I felt something crawling on the air around us. I looked toward the house.

The goblin shamans had made no move to join us in the garden. They didn’t need to. I couldn’t hear the words of the spell they were weaving, but I could feel what it was doing. A power was building, and we didn’t want to be here when they released it. It was particularly nasty, and would reduce us to smoldering corpses, if not ashes. I had no intention of being made into mulch for Nigel’s roses. There were faster spells, but from the sound of things, the shamans were going for fun over speed.

I could shield us if I had to. I felt confident in my ability to keep us from being fried, but I felt less certain about being able to damage three Khrynsani shamans. This wasn’t a time for a brawl—this was a time to get the hell out of here. But their spell was reaching its conclusion, so it wasn’t my decision to make.

They didn’t expect to be attacked, so they hadn’t wasted any power shielding themselves. Their magical britches weren’t going to be any farther down than they were right now. I didn’t have to break their spell, just their concentration. My nose had already told me that Nigel’s gardener had been fertilizing today; my eyes discovered he’d graciously left a bucket of said fertilizer for my use and enjoyment.

I could move small objects with my mind. A bucket of manure was a small object.

I tossed the bucket—and its contents—toward the balcony. As far as defensive spells went, it wasn’t powerful, it certainly wasn’t pretty, but it got the job done. At the very least, the goblin shamans were distracted. At the most, they were discouraged from trying to roast us. They also looked like turning me into rose mulch was the nicest thing they wanted to do, but I wasn’t going to stick around and find out for sure.

Lights came on in the windows of the houses next door, and more goblins came over the wall beyond the orchard.