“Sixty thousand.” Eli reached in his pocket and pulled out his new wanted poster. “It’s really too bad,” he sighed, unfolding it. “They just copied out all these new ones. I think it’s their best likeness of me yet.”
He tried to hand the poster to Miranda, but she held up her hand. “Stop. You’re up to something.”
Eli blinked innocently, but Miranda leaned forward on Gin’s head, keeping her eyes pinned on his. “Asking Mellinor to pledge money, I can understand. That gives them a thirty-five-thousand-gold stake in making sure you don’t get caught. But the Spirit Council won’t stop chasing you no matter what it costs. You know this, so why raise your bounty? Don’t you realize that every gold standard draws another ten bounty hunters out of the woodwork? Sixty thousand is enough money to bankroll a small war. Your own mother would turn you in for half as much.”
“I don’t doubt she would.” Eli’s grin grew wicked. “But you’re missing the point, Lady Spiritualist. It’s not about the bounty hunters or extorting countries. It’s about the bounty. It’s about a little boy’s dream!” He threw out
his arms. “Sixty thousand is nothing. Chump change! My goal is to be worth one million gold.”
Miranda’s eyes widened. “One million? Are you crazy? There’s not that much money in the world! The Council’s war with the Immortal Empress didn’t cost half so much, and they’re still paying it off. Even if you kidnapped a king a week, you’d die of old age before you got your bounty that high.”
“Well,” Eli said, “if that’s how you feel, how can you object to a trifle like moving the Spirit Court’s five thousand?”
Miranda hunched over Gin’s head, glaring suspiciously at the grinning thief. “Why a million?”
Eli shrugged. “Seemed like a good number. No one’s ever had a million-gold bounty.”
Miranda gave him a scathing look. “It can’t be that simple.”
“I never said it was, but you’re free to make up your own reasons if it’ll make you feel better.” He shoved his hands in his pockets and looked up at her, his face unbearably smug. “Time’s ticking, Miss Spiritualist. Do we have a deal or not?”
Miranda knotted her hands in Gin’s fur, thinking. Henrith shifted uneasily behind her while the hound kept a close eye on Nico, who hadn’t done anything except sit on the ground and watch the show. Finally, the Spiritualist gave a long sigh.
“All right,” she said. “I’m sure I’ll regret this, but you have a deal, Mr. Monpress. If you help apprehend Renaud
and
put Henrith safely back on his throne, I will talk to the Rector Spiritualis about transferring our bounty on you to the Council. However”—she stabbed her index
finger at him—“even though, at the moment, I’m looking the other way for the sake of the greater good, my orders to bring you in have not changed. When we are done here, I’m not going to stop chasing you.”
Eli smiled graciously. “I expected nothing less.”
Miranda blinked, thrown off balance by his sudden sincerity. “Well, that’s settled then.”
Josef pushed himself off the tree. “If you two are done chatting, we’d better get moving. Sitting out in the dark on the edge of the clearing where we were almost killed isn’t a good place to talk strategy. Besides”—he slapped his neck—“I’m being eaten alive out here.”
Now that he mentioned it, Miranda could feel them too. “Lead on,” she mumbled, slapping one of the biting midges off her hand.
When she looked up, the swordsman was already stalking off through the trees. The demonseed girl followed a few steps behind, silent as a shadow. Eli strolled along at his own pace with his hands in his pockets, whistling something off key.
Miranda exchanged glances with the king. At last he gave a resigned nod, and she nudged Gin with her toe. The ghosthound rose soundlessly. Quiet as his namesake, he slipped through the trees, keeping abreast with the swordsman but well away from the girl who followed him. High overhead, the moon was beginning its climb through the black sky, illuminating their winding path through the rocky hills and steep gullies of the deer park with her clear, white light.
T
his
is where you were hiding?” Miranda gaped, sliding off Gin’s back. The moonlight that filtered through the treetops was just enough for her to be able to make out the tumbledown walls and gaping roof of the small hunting shack. “You could barely spend a night in this.”
“It’s a bit run down,” Eli admitted, “but”—he leaned over and pointed through a gap in the surrounding trees—“you can’t beat the location.”
Looking where he pointed, she could just spot the white walls of the city glowing silver through the trees, barely half a mile away.
“I don’t believe it,” Miranda said.
“First rule of thievery,” Eli said, grinning, “only run if you’re not coming back.” He thumped his heels on the hard ground. “The last place a man looks is under his feet.”
“All this time you’ve been hiding in the king’s deer
park?” She was almost laughing now. “You’re putting me on. I had Eril search this area days ago.”
“Spirits don’t see everything,” Eli said. “Besides, I had some excellent camouflage.” He tilted his head back. “Ladies?”
The pleasant purr of his spirit voice reverberated through her. High overhead, a chorus of sighs answered, “Eli!”
Miranda took a step back as the trees behind the cabin, a clump of young hardwoods taking advantage of the tiny clearing’s sunlight, shook themselves to life. They bent down, giggling like geese, and surrounded Eli in a nest of branches. He said something low, and they giggled harder before lifting away and settling lightly over the ruined roof. They rustled madly, fluffing their broad leaves over the gaping holes and forming a sort of net over the fire hole to diffuse the smoke. When they stopped moving at last, Miranda’s eyes widened. The young trees covered the hut perfectly. In fact, had she not seen them move, she would have sworn that the hovel was just another rocky outcropping, and that the trees had always been that way.
“Welcome,” Eli said, slipping between the branches with practiced ease and opening the rickety wooden door. Josef followed him, clutching his injured chest and grumbling under his breath the whole way. Nico went into the hut last, pulling her coat tight around her and her hat down over her eyes as she squeezed between the branches. Only when they were all inside and she saw the first sparks of a fire being struck did Miranda begin to untie her own bag from Gin’s back.
King Henrith had just made it to the ground. He
looked at the hut with no small amount of panic in his eyes. “What should I do?”
“For now, go in,” Miranda said, struggling with the leather straps. “We have a deal, and I don’t think he’ll go back on it. After all, you’re no profit to him now.”
The king grimaced. “That’s supposed to be comforting?”
“With a thief like him, it’s the most comforting thing you’ll hear. Go in, I’ll follow in a moment.”
The king hovered a moment longer and then timidly made his way into the hut.
“Can’t really blame him,” Miranda said as the king’s shadow joined the others’ around the infant fire. “It’s not exactly a place of pleasant memories, considering what he’s been through.”
Gin snorted, sending a wave of dead leaves scurrying across the grass. “What kind of wizard starts a fire with rocks?”
“The same kind who flirts with trees, apparently.” Miranda worked the pack free at last and set it on the ground beside her. “No wonder he was so hard to track. Half the spirits in this clearing are in love with him. It’s like that stupid door all over again.”
Gin rolled his eyes, but stayed oddly silent. Miranda walked over to his head and began to scratch his ears. “How does he do it?” she murmured. “How does he get them to just, I don’t know”—she shrugged—“do what he says?”
“There’s something about him,” the ghosthound said quietly. “He’s got a sort of brightness.”
Miranda kept scratching, listening carefully. Spirits, even talkative ones like Gin, almost never talked about the spirit world. She’d tried to cajole information out of
him on uncountable occasions, but every time he refused, saying it would be too difficult, like trying to describe the color red to a blind child. Some things, he would growl, you just had to see for yourself.
When he didn’t continue on his own, she tried a delicate prompt. “Brightness? Like sunlight?”
“No,” Gin said, “not like light through the eyes. Bright, like something beautiful.” He shook himself and stood up. “Leave off, I’m no good at this. He’s just got a light around him, all right? And spirits are attracted to light. Interpret as you will. I’m going to get some food. Be back in a few hours.”
Then he was gone. It happened so quickly, she barely felt his fur slip between her fingers before he vanished into the night. Miranda stood for a long while where he had left her, looking up at the full moon with her eyes closed tightly, trying to imagine what light not like light through the eyes looked like. Only when Eli yelled something about dinner did she finally go into the cabin.
“All right,” Eli said, rubbing his hands together. “What’s the plan?”
They were seated in two factions on either side of the fire, Miranda and the king against one wall, Eli against the other. Josef was lying flat on his back in the far corner, gripping the hilt of his iron sword while Nico hovered over him, treating the nasty gash in his chest. She had finished cleaning the glass sand out of it by the time Miranda entered and was now stitching the skin back together. From Josef’s bored expression, she might as well have been doing needlepoint next to him rather than
in
him, and Miranda was impressed in spite of herself.
Eli’s question seemed aimed at no one in particular, but when no one answered, Miranda took it upon herself. “A frontal assault is out of the question,” she said. “Renaud will be on high alert. He also has a master swordsman, as we saw, so there’s that to think about.” She nodded slightly at Josef, who either didn’t notice or didn’t care. “I just wish we knew what other enslaved spirits he had.”
Eli shrugged. “Well, he can’t have too many enormous, mad spirits just lying around.”
“We can’t count on that,” Josef said. “I’m not a wizard, but even I can tell the man’s obviously powerful. I mean, no offense, Miss Spiritualist, but he had you squirming in the sand the minute he got serious.”
Miranda blushed scarlet. “Do not postulate where you do not understand, swordsman,” she snapped.
Josef looked at Eli, who was doing his best not to laugh. “Don’t be prickly, Miranda,” Eli said. “He didn’t mean anything by it. Do you want to tell him, or should I?”
Miranda looked away, fuming. “I don’t see why it needs to be explained at all. He won’t understand it.”
Josef’s glare matched her own. “Try me.”
Miranda tugged a hand through her hair. “Fine,” she growled. “It’s not exactly a secret.” She held up her hand so that her rings glittered in the shaky firelight. “Wizards can impose their will over spirits. That’s one of the basic principles behind magic. The other, of course, is that our control does not extend over other human souls. That’s why most people feel only a slightly uncomfortable pressure when a wizard opens their spirit, no matter how strong the wizard is. Spiritualists, however, are different, because we maintain a constant bond through our rings
with our servant spirits. Each of my spirits siphons off a small, steady stream of energy from my soul as per our agreement when they became my servants.”
“Power for service,” Eli said, with mock seriousness. “Strength for obedience.”
Miranda ignored him. “Most of the time, this connection is one way. But sometimes, for example, when a powerful wizard opens his spirit full tilt right in front of them, my servant spirits are affected like any other spirit, and that can cause feedback through our connection.”
“So what does that mean?” Josef said.
Eli beat Miranda to it. “It means normal humans may feel a bit queasy when a wizard’s open soul is pressing against them, but it can’t hurt us, so we don’t go all weak at the knees about it. Spiritualists, however, are tied into their pet spirits waking and sleeping, and when those spirits are squashed under a strong wizard’s will, like Renaud’s, the Spiritualist,” he said and made a squishing motion with his hands, “goes right down with them.”
Miranda shook her head, but Josef nodded. “Hell of a weakness. How does the Spirit Court fight an enslaver, then?”
“A strong, loyal fire spirit is usually enough,” Miranda said. “They’re so chaotic that most enslavers can’t get control before they’re burned. My Kirik would have been perfect had
someone
”—she glared murderously at Eli—“not doused him.”
“How was I supposed to know he’d go out so quickly?”
Josef shook his head. “Well, that’s out. Is there any other way around the problem?”
“No,” said Miranda.
“Yes,” said Eli.
She whirled to face him. “What do you mean?”
Eli shrugged. “Your rings are what give you trouble, right? So take them off. Seems simple to me.”
“
Take them off?
” Miranda looked incredulous. “I can’t just take them off!”
“Well, how else do you think you’re going to be able to come into the castle with us?” Eli said.
“Maybe you can get by sweet-talking trees and doors,” she huffed, “but I’m not leaving my spirits. I’ll be defenseless!”