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Mutex still didn’t move. Neither did Marla. Finch was formidable—he could deal with
the bird-man. Marla had her eyes on the Cornerstone, and the birds that were slowly
carrying it away. She ran for the Cornerstone, leaping, her dagger of office in her hand,
slashing out for the silver chains.
Hummingbirds swooped down to block her blow. When her blade hit the birds there
should have been blood, and feathers, and the sudden cessation of swiftly humming
wings, but instead her dagger spun out of her grip as if she’d tried to stab some
viciously whirling piece of heavy machinery. She looked at the birds, which looked
back at her with a thousand pairs of tiny black eyes, then went for her blade, which was
now lying in the dirt by the tree line.
“Shit,” Rondeau said. “They’re tough little mothers, aren’t they?”
Finch, meanwhile, had transformed into a bear. He looked wholly natural among the
trees, with Mutex as the obvious interloper—and obvious prey. Finch had two feet of
height on the skinny magician as he stood upright and roaring, his fur bristling and
matted. He dropped to all fours and advanced on Mutex, ready to maul him, or eat his
entrails, or do whatever it was angry bears did to the objects of their anger. Marla had
never observed a grizzly up close, only behind bars at the zoo, where they had a fat old
one that mostly slept. She was curious to see what sort of damage Finch would do when
he killed Mutex. Marla hoped that once the skinny sorcerer was dead, the hummingbirds
would revert to more natural behavior, and either drop the Cornerstone or be dragged
down by its weight—at the very least, whatever protective spell Mutex had cast on them
would be broken, and she could dispose of the birds in a straightforward fashion.
Mutex smirked as he watched Finch approach. It was an expression Marla would be
glad to see clawed off his face, though it worried her. Mutex clearly thought he had
some trick in reserve, but Finch as a bear was more formidable than either a sorcerer or
a wild animal. He had all his magical abilities—at least, those that didn’t require good
pronunciation—in addition to claws, teeth, and a physical constitution unmatched in
nature. Bears were symbols of tremendous strength and ferocity, and Finch now
embodied that symbol.
Mutex lifted the lid from his wicker basket and, in an almost casual gesture, tipped its
contents out on the ground.
At first, Marla thought he was dumping out gold nuggets, a cascade of small, shining
yellow objects, but then she saw them moving, and recognized them for what they
were—tiny yellow frogs, like the one that had hopped out of Lao Tsung’s mouth.
Well. That question was settled. Unless there was another sorcerer running a frog show
in town, which seemed unlikely, Mutex was the one who’d killed Lao Tsung—
doubtless after torturing him to find out the location of the Cornerstone. Hardly
surprising, but it was nice to have confirmation.
The frogs did not attack Finch; they did not appear to take any notice of him at all. They
simply spread out on the ground, hopping about randomly, bumping into one another,
still disoriented by being dumped from the basket. The basket, Marla noted, was still
full to the brim with squirming frogs, which meant there was some topological