44 loop 1 Part 24

The smart move had been to leave. Thirty seconds ago, when the old professor had bolted out the east doors and a dozen others followed him on instinct, it had probably looked sensible. The dining hall ceiling was gone and the open sky above us had a dragon in it. The problem was that the professor and that group had run straight out into the open air, toward the thing that had made the roar. This thought went through my mind just as the billowing dragonfire came down.

But the dragonfire never reached us. Frost caught it in a spell. “[Mass Plating]!”

A dozen overlapping discs of dark ash-colored glass snapped into place over the hole in the roof. Each one angled against the next so as the flames struck they slid sideways instead of pouring straight down onto us. The shadowy flames bounced off the glass and spread like water, looking for a way through. Where the smoke and fire pooled thickest, the plates drank it in and darkened into a true black, swelling up like a bruise. But they held. And we were safe, for the moment.

“Everyone down and get behind me,” Frost shouted. “If my shields break, be ready to dodge the flames. They eat whatever they touch.”

That was an excellent thing to share and a terrible thing to learn while standing under them. I really felt for the people around me, so I tried to be as shocked as they looked.

The plates would likely hold for a while, but a while was not forever, and the people outside had no protection at all. Every second we spent safe inside was a second they spent unsafe. At least we had the dragon’s attention, which was the kind of advantage that felt suspiciously like a disadvantage.

I looked around the room, trying to figure out what to do. There were too many people to hide, too many wounded to run properly, and not enough ceiling left to pretend this was a building. Half the survivors that hadn’t fled were frozen in place. The other half were staring up like the dragon might become less real if they watched it hard enough. An idea came to me, but I needed Flag, and Flag was busy meditating.

Flag, get off him and come over here, I asked through our bond.

He had spent the past several minutes playing the part of an almost-four-ton paperweight. He got up at once and said, Coming, Lazlo. I’m pleased to be needed. Then he crossed over to my chair in heavy, lurching steps, sending each foot down too hard and overcorrecting on the next step. Of course, this meant Bain picked himself up. He got to his feet faster than I’d expected and brushed dust from his robes. There was a smear of dried blood on his temple from where he had hit the floor.

Fuck. Why couldn’t I have knocked him out?

“Professor Frost.” His voice was flat and unbothered, as if he had not just been bullied by my pet rock. “I am still acting headmaster. You will direct this defense on my authority, and you will arrest that boy.”

Frost gave him a look that said Are you for real? “If you are still acting headmaster,” she said, “then act like one. Reinforce the fucking doors before the dragon comes through them and attacks us from behind.”

Handing Bain a chore to shut him up was the best thing I had seen all week. Bain stiffened. His mouth opened, then closed, then opened again, because apparently even near-death experiences could not stop the man from preparing a lecture. He took two sharp steps toward the east doors, one hand lifting as if he intended to issue orders to the doors personally. He did not make it.

Eirkedross hit the defenses again. It found a weak part in the roof that Frost’s plates had not covered and leaned its whole weight into the building. Frost cast [Mass Plating] again, but she was not fast enough. She managed to catch the section over the students where the ceiling cracked. But on the other side of the room, over Bain, the ceiling failed. A column of old white masonry fell down onto the spot where he had been standing. The impact shook the floor hard enough to rattle my teeth. Dust exploded outward, swallowing the east side of the room in a gray cloud. When it cleared, there was a heap of stone where Bain had been, and he was under it.

“Well,” I said, because it was clear he was not getting up from that. “That’s one way to settle a chain of command.”

I would have felt bad about it. But he had just tried to kill me.

Finn, though, had finally broken out of whatever stupor had caught him. A first-year near the broken serving line stumbled sideways, eyes blank, one hand pressed to a bleeding shoulder. Finn caught them with a gold ward before they hit the floor, then pushed another shield over two students crouched beneath a cracked beam. After that, he moved. He became a constant blur of casting: wards, healing pulses, quick scans, quiet instructions. His hands were shaking, but his spells were not.

The dungeon-track professor started pulling panic-frozen students away from the rubble. The two seniors moved with him—one manifestation and one alteration. Their joint casting slotted together so smoothly I almost hated them for making competence look efficient. My earlier idea forgotten, I sent Flag to assist.

Frost held the ceiling. Finn kept people alive. Everyone who could move started trying to get the people who could not toward the northwest doors. Which left me sitting on a chair carried by three golems. In my defense, this had been a very good arrangement until the dragon.

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“Lazlo,” Finn said, half-angry, half-resigned, like he didn’t have the energy to fight me. “You need to get down from there and help out.”

“Yarrow,” Frost interrupted without turning around to face us. “Tell me what these golems can do.”

“Well, the three carrying me can follow orders, and Flag can think for himself and cast a little magic.”

She looked at me, then at the chair, then at the three soulless golems beneath it. “Can you get off those things and be serious for a moment?”