by Rachel Aaron
“Three days, then,” Lelbon said. “Now, it’s my understanding you’re one of the faster Spiritualists, but let’s assume for the sake of argument that everyone in the Court could move at your speed if pressed. The Allva is enormous, hundreds of miles of dense trees spread over three river basins that eventually braid together into the Ell, the mother river. If the entire forest is in a panic as you say, it would take thousands of wizards to cover that much ground. Even if you rallied every Spiritualist to your cause, you still wouldn’t have the manpower to handle a single lost star, assuming you could even get your people there fast enough to do any good for a panic that is already in full swing. ”
Miranda clenched her teeth. “So I should just ignore my oaths and turn away?”
“You are the Rector Spiritualis,” Lelbon said, leaning back in his chair. “I would never presume to tell you how to run your Court. I can only suggest that you consider the larger picture. Even I know the Spirit Court is fractured. Noble as your intentions may be, think. Is it worth pushing an already battered Court past its limits to offer aid that will be too late and too little to do any good?”
Miranda closed her eyes and buried her head in her hands. “I can’t do nothing,” she whispered through her fingers.
“The Spirit Court is the single greatest human organization for the good of spirits that has ever existed,” Lelbon said. “I would hardly count its rebuilding as doing nothing. ”
“You don’t understand,” Miranda said, pushing her head up. “The only reason I’m Rector is because Banage made me. I’m not the one who will rebuild the Spirit Court. The Conclave will reunite us, probably under Blint, who’ll waste no time turning us into an arm of the Council. That’s what we are now, just more of Whitefall’s cronies. I knew the Court was changing when they kicked me out for aiding a Great Spirit, but I thought it was just Hern’s influence. Now, I’m not so sure. ”
“If that’s how you feel, why continue as Rector?” Lelbon said. “Why not give it to whoever wants it and strike out on your own?”
“Because I can’t do anything on my own,” Miranda said. “That’s why I need proof. My only hope at this point is to gather enough information about what’s happening with the stars so that when I present it at the Conclave, the Court will realize what it has to do, no matter who’s leading it. They might have gotten caught up in the power of the Council, but every Spiritualist takes the same oaths to protect the Spirit World from harm, even Blint. We may not be able to fix everything, but we can still try. Even if we can protect only a few, that’s better than nothing, and maybe in the process of trying we’ll remember what the Spirit Court’s really about: spirits, not humans. ”
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Lelbon stared at her. “And do you think it’ll work?”
“It better,” Miranda said, rubbing her tired eyes. “I’m all out of cards, otherwise. ”
“I applaud the effort, in any case,” Lelbon said. “What is the minimum you need to convince your Court?”
Miranda took a deep breath. “I can start with proof that stars are vanishing, and that it’s a problem, but that’s just the beginning. To really show that this is a true emergency, I have to show the scope of what we’re dealing with. I’ll need to know how many stars there are, where they are, and how many are missing, all before tomorrow. You’ve already made it clear that Illir can’t give me this information. If you can’t tell me, either, then please forgive my rudeness, but I don’t have any more time to chat. ”
“A fair assessment,” Lelbon said. “I’m afraid I cannot give you the information you seek, Rector Lyonette. At this point, I think you can name more stars than I. ”
Miranda fell back in her chair. She’d been so sure that would work, that the old windbag would drop the act and just tell her if she pressed directly. But before she could fall completely into despair, she realized Lelbon was still talking.
“What?”
“I said there are other ways to find what you’re looking for,” Lelbon repeated. “Ways that are beneath the Shepherdess’s notice. ”
Miranda wanted to throw up her hands. “Why didn’t you just say that earlier?”
“You’re not the only one with a duty to fulfill,” Lelbon said. “I was sent to give you my advice and experience as well as to answer my master’s debt. Whether you use them, however, is up to you. ”
Miranda sighed. “Right. So what’s the trick, then?”
“You’ll see,” he said, standing up. “Shall we be off? You did say you had no time to spare. ”
Miranda blinked at the sudden change. “Where are we going?”
“Not far,” Lelbon said. “You will need a nondescript conveyance and some money. ”
“Money?” Miranda froze halfway out of her chair. “How much money?”
“A great deal, I’d imagine,” Lelbon said. “Brokers aren’t known for giving discounts. ”
“You’re taking me to see a broker?” Miranda was almost shouting now. She couldn’t help it; this was too absurd even for her. “Brokers are for finding stolen goods and spreading gossip. How is a broker going to know about stars?”
“Miss Lyonette,” Lelbon said with a long sigh, “if I didn’t think this was worth your time, I wouldn’t have suggested it. Now, are you coming, or should I leave?”
Miranda took a deep, calming breath. “Let me ask Krigel how much we have on hand. If you want to wait downstairs, I’ll meet you there. ”
“Very well,” Lelbon said. “I’d bring a hundred gold standards at least. More, if you can manage it. This isn’t an answer they’re going to have on hand, after all. ”
“Right,” Miranda grumbled. She walked her guest to the top of the stairs. Once she was out of sight, she walked back into the Rector’s office and began yanking as hard as she could on the rope pull that rang down to Krigel’s desk.
Thirty minutes later, Miranda and Lelbon were in a hired carriage bumping down a steep, uneven backstreet toward the river. Miranda sat sideways on the bench, clutching a large, leather satchel in a white-knuckled grip. Across from her, Lelbon watched with an amused expression. Miranda scowled back and clutched her satchel tighter, wincing at the jingle of coins every time the carriage hit a pothole.
Two hundred and fifty gold standards was all Krigel had been able to pull together on such short notice. Even so, it was way more money than Miranda had ever personally carried, and she was absolutely certain something horrible was going to happen. Not that forking it over to a broker wasn’t horrible enough. In fact, the more she thought about it, the more she felt this was a bad idea.
The carriage rocked violently and then creaked to a halt. Miranda peeked out the window. They’d stopped in front of what looked like an abandoned shop. The old building was half stone, half timber, both black with tar and torch smoke, and the whole structure seemed to be leaning backward into the river behind it. She was about to ask why they’d stopped when Lelbon began climbing out of the coach. Miranda’s eyes flicked to the clusters of barge workers and drunks loitering on the docks down the road, and her frown inched lower. She knew she should have brought Gin.
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But done was done, so she hefted the strap of the heavy money sack onto her shoulder and followed Lelbon out of the carriage and up the rickety steps to the building’s warped door. Lelbon knocked once and stood back. The door opened a few moments later, and Miranda found herself staring at a short, broad woman in a leather vest and workman’s trousers. She jumped when she saw them, which Miranda considered a natural reaction to opening your door to find a Spiritualist and an old man wearing a bedsheet, but then, to Miranda’s surprise, the woman lowered her eyes respectfully.
“Welcome, Voice of the Wind. ”
Lelbon thanked her and stepped inside. Miranda followed hesitantly, clutching her bag as the woman bolted the door behind them. Inside was a narrow waiting room with benches on either sid
e of the door and a potbellied stove in the corner. The tiny space was further crowded by a large desk, which the woman slid herself behind before turning to Lelbon and Miranda.
“What can we do for you, sir?” she said, opening a large, ink-stained ledger. “Have you come to check the accounts?”
“Not today, Emma,” Lelbon said. “I’ve brought you a customer. ”
He gave Miranda a little push, sending her stumbling up to the desk. She recovered quickly, pulling herself up to her full height and fixing the woman with her best no-nonsense look. “I understand you answer questions. ”
“That we do,” the woman said, giving Miranda a shrewd once-over that was worlds apart from the awed obedience she paid Lelbon. “The price depends on what you want to know. Simple questions are cheap, difficult ones less so. ”
“And what if you can’t answer the question?” Miranda said.
The woman turned up her nose with a sniff. “We’re all licensed brokers here with a century of experience between us. Our price is dear, but our service is the best you can receive. There’s no question in the world we can’t answer. ”
“I meant no offense,” Miranda said. “I’ve never used a broker before. ”
The woman gave her a “well that’s obvious” glare and flipped the ledger around so it was facing Miranda. “Write your question here,” she said, pointing at the top of the page. “After that, we’ll agree on a price, and then we’ll find your answer. ”
“What if I have more than one question?” Miranda said, taking a metal quill from the cup at the woman’s elbow and dipping it in the large inkpot.
The woman tapped the empty lines with her fingernail. “Write them all down, one per line, and then we’ll talk. ”
Miranda obeyed, scratching her questions onto the paper. When she was finished, the woman flipped the book back around and read out loud.
“ ‘How many stars are there? Where are they located? Which ones are missing?’ ” She glanced at Miranda. “Just those three?”
Miranda blinked. Considering she was asking openly about stars, she’d expected some kind of reaction, but she might have been after the names of the last five merchant princes for all the woman seemed to care. “Yes, that’s it,” she said. “Can you do it?”
The woman didn’t even bother to answer. Instead, she grabbed another sheet of paper and began working out figures. Miranda had no idea where she was pulling the numbers from, but they were growing at an alarming rate. The woman checked her math and then circled the number at the bottom before sliding the paper over to Miranda.
“Three hundred gold standards?” Miranda cried, snatching the paper off the table. “Is that what you normally charge?”
“Hundred gold per question seems a fare rate considering we’re going to be getting answers for the whole Spirit Court,” the woman said, crossing her arms. When she saw Miranda’s startled look, she rolled her eyes. “We’re Zarin brokers, Rector Lyonette, not some small-town operation. It’s our business to know who you are and what you’re up to. ”
She reached over and grabbed the ledger again. “What we’ve got here is really one question with three parts—you want names, locations, and verification. Since you’ve come to us, that means this information is either too big for the Court to gather on its own or you don’t want anyone knowing you’re after it. Both carry a premium. If you don’t like it, you can go somewhere else, but there ain’t any other broker worth the name going to give you a better deal than that. ”
She put her hands on her hips as she finished, and Miranda knew she was defeated. “Fine,” she muttered, hauling the sack of gold onto the desk. “I’ve got only two hundred and fifty with me. ”
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The woman smiled. “Seeing as you’re with the Voice of the Wind, I’ll spot you the rest. Just have it here by tomorrow morning and there won’t be no problem. ”
Miranda sighed. Krigel was going to kill her. The Court wasn’t exactly flush these days, and that two hundred and fifty was next month’s operating budget. But she was in this up to her neck now, nothing to do but keep going and hope it worked. “When do I get my answers?”
“Soon as we do,” the woman said. “Which means it’ll take as long as it takes. ” She lifted the sack of gold off the table and set it down behind her desk with a grunt of effort. “You can wait in the back, if you’d like, sir,” she said, straightening up. “It’s nicer than up front, and more private. ”
This last bit was directed at Lelbon, who accepted graciously. The woman led them behind her desk and through a small door into a much larger room full of the strangest contraptions Miranda had ever seen. Each was the size of a large loom, but rather than lines of yarn, these were strung with squares of cloth in a rainbow of colors sewn onto ribbons at various heights. Each cloth strip had two sides, and each side was stamped with a symbol Miranda didn’t recognize.
There were four of the contraptions in total, all alike and each set well apart from the others. Three other women, all about Emma’s age, stood clustered in the far corner around a table set with sandwiches and a battered kettle. They all bowed when they saw Lelbon, and he waved politely as Emma led them between the strange machines and through another door to a small, cozy room overlooking the river.
“There you are,” she said, motioning for Lelbon to take a seat in one of the worn but very comfortable-looking chairs under the window. “You can stay here as long as you like. I’ll bring you your answer when it’s ready. ”
“Thank you, Emma,” Lelbon said, sinking into the closest chair.
Emma beamed at him and retreated back to the large room, shutting the door firmly behind her.
“I didn’t know you were such a celebrity,” Miranda said, sitting down in the chair beside Lelbon’s.
“All part of the job,” Lelbon said with a smile.
Miranda arched an eyebrow. “So,” she said, leaning back. “The West Wind runs the brokers. ”
The old man shrugged. “What gave you that impression?”
“It’s pretty obvious,” Miranda said. “Come on, they called you ‘Voice of the Wind. ’ ”
As though in answer, a gale began to bellow inside the room they’d just walked through, howling against the warped board walls and rattling the door on its hinges. Miranda smiled triumphantly, but Lelbon’s face was unchanged.
“Your assumptions in this are entirely your own, Spiritualist Lyonette,” he said, glancing out at the river. “Isn’t the water lovely today?”
“Why would a huge spirit like the West Wind care about running an information-selling organization?” Miranda said, completely ignoring the attempted subject change. “Brokers have nothing to do with spirits that I know of. I’ve never even heard of one who was a wizard. Why would a Wind Lord put his efforts into spreading information for spirit-deaf humans?”
Lelbon gave her a dry look. “You’re not a subtle woman, Miss Lyonette. ”
Miranda crossed her arms over her chest with a glare.
“As a loyal scion of the Wind Courts, I cannot answer your questions,” Lelbon said at last. “You know that, so stop asking. ”
“So don’t answer me as a servant of Illir,” Miranda said. “You were an historian first, not to mention a wizard so interested in the Wind Courts you actually convinced one of the four winds to employ you. I’m asking your opinion as a fellow knowledge seeker. We do have some time to kill, might as well fill it with good conversation. ”
Lelbon’s mouth twitched. “Very well, Spiritualist, let me put it this way. The Wind Courts are different than other spirit hierarchies, mostly because they have no lands to call their home. Other than that technicality, however, three of the four Wind Lords are much like any Great Spirits—sleepy, overbearing, sure of their own way, and fanatically loyal to the Shepherdess. ”
“But Illir is different,” Miranda said.
“Very,” Lelbon said. “Of al
l the spirits I’ve met, Illir is the only one I’ve found with a real sense of curiosity. He’s especially interested in humans. ”
Miranda frowned. “Why?”
“Because of all the spirits, humans are the only ones created by the Shepherdess,” Lelbon said. “We are unique. Unlike everything else in the world, our strength is not bound by our size but by our will, and though over ninety percent of us are deaf and all of us are blind, we are the only souls in creation with the power to dominate other spirits. You can see then how studying such creatures would be of great interest to my master. ”
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Miranda frowned. “But why brokers? I mean, I can see how making your winds into a conduit of information would be a great way to learn about humanity, or its underbelly at least, but why charge for it? What’s a wind going to do with three hundred gold standards?”
Lelbon’s mouth twitched. “There are other forms of power besides wizardry, Spiritualist. My master likes to keep his interests diverse. ”
“Is he bribing politicians?” Miranda said, laughing at the idea. “Running merchant empires on the side?”
“I don’t pry into my master’s private affairs,” Lelbon said. “But I do know he’s contributed to certain criminal bounties. ”
Miranda’s smile fell instantly. “You can’t be serious. ”
“Monpress has provided him with a great deal of entertainment over the years,” Lelbon said. “My master likes to pay for a good show. ”
Miranda clenched her jaw and said nothing, glaring out the window at the river below.
“He also writes from time to time,” Lelbon added, almost as an afterthought.
“Writes what?” Miranda said, still looking at the river.
“A variety of things,” Lelbon said. “Histories, travelogues. You might have heard of him, actually. His books are under the name Morticime Kant. ”
“Are you kidding me?” Miranda roared, nearly launching out of her chair. “The West Wind is the source of that overwrought, misleading, misinformed, horribly written nonsense about wizards? The books that say we wear pointed hats and robes and do nothing but brew frogs into potions all day? That Morticime Kant?”
“I hadn’t heard the bit about the frogs,” Lelbon said, trying hard not to laugh. “But yes, that Morticime Kant. It was part of a long-running experiment to see if he could influence human behavior through suggestion. ”