Read Online Delusion by Laura L. Sullivan - Free Book Online

is only a commoner, and somehow she can see us. She can cross the divide!”
    “Silence! The only saving grace is that you failed. I do not know what shames me more—that you attempted the taboo magic, or that your powers were not equal to it. Perhaps we were too hasty in advancing you from journeyman. Arden, you are henceforth in durance, and forbidden to draw from the earth until we have decided your punishment.”
    Phil smiled. This distinguished old bloke was evidently in charge and was putting that Arden fellow properly in his place. She didn’t understand half of it, but any minute now the gentleman would apologize, and to make it up to her, he’d be obligated to help with the Home Guard.
    “Will you fuddle her at once, Headmaster?” one of the plump men asked in a stage whisper.
    “I shall, and she’ll be quickly on her way, none the wiser.” He looked steadily at Phil for a moment until she felt uncomfortable. Again, the air grew heavy with translucent color, and she blinked heavily in the intense sunlight, wondering what on earth was wrong with her eyes.
    “It’s men we need, and weapons, too. Or money, I suppose. Sir? You have been a soldier, sir?” The stiffness of his spine and an intensity in his eyes made her certain.
    He flicked a disdainful glance at Arden, then spread his fingers parallel to the ground and assumed a look of intense concentration. After a moment he stopped with a sigh. “Not a single thing. She should be bound with all the force of the Essence—but nothing. The power is here, in me, but it has no effect on her.” The other men looked frightened, but the old gentleman only said, “Curious.”
    “I knew my magic wasn’t faulty!” Arden said, and Headmaster Rudyard frowned him into silence.
    He addressed Phil at last. “As for you, my lady, will you come with me?” He held out his arm.
    Phil had scarcely been listening to their conversation. She saw herself facing down a troop of German invaders, so well equipped that they surrendered on sight. She placed her hand in the crook of his arm and marched through that writhing Eden of vines and flowers toward Stour Manor as proudly as if she were taking her third curtain call after a death-defying escape.
Some men,
she thought,
know how to treat a visitor—and a lady.
    As she passed, she surreptitiously stuck her tongue out at Arden and mouthed, “Beast!”
    She was not quite so pleased when, at the great arched entrance, a half-dozen men in the oddest assortment of clothes seized her and carried her off, kicking, clawing, and cursing like a sailor, to a dark room, where they bound her hand and foot with hemp ropes and tossed her onto a chaise.
    She felt slightly better when Arden was brought into the room, too, where he submitted to being tied to a chair.
    Her mood improved considerably when she let her breath out and found that the ropes were just slack enough to work with. The considerate men had bound her hands behind her, so it was easy enough to reach the tiny pocket she had sewn into the back waistband of every garment she owned—a sensible precaution for a girl who makes her living by letting herself be tied up. She bypassed the handcuff key and the two slivers of metal, pointed at one end, cocked at the other, and plucked out the razor blade.
    And when she was free and her eyes had fully adjusted to the gloom, she was practically ecstatic, for the fools had locked her in a sort of armory. Amid heads and horns and stuffed beasts hung fowling pieces and rifles and impossibly long-barreled muskets, all quite old but clean and oiled. There were swords and daggers, pikes and flails—all manner of deadly, pointy things. She shrugged off the ropes, snatched up the deadliest, pointiest thing she could find—a curved Rajput tulwar sword—and pressed the tip to Arden’s throat before he could think to call for help. She looked as if she’d done it a hundred times before. She hadn’t. She’d done it a thousand times at