by Rachel Aaron
Sara slammed her hands on the desk, scattering his papers. “You’re going to regret this, Whitefall,” she growled.
“I already regret this whole situation,” Alber said, gathering his papers back into their piles. “But if you need someone to scream at, I suggest taking your rage out on Josef of Osera. He’s the one who decided to let your son hang. I’m just the middleman.”
Sara scraped her nails across the polished wood, and then, without another word, she turned on her heel and stalked out, slamming the heavy office door so hard she heard books fall from Alber’s shelves. Sara didn’t care. Her mind was a seething fury when she spotted Sparrow waiting by the stairs. He was the picture of obedience, and it didn’t help her mood one bit.
“You,” she hissed, glaring murder at her garishly dressed assistant. “You’re in more trouble than he is. I told you to watch the Court, and where have you been? Sneaking behind my back and taking my son to Whitefall, of all people—”
“He asked me,” Sparrow said, pleading.
“And how did he know?” Sara snapped.
“I told you. Whitefall always finds out,” Sparrow said.
“Not that fast,” Sara said, eyeing him suspiciously.
Sparrow looked aghast. “Surely you don’t think I did it? You’re the only lifeline I’ve got, Sara. I’d never betray you.”
“Then why did you bring my son to Alber?”
“He’s my boss, too,” Sparrow said, exasperated. “I can’t just—”
He cut off with a wince as Sara’s hand slipped inside her coat.
She let him dangle like that a bit, rolling his orb between her fingers before reaching past it to pull out her hastily extinguished, half-smoked pipe instead. “I am the only authority you should worry about, Sparrow,” she said quietly, setting the pipe between her teeth. “You’d do well to remember that your capacity to please and serve me is the only thing keeping the ax off your neck. Do you understand?”
“More than you will ever know,” Sparrow said, stepping forward to offer her a light.
Sara puffed against the match flame, glaring at him through the rising smoke. “This isn’t over,” she said once the pipe was going. “It won’t come tonight, because that’s all I have to learn whatever it is Eliton’s keeping secret, but one night won’t matter. You’re going to be doing penance for this for the next decade. I’ll make you wish—”
She froze midstep, her pipe falling from her mouth. Sparrow caught it neatly, holding it between her slack teeth. “What?”
“The door to Eliton and Etmon’s cell just cried out,” Sara said, snapping her jaw shut. He started to say something else, but she held up her hand. “And there’s Etmon’s spirit,” she said, pushing past him. “Downstairs. Now.”
Sparrow followed dutifully, bobbing behind her like a brightly colored shadow. They cleared the citadel proper in record time, bursting through the door at the top of the cavern with a clang that was lost in the roar below. Sara stooped cold, clinging to the iron railing as she stared down in disbelief.
The usually dark cavern was bright as day, lit by a bird of fire the size of a ghosthound that was flying in slow circles just below the hollowed-out ceiling. Down on the floor, her wizards were shouting, holding up their hands against what looked like a mass of twisted wood. She could feel their open spirits against her own, but as her staff had always been limited to the Spirit Court’s leavings, it was a pathetic showing. The lot of them couldn’t stop the roots as they shot out and twisted around the closest tank.
The iron groaned as the roots began to pull, and then it toppled, spilling a flood of beautiful blue water onto the dusty floor. As this happened, another spirit, a great jade horse, ran past her line of sight, its glossy legs splashing through water that was already a foot deep. It reared as Sara watched, kicking the next tank with enough force to puncture the iron wall. Water sprang through the hole, shooting out in a torrent of brilliant color.
For several moments, Sara could only watch in horror. Even under the fire bird’s orange light, the water on the floor was bluer than blue, a pure azure shining with its own light, the light she had nurtured, the light that was now dying out as the water mixed with the dust and grime. It flowed down the slight slope toward the center of the cavern, toward… Sara’s eyes shot up and froze, caught on the twisted, blown-out ruin of what had been her office. The large tank was almost unrecognizable, the metal plates yanked apart by enormous force to reveal the stairwell that led to the water below, her water.
Sara’s chest began to ache, and she suddenly realized she hadn’t taken a breath for nearly thirty seconds. She gulped in the air as she looked frantically around the cavern, her gaze sliding past the spirits, past her own useless wizards, to lock on the man responsible. The second she had enough air, she screamed at the top of her lungs.
“Etmon!”
The tall wizard standing on the suspended walkway turned. Even from this distance, she could see the look of triumph on his face.
“Your husband certainly can make a mess,” Sparrow said, peering over the railing.
“Shut up,” Sara spat, tearing off her coat. “I’ll handle Etmon. You find Eli.”
“Find Eli Monpress?” Sparrow cried. “In this chaos?”
“Do it!” Sara roared, shoving her coat at him.
She didn’t even wait for him to nod. She just spat out her pipe and hopped up on the railing, ignoring the protests of her aging knees. As soon as she was up, she fell forward, plummeting toward the water as she gripped the large, polished quartz on the ring of jewels hanging from her belt.
The moment her fingers touched it, the wind sprang forth. It caught her like a falling feather, blowing her up just before she hit the intact tanks below. Sara held out her arms, balancing as the wind set her down on the suspended walkway a dozen feet from Banage. She gripped the handrail to steady herself, the wind returning to its crystal as she raised her head to met Banage’s haughty gaze with a look of pure, molten rage.
“I told you it would all come to light, Sara,” he said solemnly. “It always does. Sooner or later—”
A blast of wind knocked him off the walkway midword.
Banage fell like a stone for several feet before a tangle of branches caught him, lowering him gently to the ground. Sara pulled her wind back, binding it around her body as she sent a spike of power to the largest of her red jewels. The temperature began to rise as the wind swirling around her filled with embers, wreathing her in red light. The wind spun faster and faster, blowing the fire inside hotter and hotter. When it was as hot as she could stand, Sara jumped the railing again, sailing down through the air after Banage. Another tank toppled as she fell, spilling its blue, blue water without so much as a cry.
Behind her, forgotten, Sara’s wizards were fleeing into the citadel. They crammed the stairwell in their panic, rushing toward the safety of the Council. And though they ran right by them, none of the fleeing wizards noticed the two coats abandoned on the railing, one plain and white like theirs, the other a gold-embroidered tapestry of turquoise, their sleeves fluttering in the hot, dry wind.
Eli Monpress was severely disappointed by the security at Whitefall Citadel. He’d expected to have to do some serious legwork, maybe even a little climbing, but in the end he’d been able to walk right out through a side door. Of course, the guards were a little preoccupied by the fit Banage was throwing in the cellar, but still, disappointing. Didn’t anyone make a proper citadel anymore?
To be fair, the guardhouse would have been harrier if he hadn’t managed to nick a fine military overcoat, complete with medals, from the coat check. As it was, he’d had no problems. With all that authority on his chest, the soldiers had opened the gate without a second glance, letting Eli Monpress stroll leisurely into freedom.
It was far too fine a day for heavy clothing, so he ditched the military coat as soon as the citadel gate was out of sight and snatched a nice, broad farmer’s hat from a tragically unattended shop front.
He ditched Benehime’s white coat as well, stripping down to his shirtsleeves in the alley between two buildings.
He put his back to the wall and ran his shirt along it, staining the fine, white fabric with grime. His hands, already filthy from climbing around in the cistern, he wiped across his shirtfront until it was hopelessly smudged. When he’d stained himself to his satisfaction, he rolled up his sleeves and kicked off his white boots, letting his pants, which were already acceptably dingy from his imprisonment, hang down over his bare feet.
Eli smiled at his efforts and slapped the straw hat on his head. Then, dirty and barefoot with his head down beneath the broad brim of his hat, he turned onto one of Zarin’s busiest streets. Though his smiling face was plastered across nearly every wall, Eli walked through the crowd without causing a ripple, just another poor, dirty farmer, passing right under people’s notice. If the snobbery hadn’t been so advantageous, Eli might have been insulted.
He made it as far as the wharf without a hitch, but then his plans stumbled. Something must have happened while he’d been in prison, because the roads down to the river were a chaos of soldiers and soggy, bedraggled boat workers. A few seconds of listening told Eli that the river had flooded, which, considering there had been no major rains lately, he found very surprising. Still, the river district was clearly out of the running, so Eli slipped away from the crowd between the buildings and started up toward the workman’s quarter high on the city’s northern ridge.
The farther he went from the Citadel, the smaller and rougher the buildings became. Carriages were fewer and more storefronts were open instead of glassed. When he finally reached what he judged as the right part of the wrong side of town, Eli slowed down and started looking in earnest. He walked in a weaving pattern, studying and dismissing several taverns before he found the one that was just the right sort of seedy. Ducking under the faded sign, he pushed open the swinging door and slipped inside without a sound.
The place was dead. This close to dinner time, even drunks were home with their families. The lone barman didn’t even look up as Eli walked through the empty taproom toward the darkest, farthest corner table tucked away between the fireplace and ale casks where two familiar figures sat playing cards.
“Took you long enough,” Josef said as Eli took the empty chair with its back toward the room. “Nice hat.”
“Thank you,” Eli said, motioning for Nico to deal him in. “I hope you weren’t waiting long.”
“We just got here,” Josef said. “Oserans are tenacious bastards, took us forever to shake them.”
“I have to admit I was a little worried you wouldn’t show,” Eli said, picking up each Daggerback card as Nico dealt it. “After that display in Whitefall’s office, I almost believed kingship really had lured you in. If I’d known you could act like that, I would have worked out more two-man cons.”
“Who said I was acting?” Josef grumbled. “I meant it when I said I wasn’t going to trade my people’s money for a thief, and I promised my mother I’d take care of Osera.”
“So what are you doing here, then?” Eli said, frowning at his hand.
Josef leaned back, fanning out his cards while his free hand fiddled with the collar of his expensive coat. To a causal observer, he probably looked like a roughneck on a lucky streak. Certainly not the king of a Council Kingdom. “I think five hundred thousand gold standards is more than enough care for any country,” he said slowly. “It’s no secret I’m a pretty terrible king, so I figured now that money’s not an issue I should just get out of the way and let the people who want to rule have a go.”
“Very prudent,” Eli said. “I mean, it’s painfully obvious you don’t know anything about the niceties of politics.”
“I thought we did pretty well,” Josef said with a shrug.
Eli gave him a flat look. “You brought a severed head to a meeting with the Merchant Prince of Zarin.”
“What other proof am I supposed to bring?” Josef said. “His body was too big to haul around.”
Nico covered her mouth in a cough that sounded suspiciously like a laugh. Eli just rolled his eyes.
“Now that that’s settled,” Josef said, “where to?”
Eli scowled, suddenly serious. He’d been thinking about that question ever since he got out of the Citadel, and no matter how many angles he tried, there seemed to be only one answer he could live with. “The Shaper Mountain,” he said at last. “Karon is missing.”
Nico looked up. “Your lava spirit?”
Eli nodded. “Benehime took him away for helping me, but the Shaper Mountain will know where he is. Lava spirits are as much rock as fire, so they fall under the Mountain’s star as well as the great Lava River that minds all the fires. The Shaper Mountain knows as well as I do that Karon will die unless he finds a volcano willing to take him or I get him back. The old rock pile might put on a good front as a loyal star, but I know for a fact he’s not as law abiding as he pretends, especially not when one of his children, however distant, is on the line.”
Josef sighed. “Should I be concerned that I understood none of that?”
“Nope,” Eli answered. “Not unless you have a problem with going back to the mountains.”
“Mountains are fine,” Josef said. “While I know Osera will fare better without me, the rest of the country doesn’t seem to agree. I’m sure they’ll come around once they realize that not having a king actually sitting on the throne doesn’t mean the world is ending, but for right now the farther away from Osera we get, the better I’ll feel.”
“That makes things easier,” Eli said. “Nico?”
Nico shrugged. “If Josef doesn’t care, I don’t. I lost my fear of the mountains months ago.”
“Easier still,” Eli said, tossing his cards on the table. “It’s decided then. Let’s get out of here. That was a lousy draw anyway, and I’ve had more than enough of Zarin to last me another twenty years.”
“Figures,” Josef said, handing his cards to Nico. “The one time I get the Shepherdess.”
“She’s not all she’s cracked up to be,” Eli said, slapping his hat back onto his head.
Josef tossed some coins on the table as Nico tucked the Daggerback deck into her coat. The barkeep nodded to them as they left, never realizing that he’d just let the three most wanted criminals in the Council stroll out his front door.
“Do we need to pick up any operating funds?” Josef asked, adjusting the wrapped shape of the Heart on his back as they walked.
“Nope,” Eli said. “I’ve got it covered.”
He turned them down an alley and reached into his shirt, drawing out a set of tiny golden spoons. Josef’s eyes widened as the spoons were joined by a silver-wrought paperweight, a pair of delicate porcelain horses, and a miniature landscape still in its gilt frame.
“Where were they keeping you?” he asked as Eli piled his wealth in Nico’s hands. “A museum?”
“Oh, come on,” Eli said, fishing around in his pockets. “I was in the Council Citadel. I couldn’t leave empty-handed, could I?”
Josef rolled his eyes as Eli added several rare coins, a jeweled curtain pull, and an inkwell bearing the Whitefall family crest to the pile.
“That’s all I could fit,” he said with a regretful sigh. “We have to go back, though. Whitefall has amazing taste, and we could really use a wider collection of porcelain at Home.”
“Put it on the list,” Josef said. “Now, let’s find a fence and get going.”
Eli held out his arms in a grand gesture for Josef to lead the way, and they set off down the street toward a square filled with exactly the sort of dark, seedy stalls that would suit their purposes. Behind them in the distance, the Council Citadel’s golden spires trembled, sending pigeons fleeing across the sunset sky.
CHAPTER
11
Sara lashed out. A wave of fire followed her motion, washing Banage under. For a moment he was lost in the flames, but then cool mist fanned out around him, qu
enching the fire in midair.
When the flames were gone, the mist returned to its master, circling his body in a protective blanket. Sara drew the remains of her fire back, the wind and flame hissing together as they retreated. Behind his wall of fog, Banage glared and stretched out his hand to touch the metal wall of the closest, unspilled tank.
“Stop!” Sara cried, holding up her hands. Her eyes went wide as Banage’s fingers pressed against the metal, the great black ring on his thumb glowing like the sun through smoked glass. As the ring’s light grew, the cavern floor started to rumble as a great stone hand yanked itself from the ground. It rose up with a grinding sound, folding its dark, rocky fingers in a mirror of Banage’s own around the tank’s metal supports.
“Etmon, please,” Sara begged, eyes locked on Banage’s stone spirit as her tank began to wobble. “Do you even know what you’re destroying?”
“Oh, I know.” Banage’s voice was as cold as his fog. “For the first time, Sara, I know. I always suspected, but I thought surely, surely I couldn’t be right. You were a Spiritualist once. You couldn’t possibly have strayed that far. Now, I know better.”
The metal tank groaned as the stone hand began to push.
“This isn’t the Spirit Court,” Sara said calmly. “You have no right to come in here and shove your morals—”
“I have every right!” Banage roared. “Morals don’t change with location! There is truth in this world, Sara. Right and wrong. These things don’t vanish when you close your eyes, and you can’t make them go away by burying them in a cave.”