Makun watched the hand come toward him. With his awakened sight he could see dark energy coiling around the fingers like smoke, dense and hungry. He stepped back, not knowing what else to do, and he was far too slow. The man had walked the Mystic way, and his body moved faster than any ordinary person's, practiced and efficient.
Clack.
Cold fingers closed around Makun's throat, not crushing, but controlling him completely.
Once again Makun felt powerless. It was different from the presence. She had been something beyond comprehension, a scale of power he couldn't even measure. This man was human, and Makun had spent years learning how to deal with humans.
He had trained in grappling, chokes and basic self-defense, everything he could pick up to get himself out of bad situations, and that training had saved him more than once: the drunk who cornered him outside a convenience store two years ago, the group that tried to take his phone last spring, the creep who followed him home from the bus stop. He was proud of it, proud of the discipline and the hours of drilling until the movements became instinct. It had kept him alive when his luck failed.
However, against someone who walked the Mystic way, it meant nothing.
The man lifted him until his toes scraped the cobblestones, the book pressed tight against his chest. "Give me the book," he said, low and controlled. "Or be dealt with."
Makun's lungs burned, and the edges of his vision blurred. But he couldn't let go. This book was his way forward. "Over my dead body," he spat.
Over the man's shoulder, through the blur at the edge of his vision, he could see the veiled woman. She hadn't moved from her blanket. Her fan lay closed in her lap, and she was watching him choke.
The man's eyes narrowed behind their red glow, as if surprised that someone so weak could be so stubborn. "Then that's the fate you chose."
His left fist filled with energy, and this time Makun could see it clearly, spiritual particles compressed into something dense and solid, something that could break bones. The fist drew back, aimed at his stomach: one blow to knock him out and loosen his grip on the book. Makun held on harder, until the corners dug into his ribs and his knuckles went white.
The blow never came. Behind the man, the veiled woman rose in one fluid motion, and the fan in her hand snapped open, a beautiful Chinese fan painted with symbols that seemed to move in the lamplight. She flicked her wrist once. The air cracked like a whip, the grip on Makun's throat was simply gone, and the man was launched off his feet as if a gust of wind had picked him up and thrown him away. He crashed into a stall ten feet away in a burst of splintered wood and scattered goods.
Makun dropped to the cobblestones and his knees buckled. Through watering eyes he looked up at her. She was already closing the fan again, as calm as if she had brushed away a fly.
She had sat there with that fan in her lap and watched him choke, and Makun understood why. She had been weighing him, waiting to see whether he could save himself, whether he was really what he had whispered he was. Only once it was clear he couldn't had she decided he was still worth more to her alive.
Makun had counted on exactly that. It was why he had whispered to her in the first place. Without her, with his luck, he might as well have tripped over something and died, and the man would have taken the book from his body.
The man on the ground stared at her, bewildered. He must have expected her to step in, but not with that kind of strength, and Makun watched him take it in and understand why she had brushed off a third-grade Adept's root as if it were nothing. Yet he didn't give up. He rose slowly, brushed the splinters from his coat and began to mutter in a language Makun didn't recognize. The air around him thickened as the particles streamed toward him like iron filings to a magnet.
The veiled woman watched him and scoffed. Then she turned to Makun. "Come and stand next to me."
Makun didn't think. He scrambled up and stumbled to her side, his throat aching and his hands still shaking, but moving.
The man finished his chant. Energy exploded around him in a flare of red light, the cobblestones cracked beneath his feet, and he launched himself forward. He wasn't running; he was flying, his body blurring and leaving afterimages in the air. The veiled woman raised her fan as he closed the distance in seconds, his fist still charged with that dense energy and aimed straight at her face.