Page 141 of Mud

I flinched. “Actually, rain is not what I need.”

His silver brows shot up. “What do you need, then?”

“A hailstorm.” Lots and lots of hail. “Right over the roundabout at the other end of the street.” Where there were the most birds, Iris help me. Because if a bird died in a hailstorm, it would be ofnatural causes,I was sure of it. Even if magic-made, a storm was still natural, and it was considered a natural disaster by all laws. I’d dealt with damages like this in the IDD. And nobody said what kind of a creature we’d need to bring back. It didn’t have to be a person—Blackfires brought back ravens to make their anchors all the time. Maybe I could figure out a way to do it, too.Withoutmagic.

Without Taland.

My stomach fell all the way to my heels.

“A hailstorm in the middle of the game,” Refiq whispered.

I nodded. “Can you do it?”

A long and heavy silence followed as the halfling looked everywhere around us but saw nothing, lost in his own head. I could see the wheels turning, and I prayed and prayed and nearly pulled my fingers off my hands until he said, “I’ll need a tomorrow, and I make no promises. If it works, tomorrow it will hail over the roundabout. And if it doesn’t, I keep the coin.” He offered me the palm of his hand. “That is my offer.”

Once more I bit my tongue to keep from cursing out loud.

“Do you accept?”

I did.

Chapter 29

Rosabel La Rouge

Present day

As soon as I walked out of Refiq’s shop, I heard the scream. I was reaching for my knives before I knew what I was doing, but just as my hands closed around the handles, I realized that the crowd had gathered right in front of the street that led deeper into Night City.

Whitefire magic was shining brighter than I’d ever seen it do while a woman kneeled in front of someone who wasn’t moving.

Probably someone who had passed out.

Relieved, I let go of my knives as I went closer, sure that a player had fallen unconscious from the lack of food or something, and my first thought was that the Whitefire was helping to pull him out of it.Healinghim.

In moments like this, I kept forgetting what kind of a gamethe Iris Roe was.

When I was close enough to the crowd of both playersand residents, I realized that it was an elf who was on the ground, the side of his head gushing out so much blood it had already created a large red pool on the asphalt. After having searched all those puddles with my hands in the Redfire challenge, I found the sight of so much blood made me want to throw up more than ever before.

But the Whitefire woman wasn’t healing the elf.

No, she was chanting a necromancy spell instead, and soon, the elf’s body began to catch the white flames that were dancing all over it.

He fell,someone whispered.

He was carrying that bucket—said an orc, pointing at the broken asphalt of the sidewalk where a wooden bucket lay empty—and he just fell.

The gods must have taken him, bless his still heart…

Yes, yes, the gods…

But the gods most definitely did not turn the elf’s body to ashes at the whisper of the Whitefire mage. She had enough power to complete the spell as she should, apparently, because the piles of ashes that that elf became blew away with a wind the rest of us couldn’t feel. When they did, something remained on the asphalt, something small and metallic.

Whispers and gasps as we all leaned in to see better, but the Whitefire grabbed it lightning fast, stood up, and started running down the street, deeper into the city.

Her key. She got her key and completed the game already—all because she happened to be in the right place at the right time.

Except…

---