by Rachel Aaron
“I don’t see why you bother,” Miranda said, crossing her arms. “Sara did horrible things. She deserves everything she gets from those rivers.”
“That she does,” Banage said, climbing onto his stone horse. “But for good or ill, she’s still my wife, and I honor my oaths.”
“Even when the other person doesn’t?” Miranda said.
“Our oaths are our own, Miranda,” Banage said solemnly. “You know that.”
Miranda glowered. “She doesn’t deserve such loyalty.”
Banage just gave her a long, sad smile. “I’ll never give up on her,” he said. “The game’s not over yet.” And with that, he started down the tree-lined boulevard, his jade horse picking up speed as its green stone hooves clattered on the paving stones, raising a chorus of complaints.
“Remind me to schedule that formal inquiry to determine which stones actually want to be paving stones,” Miranda said wearily, pinching the bridge of her nose.
Gin nudged her back with his muzzle. “He’ll be back, you know. Maybe even with Sara, assuming he can convince the rivers not to drown her for her crimes.”
“I hope so, for his sake,” Miranda said. “Personally, I don’t understand what he ever saw in her.”
“Humans are strange,” Gin said, flicking his ears.
Miranda sighed and turned back to the Tower. “Come on, we have work to do.”
Gin swished his tail and followed his mistress up the stairs. Krigel was waiting just inside the Tower door, his arms full of papers containing thousands of details that awaited the Rector’s attention. Miranda looked at the pile and sighed again. Then, pulling herself straight, she held out her arms to accept her duty.
Alric, Deputy Commander of the League of Storms, or what was left of it, crouched silent and unseen on a ridge surrounded by delicate, yellow-leafed trees, watching the house on chicken legs. Beside him, the other League agent crouched just as silently, but his eyes were on Alric, and he did not look happy.
“How long do you mean to let this continue, sir?” he said in a low voice as the bear-headed man and his daughter went back inside the house. “The Lord of Storms’ orders were very clear.”
“The Lord of Storms isn’t here anymore, Chejo,” Alric said, just as low. “Or if he is, he isn’t worried about us. The demon is gone, the Dead Mountain empty and abandoned, the demonseeds cold and sleeping safely in the vault.”
“Even more reason,” Chejo countered. “She’s the last.”
“That she is,” Alric said. “But let me frame it like this: Even at its peak with the Lord of Storms beside us, the League was defeated by the Daughter of the Dead Mountain. That was three years ago. Part of being a commander is understanding what the men under your command can and cannot do, and I know we cannot take her down. Not with all our men, maybe not even if the Lord of Storms returned. Our gifts may remain, but without our Commander we can’t replenish our numbers with new recruits. Any attempt to fight the demon would cost us men we cannot replace, and anyway, it’s not like she’s running rampant through the countryside, is it?”
They both turned to glance at the knot of three people lying on the rocks beside the crouching house. The thief was talking as always, waving his arms in great circles. The swordsman was sprawled like a lizard in the sun and didn’t seem to be listening, but the girl was. She sat on the edge of the stone, her head tilted in a way that reminded Alric of an entranced cat.
It certainly wasn’t how you expected to find a demonseed, but the Daughter of the Dead Mountain had never been a normal seed. He wasn’t even sure she was a seed anymore now that the world had nearly collapsed, but she was surely a demon. She hid it well, but Alric could see the signs if he looked close enough—the way her black clothes seemed to eat the light, the faint waver of her shadow on the rock though the sun had not moved at all, and of course, the face he knew so well.
“My orders stand,” Alric said, settling down on the ridge. “We watch. If she panics so much as a pebble, we move in. I don’t think we can kill her, but there’s always the Shaper’s box. Still, seeing as she can afford a confrontation better than we can, we move only if she forces us. If she plays nice, we’ll play nice.”
“And just how long do you mean to play, sir?” Chejo said, gripping the hilt of his blood-red sword.
“Until the game ends,” Alric answered. “Now, report back to the citadel. I expect my relief to find me in three hours.”
Chejo saluted and vanished through a slit in the air. When he was sure he was alone, Alric released the breath he’d been holding. The League was a dangerous tangle of aggressive personalities without the Lord of Storms to keep them all in check. He would have to tread carefully, but then he’d been treading carefully for centuries. After almost a thousand years as the de facto organizational leader of the League, handling the sort of brute fighters the Lord of Storms preferred came to Alric as naturally as breathing.
He glanced down at the girl, still smiling in the sunshine. It was probably all a trick, of course, but Alric saw no reason a demon couldn’t be happy every once in a while. Especially when that happiness seemed to involve no eating of spirits for once.
Alric smiled, leaning back to catch a shaft of the warm sunshine the rest of them were enjoying. Watching a happy demon might not be exciting, but it was far better than martyring yourself fighting one. The demon lounged on the rock, feet swinging in the breeze like any normal, happy girl enjoying a nice day, and Alric’s smile widened before he could stop it. Good for her, he thought. For all he cared, she could stay like this forever. And so, for that matter, could he.
Basking in the sunlight that was so rare for a man who’d spent his immortality in a fortress of storms, Alric relaxed into the grass and set about enjoying the next three hours of his watch.
“And that’s the plan,” Eli said, finishing with a flourish. “What do you think?”
“I don’t know,” Josef said, scratching at the bandages that swaddled his chest. “Seems needlessly risky to me. And we’ve never pulled a job in Zarin before.”
“That was to avoid my father,” Eli pointed out. “But I’ve put the past behind me and come to embrace the target-rich environment Zarin provides.”
Josef made a noncommittal noise, and Eli turned his eyes to Nico, pleading. The girl just shrugged and smiled, legs swinging back and forth in the air beneath her.
Seeing her like this still threw Eli for a loop. He was used to Nico being a ball of coat, not kicking limbs. But now she sat in the sunlight in a pair of trousers, boots, and a loose shirt that dropped to her wrists despite the heat. All black, of course, but everything she made for herself was. There didn’t seem to be much option for color when you formed your clothes out of shadow.
Still, it all looked normal enough except for the long, ragged scarf she wore around her neck. The scrap of black cloth was all that remained of the coat Slorn had made for her so long ago. They’d come here hoping to get it patched, but even Slorn couldn’t work a miracle that large. Still, even torn to bits and changed by Miranda’s gift of will, the scrap of coat had never lost its loyalty to Slorn, Nico, and its duty, and Nico absolutely refused to give it up. It clung to her neck like a snake, twitching occasionally whenever Eli looked at it sideways.
“Maybe we should keep lying low,” Josef suggested, his voice warped by a wide yawn. “Give things a chance to shake out. I know I haven’t gotten used to doors yelling at me when I slam them yet.”
“That’s exactly why we shouldn’t wait,” Eli said, exasperated. “The unrest is what creates the sort of wide-open opportunities we’ll need for a job like this. It’s perfect. We’ll hit the opera first and then Whitefall’s private manor house, netting five priceless treasures in a little under two hours. This is the sort of heist people will be talking about for years. Think of my bounty!”
“What is your bounty now, anyway?” Josef said, yawning again.
“Two hundred and eighty-five thousand,” Eli recited. “Which is still seven hundred
and fifteen thousand from where it needs to be.”
Josef shrugged and lay back in the sunshine, completely oblivious to the seriousness of the matter. Folding his arms over his chest, Eli decided to raise the stakes. “Josef,” he said calmly. “If you don’t get off that rock so we can get going, I’m going to write your ministers and tell them I found their king.”
Josef’s body went stiff, and Eli broke into a cruel smile. “I’m sure they’d be willing to fork over some of Den’s bounty to drag you home,” he continued. “One way or another, my number is going up. So which will it be, your majesty?”
Josef sat up with a long sigh. “When do we leave?”
“That’s more like it,” Eli said, starting off toward the edge of the clearing where Slorn and Pele were talking with the trees of the Awakened Wood. “And we leave as soon as I thank our hosts.”
“Wait a moment, Eli,” Josef said, standing up.
Eli stopped and looked over his shoulder to see his swordsman lift the Heart of War and look at it for a long moment before slinging it over his shoulder, well away from his injured chest. “I’ve been thinking,” he said at last. “Can we even pull the heists anymore?”
Eli frowned. “What do you mean?”
“I mean now that you’re not a wizard,” Josef said. “Is that going to change the way we do things?”
Eli stared at him a moment, and then stepped over to the side of Slorn’s house where a small tool chest had been fastened onto the wooden exterior. Its door was locked with a latch and fastened tight with three ornate hinges, all wrought from the same smooth, black iron. After a glance to make sure Josef was watching, Eli fixed his face in his best smile and leaned down, tapping the door with his long fingers.
“Excuse me,” he said. “I was just walking by when I happened to notice the extraordinary grain of your wood.”
The shed door rattled slightly. “My wood?”
“Who else’s?” Eli said.
The door waggled happily a moment, and then froze. “Wait,” it said. “You’re the thief, aren’t you? Slorn said I wasn’t supposed to listen to you, Eli Monpress.”
“Slorn’s a tinkerer,” Eli said, waving dismissively. “He doesn’t like anyone messing with his toys. But I’m not going to do anything. I just want a closer look.”
“Well, I guess that’s all right,” the door said, angling its wood so Eli could see the grain clearly.
“Absolutely stunning,” Eli said, stroking the door with his fingers as he pored over the completely normal wood grain like it was a list of lock combinations for the Council of Thrones’ tax vault. “Can I see the other side?”
“Of course,” the door said, its voice swelling with pride. “Let me have a word with the lock.”
The spirits chattered among themselves for a moment, and then the lock popped with a grudging click. The door sprang open, revealing Slorn’s neat and near-priceless collection of custom awakened saws. Eli nodded appreciatively and turned to Josef with a smug smile. “Any more questions?”
Josef shook his head.
Eli thanked the door and stepped away. As he started toward Slorn to make his farewells, he glanced again at Josef and Nico only to see them both waiting by the rocks, fully armed and ready to go. Grinning wide, he hurried toward the bear-headed Shaper while visions of his new bounty danced through his head with all the little zeros trailing behind.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Five books and seven years after he sauntered into my life and told me I was going to write a novel about him, Eli’s story is now finished. It’s been a far more enjoyable journey than I could ever have anticipated, and I could never have done it without Matt Bialer, my tireless agent, and Lindsay Ribar, whose wonderful suggestions created most of the really good parts of this series. I am also deeply grateful to Devi Pillai and the fantastic team at Orbit, whose love and enthusiasm for my books never ceases to amaze me into sputtering befuddledness. Also, thank you to my wonderful fans. Eli loves each and every one of you personally.
But most of all, these books could not have happened without the original Slorn, my husband, Travis. Thank you for always being there for me, love, and thank you for letting me put a bear on your head.
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