This is the conclusion to Doubtful Allies:

Jayden’s reunion with Suzy Lockheart clearly wasn’t a success, but at least it had happened without bloodshed, so Dana considered it a win. She headed for her own room, wondering if this meeting might be good for Jayden. He might not like Suzy, but he made it sound like the woman was dangerous. Maybe she might join them. Many of Dana and Jayden’s fights would have gone better with a powerful friend at their side.

Dana was settling for the night when the door opened and Suzy came in. Dana stared at the woman and said, “You could have knocked first.”

“I didn’t leave home, lose my dowry and get disowned so I could be polite.” Suzy sat on the edge of Dana’s bed and waved her hand north. “Zentrix society is all about not making waves. Be polite, follow the rules, bow and grovel to your betters, and once they’re gone let the verbal venom flow. Hypocrisy, thy name is Zentrix.”

Curious, Dana said, “I went there once. Everyone was nice.”

“You didn’t stay long enough. Grow up there and you see people at their worst. I got out before my parents could marry me off to a raging bigot with excellent breeding. Two years apprenticed to an alchemist against my parent’s wishes got me where I am today, not mindless obedience.”

Suzy edged closer. “Enough about me, let’s talk about you. I’ve had this burning question ever since I heard Jayden was traveling with a girl.”

“What is it?”

“I liked Jayden when we had our earlier adventure together. Really liked him. The weird part is he didn’t feel the same. I did everything except tie him up, and I considered it. Then I hear he’s got a girl who’s been with him for months.”

Suzy took Dana’s hands. “I’m not trying to steal him from you. He’s your chew toy, but I need to know what you did that I didn’t. What worked in the end?”

Dana’s heart raced. She felt herself blush. “I, um, you must have heard wrong. We don’t have that kind of relationship. I mean, I like him, but nothing happened.”

Suzy stared at Dana for a moment. The woman’s eye twitched. She stood up and said, “Would you excuse me for a moment.”

Suzy marched to Jayden’s room and kicked the door in. Jayden looked up from his bed where he’d been studying his spell tablets. “Nothing happened? You’ve been with the girl for months and nothing happened! What the crilviz, Jayden!”

“Crilviz?” Dana asked.

“A gnome word, very vulgar,” Jayden explained. “Ms. Lockheart, my love life, or lack thereof, is no business of yours.”

“Don’t give me that!” Suzy yelled. “I know you like girls. I’ve heard the stories.”

Dana got up from her bed. “What stories?”

“Fine, you think I nearly killed you, even if I didn’t, but what about her?” Suzy demanded. “What crime did she commit to spend the rest of her life in the friend zone?”

“Do you mind?” Gaston yelled from the inn’s common room. “If I had customers you’d be driving them off!”

“Shut it!” Suzy yelled back. She turned her attention back to Jayden. “Well?”

Jayden set his spell tablet aside. “Dana is my friend. I have few others, and none I trust like her. She cares for my wellbeing more than I do. I don’t wish to lose her friendship. To try to turn our relationship into something it isn’t, and shouldn’t be, would be wrong. Think ill of me if you will, but I cherish what Dana and I have too much to risk losing it.

“What you seek from me is something I can’t give when there is no depth to the feelings you have for me. When we first met you were rebelling against your strict upbringing, and you’re still doing so today. You seek constant excitement and new experiences, not a bad desire, but I’m nothing more than a diversion from your boredom. I seek more than that, and if you examine your feelings you’ll agree it’s more than you’re willing to give. If I’ve misjudged you, say so.”

When Suzy didn’t reply, he added, “And you don’t care about the people of this kingdom.”

“What does that have to do with anything?” she asked in bewilderment.

“It must sound odd given my actions, but I love the people of this land. I want to end this madness and return them to the peace and prosperity they once enjoyed. They don’t matter to you, nor do the people of your homeland, or the residents of Brandish that you’re in the process of saving from invasion. You prize your independence and care for a select few who have earned your respect. This is a job to you, nothing more, and to me it’s far more important than gold.”

Jayden got up and walked over to Suzy. He put his hands on her shoulders. “You must feel insulted by what I’ve said, but you did ask. You deserved an honest answer, no hypocrisy, no hidden feelings. I harbor no ill will if you wish to cancel our arrangement. Now if you’ll excuse me, I’m tired from a long day, so get out of my room and let me get some sleep.”

Jayden led her from his room, shut the door and locked it. Suzy stood in the hallway for a moment before she turned to Dana and asked, “What just happened?”

* * * * *

Dana met Jayden the following morning in the inn’s common room. Gaston served them what might have been food if he’d cooked it right. Dana managed to keep it down with difficulty.

“Last night you gave Suzy a good reason to turn us over to the authorities for the bounty money, or just blow us both up while we slept,” she told him.

Jayden ate his food despite its poor quality. “Any other answer would have made the situation worse. If I had promised her what I had no intention of giving, she would have been even angrier. If I had returned her affections it would have made her believe we had a future together, and with such differing goals it wouldn’t work.”

Gaston walked up to their table and set down a bottle of wine. “The food will go down better with this.”

“And you wonder why you don’t have more customers,” Dana said.

“You try cooking good meals when you can’t get spices,” Gaston said as he left them. “I used to get good supplies from Fish Bait City.”

Jayden poured himself a cup of wine and tasted it. “Passable. In regards to Suzy informing on us, she despises authority figures of any kind. The price on my head is staggering, but claiming it would require her working for men she sees as no different from the ones in her homeland. Her dislike of royalty is so great that I’m surprised she accepted a job from the king of Brandish.”

“He wined me, dined me, and didn’t tax me,” Suzy said as she came into the common room. “I put up with a lot when people are nice to me.”

“I doubt I’ve ever been nice,” Jayden replied as he handed her the bottle.

“You have,” she told him, and took a swig of wine before starting her meal. “Jayden, I won’t pretend I understood half of what you said last night, but making you like someone you don’t is something my parents would do. We’re working together and that’s that. And I’ve never seen you lie to anyone or treat rich people better than poor ones, so you’re owed respect.”

Suzy sat down across from him at the table and fixed him with a stern look. “But tell me this, what happens if you win and the king and queen get killed, imprisoned, exiled, eaten by aardvarks or whatever? Someone’s got to be in charge when they’re gone.”

“I have no desire for the throne,” he told her.

She raised the bottle in a toast. “I’ll drink to that. Being in charge is no different than being in jail. You’re at the mercy of the job, day and night doing what has to be done and never what you want to do. But if you don’t take it someone else will. Men will kill to get the crown, and do worse to anyone they rule. We’re talking a repeat of the civil war your people had. If you get what you want you’ll make things a whole lot worse for everyone living here.”

Dana frowned. “You think people would accept a sorcerer lord as their king?”

“Of course not, that’s my point,” Suzy replied. “Turn down the job and it’s anarchy. Take the job and you’ve got rebels, coups by the army, and assassinations attempts on the hour every hour.”

Jayden sipped his drink before answering. “I never imagined my life would end happily ever after. What you predict may well come to pass. Your worst-case scenario has one advantage over doing nothing, namely only one kingdom would suffer, not four. It is a questionable improvement, I admit, but it limits the damage.”

“You’re smart enough to want more than that,” she told him.

“What I want, for now, is to see the contents of those armored wagons,” he replied. “How soon can to make that happen?”

Suzy set down the bottle. “Tonight. We need to get inside Armorston before the city gates close at sunset. It’s better if we go just before noon. There’s more traffic to cover our entrance, and the guard changes at noon so those men will be tired and hungry after a long shift. They’ll be more likely to let us pass without looking too closely.”

“I want see this hiding place,” Dana told her.

“Easy to do.” Suzy led them outside to where she’d stabled her horses and left her wagon. She opened the back to show countless bags and terracotta jars, some as big as a man. Suzy went to the back of the wagon and pressed a hidden switch, causing two of the larger jars to open and reveal compartments four feet tall and two feet deep.

“Nifty, huh? The tops of the jars have false bottoms and are filled with cooking oil, so if someone reaches down there they won’t get suspicious. You’ve even got hidden eyeholes to look through.”

Dana climbed into the wagon and sat in one of compartments. “Can we open these from the inside if we have to?”

Suzy pointed at a spot near Dana’s foot. “A switch by your left foot opens the door.”

“It will do the job,” Jayden said. “How soon do we leave?”

“Now-ish. I hope you don’t mind sharing that space with Yub. He’s a dear, but people overreact when goblins show up a their door, especially ones with bombs.”

Dana took the grinning goblin onto her lap before Suzy swung the door closed. She heard Suzy say, “Watch your hair,” moments before there was the bang of the other door closing. Dana found the eyeholes Suzy had mentioned and was able to watch the wagon leave the inn behind and go onto the road.

The trip there was more interesting than Dana had expected. She saw many other wagons on the road, plus carriages and men riding horses. Most people going into Armorston brought produce, hay, livestock and other simple goods. Men riding carriages were better dressed, and traffic stopped to let them go through. Dana was surprised by what she didn’t see, for there were no trolls, dwarfs, elves or other races, only humans.

Traffic slowed when they neared the city gate. Bored soldiers went through the motions of searching vehicles and people, but they seldom did more than open a few bags or barrels. When Suzy brought her wagon to the gate the soldiers perked up.

“Morning, boys,” Dana heard Suzy say. She couldn’t see the alchemist through the eyeholes.

“Hey, it’s Lockheart,” a soldier said cheerfully. “Got anything to perk a man up, besides seeing you again?”

Dana rolled her eyes at the cheesy pickup line, but Suzy laughed. “I’ve got a bottle of what an innkeeper called wine. It’s half done, but if you don’t mind leftovers it’s yours.”

“I don’t turn down alcohol.” A soldier reached up past the eyeholes and came back into view with a bottle. More guards checked the back of the wagon, but they didn’t search it long. Dana saw soldiers pass around the bottle until it was empty and toss it into the snow. “Go on, ma’am, but you’ll need a permanent residency pass soon.”

“No need for that when I’ll be leaving soon,” Suzy told him.

“That’s a crying shame,” the soldier said before waving her on. “The kingdom needs more pretty girls.”

They went into the more protected areas of the city, and what little Dana could see through the eyeholes proved that Jayden hadn’t exaggerated about Armorston’s weapons manufacturing. The wagon rolled by five large blacksmith shops with many men working at each of them. Firewood and charcoal were stacked up to fuel the forges. Large wagons with reinforced axels brought in iron ore, and armed men carried out swords, spears, axes, arrowheads and maces. The air stunk from so many fires, and it hurt Dana’s eyes and made her nose itch. Yub stayed quiet on her lap and read papers covered in strange formulas.

The wagon rolled through the streets for hours. Suzy received friendly greetings in some quarters and was barely tolerated in others. Soldiers urged her to leave whenever she neared a military post or government building like a jail or courthouse. Dana saw the same agitator from yesterday spinning his lies for a new audience. Eventually night fell and traffic dwindled as the streets emptied of foot traffic, carts and animals. Once they were alone, Suzy turned the wagon down an alley to a street filled with artisans such as surgeons and barbers who advertised their shops with colorful signs.

Suzy stopped her wagon next to a large stone building with its door shut and windows shuttered. “This is the place.”

“Halt!” Dana tensed at the shout. She saw two spearmen wearing winter coats over their chain armor approach the front of the wagon. “Traffic is prohibited on this road.”

“Hey, boys,” Suzy greeted them. “I’ve got a pass for this part of town. I’m supposed to bring your alchemist fresh supplies.”

Suzy showed them her papers, which they took one look at before glaring at her. “Your permits aren’t valid after dark.”

“I’ve come here at night plenty of times,” she protested.

A spearman shoved her papers into a coat pocket. “New regulations took effect yesterday. No travel after dark for citizens or visitors without military permission and armed escorts.”

“No one said anything about new rules when I came here today!”

“It’s your responsibility to keep up with regulations, not ours to inform you. Step off the wagon.”

Dana heard Suzy grumble and the sound of coins jingling. “I’m sure we can work this out.”

Both spearmen approached the wagon with their weapons raised. “You may have bribed soldiers in other cities, but not here. Step off the wagon now, ma’am, and keep your hands where we can see them.”

Suzy gave them a dramatic sigh, and then giggled. “Jayden, be a dear.”

The soldiers looked puzzled by her sudden change of mood. Their confusion ended abruptly when a black clawed hand as big as a man punched one man and then slapped the other to the ground. One spearman maintained consciousness and opened his mouth to scream. Another punch from the giant hand came before he could cry out a warning.

“Ooh, that’s a new one,” Suzy said as the giant hand dissolved. “I love watching you work.”

Jayden and Dana opened the secret compartments and got off the wagon. Suzy brought out rope from inside the wagon, and they tied up the soldiers before stuffing them into the secret compartments. Once that was done they studied the door. Jayden frowned and said, “Oak boards bound in iron, locked and likely barred. The owner values his privacy. Are there more defenses inside?”

Suzy took a small bottle from her coat and pulled her arm back to throw it. “Not that I saw.”

Jayden saw what she was doing and grabbed her arm. “A bomb? Are you trying to draw attention to us?”

“That happened when we beat up those guards. Their officers will notice when they don’t come back. After that we’re looking at an armed response by hundreds of soldiers. So, new plan, smash and grab.”

Dana drew her sword and walked up to the door. “I can do this fast and quiet.”

Suzy put her bomb away and watched Dana cut off the lock on the door with her sword. There were some sparks as the sword sliced through the iron bands on the door, but the light seemed to go unnoticed. She had to cut through an iron bar on the other side of the door. Once she had it open they went inside.

Suzy took the lead as they went through the alchemist’s shop. She took a glass tube from her belongings and shook it, making it produce a bright green light that lit up the building interior. There was a large counter running across the room, and behind it a dizzying array of bottles, vials, pots and jars filled with the most bizarre things Dana had ever seen. Dana winced when she saw a glass jar filled with pickled lizards.

“Ignore that,” Suzy said as she jumped behind the counter. “Those are props to make him look mysterious. He keeps legitimate ingredients back here…or he used to.”

“What?” Jayden asked. He and Dana went around the counter to find row after row of drawers. Suzy pulled them out one after and other and dropped them on the floor, each one empty. Only three drawers had pouches of ingredients, which Suzy took. “Where are the materials you need?”

“Kind of wondering that myself,” she said. Two doors were behind the counter. Suzy opened one and went inside. “This might take a bit. Yub, watch the door for trouble. Dana, be a dear and check the other room.”

Jayden went to the door and stood guard. “Could the alchemist have become suspicious of you and moved his stock?”

Suzy threw papers and clothes out of the room she was in and left them in a pile on the floor. “Last time I saw him, he invited me back and said he hoped we could have a long and productive relationship, the old lecher.”

Dana tried the second door and found it locked. It took her seconds to cut the lock off the door. She opened it and peered inside. Suzy had taken the light with her, so it was hard to see inside the room, but she could make out some things.

“Suzy, what would your bomb look like when it’s done?” Dana asked.

There were thuds and cursing as Suzy continued her search. “About three feet long, a foot thick, iron casing, knobs and a plunger to set the explosion.”

Dana backed out of the room. “That sounds about right, but this one is a bit thicker.”

Jayden and Suzy ran to her side. Suzy lifted her strange light producing tube to illuminate the room. There was a large table covered in empty bottles, dirty spoons, a mortar and pestle, stacks of paperwork and one enormous bomb. The black iron casing was rough and pebbly. The controls were made of wood and recessed into the casing. It looked unworldly, and somehow menacing.

Suzy pushed past the others and stuck the end of her light producing tube into her mouth so she could go through the paperwork with both hands. Jayden followed her and marveled at the bomb.

“This would explain where the alchemist’s stock went,” he said. “Producing this monstrosity must have exhausted his supplies.”

“Why would he make this?” Dana demanded.

“Mmm hmm hmm hmm,” Suzy said. Dana took the tube out of her mouth and held it overhead. “Thank you. The paperwork says this is a Class X Incendiary Device, made on orders from, Jayden, say it with me.”

“The king and queen,” Jayden growled.

“Clever boy.” Suzy held up a contract with a royal seal on the bottom. “He was hired to make his bomb a month ago. It looks like it took weeks to get the materials brought in. Once that was done he only needed days to throw it together.”

“How dangerous is it?” Dana asked.

Suzy went through the papers until she came up with a diagram. “My bomb would have gone off with one big boom. This one has fifty little bombs filled with powdered phoenix blossoms and drops of etherium. A small charge inside would blow open the outer casing, another charge would scatter the smaller bombs, and those would go off like fireballs twenty feet across.”

Dana’s jaw dropped. “You could burn down half a city!”

“Why stop at half?” Jayden asked. “Buildings in most cities are built one against the other, the wood dry and easily ignited. A fire could spread quickly from one building to the next until an entire city burned. It would be equally effective against an army with tightly packed ranks of soldiers.”

Suzy tapped a finger on a paper filled with strange symbols. “Phoenix blossoms are high in phosphorous. Liquefy it, purify it, and it turns white and burns really hot and makes lots of smoke, toxic if breathed in. Putting it out with water would be hard unless you totally submerged it. This bomb uses a lot of phoenix blossoms and can throw it far. The fires would be impossible to stop.”

“So he had all the stuff you needed for a bomb because he was going to build a bomb,” Dana said.

Jayden ran a hand over the bomb. “And he indeed built it. I can only imagine how the king and queen could use this weapon. Suzy, can you disable it and retrieve the materials you need?”

“That’s a hard no.” Suzy dropped the papers on the floor and took back her light tube from Dana. “The phoenix blossoms chemically reacted with the etherium to make it even more dangerous. It’s basically looking for an excuse to go off. I can’t reverse the reaction. It would explode if I even tried.”

“And this guy built it inside a city,” Dan said. She was in awe of the man’s stupidity. “What do we do with it?”

They saw Yub scamper in and point behind him, where a crowd of spearmen ran to the building’s door. An older man with thinning hair and dressed in a bathrobe and slippers led the group. The old man gasped and pointed at Suzy.

“You! You thieving wench! I should have known you were up to no good!”

Suzy smiled at him. “You really should have.”

Jayden stepped in front of her and cast a spell to form his black sword. “Gentlemen, and I use that term loosely, you can only attack us one at a time through that doorway, at least until it fills up with bodies. Allow us to leave in peace and you avoid needless casualties.”

One of the spearmen stepped to the front of the group. “You can’t stop us all! Come on, men, this man is a threat to the entire kingdom!”

The brave soldier took two steps forward and stopped when he realized the other spearmen weren’t following him. The soldier slapped a hand over his face and announced, “Whoever kills him gets the bounty money, tax free.”

“That’s more like it!” another spearman shouted. He ran forward with a dozen more men behind him.

“No one listens to reason,” Jayden said as the men charged him. He hacked two spears in half and dodged two more. That was enough to open the doorway for spearmen to pile into the room, a mistake when their long weapons were poorly suited to such tight quarters. Soldiers pushed up against each other, trying to bring their weapons to bear as Jayden cut spears to pieces.

Suzy giggled as she climbed onto the counter and pulled bombs from inside her coat pockets. She threw them with wild abandon into the packed soldiers, and was rewarded with screams of fear and pain as the bombs went off. Spearmen were thrown about, and many who weren’t hurt fell back to avoid her next attack. Yub joined her and threw more bombs into the fray, adding to the chaos and confusion.

Dana screamed when soldiers burst through the store’s windows. These men handed off their spears to other soldiers and drew swords before climbing inside. With Jayden and Suzy busy, Dana drew her sword and ran over to hold them off. One soldier swung his sword at her head, and she raised her sword to block the attack. There was a shower of sparks as her sword sliced through the soldier’s blade.

The soldier stared at her in horror, finally saying, “I’m still making payment on that!”

Dana put her left hand over her mouth. “Sorry!”

“Don’t apologize to the man trying to kill you!” Jayden shouted.

“Get help!” a soldier shouted. Soldiers outside blew whistles to attract reinforcements. Dana heard people running down the street toward them. She hadn’t seen other exits in the alchemist’s shop besides the front door, now choked with soldiers. Jayden and Suzy couldn’t keep them back forever. Dana wondered if there were wizards or more alchemists in a city this large who could back up the soldiers.

Suzy put a hand on Dana’s shoulder. “I’ve got an idea. Come with me.”

Dana, Jayden, Suzy and Yub fell back to the room with the completed bomb, fighting off soldiers the entire way. Jayden and Dana held back the horde of soldiers while Suzy climbed onto the table holding the bomb. Dana was fighting for her life, cutting apart swords and spears jabbed at her. She didn’t see what happened next until it was too late.

“Gentlemen!” Suzy shouted. The soldiers kept pushing forward regardless of her shout. Suzy threw bombs into the packed soldiers, injuring several and forcing the rest back. It ended the fight briefly, long enough for Suzy to yelled, “May I have your attention, please! This shop contains a firebomb large enough to at a bare minimum destroy the entire block. Anyone standing near it will die horribly when that happens. Is the alchemist nearby? Come on, don’t be shy.”

The older man in his bathrobe slipped between the packed soldiers. Suzy pointed at the bomb and asked, “Would you tell these nice people what I’ve done?”

The man’s face turned white. He trembled and his jaw dropped. “Y-you, you fool, you’ve armed it!”

Suzy smiled, a deranged grin that suggested a total lack of self-preservation. “That’s right, it’s going to go off. If we don’t get away, nobody gets away. So make your peace with God, because we’re all going to meet Him.”

The alchemist asked, “What time did you set it to explode?”

The room was silent. Soldiers stared in terror at the bomb. Suzy looked curious at best before saying, “Hmm, now-ish?”

Soldiers screamed and ran away. Dana threw herself to the floor. She knew it wouldn’t save her, but there was no way she could escape before the bomb went off. For long seconds she stayed down, her arms covering her head. Then Jayden tapped her on the shoulder and helped her up.

“What, why aren’t we dead?” Dana asked.

“I set the bomb to go off in five minutes,” Suzy said. She burst out giggling like it was a grand joke.

Dana yelled, “I thought I was going to die!”

“That was the point, dear,” Suzy told her.

Dana looked at Jayden. “You didn’t take cover. How did you know she was lying?”

“I don’t believe anything she says,” Jayden said. “Come on, the soldiers will return when nothing explodes.”

Suzy bent down over the bomb and began tinkering with it. “Give me just a minute to shut it off. Hmm. Jayden, grab the metal tab here, yes, that’s the one, and pull hard. Harder. Oh dearie.”

“Oh dearie what?” Jayden demanded.

“A metal panel slid over the controls after I set the bomb,” Suzy explained. “It’s not coming off. I think it’s a safeguard to make sure no one disarms the bomb after it’s been set. We’ve got five minutes until it goes off like an angry dragon.”

“You set a bomb you can’t defuse?” Jayden demanded.

Suzy shrugged. “It was this or fight our way out through a hundred men. We aren’t that good.”

Dana ran to the bomb. “I can cut off the metal panel.”

Jayden grabbed her arm before she got close to it. “Your sword produces sparks when it cuts through metal and would set it off.”

Suzy took Yub by the hand and headed for the door. “Five minutes is enough time to get out of here.”

Jayden didn’t budge. “Us, but no one else. Armorston would be destroyed, and countless lives lost with it.”

Suzy told him. “The best we can do is help some residents evacuate.”

“As angry as I am with these people, I won’t condemn them to death.”

Dana’s mind raced as she tried to come up with a solution. The bomb was massively destructive, and Armorston was so large they’d never get it outside the city walls before it went off. Even if they did, there were many houses and shops outside the walls that would be destroyed. There wasn’t a river or chasm to throw the bomb in, either. What was left?

“Sewers!” Dana shouted. That earned her confused looks from the others. “Jayden, we saw sewers flowing out of the city. That means water, maybe enough to smother the fire. Pick the bomb up with your magic hand spell and dump it down a sewer entrance.”

“The nearest entrance big enough to use is three blocks away,” Suzy said.

“Take us there on your wagon.”

Jayden recast the spell to form his magic hand and picked up the bomb. He carried it outside and mounted the wagon. Dana helped Yub into the back while Suzy snapped the reins and sent the horses racing down the street.

The streets weren’t empty at this late hour. A crowd of soldiers was running from the alchemist’s shop, and their panic doubled when they saw the bomb coming towards them. Fresh screams erupted from the soldiers as they fled in all directions.

“There they are!” a man cried out behind the wagon. “Get them!”

Dana saw a crowd of over a hundred soldiers and five knights on horseback coming from behind them. For a second she wondered why they weren’t running for their lives, but then she remembered soldiers had blown whistles at the alchemist’s shop. These men must have come in response and decided to chase the most obvious target, a wagon racing through the streets at night.

“Trouble behind us!” Dana yelled.

“Busy,” Jayden replied. He was focused on keeping his magic hand moving ahead of them and couldn’t help.

“Sweetie, there’s a big red bag next to you,” Suzy said as she drove the horses on. “Throw everything in there.”

Dana reached into the bag and pulled out two terracotta bottles sealed with wax. She threw them at the soldiers and was rewarded with twin explosions that sent men flying. Yub handed her more bombs to throw. She lobbed one after another, thinning the ranks of pursuing soldiers.

“Don’t be stingy,” Suzy called out. “They’re meant to be used.”

A knight rode up alongside the wagon and swung his sword at Dana. She parried the blade with her sword, cutting off the last five inches of the knight’s blade. Another knight tried to attack her. She grabbed a bomb with her left hand and threw it in front of the knight. The explosion spooked the knight’s horse so badly that it reared up and threw the knight off its back.

The wagon took a sharp turn and came to a stop next to an iron door set into the street. Suzy pointed at it and said, “That’s an access to the sewers for workers. Good news is it’s big enough to fit the bomb. Bad news is it’s locked.”

“Got it!” Dana yelled. She jumped off the wagon and hacked at the iron door with her sword. Sparks flew high into the air as she cut through the door until severed pieces splashed down into the sewer water below.

She stepped back as Jayden’s magic hand slipped the bomb into the hole. They heard a reassuring splash and saw water shoot up like a geyser. Soldiers and knights caught up and surrounded them, drawn sword around them like a circle of steel. No one moved. For five seconds the stalemate held, ending when the bomb went off.

The explosion sounded weird to Dana. Water muffled the blast, but the sewer walls made the sound echo. Bright light poured up from the hole, followed by foul smelling white gas. Narrow sewer grates along the street lit up as fire spread through the sewer. The heat was so great that Dana could feel it radiating up through the street and the soles of her boots. Soldiers cried out in confusion and fled. Then the street began to sag.

“You said water would smother the fire,” Dana said.

“If there’s enough to submerge it, yes,” Suzy replied. The street trembled and sunk further. “Construction standards are really low around here.”

“Run for your lives!” Jayden yelled, a warning the soldiers were happy to take. He helped Dana onto the wagon as Suzy snapped the reins. The wagon shot down the street with men fleeing alongside it. Dana looked behind them to see a huge section of the street sink into the ground. Fires burned brightly in the newly formed chasm, and smoke rose in billowing clouds. The chasm grew as more of the street collapsed from the intense heat.

“Ride faster!” Jayden shouted. He used his magic hand to batter aside a carriage parked across the street and then a stack of crates piled up in their way.

The wagon shot down the street at breakneck speeds. Dana saw fire consume more of the sewers and streets above them, but the blaze stayed contained in the chasms it made. She looked ahead to see a closed city gate in front of them. Suzy slowed the wagon, giving Jayden enough time to batter the gate with his magic hand again and again until it came off its hinges. The wagon rode on through the outer sections of the city until it came to a stop miles from Armorston.

Dana, Jayden, Suzy and Yub climbed off the wagon and looked at the devastation behind them. Barred sewer outlets poured out flames floating on the surface of the water. Fires inside Armorston were limited to the sewer network and spared the rest of the city. Panicked crowds fled the disaster but weren’t in immediate danger.

“Oh, oh wow,” Dana said.

“I knew it,” Jayden said. “I knew something would happen. I worked with Lockheart once and it went disastrously wrong. I was a fool to think it could end otherwise! This mission failed in every possible way. I didn’t get close enough to see what those wagons had brought into Armorston, and we didn’t get the bomb ingredients to save Brandish.”

Dana took him by the arm. “Jayden, this isn’t her fault. She didn’t make a huge bomb inside a city.”

Jayden broke free of her grip. “She set the blasted thing off! I can’t imagine who else I’d blame for this. No, I take that back. I blame myself. I should have had the common sense to look for another way in without Suzy ‘the walking disaster’ Lockheart!”

“At least the king and queen don’t have that huge bomb anymore,” Dana told him. “They must be out a lot of money, too.”

“For once in my life they’re not who I’m angry at!”

Dana went to Suzy. The alchemist stared at the city and the screaming crowds of people. She seemed stunned by the damage they’d done. Desperate to console her, Dana said, “Suzy, he doesn’t mean that.”

Suzy turned to face Jayden, not Dana. For a second Suzy’s expression was unreadable. Then she screamed, “Best date ever!” before lunging into Jayden’s arms and passionately kissing him.