Finally, the acids fought themselves out, leaving a warped, melted hole in the iron just large enough to fit a small fist through. The door whimpered, and Eli rubbed it gently, whispering apologies and promising to have it recast as soon as possible. Whether he meant it or not, the words seemed to put the door at ease, and as it drifted back to sleep, Eli reached his hand through the melted hole and popped the lock on the other side.
“Swordsmen first,” Eli said, swinging the door open.
Josef put his hand on his sword hilt and eased his way into the black tunnel.
“All clear,” he whispered, and the rest of them hurried through the doorway, mindful of the spots where the last remnants of the acids were still steaming.
The hall on the other side was smaller than the cellar it joined. In fact, it was barely larger than the door itself. They walked single file, with Josef leading the way, absently twirling two knives in his hands. Miranda went next, followed by Eli, with Nico trailing behind as usual. For her part, the Spiritualist kept to the absolute center of the hall, as far as she could get from the cobwebby walls. Here and there, small roots had pushed through the ceiling, and she realized they must be under the palace
grounds. Unseen things scuttled in the dark behind them, making Miranda’s skin crawl. Apparently, Josef didn’t like the scuttles either because he stopped suddenly, causing Miranda to nearly run into him.
“What now?” she whispered, regaining her balance.
Josef threw up his hand to silence her. She glowered at the command, but said nothing. Behind them, something skittered again, and Josef turned on his heel. Miranda didn’t see the knife leave his hand, but she heard it hit. A squeal erupted behind them, and the skittering stopped. Eli whirled around, holding his lamp high. The light fell across their dusty footprints and, right at the edge of the glow, was a squirming, dying rat with Josef’s knife sticking out of its side.
“Getting paranoid?” Eli muttered, lowering the lamp. “It’s not like you to kill the wildlife.”
“It’s not paranoia.” Josef walked over to reclaim his knife. “Have you ever seen a rat act like that?”
“What are you talking about?” Miranda said.
“Rats are scavengers and foragers,” Josef said. “This one’s been following us since the first cellar. What kind of rat leaves a cellar full of food to follow people into an empty hallway?”
Miranda hurried over to the dying animal and hovered her hand over its head. Sure enough, she could feel the faint echo of Renaud’s spirit slipping away as the rat’s movement stilled. She snatched her hand back.
“Josef’s right,” she said.
“If he has control of the rats, that could be a major problem,” Josef said, looking at Eli. “Even you can’t sneak past rats.”
“He can’t control all of them,” Miranda said, rubbing
her hand on her skirt. “Controlling lots of small spirits is harder than controlling one large one.”
“He wouldn’t need to control all of them,” Eli said thoughtfully. “Rats talk among themselves, and two wizards aren’t exactly inconspicuous. Two or three informants would be enough.”
Josef pushed past them and began walking in quick, impatient strides down the dark hall toward the castle. “We’ll just have to assume Renaud knows we’re down here,” he said. “And that means we need to be somewhere else.”
Miranda hurried after him. The dark, dirty tunnel was the last place she wanted to face another of Renaud’s mad spirits. The swordsman set a grueling pace, not running but walking so fast they might as well have been. The tunnel around them was growing lighter or rather, less dark. She still couldn’t see anything beyond the lamplight, but the tone of the darkness was shifting to something friendlier, more human. Even so, the tunnel seemed to go on forever, and Miranda’s legs were beginning to ache. The gardens hadn’t seemed this long when she was aboveground. As the tunnel went on and on, she started to wonder if this wasn’t some new trap they had stumbled into.
At last, she saw real light up ahead. Josef slowed his pace a fraction and then came to a complete stop. Eli held up the lamp, revealing a wrought-iron gate kept closed with a simple chain and padlock. The chain had rusted long ago, and Josef was able to reach through the iron bars and yank it off without difficulty. The gate swung open with a creak, and they piled into the final room of their journey.
“Great,” Miranda said, “more potatoes.”
“Ah,” Eli countered, “but these are royal potatoes! We’re here.”
Miranda looked around skeptically. The stone cellar, with its bins of root vegetables and its cold, earthy smell, was uncomfortably like every other wealthy cellar they’d tromped through. On the opposite wall, dim light shone through the cracks of a squat wooden door. Eli blew out his lamp and set it on the lip of the potato bin. He put his finger to his lips and then, slowly and silently, opened the door.
The hallway beyond was lit with indirect firelight from the room at its end. Distorted voices echoed up and down its length, and Miranda could make out the shadows of servants as they sat around the hearth. Eli craned his neck out as far as he could, then pulled back, grinning.
“All right,” he said, brushing the last bits of cobweb off his valet’s jacket, “time for phase two. Ready, Nico?”
The girl nodded and pulled her coat tighter.
“Wait,” Miranda whispered. “What’s phase two?”
Eli shook his head and put his finger to his lips before stepping out into the hall. Miranda made a rude gesture at his back and crept after him.
S
omething’s not right,” Josef muttered.
“You’ve got a point,” Eli said, thunking his slab of bread against his wooden plate. “This bread’s two days old at least.”
Miranda hunched over her stewed beef and said nothing. The three of them were crowded around a small table in the kitchen surrounded by a crowd of servants who were all eating their dinners with determined efficiency. So far, phase two had consisted of sneaking into the kitchens and blending in with the other servants for the dinner rush. No one had noticed them, but they weren’t getting any closer to Renaud, and, even worse, Nico was nowhere to be seen.
“We’re wasting our time,” Miranda grumbled, shoving her plate away. “There was no need to get food as well.”
“Nosunse,” Eli said around his enormous mouthful of beef. He swallowed with gusto. “A servant who rejects
food? Now
that
would stand out. Besides, why let it go to waste?” He took another bite.
“They have only two guards at the door,” Josef went on, ignoring them both, “and no one checking the servants. The cooks didn’t even look sideways at us.”
“Maybe they don’t know we’re here,” Eli said. “The spying rat we caught could have been the only one. Or maybe they know we’re in the castle, but they weren’t expecting us to come to the kitchens. Or maybe my plan is actually working. The whole point of breaking in at dinner was to catch the shift change so no one would notice three newcomers.”
“Or maybe they’re just incompetent,” Miranda said, remembering how the castle had reacted when she’d arrived for the first time. “Renaud may be in charge, but Mellinor is still Mellinor. Common sense seems to be as forbidden as wizardry in this country.”
“You have a point,” Josef said, leaning back in his chair and pretending to drink while he scanned the room. “But this was too easy even for incompetence. Mellinor may be slack, and I don’t know about Renaud, but Coriano isn’t someone who would leave an opening like this, not unless he was planning something.”
“Coriano?” Eli wiped his mouth with a greasy napkin. “Didn’t he run off?”
“He’s a swordsman; he only retreated. Besides”—Josef dropped his hand to where the carefully wrapped Heart of War was leaned against his leg—“the Heart can feel his sword. They’re calling to each other.”
“Josef,” Eli said patiently, “for the last time, you’re not a wizard. You can’t hear a damn thing that sword is saying.”
“I don’t have to hear him to know what he wants,” Josef growled. “You’re just mad you can’t talk to him.” Josef flashed Miranda a conspiratorial grin. “It’s the only spirit we’ve found that won’t talk to Eli.”
“Who’d want to talk to a spirit that chose you, anyway,” Eli muttered, reaching for his spoon to finish the last of his impromptu dinner. “He must have horrid taste.”
“Enough,” Miranda said, shoving Eli’s bowl out of reach before he could take another mouthful. “We’re wasting our time. What are we waiting for, anyway?”
A chorus of screams erupted from the kitchen, and Eli’s face broke into an enormous grin. “That.”
A crowd of cooks poured screaming out of the kitchen, followed by a thick plume of white smoke. The servants at the front tables started to panic, screaming “fire.” The soldiers ran forward, shouting for order as the servants rushed the doors to the kitchen gardens. While the overwhelmed guards yelled and tried to keep people from trampling each other, Eli and Josef calmly got up and jogged toward the now unguarded door to the upper castle. Miranda watched the panic in shock for a moment and then stood up and stomped after the thief.
The main hall of the servant level was even more crowded than the dining room. Alarm bells were ringing up and down its length, and the smell of wood smoke and burning tar hung heavy in the hazy air. Servants seethed from the dozens of interconnecting hallways like ants out of an overturned hill, shouting and shoving as they rushed the exits. Eli let them surge past him, nimbly working his way upstream along the wall. Only when a platoon of guards carrying buckets appeared at the far
end of the hall did he change course and duck down one of the small connecting corridors.
“I can’t believe it!” Miranda whispered fiercely as they half walked, half ran down the narrow hall. “You started a fire just so you could get past some guards? Do you
ever
consider the consequences of your actions!?”
“We didn’t start a fire,” Nico’s voice said calmly.
Miranda jumped and whirled around. At first, she saw nothing but the empty hallway filled with hazy smoke, dark except for the sputtering wall sconces set at wide intervals. Then, Nico appeared from the shadows a foot behind them, as if she had emerged from the wall itself, looking very pleased with herself.
Miranda refused to be intimidated. “What did you do?”
“Nothing bad,” Nico said. “I just let the furnace know what I was, and now it’s trying to burn down the castle.”
“You deliberately terrified a fire spirit?” Miranda gasped. “That’s horrible!”
Nico crossed her arms over her chest, her brown eyes perfectly calm. “I didn’t terrify it. I introduced myself. It was the furnace’s decision to try and kill me by burning everything. Don’t worry, though; it’s a slow, fat spirit. The servants will have no trouble holding it back, if they can get over their own panic.”
“Don’t you dare blame the furnace,” Miranda said. “Spirits are panicky by nature, fire spirits especially. It’s our job to protect them from things like this, not scare them witless.”
“
Your
job, you mean.” Nico turned away. “Don’t assume that everyone thinks like you.”
Miranda’s face reddened, but before she could retort, Nico vanished into the shadows as suddenly as she had appeared.
“How does she do that?” Miranda said, crossing her arms over her chest.
“She’s always been like that,” Eli said, giving the Spiritualist a little push down the hall. “Didn’t I tell you she didn’t need a costume?”
Miranda shook her head and let him jostle her down the corridor. They had gone only a few steps when Nico popped back into view, making Miranda jump again.
“I forgot to tell you,” she said to Eli. “Renaud is in the treasury. I overheard the valets complaining about it when I was getting in position. He’s been in there since last night, apparently.”
Miranda’s eyes went wide. “The treasury? You’re sure?”
Nico shrugged. “That’s what I heard. Apparently, he’s been spending all his time staring at a support pillar.”
“Well, there’s no accounting for taste,” Eli said. “Maybe he’s never seen one before. I don’t think he got out much.”
“You’re sure it’s a pillar?” Miranda’s voice was pleading. “Are you sure you didn’t mishear?”
“I don’t mishear,” Nico said flatly.
Miranda clenched her hands together. “Oh, dear.”
Josef, who had been quiet all this time, stepped forward to block her way. He planted himself in front of the Spiritualist, looking down at her with a stony expression. “Why is a pillar bad?”
“I’ll have to explain later,” Miranda said, pushing past him. “We need to get to the—”
“No,” Josef said, grabbing her arm. “You’ll explain now.”
He looked up and down the corridor. Behind them, in the main hall, servants were still running madly for the exits. Josef shook his head at the panic and marched Miranda in the other direction. He tried the first of several small, inconspicuous doors. When it opened, he shoved Miranda inside. Nico and Eli followed suit, cramming themselves into the small closet.
“What are you doing?” Miranda hissed, fighting Josef’s hold.
“You haven’t been open with us,” Josef said, tightening his grip. “You were the one who asked for our help, Spiritualist. You don’t get to string us along, telling us whatever you think we need to know. I’m not going a step farther until you tell us why Renaud being in the treasury is enough to make you go white.”