by Rachel Aaron
Miranda looked around at the empty town. “That it does, but I’m not exactly a lady of the manor.”
The wind laughed, rippling over her. “I’m sure you’ll manage. I’m leaving Lelbon here to help. Try not to be too hard on the little river spirit when it comes back. And Miranda?”
This last bit was whispered, a bare breeze in her ear. “Good luck and thank you. I won’t be forgetting your usefulness.”
That struck Miranda as an odd way of putting it, but the wind was already blowing past her, rising in a gale and blowing west, clearing the clouds out of the way as the sun began to peek over the horizon.
“Well,” Gin said. “Now what?”
“I’m not sure,” Miranda said. She was feeling a bit deflated, but happy. If anyone could get her back into the Spirit Court without Eli, it would be a spirit like the West Wind. Still, first things first. “Erol,” she said clutching the pearl pendant at her neck. “Go and tell Durn to bring Hern to the citadel so we can lock him up somewhere more comfortable.”
The wind tittered at this and left, blowing out in a whistling gust. When it was gone, she nudged Gin forward. He trotted off toward the citadel, tongue hanging out.
“We need to find the second-in-command,” Miranda said, running her hands through her hair as her brain scrambled. “Send a runner to the Council and to the King of Argo to find out who’s supposed to be taking over, and to explain what happened. I’m not looking forward to that. Plus, there’s cleanup, getting the people back in line and back into their homes, rebuilding, so much to do.”
“You’ll manage,” Gin said. “First, let’s get some breakfast. I don’t think anyone would begrudge me a pig after all that running.”
Miranda laughed, and together they picked up the pace, loping past the burned-out buildings and into the great, empty citadel of Gaol.
All in all it took two weeks for the King of Argo to declare the Duke of Gaol’s successor. Edward of Gaol had no wife or children, and though his nephew was the obvious choice to inherit, the nature of the duke’s death prevented a smooth transition. He’d been murdered, that was certain. Still, the King of Argo couldn’t levy charges against a shop sign, roofing tiles, and an iron door. So, after much deliberation, the duke’s death was written down as an accident. Once that was out of the way, the nephew showed up almost immediately and proceeded at once to instigate a full inventory of Gaol’s wealth and property, a task that left him exceedingly unhappy.
“This is intolerable!” he cried, shoving the account books under Miranda’s nose for the fifth time that hour. “Not even counting the water damage done to my priceless treasures, which we’re still dredging out of the river, the old goat spent almost forty thousand gold standards on his ridiculous Eli Monpress obsession, ten thousand of which was spent making that brick of a citadel look impressive from the outside! Honestly, it’s not even a citadel, just a garrison with overly thick walls and an absurd little mansion stuck on its head.”
“Well,” Miranda said, “look at it this way: at least Gaol’s not in the hole, which is more than I can say for most kingdoms. So why don’t you count yourself lucky? You are, after all, one duchy richer than you were last week.”
“That’s hardly the point!” the nephew cried. “Look here! Here’s a check written out to one Phillipe di Monte for ‘consultation and advice involving the actions of Eli Monpress.’ Written out the day my uncle died, no less! It’s scandalous!”
“Phillipe di Monte,” Miranda said thoughtfully. “Isn’t he the villain from Pacso’s The Piteous Fall of Dulain?”
“I don’t care if it was Punchi the puppet!” the nephew shouted back. “I just want to know why he’s getting almost twenty thousand standards of my money when his advice obviously didn’t work!”
Miranda didn’t have an answer for that. Fortunately, Lelbon appeared at that moment to tell her that Fellbro was almost ready to take his river back.
As it turned out, by the time the duke’s nephew contacted Gaol’s money changer in Zarin, the gold had already been paid to the mysterious Phillipe di Monte. This sent the poor boy into a rage, and convinced it was Eli himself making a fool of him, the new duke then sent off a letter pledging another twenty thousand to Monpress’s bounty, just on general principle.
“That will show the no-good thief!” he said, sealing the letter to the Council Bounty office.
Miranda wisely kept her comments to herself.
Just when she was sure she could take no more, an envoy from the Spirit Court arrived to fetch Hern and Miranda and take them back to Zarin. The wind’s words must have had a better effect than even Miranda had anticipated, for the Spiritualists treated her as if she was the Rector Spiritualis himself. This infuriated Hern to no end, which put Miranda in very high spirits as she rode down to the river.
She’d spoken to her sea spirit very little while Mellinor had inhabited the river. He’d simply been too large and too busy to talk with. Now the blue water was gone and the river was back to its usual cloudy green. As Miranda walked out on the dock, Mellinor rose in a pillar of water to greet her, his water cloudy with fatigue.
“I was almost afraid you wouldn’t come back,” Miranda said. “Not after you’d gotten a taste for being a Great Spirit again.”
“Of course I came back,” the water said. “I’m a sea, not a river. All this flowing and silt was driving me mad. Besides”-his voice grew wistful-“no river could replace my own seabed. But I’m already resigned to that, and anyway, you’re my shore now, Miranda.”
She smiled at that, and held out her hands. “Ready to come home, then?”
“More than you know,” he said and sighed, sliding back into her with a relieved, sinking feeling.
He sank to the bottom of her spirit and fell asleep almost instantly. When he was completely settled, Miranda turned around and walked back to Gin, who was waiting on the road.
“Come on.” She grinned, sliding onto his back. “Let’s go home.”
“I thought we’d never leave,” Gin sighed, loping back toward the citadel where the other Spiritualist waited with Hern, now ringless and bound in chains, to journey with them back to Zarin where, Miranda had the feeling, she’d get a much warmer welcome this time around.
Acknowledgments
Thank you to Aaron, Matt, Krystina, Steven, Andrea, and everyone who read my books back when they were really terrible. Your feedback got me to where I am today.
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