Page 60
“You cut me to the bone, lady,” Eli said, clutching his chest. “Are you implying that I blacken the reputation of wizardry?”
Miranda cocked an eyebrow at his theatrics. “The Rector Spiritualis wouldn’t have sent me out here if you were doing it a benefit, Mr. Monpress. ”
“Ah yes, the great Etmon Banage. ” Eli smiled. “How nice of him to draw the line between good wizard and bad wizard so clearly. Truly a civic-minded man. ”
“Master Banage is twice the wizard you are, thief,” Miranda hissed, leaping to her feet. “How dare you even mention—”
A black blur shot in front of her face, and Miranda flinched as the long, pitted blade of Josef’s sword came into focus an inch from her nose. The swordsman was lounging against the hut with his arm extended, holding the enormous blade between Miranda and Eli with one hand.
“Children,” he said, “not now. ”
Miranda blinked nervously. The sword hung in the air in front of her. This close, she could see the deep gouges from a lifetime of battles that ran like canyons along the blade, though the sword’s surface was like no metal she had ever seen. It was blacker than pot iron, and dull as stone. Its cutting edge was uneven, splashed here and there by a redder darkness, like old blood that could never be scoured off. The blade looked impossibly heavy, but Josef’s arm was firm as an iron beam, and the sword did not once waver in his grip.
His point made, Josef plunged his blade back into the moss beside him and calmly resumed cleaning his knives as though nothing had happened.
Miranda turned to Gin as much to get away from Eli’s triumphant grin as to fix the small bag containing her rings to the rope around his neck.
“I could eat him for you,” Gin growled in her ear, his eyes on the swordsman. “It wouldn’t be any trouble. ”
“No,” Miranda said, adjusting the small bag, her fingers lingering over the familiar shapes outlined through the soft doeskin. “Without you around, we’ll need someone who can look threatening. Besides, he’d probably give you indigestion. ”
“Without me?” Gin snorted. “I’m going with you. ”
“No, you’re not. We’ve been over this. ” Miranda pulled his head down, bringing his orange eyes level with her own. “If there’s one thing we do know about Eli, it’s that he’s a master thief. If he says he can get us in, then I believe him, but even Eli can’t work miracles, and that’s what it would take to sneak your fluffy face past the walls. No, your job is to stay and guard the king. The Powers know he can’t guard himself. ”
Gin glanced over at the king, who was prodding the passed-out guard with his finger, and gave a mighty sigh. “All right,” the dog growled and shuffled over to sit next to Henrith, who looked none too pleased by this turn of events, “but I’ll be listening. ”
“I’ll call if I need you,” she said.
Gin snorted, but left it at that.
“All right,” Eli said. “If the girl and her puppy are finished saying their good-byes, let’s get a move on. ”
Josef nodded and stood up, his ill-fitting armor clanking loudly. Since his outfit didn’t have room for his usual arsenal, he had been forced to make do with a knife in each boot, one behind his neck, and one at his waist. Still, he could almost pass for a normal soldier. Almost, that is, until he ruined the whole look by fastening his black sword across his back with a leather strap.
“You can’t wear that,” Miranda said, pointing at the blade. “What’s the point of wearing disguises if you’re just going to give it away by carrying that monstrosity around? I mean, if I left my rings, surely you can go an hour without your sword?”
Josef looked her straight in the eye and pulled the strap tighter. “If the Heart stays, I stay. ”
“I hate to admit it, but she does have a point,” Eli said, frowning. He went into the cabin and came out a few moments later, carrying a few sticks and a leather sack. “Just a second,” he muttered, laying his materials carefully on the dirt. He kneeled beside them and began to talk in a low, soft voice. Miranda tried to listen, but it was impossible to get close enough to hear what he was saying without making it obvious that that was what she was trying to do. At last, he scooped up the shortest stick and, with a few more words, bent the wood into a circle as easily as one would coil a length of rope.
Miranda watched in amazement as Eli laid the loop of wood and the two remaining straight sticks on top of the leather bag.
Page 61
“When you’re ready,” he said.
No sooner did the words leave his mouth than the bag sat up. With a lively wiggle, the leather sack undid its seam and began wrapping itself around the wood, forming a tube around the two longer sticks. When the leather had wrapped itself as far as it could go, it pulled itself tight, and the thread from the seam stitched itself lengthwise up the edge of the long, leather tube. When it was finished, Eli held up a long, but otherwise perfectly normal-looking, spear quiver, the exact size and shape to hide the Heart of War.
Eli thanked the quiver several times before handing it to Josef, who slid his sword into the leather with his own nod of thanks.
“How did you…” Miranda pointed a limp finger at the quiver that had been three sticks and a bag less than a minute ago.
“Easy enough,” Eli said. “I’ve had the bag for a while. He always had higher ambitions than luggage, so he was happy to help. The sticks were greenwood, and they love any chance to move around a bit before they dry brittle. ” He walked over to Josef and examined his handiwork. “It’s too bad we don’t have any spears to really complete the effect. ”
He kept talking, but Miranda’s mind was too dumbfounded to make sense of it. She was still processing the enormous list of impossible things she’d just watched him do like it was nothing, like he did this every day. Talking to trees was one thing, but to make something new, just by talking, it was unbelievable. Not even the great shaper wizards could craft spirits without opening their own souls at least a little. This was like the wood and leather had decided to do him a favor, just because he asked. If she’d tried to do something like that without getting one of her servants to act as a middleman, the wood would have ignored her completely. Yet it did what Eli asked joyfully, as if he were the one who needed impressing, and not the other way around. She watched Eli as he talked, his long hands moving in elegant circles, and, not for the first time, Miranda caught herself wondering just what he really was.
“Are you feeling all right?”
Miranda jumped. Eli was looking at her quizzically. “You were staring and not listening. ”
“It’s nothing,” Miranda muttered, fighting down her blush at being caught. “Let’s just get going. ”
Eli shrugged and turned to follow Josef as he led the way toward the castle. Nico joined them at the edge of the clearing, fading out of the woods like a ghost. Miranda jumped when she saw the girl, half because of her sudden appearance, and half because she hadn’t noticed Nico was missing in the first place. Then she realized that Nico didn’t have a disguise.
“Wait, doesn’t she need—”
“No,” Nico said, without stopping or looking back.
Gin padded back over to her, his eyes on the girl. “Watch yourself,” he growled, “and don’t forget what she is. Demons can’t be trusted. ”
“Duly noted,” Miranda said, and she gave his fur a final ruffle before jogging into the forest after Eli and the others.
Though they were only half a mile from the city, it took over an hour to reach the wall. This was mostly because Josef led them in a crazy zigzag through the brush. They crossed back over their path more than once, and he insisted on keeping to the tall undergrowth and away from the game trails, so that with every other step Miranda had to beat back a branch or untangle her skirt from a nettle bush. To make things worse, Eli stopped every five minutes or so to murmur quietly to this tree or that rock. She made it a point
to listen covertly, but so far as she could tell, his little talks were of the most mundane kind, an exchange of pleasantries, maybe a comment about the weather, like a country wife chatting with her neighbors. As he talked, he would do them little favors, flicking an ant away or scraping some moss off the peak of a rock so it could feel the sunlight. That was strange enough, but the truly amazing thing was the way the sleepy spirits perked up as soon as he spoke to them. Miranda could almost feel them leaning forward, eager to tell him anything he wanted to know. Whatever brightness Gin had been talking about, it seemed to have a universal effect.
Miranda expected Josef to complain about the seemingly meaningless stops, but he accepted Eli’s little chats with bored inertness, as if he had long since argued every point of the process five times over and couldn’t be bothered to care anymore.
At last, they had reached the edge of the forest, where the king’s deer park met the city’s northern border. The trees ended a good twenty feet from the wall, leaving a broad swath of open ground carpeted with overgrown grass and saplings. Josef made them crouch in the scrubby bushes at the edge of the clearing as he scouted ahead. While they were waiting for the swordsman to come back, Miranda took the opportunity to satisfy her curiosity and she crept over to where Eli was crouched in the grass.
Page 62
“Okay,” she whispered, “I give up. Is the weather talk some kind of code?”
“What?” Eli’s eyebrows shot up. “No, no, I’m just building good will. ”
Miranda gave him a confused look. “Good will?”
“It’s a harsh world,” Eli said. “You never know when you’ll need a little good will from the local countryside. ”
Miranda was skeptical. A mossy rock didn’t seem like much of an ally. “So you weren’t doing reconnaissance or anything?”
“Sorry, no,” Eli said, shaking his head.
Miranda frowned. “But—”
“Quiet. ”
Miranda and Eli both jumped at the sudden command. Josef was kneeling in the tall grass not a foot away from them, glaring icily. Miranda hadn’t even heard his approach.
“We move now,” he said.
“Wha—” Before Miranda could even form her question, Josef took off for the city wall at a dead run, Nico and Eli right on his heels. Miranda took a deep breath and charged after them, covering the space of open ground between the trees and the city wall faster than she had ever moved in her life. She slammed into the wall and dropped to a crouch just in time. No sooner had she reached the stones than a small troop of guards appeared out of the woods only a few feet from where they’d been hiding just moments before.
Miranda clapped her hands over her mouth as the soldiers fanned out. They patrolled the edge of the forest in a wide sweep, poking their short spears into the underbrush. Finding nothing, the leader waved his hand, and the unit faded back into the woods. Only when the sound of their boots had died to a whisper did Miranda release the breath she’d been holding.
“That was lucky,” she said.
“Luck’s got nothing to do with it,” Josef said in a low voice, peering at her through the grass. “Those patrols have been sweeping the area all day. If it wasn’t for the fact that the forest doesn’t want them to find us, all the luck in the world wouldn’t have gotten us this far. ”
Miranda started, and Eli winked at her from his hiding place farther down the wall.
Josef gave Miranda a look of grudging approval. “Nice sprint, by the way. ”
“Thanks,” she muttered. “What now?”
“Now we have to find that panel,” Josef said, turning to the wall. “It should be close. ”
“It’s here. ” Nico’s quiet voice made Miranda jump. Nico was crouched on Josef’s right, one small white finger sticking out of her voluminous sleeve to point at the iron square, barely larger than a laundry chute, set into the wall beside her.
“What is it?” Miranda asked, leaning in for a better look.
“A bolt hole,” Eli said, crawling over to crouch beside Nico, “in case the royalty need to make a fast exit. Very common in cities like this. ” He gave the iron door an experimental push, but it didn’t so much as rattle. He tried again, harder this time, but he might as well have been pushing the wall itself. “Hmm. ” He frowned. “This one seems to be locked. ”
Miranda gave him a puzzled look. “Isn’t this how you got in last time?”
“Of course not,” Eli said, looking insulted. “First rule of thievery, never use the same entrance twice. ”
Miranda rolled her eyes. “How many ‘first rules’ of thievery do you have?”
“When one mistake can mean your head on a pike, every rule’s a first rule,” Eli said cheerfully.
The thief ran his long fingers along the door’s edge, which was set flush against the stone. Miranda watched with growing uncertainty. There wasn’t even a keyhole, so far as she could see. When he had tapped every inch of the metal, Eli leaned back, brow knit in thought.
“Can’t you just talk it open?” Miranda asked, moving a little closer. “Like you did with the prison door?”
“I could,” Eli said, “but—” He reached into his coat pocket and drew out a small leather case, monogrammed in gold with an ornate capital M—“sometimes a simpler solution suffices. ”
He flipped the case open, revealing a startling selection of lock picks. Carefully selecting the longest and thinnest, he leaned down until his nose brushed the door. He held out his hand, and, without further prompting, Josef handed him a knife. Eli expertly wedged the slender blade into the hair-thin crack between the iron and the stone. Then, using the blade as a lever, he carefully lifted the door out of its niche. It opened just a fraction before sticking again with a soft clang.
Page 63
“Lever and padlock,” Eli muttered, switching out the thin lock pick for a slightly longer one with a crooked head. “Josef, if you would. ”
Josef took the knife from him and held it where Eli pointed, putting just enough pressure on the lever to keep the opening as large as possible without snapping the blade. Eli took a pair of delicate, extremely-long-nosed pliers out of his case and, using both hands, neatly slipped the pliers and the lock pick through the knife-thin crack.
He gripped with the pliers and began to deftly maneuver the lock pick, wiggling it right, then left, then right again, like he was trying to hook something. At last there was a loud click. Eli released the pliers and a muted crash came through the iron as the padlock hit the ground on the other side. He tucked his tools back into their leather case and opened the door with a flourish. The whole operation had taken less than a minute.
When he caught Miranda gawking, Eli’s grin became unbearably smug.
“What were you expecting?” he said, still grinning. “I’m the greatest thief in the—ow!” He yelped as Josef punched him in the arm.
“Enough bragging,” the swordsman grunted. “Inside, quick. The patrols move in a circle, you know. ”
Still rubbing his injured arm, Eli slid feet first into the dark bolt hole. Nico went next, casually wedging herself, bulky coat and all, through the narrow opening.
“You next,” Josef said, looking at Miranda.
She swallowed. Suddenly, the bolt hole looked impossibly narrow and abysmally deep. However, she had an image to maintain as a Spiritualist, and that image did not include being afraid of holes, no matter how narrow or deep they might be. She sat down stiffly and began easing herself in, feet first. Just when she’d managed to convince herself it wasn’t going to be that bad, she heard the crunch of men moving through the forest. She looked frantically over her shoulder in time to see the first patrolman reach the edge of the forest. She was about to whisper a warning when Josef shoved her, hard. Miranda yelped and lost her balance, sliding the rest of the way down the bolt hole. She landed in a pile on a cold, hard-packed dirt floor. A sec
ond later, Josef landed on top of her. The iron door clanged shut above them, and the room plunged into darkness.
CHAPTER 18
The next few seconds were a confused, painful scramble as Miranda did her best to get out from under Josef. The man was amazingly heavy and, she grunted as she cracked her ribs against his elbow, full of sharp edges. It didn’t help that the ground was horribly uneven. Just when she’d finally managed to untangle herself from the swordsman, a soft, yellow glow winked to life. Miranda’s relief was almost physically painful as the darkness resolved itself into familiar shapes. They were in a root cellar. Other than the four of them being in it, it was a very normal root cellar, with potatoes, apples, and turnips rolling across the floor where Miranda and Josef’s landing had knocked them loose from their bins.
Eli held up a tiny blackout lamp, one shutter cracked just a fraction, the source of the unsteady light. “Nice landing,” he said with a grin.
“I would have been fine if someone hadn’t pushed me,” Miranda hissed, hurling a potato at Josef.
“If I hadn’t pushed you, we would have been spotted,” Josef said, catching the potato in midair, “and that would have been that. ”
“Well, now that we’re all here and uncaught,” Eli said, swinging his lamp toward the squat wooden door half hidden behind a large bin of potatoes, “let’s get on with it. ”
Miranda stood up, slipping a little on the rolling tubers. “Where are we?”
“Under the city, inside the walls,” Eli said, popping the crude lock on the wooden door with a wiggle of his lock pick. “I told you, we’re in the bolt hole. Most castles would have their own tunnel to safety in case of invasion, but Allaze is so close to the river, a deep tunnel would flood, so it looks like they had to make do with linking a bunch of cellars together. ”
“Lucky thing for us, in any case,” Josef said, walking through the door Eli held open and into the next cellar.