by Rachel Aaron
“No one would ever accuse us of traveling normally.”
Josef shrugged, helping Nico down. “Can the cart keep going?”
“No,” Eli said. “They’ve earned their rest. Help me out,” he said, leaning down. “After all that, the least I can do is leave them free.”
They undid the wheels and left them propped in the rocks beside the cart. Then, with a thankful farewell, Eli, Nico, and Josef set out down the overgrown path into Argo.
“All right,” Josef said, setting a brisk pace. “What now?”
“Now, we make for Gaol.” Eli reached into his pack and pulled out his map. “Argo is divided into four autonomous duchies, each about the size of a small kingdom itself. Argo’s really more like a collection of kingdoms than somewhere like Mellinor, where one king calls all the shots. That’s probably why it was one of the first major players to join the Council of Thrones. It was already used to the idea of governance by committee. Anyway, Gaol is the southernmost duchy, taking up the whole of the Fellbro River Valley just before it joins the Wellbro and they both change their names to the Whitefall River as the water enters Zarin’s territory. That’s part of why Gaol is so rich. The Fellbro River connects the northwest quarter of the Council Kingdoms with everything else. There’s enough trade coming down that waterway to keep even the greediest merchant happy, and not so much as a kernel of wheat passes through without Gaol levying some kind of tariff. Now, we’re currently in Eol, the northernmost and relatively poorest duchy of Argo. All the attention’s on the river traffic, so I expect that if we can stay on foot and on the border here we can just walk into Gaol with no questions asked.”
Josef shot him a look. “That simple, eh?”
“With us? Never,” Eli said, laughing. “If we can get into Gaol’s capital, which, I might add, is also called Goal, thanks to the stupid and confusing naming conventions of the northwest kingdoms. Anyway, if we can get in unmolested, we’ll have Slorn’s sword and be out of here in a week, tops.”
“A week?” Josef said. “You said kidnapping the King of Mellinor would take a week.”
“Give or take a major inconvenience,” Eli said, shrugging. “Kidnapping was a new area for us. There were bound to be slip-ups. This is good old-fashioned theft, and no Spiritualists in sight to mess it up. I think we’ll be all right.”
Nico and Josef exchanged a look behind Eli’s back as they followed the thief south, down the overgrown road and into the rolling hills of Argo.
It took them two days to reach Gaol’s border, mostly because on the second day it began to rain. It was a drenching, cold rain blown down from the mountains, and it made the going miserable. Eli, drowned and sulking with his blue jacket wrapped tight around him, mentioned something about stopping every mile or so, but nothing came of it. The mountain forests had stopped at the Argo border, logged to make room for sheep and cattle grazing, but it was poor land up here and the ranchers’ homes were spread thin. They passed a few farmhouses, their inviting plumes of smoke smelling of cooking and warmth, but the travelers didn’t stop. Eli had learned his lesson about nosy farmers on multiple occasions, and even a miserable, wet walk wasn’t enough to make him try one of those doors.
“Not much farther,” he said, tilting his head so the water would have a harder time going down his neck.
“So you keep saying,” Josef said. The swordsman paid no more attention to the rain than a bull does, and the water rolled off him with scarcely a notice. Nico kept in step with him, kicking her thin feet so the mud wouldn’t build up on her boots. Eli grumbled something about traveling with monsters and kept his own pace, moving his feet carefully so as not to lose a boot in the quagmire the road had become. It was a complicated process, which was why he didn’t notice that Josef and Nico had stopped until he ran face-first into Josef’s back.
“Powers!” he muttered, stumbling back. “What now ?”
Josef just nodded at the road ahead of them. Eli squinted into the rain, confused; then he saw it too. About ten feet ahead of them, the rain stopped. The road went on, the hills went on, but the rain didn’t. Eli walked forward, sloshing through the mud until he was on the edge of where the weather suddenly cut off. There, in the middle of the road, was a line. On one side, it was a miserable, cold, wet rain; on the other, the weather was sunny and the road was dry.
Squinting through the rain, Eli leaned forward until his nose was almost touching the invisible barrier separating rain from sun. “Well,” he said softly, “that’s odd.”
“That’s one way to put it,” Josef said.
Eli tilted his head back and squinted at the sky. The disconnect seemed to go all the way up. Even the gray clouds stopped at the line, swirling and turning over on each other at the border as if they’d hit an invisible wall.
“Very odd,” Eli muttered.
Josef glared at the division. He didn’t like unexplainable things. “Any ideas on what could cause something like this?”
“Well,” Eli said, tapping his fingers against his wet chin. “It could be some kind of agreement between the local spirits. I doubt it, though. Spirits have their own politics, but something this precise smacks of human interference.”
Josef frowned. “A wizard who likes sunshine, then?”
“That’d be my guess,” Eli said, poking at the line between wet and dry with his boot. “Not a Spiritualist, though. They’d consider something like this, I don’t know, rude. Not their style at all.”
Josef nodded, and they stood there staring at the anomaly for a moment longer. Then Eli shook himself.
“Well,” he said, “no point in standing in the drink when we don’t have to. That’s our road, so we might as well stop worrying and enjoy the sunshine.”
He strode forward, crossing the border between rain and sun with only a tiny hesitation. He felt nothing as he crossed, just the welcome warmth of sunlight on his wet shoulders. Now that he was on the dry side, the air was cool and bright and the dry road was solid and even, a welcome change from the rutted mud slick they’d been shuffling through all day.
Once they were all in the dry they shook out their soaked clothes and sat in the thick grass on the roadside while they drained the water out of their boots. Now that they could see the sun, it was clear that the afternoon was quickly passing, so after a short rest, they pressed on, following the road down out of the hills into a green valley.
The land on this side of the rain was very different from the scrubby hills they’d been plowing through since abandoning the cart. The brown grass and rocky outcroppings had been replaced by orderly orchards and green pastures. The road was well maintained, with neat stone walls dividing it from the farmland and not a single rut in the hard-packed dirt. In the distance, picturesque farmhouses made of gray stone and whitewashed wood nestled between the hills like plump, roosting chickens. Sleek horses grazed in green fields while roosters with deep-blue tails strutted on white fences, crowing occasionally as the sun sank lower.
“It’s like we walked into a painting,” Josef said. “ Cottages at Sundown or something.”
Eli brushed self-consciously at his dirty clothes. He hated being dirty in general, but being dirty here felt like an insult to the bucolic perfection. “Funny, I figured the richest province in the Council Kingdoms would be a little less pastoral.”
Josef shrugged. “Even rich people have to eat.”
“I just hope this place has something worth picking up besides the Fenzetti,” Eli said. “All I’m seeing is a lot of grass and livestock, and I’m not doing horses again. I swear, the more valuable their bloodline, the harder they bite.”
“I don’t think you have to worry about that,” Josef said. “There’s the town.”
Eli looked up and saw that Josef was right. At the bottom of the hill they’d just crested stood a large, lovely town. Gray stone buildings with steep red roofs stood in orderly squares divided by broad, paved roads. The city was hemmed in on all sides by a high stone wall, though it looked
more like an ornamental barrier to separate the city from the country than an actual, defensible position. On the far side of the city from their position, a river hemmed in by bridges and dock houses glittered in the evening light, and above it, sitting on a jut of rock like a crow on its perch, was the duke’s citadel.
Even if the poster hadn’t had a picture, Eli would have recognized the building. Perfectly square, with tiny windows and a black exterior, it was radically different from the charming buildings that surrounded it. Guards walked the perimeter, tiny glittering figures with polished hauberks guiding thick-shouldered dogs on leather leads. Though it was still early evening, torches burned on the citadel walls, their light reflected by mirrored panels set right into the stone, bouncing the light back and forth so that every shadow was illuminated. These felt like unnecessary precautions, however. Even without the guards and the lights, the thick walls of the citadel positively reeked with inaccessibility. Eli felt his pulse quicken. It was a challenge, a true challenge, and he could hardly wait to begin.
Josef caught his gleeful look and folded his arms over his chest. “We’re doing this carefully, remember?”
“Oh, I remember.” Eli grinned. “It would be a shame and a waste to do it any way but right.” He clapped his hands and turned to his companions. “First order of business, setting up base camp. I’m thinking docks.”
“Sounds good,” Josef said. “Lots of people go through there. It’s hard to remember them all. Even the best guards won’t notice three new faces.”
“Close to the city, too,” Eli said, eyeing the river. “And plenty of escape routes.”
“That’s settled, then,” Josef said, veering off the road. “Let’s go.”
Eli and Nico followed the swordsman as he left the road and cut straight down the steep embankment toward the river. They hit the water south of town and followed it up, slipping past the wall through one of the dozens of dock gates and up onto the river walk. The river itself was a good fifty feet across and deeply trenched for the large, low-running barges that floated down it. Piers jutted out into the murky green water, connecting the boats to the long, low storehouses that pushed right up to the river’s edge. River crewmen were gathered in knots by the iron fire troughs, smoking pipes and roasting fish on skewers over the hot coals. These clusters were few and far between, however, and other than the river men, the docks were empty.
“Better and better,” Eli said quietly.
They chose one of the storehouses on the end, a small affair with an older lock, which took Eli five seconds flat to pick, and plenty of dusty cargo that wasn’t going anywhere.
“Perfection,” Eli said, craning his head back to look up at the last light of evening as it streamed through the tiny, glassless windows high up on the two-story walls. “And with daylight to burn.”
“I’ll take care of the groundwork,” Josef said, setting the Heart down in a corner. “Nico, secure the building. Eli, do whatever it is you do.”
“Right,” Eli said, plopping down on a crate and kicking off his wet boots. “I’ll get right on that.”
Josef made a “forget it” gesture as he walked out the door. Nico had vanished the moment Josef assigned her duty, and so Eli was left alone. He took his time wiggling out of his wet coat and fanning out his shirt so the white cloth wouldn’t dry crinkled. Finally, when he was beginning to feel human again, he stood up and strolled to the center of the dusty warehouse.
“All right,” he said to the empty room. “Let’s get started.”
It was fully dark when Josef slipped back into the storehouse, carrying a bag of food and a long list of new troubles. But when he opened the door, he realized he wasn’t the only one who’d had bad news. Eli was sitting in the far corner of the room, surrounded by boxes and looking more frustrated than Josef had ever seen him look.
He put down his bag and walked over, crouching next to the thief. “What’s wrong?”
“It’s the boxes!” Eli exclaimed, far too loudly. “They won’t talk to me!”
Josef flinched at the desperate edge in his voice. Anything that put Eli this out of whack was going to be a problem.
Eli glared at the boxes. “They won’t talk to me at all. Not at all! It’s like they’re not even spirits!”
“Eli,” Josef said slowly, “they are just crates. We’ll find something else—”
“It doesn’t matter if they’re crates or cupcakes!” Eli cried. “They’re spirits, and they’re not talking. Spirits always talk to me, unless they’re under an Enslavement not to, but I don’t feel anything like that here. Just crates who won’t talk .”
“Maybe they’re shy?” Josef said and sighed. “Anyway, we’ve got bigger problems than not-talking crates. Something’s off in town.”
“Off?” Eli said. “Off how?”
“Hard to explain, really.” Josef ran his hand through his short hair. “To start, it’s spooky quiet. Everything’s so neat. Plus, the streets emptied out as soon as the sun went down. No taverns, no drunks, nothing but guards, clean streets, and quiet.”
Eli shrugged. “Gaol’s a peaceful, quiet town full of decent, boring people. I realize you might not have much experience with those, but it’s hardly something to get alarmed about.”
“There’s quiet and then there’s quiet,” Josef snapped. “I told you, this was spooky quiet. And”—he reached in his pocket—“these are all over town.” He took out a piece of paper and unfolded it, revealing a familiar grinning face above a large, bold number. Fifty-five thousand standards.
“They didn’t even get the bounty right,” Eli said, grabbing the poster. “I’m worth sixty thousand.”
“Who cares about the number?” Josef growled, snatching the paper back. “I knew this was a trap from the moment you got all starry-eyed over that poster for the citadel back at the broker’s, but the bounty posters confirm it. We should sneak out tonight before it slams shut on our heads.”
“Sneak out?” Eli cried. “Josef, we just slogged through two days of rain to get here. We’re not going to just turn tail and leave.”
“Weren’t you listening?” Josef said, grabbing Eli’s arm. “It’s one thing to get caught in an ambush, but it’s just plain stupid to stay in one after you’ve spotted it. Part of fighting is knowing when to retreat.”
“As you are so fond of pointing out,” Eli said, snatching his arm back, “I’m not a fighter. And we’re not leaving.”
“You should leave,” whispered a quiet voice. “You seem like a nice wizard. We don’t want you to die.”
Eli spun away from Josef. “Well, hello there,” he said. “Looks like you can talk!”
The crates around them jumped. “Shh!” the voice hissed. “Not so loud! If we’re caught talking to you it’s the end for us.”
“What?” Josef whispered, looking around.
“It’s the crates,” Eli whispered back, grinning like a madman. “They’re agreeing with you.” He patted the swordsman on the back and then leaned in to whisper to the wooden crate. “What do you mean ‘the end’? Who would catch you?”
The crate fell silent again, leaving the question hanging. Then, in a voice that was scarcely more than a whisper of dust on wood, it said, “The watcher.”
Eli frowned, confused. “Watcher?”
“The duke’s watcher sees everything,” the crate said, trembling. “We’re not allowed to talk to wizards, but you’re the nicest, brightest wizard we’ve ever seen, so please, leave. We don’t want you to get caught.”
Eli was about to ask another question when a sharp crack from the highest crate on the stack interrupted him.
“Watcher!” the crates cried in unison. “It’s coming! Say nothing! Ignore the wizard!”
“Get out of here!” Eli’s crate whispered frantically.
“What’s coming?” Eli whispered frantically, running his hands over the dusty wood. “What do you mean ‘watcher’?”
But the crates had shut themselves down again, and in
the silence, Eli heard a low sound.
“What is going on?” Josef said again, more urgently this time.
“Shh!” Eli hushed him, hunkering down among the crates.
Josef gave him a cutting look, and then he heard it too.
It sounded like a strong wind rushing between the buildings, only it didn’t rush. The roaring sound lingered, moving up the river slowly, patiently, and in a manner that was wholly disconnected with the entire idea of wind. It hit the wooden walls of the warehouse like a wave, rattling anything that wasn’t nailed down, whistling as it tore through the high windows. Then it was gone, moving methodically down the line of dock houses, leaving only the terrified silence of traumatized crates in its wake.
Eli glanced at Josef and the two of them crept back to the center of the storehouse. Nico was there waiting for them, though Eli hadn’t seen her come in. She was simply there, and she didn’t look happy about it.
“Something just came by,” she whispered once they were close.
“So we heard,” Eli said. “Did you catch what it was?”
Nico shook her head. “I want to say it was a wind, but I’ve never felt a wind like that.”
Eli bit his lip thoughtfully, but Josef looked like his mind had just been made up.
“So,” he said, “we’ve walked into a trap full of terrified spirits and winds that aren’t winds. Is that enough to convince you this job is going to be more trouble than it’s worth?”
“One day.” Eli faced Josef, holding up one finger. “Give me one day to scout the situation. Tomorrow night, we’ll make the hit or leave. Either way, it’ll be done.” He looked up at the high windows. “There’s something going on here. First, the line in the rain; now this. Surely you’re as curious as I am about what’s going on here?”
“Of course I’m curious,” Josef said. “But I don’t let my curiosity get me stuck in situations I can’t get out of. That’s the difference between you and me.”