The crowd recoiled from Markus' blade like a sucking tide. Several glasses dropped and shattered and at least one woman fainted dead away. Calliope wove her fingers in a complicated pattern in front of her face and the iron window awning began to twist and groan, growing over the windows and sprouting thorns of bright sharp iron that barred any escape. One man ran at the closing aperture and tried to dive through. One of the metal vines snapped down and wrapped around his leg. The man screamed as several other vines joined it, ripping and tearing the victim in a shower of blood and gristle. The wet ruin dropped outside the window and the vines resumed their places, gleaming with bright blood. Several people vomited but the net affect was a contraction towards the center of the room, the aristocrats piling up in a terrified knot at the center of the ball room, each trying to stay as far away from the windows and their deadly guardians as they could.


"Was that really necessary?" Markus asked in a low whisper. Calliope shrugged her shoulders.

"I'm not a damned gardener," she replied a touch pevishly, the spell having put considerable strain on her, even more so now the vines had tasted blood. They rattled and hissed against the windows but she kept them in place with force of will.

"You'll never get away with this!" a puddy man in puce livery blustered.

"You might be right, if the Governer decided to set fire to the building he could kill the lot of us in one go," Calliope admitted. She cocked her head as though considering.

"Of course, that would mean cooking the lot of you like so many roast chickens too."