Page 98 of Hijack the Seas: Seismic

“He didn’t.”

Well, I suppose that was understandable. He thought you were going to stay with him, didn’t he? But that was before he went through the portal to that other place. What was the name again?

“Jotunheim.” I felt the usual hand around my throat whenever I thought about it.

You’ll see him again, Radu told me kindly. We both will.

“You sound sure.”

It’s Mircea, the shrug was in his voice as well as on his shoulders. Now, don’t you think you should get that ring to the mage?

“How?” I asked, and it was a question. Even with the help of Radu’s height, I couldn’t see anything over the crowd or much ahead of us except for the swath carved by Alphonse’s viciousness.

Which had just been joined by that of someone else.

A bunch of people were abruptly raised into the air and tossed aside like Moses carving a path through the Red Sea. An invisible path that people washed up against on both sides in a working mass of limbs and furious faces but didn’t break through. Maybe because this path led to a witch who specialized in shields—and fury.

I wondered briefly what Enid looked like when she wasn’t pissed off and if I would ever find out.

Not today, it seemed.

“Where have you been?” she demanded, screeching loudly enough in my face that I had no trouble hearing her, even through the sustained trumpet blast deafening everyone in sight.

“Trying to find Pritkin,” I yelled back. “Where is he?”

“There!” she screamed and pointed to where the riders on their strange mounts were circling the middle of the pond like rubber duckies around a drain.

It must have been a really big drain because, suddenly, there were fewer of them, as several popped out of sight. I could see them briefly under the water’s surface, like vague, rippling shadows, for a moment, and then even that much vanished. And they didn’t come back up again.

“What happened?” I asked, grabbing Enid as Radu let me down. “Where did they go?”

“To the race! But they’re not alone! The Queen’s Guard went too, supposedly for security—”

Yeah, the security of their master, I thought furiously, catching sight of some of the purple-haired assholes.

Enid kept talking, and from her expression she was thinking the same thing I was. But I couldn’t hear her because the damned horn sounded again, drowning her out. And giving me a migraine because we were almost on top of one of the trumpeters.

But several more riders had just disappeared, and they were all speeding up. Round and round, like racing in a bathtub, but at every revolution, another one or two vanished from sight, including one of the Queen’s Guard. Leaving no fewer than four more, all jostling for position near Pritkin.

“Grab him!” I said to Enid as the latest blast cut out. “Don’t let him go!”

“I can’t! No one can enter the pool on pain of death save for the challengers—”

“And their crew?” I demanded because some of those strange mounts were carrying two.

“Yes, but—”

“Can you ride?”

She looked at me like I was mad. “What does that have to do with—”

I shook her savagely, which was likely not a wise move considering her hair-trigger temper, but I was past caring. “Can you ride?”

“Yes! But what difference does—”

I held the ring up in front of her eyes. “I need to get this to him if you want him to win or even survive! So, are you with me or not?”

She stared at me wide-eyed. “I—I—I’m a slave. I’m not part of your team—”

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