All Spell Breaks Loose by Lisa Shearin

way. Their armor wasn’t bad and their weapons were slightly better, but it all looked like they’d used what they’d found or taken. Uncle Ryn’s and Phaelan’s crews operated the same way. But these people weren’t pirates. Some of them had the look of experienced fighters; the others held themselves and their weapons like staging an ambush was relatively new to them. They outnumbered us, though surprise had been their only advantage, but it had worked well enough. The cave floor littered with dead Khrynsani was proof of that.
    However, at least six of them were mages. Good ones. Without my magic, I couldn’t sense their power, but I didn’t need to sense it when I could see it with my own two eyes. Experienced mages often left a hazy shimmer behind for a few moments after they’d worked some form of magic, whether defensive wards or offensive spells. Mychael and Tam could take this group on, and probably take them out, but their level of battlemagic combined with enclosed spaces would have fatally unintended results. Carnades’s possible contribution didn’t even enter into the picture. If the spells started flying, the only side Carnades would be on was his own.
    Tam’s brother reached up with the hand not holding the crossbow and pushed back his hood. Oh yeah, he was Tam’sbrother, no doubt of that. He wore his black hair long, and, like his brother’s, it was tightly bound down his back in a goblin battle braid. He looked slightly younger, and his features were a little sharper than Tam’s, but they’d be no less swoon inducing to the general female population.
    Tam was utterly, preternaturally still. “What are you—”
    “Doing here?” his brother finished. “It looks like we’re pulling your ass out of a very large fire.” The goblin paused, his expression card-shark blank. “Or did we interrupt a business meeting?”
    “Business?” Tam hissed. He gave a sharp kick to the Khrynsani corpse at his feet that had died by his hand. I had to wonder if Tam would’ve preferred it if his boot had connected with his brother instead. “How dare you imply that—”
    The goblin shrugged. “Well, you might not be who you say you are.”
    “What?”
    “You might not be who—”
    “I heard what you said,” Tam snapped.
    Talon was standing right behind me. I heard him draw breath to make his own contribution, and I reached back and pinched the hell out of whatever skin I could latch onto. Talon squeaked, but then he did exactly what I’d intended—kept that mouth of his shut and didn’t give his dad any more trouble than he might already have.
    I didn’t know the circumstances behind this tit for tat, but I’d seen Phaelan and his brothers engage in it often enough that I knew where it was going. Phaelan and one brother or the other usually ended up on the ground in a messy wrestling match. Tam and his brother were both heavily armed, and Tam was heavily magicked. This would just be messy.
    Anyone who ambushed and killed Khrynsani waiting to ambush and kill us might not be our friends, but I couldn’t see them being our enemies. Just about the last thing I thought we’d be doing was standing in a damp cave withdead Khrynsani while Tam and his brother engaged in some kind of alpha male sibling rivalry.
    Tam’s brother shrugged. “You were recently possessed by Sarad Nukpana. You let Raine Benares over there kill you rather than stay that way.” He made a sound that was somewhere between a snort and a laugh without the humor. “You getting yourself possessed by someone else wouldn’t be the strangest thing I’ve seen this week. And a possessed man certainly wouldn’t hesitate to kill a few of his lackeys to make a disguise more believable.” He paused meaningfully. “I need proof that you’re my brother.”
    Just proof? That didn’t sound like a man about to kill his brother out of rage or vengeance. Maybe Tam hadn’t pissed him off after all. That’d be a pleasant surprise. I bit