Tempt the Stars

portcullis on our side to come crashing down as soon as we shot past it.
    “Two!”
    “Shit. And the outer wall makes three, and there’s three above that damned palace. . . ”
    “That leaves three.”
    “No, two. The palace is
on
the sixth level, not beyond it. We don’t need to pass through the sixth gate.”
    Yeah, but we needed the fourth and fifth, and I didn’t think we were going to get them. Because bells were suddenly clanging out a warning from higher up on the walls, and the guards were getting closer, and the warren of streets meant that we kept flashing by alleys on both sides, and more and more of those had red energy bolts coming out of them. At the rate we were going, I doubted we’d get one more.
    Of course, I could be wrong.
    A couple of guards stepped out in front of the next gate, arms stretched out in warning, too far away to worry about getting run down. But not too far to get blown off the street with a single spell. We shot through the gate, which they hadn’t bothered to bring down, because of course we were going to stop when politely asked to do so.
    Of course we were.
    Our manners need work, I thought, and giggled. And wondered if I was going mad.
    “One more,” Caleb said, looking at me strangely.
    “Yeah, maybe,” I breathed, because suddenly I couldn’t even see the palace anymore.
    I stared around through frizzled blond hair, trying to figure out where, exactly, I’d taken a wrong turn, because I couldn’t remember turning at all. But the streets up here were even worse than in the souk, a tangled mess of intersecting passages, like a bandit’s dream, and anything but straight. And the palace, when I saw it at all, didn’t seem to be getting any closer. Like a mirage, it gleamed in glimpses through buildings or at the end of alleys, shining mockingly as we scattered people and dodged lightning bolts and ran over every freaking thing—
    And then plunged straight into a mass of guards.
    They’d gathered in a small plaza, ahead of the last gate, which two of them appeared to be trying to bring down. But it looked like maybe these inner gates hadn’t been shut in a very long time and weren’t in the best repair, because they appeared to be having trouble. But they clearly didn’t intend that we get any farther. A storm of red lightning tore through the air at us and then burst into a blinding halo just beyond our camels’ noses as Caleb flung up a shield.
    It kept us from being fried, but there were too many of them, and that shield wouldn’t last long under this kind of pounding, and it looked like they’d finally gotten
    the gate moving and—
    And
screw
it.
    “Are you
crazy
?” Caleb said when I stopped trying to hold the half-crazed camels back and gave them a little smack on the butt with the reins instead.
    I didn’t answer, because I didn’t have a good one, and because we’d just jumped ahead, hitting a dip in the street and sailing over, knocking several guards to the ground in the process and possibly running over a third. Although I didn’t see how since I was pretty damned sure that both wheels had left the ground. And then we were hitting back down, hard enough to have me biting my cheek half in two as we flew through the last gate, the camels’ noses almost straight out in front of their bodies, and me and Caleb ducking down to where ours were barely visible over the top of the chariot.
    And I still felt those wicked spikes, miniature versions of the ones on the main gate outside, brush my curls as we passed.
    I didn’t care. I swallowed blood, too busy trying not to fall out on my ass to care about anything else. I didn’t even try to steer anymore; it was virtually impossible at this speed anyway, and besides, the camels seemed to know where they were going. I just held on, the little leg brace on the side of the chariot digging into my thigh, my hands white-knuckled on the front, and Caleb cursing and camels screeching and bells clanging—
    And the palace suddenly reappearing in front of us, up a long stretch of hill.
    There was yet another gate in front of it, a flimsy-looking thing that seemed more ornamental than anything else, and a couple of white-robed guys with fancy gold belts who looked a lot prettier than the blue-robed fiends behind us. But judging by their expressions, they were also mostly there for looks.
    I guess not too many people tried storming Rosier’s palace.
    Or if they did, these weren’t the guys to stop