Caleb looked like he’d have liked a chance to explore a little. He looked like the proverbial kid in the candy store, only without any money. I felt kind of bad for him suddenly.
But I didn’t think hanging around would be too healthy.
“What?” I asked.
“The incubi came from here to earth, right?” he asked.
I nodded.
“And this place came first. So I’d say the incubi brought bits of this culture to earth, not the other way around.”
“Yeah, but why these bits?” I asked, still trying to dig one out of my ass.
Caleb just looked at me. “Really? You have to ask why incubi would encourage an outfit like that?”
I sighed. “It’s just . . . once, you know? Just once, I’d like to go on a mission without my butt hanging out, or getting shot, or otherwise being an issue.”
“Look at it this way,” he said, handing me up to the back of the semiwrecked chariot we were about to steal. “Maybe the guards will be too busy staring at it to pay us any attention.”
“Yeah. Maybe.” Or maybe we were about to make Rosier’s job really, really easy. But at least the shop owner wasn’t trying to stop us, even though Caleb’s outfit was striped and the other guy’s had been plain, and even though his skin had been a different color, and even though I was a blonde and the driver had left with a brunette.
Of course, he was an incubus, so I supposed that last one could be explained.
But nobody was asking about the other stuff, either. Nobody was even looking directly at us, as if our glorious presence was too much for them to bear. In fact, Caleb got a little too close to a porter when he was fighting with the camel things, who had been contentedly grazing on the shopkeeper’s wares all this time and were in no hurry to leave. And the man turned over his wheelbarrow, scattering packages everywhere, rather than brush up against the hem of Caleb’s robes.
Damn it, I hadn’t been here an hour and I already hated this place.
I really hoped I wasn’t going to be a permanent resident.
“All right, then,” Caleb said, gathering up the reins. And then he just stood there.
“All right, then,” I agreed.
“All. Right,” he said again, his lips pursing, as we continued to go nowhere.
“Is there a problem?” I asked, after a few seconds.
He shot me a glance. “You don’t, uh, know how to drive one of these things, do you?”
I looked at him. “Do I know how to drive a chariot, Caleb? Is that what you’re asking me?”
He sighed. “Yeah. Me, neither.”
He fiddled with the reins some more, until one of the camel things turned around and gave him a withering look. Caleb glowered at it. “You know, they don’t cover this in war mage training!”
“Do they cover stunning spells?”
“Yeah, why?”
“Because I think the owner wants his chariot back.”
And I had to give it to Caleb. He might not be rivaling Ben-Hur anytime soon, but there was nothing wrong with his reflexes. He spun and thrust out a hand, and the pissed-off demon who had just lurched out of the bar went flying. Literally—the spell tore the guy off his feet and sent him sailing back at least five yards, crashing through the open front of the tavern and scattering chairs and tables and patrons everywhere.
And normally, that would have been that. Except for the fact that we weren’t anywhere normal. So what happened instead was that a now super-pissed-off incubus rose out of its unconscious host and came for us, at about the same time that a dozen or so guards who’d been searching shops down the street realized they’d just hit the jackpot.
Well, this part’s normal, I thought, and grabbed the reins. And Caleb started firing off spell after spell in what in a lesser mage might have looked like a panic. But war mages didn’t panic. Or if they did, they made sure everyone in the vicinity was right there with them.
And there’s nothing like the threat of imminent death to turn formerly meek people into a raging mob. A few fire spells setting half the street alight, a few pulse-types causing all the overhead lanterns to burst in a colorful rain, a few hammerlike percussion blows to wagons and piles of goods and tables outside eateries, and suddenly, the guards had more to worry about than us. Like being trampled as everyone on our end of the street, all couple hundred of them, suddenly decided they wanted to be somewhere else.
Everybody but His Assholeness, that is, who just kept coming.
But that was okay, because the fire had finally done what we couldn’t and gotten the camels moving. Only they weren’t just moving, they were moving, in a blind panic and with no more concern than their owner had shown for anybody else’s person or property. I tried to steer them away from the people at least, but it was a little hard with so many running everywhere, and while also holding on for dear life. And Caleb couldn’t help me, being busy trying to find out what in his arsenal worked on an incubus.
Not much, it looked like, and the demon was still coming and the state of the street didn’t seem to bother him, because now he wasn’t so much running after us as flying, and I didn’t think we’d like what would happen when he caught up.
“My bag,” I gasped at Caleb as we barreled through a gate, the incubus right on our heels and extra sparkly in the dimmer light of the brief tunnel.
“What bag?”
“That one!”
I bumped him with my hip, and the small tasseled piece of uselessness I’d bought to replace the pockets I’d lost with my robes shimmied. It was as tacky as, well, hell, but I’d had to have something, because I wasn’t crazy enough to show up entirely unprepared.
And because I’d never given Pritkin back his little, silver demon-fighting gun.
“What does this do?” Caleb yelled, pulling it out.
“Shoot it and find out!”
I guess he agreed, because a second later he got off a perfect shot into the incubus’ sparkly cloud formation. And a second after that, it broke apart into a bunch of smaller clouds, which hovered in the air for a moment, looking a lot less sparkly. And then flowed back together, both dimmer and smaller, but still moving fast.
In the other direction.
“Damn!” Caleb looked at it with bright eyes. “I gotta get me one of these!”
“Stop quoting and help me!” I yelled back, because the camels were demented and the streets weren’t even close to level and the incubi weren’t going to have to kill us in a minute, because we were going to capsize on our heads. “Take the reins!”
“I don’t want the reins!”
“Damn it, why not? You can’t be any worse than—”
“That’s why not!”
I didn’t have to wonder what he meant. A bolt of something red and sizzling hit down beside us almost the moment the words were out of his mouth, causing the camels to rear and then swerve across to the other side of the street. All the way across. Suddenly, we were throwing sparks off the unyielding stone, having to duck baskets and rolled-up awnings and lunging through a pile of crockery, which was definitely going to be in the scratch and dent and shattered-to-bits bin tomorrow.