Flux

slaves….” She turned to look at Miner, still flopping uselessly on his side. “It seems to me that you have earned some punishment for that nonsense with the rain, boy, and since I no longer need this slave as a hostage to control you….”
    Akilina waved her hand in Miner’s direction and sang out a few warbling words.
    “No!” Ennek shouted.
    Something inside of Miner broke. It hurt so much he couldn’t even manage to scream. Instead, a sort of burbling sound erupted from his mouth, along with a gout of dark blood.
    “NO!!” Ennek’s cry seemed to come from far away, as Miner’s ears were filled with a rushing sound that reminded him of a great, pounding wave. Miner coughed again, bringing up more blood, thick and coppery in his mouth. His body was trembling, his legs shaking violently in their chains.
    No, wait. It wasn’t him that was shaking—it was the building and the ground beneath it. Akilina staggered and almost fell. Ennek’s brows were drawn together in concentration and his face was paper-white with fury. But his lips were stretched upwards in a grin, a ghastly death’s head smile that didn’t look like Ennek at all. It was as if someone had overlaid another man’s face on his, and Miner recognized that face: it was the Wizard who had first bound Ennek, the Wizard from whom Ennek drew his powers over the earth. Thelius.
    Miner coughed again and the ground shook enough to make Akilina’s house creak in protest. Somewhere something large crashed with a tremendous clatter, and people on the ground began to scream.
    Ennek laughed, and it wasn’t his laugh.
    Miner was hit with the conviction that if Ennek allowed his destructive powers free rein now, he might save his own life but he would be destroyed in the process. That dark thing inside him would take him over for good.
    “En! Stop!” Miner’s cry was syrupy and choked, but it did cause Ennek to focus on him. Ennek’s lip lifted into a snarl that was barely human. There was a terrible wrench and screech of metal. Miner was free—the chains that bound him had broken and dropped away. Miner tried to rise to his feet but only managed to get to his knees. He crawled towards Ennek, feeling the broken thing within him tear and shift so that he almost collapsed with another coughing fit.
    Ennek was free, too. He hoisted himself to his feet and launched himself at Akilina. They both tumbled to the rooftop, each wrapping hands around the other’s neck. Although Ennek was much larger and more muscular, she seemed to be sapping his strength. She rolled them over so she was straddling him. His hands fell weakly away from her, his feet drummed uselessly, and his face began to turn blue.
    Akilina didn’t notice Miner as he crawled a few feet closer, nor as he picked up his knife, which had spilled partway from his bag when the bag fell over. She never saw him as he lurched unsteadily to his feet. She never once glanced his way, not even as he raised the knife and plunged it deeply into her back.

Chapter Nineteen
    h

    M iner moaned and opened his eyes.
    He wasn’t dead. Not unless the afterlife looked like a dirt yard with a stunted tree in one corner.
    Oh gods, and Ennek was there. Just Ennek, without the horrible overlay of Thelius’s face. Ennek was sitting cross-legged beside him, looking absurdly young and a little lost, turning a bloodstained knife over in his hands.
    “En?” Miner croaked.
    Ennek tossed the knife to the side and leaned over to caress Miner’s face. “Mine! No, don’t move. I’m not certain how well…. Gods, Miner, are you all right?”
    Miner did a quick self-inventory. He felt…good, actually. The wet, awful pain in his midsection was gone. So were the aches in the muscles that had been cramped for so long, and the bruising around his wrists and ankles where his struggles had made the cuffs dig in; even the pounding in his head had disappeared.
    “What did you do?” he asked.
    Ennek kept running his fingertips along Miner’s cheekbone as if to reassure himself that Miner was real. “I…I’m not sure. You were…you were dying, Mine. I could feel it. I stopped it.”
    “You healed me.”
    “I…I suppose so.” Ennek looked even more confused than Miner felt. “I’m not sure how. I don’t know how to heal, do I? But I…I reached into your body and I fixed the broken bits.” He laughed in wonderment. “It was as easy as tying a knot.”
    Miner tried to sit up, but Ennek held him down with a