He dashed forward in a crouch and leaped onto a large serving platter. He pressed one foot against the lip of the platter, and Pushed on the bullets behind him. The maneuver threw him forward in a skid across the polished wooden floor. He broke out of the tables into open space just before the steps out of the room, then kicked the platter out from under him and increased his weight, hitting the ground and stopping.
The platter flipped out in front of him, and the startled bandits began firing. Metal pinged against metal as some of the bullets hit the platter; Waxillium responded, dropping the men on either side of Tarson with two quick shots. Then he flared his steel and Pushed toward Tarson’s gun to try knocking it away from Marasi.
Only then did Waxillium realize there was no blue line pointing to the man’s gun. Tarson grinned, his ashy face topped by Wayne’s hat. Then he whipped around, placing himself behind Marasi, whom he gripped by the neck with one hand, holding the gun steady against her head with the other.
No blue lines. Rust and Ruin … an entire gun made of aluminum?
Waxillium and Tarson both fell still. The bandits behind hadn’t noticed Waxillium’s floor-level escape on the platter; they were closing on the area where he’d been hiding. The boss still stood in the doorway, looking toward Waxillium. Wax had to be wrong about who he was. People could look alike, sound alike. That didn’t mean …
Marasi whimpered. And Waxillium found himself unable to move, unable to raise his hand to fire. The shot he’d made to save Lessie played again and again in his mind.
I can make a shot like that, he thought to himself, angry. I’ve done it a dozen times.
He’d only missed once.
He couldn’t move, couldn’t think. He kept seeing her die again and again. Blood in the air, a smiling face.
Tarson apparently realized that Waxillium wouldn’t fire. So he swung his gun away from Marasi’s head and toward Waxillium.
Marasi went rigid. She locked her legs and slammed her head upward into the Vanisher’s chin. Tarson’s shot went wild and he stumbled backward, holding his mouth.
With Marasi mostly out of the way, Waxillium’s mind cleared, and he found himself able to move again. He shot Tarson, though he couldn’t bring himself to aim for the chest, not with Marasi stumbling nearby. He settled on dropping Tarson with a shot to the arm. Marasi raised her hand to her mouth in horror, watching him fall.
“He’s over there!” Voices from behind, the three bandits he’d been fighting among the tables. An aluminum bullet split the air just beside him.
“Hold on,” Waxillium said to Marasi, leaping forward and grabbing her around the waist. He raised his gun and shot the last bullet in his gun toward the doorway, hitting the masked leader of the Vanishers in the head.
The man collapsed in a heap.
Well, there goes that theory, Waxillium thought. Miles wouldn’t have fallen to a mere bullet. He was a Twinborn of a particularly dangerous variety.
Tarson was rolling over, holding his arm and groaning. No time. Guns empty. Waxillium dropped the gun and Pushed on it while holding tightly to Marasi. The Push hurled the two of them into the air; a hail of bullets sprayed through the space where they’d been. Unfortunately, they missed Tarson, who was rolling on the floor.
Marasi cried out, clinging to him as they flew up toward the brilliant chandeliers. Waxillium pushed off one of them, causing it to rock back and forth. That Push threw him and Marasi toward the nearby balcony, which was occupied by a group of cowering musicians.
Waxillium landed hard on the balcony; he was off-balance from carrying Marasi, and hadn’t had time to judge the Push precisely. They rolled in a bundle of red and white fabric. When they came to a rest, Marasi clung to him, shaking and gasping for breath.
He sat up, and held her for a moment. “Thank you,” she whispered. “Thank you.”
“Don’t mention it,” he said. “That was very brave, stopping the bandit as you did.”
“Seven out of ten kidnappings can be foiled by appropriate resistance on the part of the target,” she said, words tumbling out of her mouth. She squeezed her eyes closed again. “Sorry. That was just very, very unsettling.”
“I—” He froze.
“What?” she asked, opening her eyes.
Waxillium didn’t respond. He rolled to the side, pulling loose from her grip as he noticed the blue lines moving to the left. Someone was coming up the steps to the balcony.
Waxillium came up beside a large harp as the balcony door burst open to reveal two Vanishers—one with a rifle, the other with a pair of pistols. Waxillium increased his weight by tapping his metalmind, then heaved with a desperate flare of steel, Pushing against the harp’s metal mountings, nails, and strings. The instrument crashed into the wooden doorway and smashed the men against the wall. They slumped down, dropping to the stairs under the broken harp.
Waxillium ran to check their vitals. Convinced they wouldn’t be dangerous any time soon, he grabbed the handguns and dashed back to the edge of the balcony, scanning the room below. The furniture he’d Pushed out of the way made a strange perfectly circular open space on the ballroom floor. Partygoers were making for the kitchens in increasingly large numbers. He looked for Wayne, but saw only the broken bodies of fallen bandits where he’d been.
“Steris?” Marasi asked, crawling up beside him.
“I’ll go after her right now,” Waxillium said. “Some men towed her outside, but they won’t have had time to…” He trailed off as he noticed a blur beside the far door. It stopped, and suddenly Wayne was lying on the ground, blood pooling around him. A bandit stood above him looking quite pleased with himself, holding a smoking pistol.
Damn! Waxillium thought, feeling a spike of fear. If Wayne had been hit in the head …
Steris or Wayne?