Sorcerybound (World's First Wizard Book 2), Aaron Schneider [accelerated reader books .txt] 📗

their treats now gobbled down, the ungrateful curs had returned to their previous allegiance. If only they’d give him a few more minutes with his file.

Voices from the house beneath, angry and sharp, hollered at the baying dogs. The animals persisted and the voice sounded again, this time calling from a window. Milo realized his inability to understand the Georgian tongue meant he’d forgotten to prepare and take the elixirs that allowed him to speak and understand any language.

He swore under his breath as he extracted his hands from the chimney. He was losing track of things more and more these days. He knew why, of course. The answer was written across his black-veined body. Nightwatch was a remarkable elixir, but sustained abuse had other effects besides the unsightly discolorations.

As he shook the last of the chimney dust into a pouch, he heard a man’s voice growling something, then the clump-clump of boots across the floor. The man of the house was headed outside to sort things out.

Milo looked skyward, cursing the bright moonlight spread over the farmstead.

If the man looked up, there was no way he wouldn’t see Milo. Milo imagined the owner of the home emerging, muttering curses, and then groggily following the straining hounds to look up at the roof. What would he do upon seeing Milo perched there like a black-streaked kobold or hobgoblin alongside his chimney? Scream? Run? Start throwing rocks?

The magus had just started to sidle along the ridge of the slate roof as quietly as he could when the farmer stepped out of the house and stood at the edge of the yard. As a tube of black metal swept in front of the man, glinting in the moonlight, Milo realized that his concern about thrown rocks was grotesquely optimistic. Pennies to perogies, if the man spotted him, Milo was going to be shot.

Sliding the pouch and file into his breast pocket, careful not to jostle glass vials and collection tools, Milo began to creep back down the other side of the house. A quick glance over his shoulder spotted the outhouse a dozen yards behind the house. Another dozen or so yards from that was a vegetable garden that butted up to the family’s fields. The winter wheat in the field was nearly ready for harvest and so stood over a meter tall.

If he could clear the distance to the outhouse in one leap, he could scuttle behind it, using it to block line of sight from the house until he hopped the garden wall. Then all he had to do was crawl over the other side and worm his way over the first grain hill, and he was in the clear.

Looking back, he saw the man was in the yard advancing toward the dogs, head and gun swiveling this way and that. The man’s movements were measured and suspicious. Was it just the disturbance that made him wary, or had he heard the rumors of the foreigners who’d taken up residence to the north in Shatili? Without the elixir of comprehension and tongues, Milo couldn’t even have asked him if he was trespassing.

Milo turned away from the gun-toting farmer, feeling the back of his skull itch in preparation for a lead slug. He gauged the distance one more time, gathered his focus, and leaped.

His coat flapped behind him, flickering from fabric into black-feathered wings that carried him easily over the muddy stretch between buildings. So easily was it that rather than landing in front of the outhouse, he thumped down on top of it.

Milo swore as the Plutonian wings dissolved back into his coat and he fought to keep himself from tumbling headfirst to the ground. As it was, he perched atop the small roof, and the entire wooden structure gave a precarious creak as it bore his weight.

For a second after the latrine’s protest faded, Milo heard only the constant yap of the dogs, and he dared to hope.

The smell of the latrine being freshly used and a soft snarl strangled that hope in its crib.

Milo barely had time to pull his leg clear when the door flew open and a sturdy young woman in a nightdress rushed out, her dark hair flying behind her. Three steps clear of the door, she whirled and saw Milo perching atop the outhouse, his silhouette clear in the silvery moonlight.

She stood gaping up at him, and Milo thought the look of horror and wonder stamped on her face might have been empowering if not for the nature of his lofty position. The smell of excrement, old and new, was potent.

“Eshmak’i!” she shrieked as she genuflected repeatedly. “Ts'adi!”

Milo stared at her for a second longer, wondering what sort of incubus she imagined him to be, but the roar of the man at the front of the house knocked him out of his reverie.

He needed to go and quickly.

He spun and leaped into the air, applying the focus necessary to form the wings on his coat by reflex. He glided over the open ground and most of the vegetable garden. His feet nearly caught a tangle of vined stakes, but he tucked them up at the last second before slamming them down on the damp earth.

“Mamik’o! Mamik’o! Mishvelet!” the young woman screamed behind him, her voice becoming a roar. “Mishvelet!”

Milo didn’t bother to look behind him as he vaulted the garden wall and raced across the field, stalks of wheat whipping about him. This wasn’t the stealthy departure he had in mind, but he supposed it would do. A few dozen strides and he’d be over the hill, then it was only a short sprint into the forest beyond. Then it would only be a matter of tracking back west to where he’d left the bag of bones stashed along the bank of the Argun River.

He knew his elevated mood was a side effect of the nightwatch, but he rode the wave of ecstatic energy, a laugh bubbling up from his throat.

“De Zauber-Schwartz strikes again!”