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Bare shanks threw open a leather sack by his side, one of several they had with them, and—

“Yes, that will do,” I said, and actually tried to pick up one of the contents.

I managed to lift it a few inches before it slid through my insubstantial hand, but Rhea grabbed it before it fell. “What is it?” she asked.

“Potion bomb. The kind I used to buy from a witch in the hills above Padua.”

“Something to give those bastards a drubbing,” the friar said, assuming that she was talking to him.

“Will it kill them?” she asked.

“Only if we’re lucky,” Red Petticoat said. “Already threw the best stuff.”

Rhea raised her eyes to mine. “No,” I told her. “But it may make them wish they were dead.”

“Sounds perfect.” She looked back over the roof. And then lobbed the bright purple, tennis-ball-sized potion bomb straight into the newest portal, before it even finished forming.

And, as Mircea had discovered in the herbalist’s courtyard, that was not something that portals appreciated. This one expressed its ire by spinning out of control, careening into and absorbing several more that were attempting to form nearby, and then chasing a bunch of war mages down the street. The bombers looked at her in surprise again, then yelled and started lobbing everything they had, trying to close more portals and, if not, to hit the mages on their way out.

And they hit a lot.

It didn’t stop the Corps, of course; nothing stopped them. But it slowed them down, and caused the latest arrivals to pause and crouch behind their shields, assessing the situation. That didn’t seem to be good enough for Rhea, however.

She looked back and forth between where we’d been and where we were going, her face a study in conflict. “I don’t know what to do,” she told me.

“What’s wrong?”

“What’s wrong?” Brown eyes flashed. “They’re about to slaughter each other, and the timeline can’t repair a massacre! This is what I was afraid of! This is what happens when you don’t have a Pythia on the scene, and I’m not one. The Lady would never have gotten into this mess, but I’m not her; I’m not anything—”

I grabbed her, before the rising emotion in her voice became a shriek.

“This Pythia—would she have chosen an unworthy successor?” I asked. “One who couldn’t manage the job? If so, she must not be very capable herself.”

Rhea looked as if I had just slapped her across the face. “The Lady is . . . is . . . don’t speak about her that way! She’s done more than anyone will ever know! Suffered more, endured more—”

“And yet, she chooses such a poor replacement. They say that the last thing a great sovereign does is to ensure an easy succession. The queen doesn’t have a child, yet she has provided an heir for her kingdom in James of Scotland, despite him being the son of her rival whom she beheaded. She hasn’t proclaimed it yet, and likely won’t, but everyone knows it is her plan. Yet your Lady has none?”

Rhea stared at me, her shock changing to anger. “I know what you’re doing! But I can’t do this alone and I don’t—”

She stopped, her face transforming again. It was so expressive that I could read every emotion, every thought. She probably needed to work on that.

Yet I was still surprised by what she said.

“I have to go,” she told me abruptly. “I have to get the Pythian Court.”

“All right,” I said, having no idea what that meant.

“Stay here. I’ll come for you as soon as we have this managed. Then we’ll go and find Morgan together, all right?”

She winked out before I could answer, which was just as well. I sat there for a moment, gently bobbing over the roofline, while the happy bombers continued their work. The librarian, who had been unusually quiet all this time, looked at me with a sardonic twist to her lips.

“You’re not going to stay here. Are you?”

“To borrow a phrase from Mistress Rhea: Hell, no.”

Chapter Twenty-Three

“I don’t like this,” the librarian puffed behind me, despite being a ghost and not needing to breathe.