by Rachel Aaron
“Especially when he hasn’t pulled a crime in over a month,” Miranda muttered, looking balefully over at the other stack of papers on her desk. Shorter than the Council reports but still an impressive pile, these were great sheets of cheap yellow paper folded in half and printed with enormous lettering. The top one proclaimed MONPRESS STILL AT LARGE!!! above a dramatized engraving of a jaunty Monpress carrying a fat man with a crown, presumably the king of Mellinor, over his shoulder while a tall man with rings on his fingers and another figure in the white uniform of the Council guards looked around cluelessly in the background.
Miranda rubbed her throbbing temples. If the Council reports were dull and overresearched, the gossip sheets were the exact opposite. Below the picture were paragraphs full of exclamations and bold claims with the important points underlined for maximum impact. Where was Monpress now? Why hadn’t he been active? Was it a cover-up? Why wasn’t the Spirit Court doing anything? Where are the bounty hunters?
The speculations ran all the way to the fold, which was a bit long even for cheap sensationalism. Still, with Eli gone to ground, the public was hungry for more coverage, even when it was a simple rehashing of known information. Miranda reached out and flipped the paper open, grimacing as the cheap ink smudged onto her fingers. The feature on Monpress continued below the fold, ending with an editorial piece from an anonymous Concerned Council Member titled OUR GREATEST THREAT.
“Who is the greatest threat to our security today? Besides the ever-present threat of the Immortal Empress from across the sea, a look down the Council’s bounty list provides a feast of villainy. Yet ask the man on the street, the farmer in the field, and the answer is always the same: wizards. We all know of the events in Mellinor, where a wizard nearly took control of a kingdom single-handedly through force of his magic. The so-called Spirit Court has told us this was the doing of Eli Monpress, but if that’s so, then why does Monpress go uncaught? How does an organization that can talk to the wind itself fail to capture a man so notorious? The answer is simple enough for a child: Because they are in allegiance with the thief! How many more disasters will we allow the wizards to blame on Monpress, their ‘supposed’ rogue? How much higher must Monpress’s bounty get before we wake up and realize that our anger should be focused not on the thief, but on his masters, the so-called Spirit Court and its king, Etmon Banage!”
There was more, but Miranda didn’t bother to read it. She balled up the paper and threw it as hard as she could across the room. It landed beside Gin, who woke with a snort, glaring at the paper before turning his orange eyes on his mistress. “I told you not to waste your time with that trash.”
“It gets worse every day!” Miranda shouted, slamming her hands on the table.
“It’s always been like this,” Gin said. “It just seems worse because you’re paying attention to it now.”
“Look.” She grabbed a fistfull of yellow sheets from the stack and shook them at the hound. “Every one of these sorry excuses for print sings the same tune: ‘The Spirit Court is a bunch of bungling idiots who can’t catch a thief,’ ‘Eli Monpress is working for the wizards!’ And it’s always us. You never see one of these anonymous letters criticizing the Council.”
“That’s because the Council outsources all its catching to bounty hunters rather than sending its own people,” Gin said, yawning. “Easier to blame someone when you know their name.”
“That’s not it and you know it.” Miranda glared at him. “It’s just what Master Banage said would happen. That thief is ruining the reputation of the Spirit Court! Master Banage’s name, all our names are being dragged through the mud on the front page of the Zarin gossip sheets and it’s all Monpress’s fault! ”
“So why are we sitting around here?” Gin said, standing up. “You’re head of the Eli investigation. Let’s go catch him.”
“Catch him doing what ?” Miranda cried, gesturing at the snowdrift of paper on her desk. “Eli hasn’t robbed so much as a roadside charity box in a month.”
“At least we’d be out there doing something,” Gin snapped back. “Better than being in here, pushing paper and getting angry at gossip sheets. Who ever heard of catching a thief by reading reports?”
“No,” Miranda said fiercely, shoving her reports into order. “This is where I need to be. The Council has the best information network on the continent. If Eli pulls anything, I’ll be the first to know. And this time it won’t be like Mellinor or Gaol. This time I’ll have the full backing of the Council. No more going after him alone, no more playing up to local officials. We’ll come down on that thief with the combined forces of the Council of Thrones and the Spirit Court. Bam!” She slammed her hands on the table. “I’d like to see him wiggle out of that.”
Gin flicked his ears back at the crash. “Why are you getting so worked up? I thought we kind of liked Eli now.”
Miranda stuck her nose in the air. “Thinking he’s not evil isn’t the same as liking him. He’s a scoundrel and a lawbreaker and a thief, not to mention a liar, and though I will admit he’s not a bad sort of guy underneath all that, it hardly makes up for the rest.” She clenched her fists. “I’m going to catch that thief, Gin. I’ll bring him trussed up like a hog before Master Banage and clear the Spirit Court’s name once and for all. And then I’m going to use the bounty money to put these liars ”—she swatted the stack of gossip sheets—“out of business for good.”
“Don’t waste your gold,” said a lilting, unfamiliar voice. “More would just spring up.”
Miranda and Gin both jumped and whirled around to face the sound. There, five steps inside the locked and bolted door, was a man. He was very tall and dressed extremely oddly. He wore red snakeskin boots with pointed toes, black trousers that were far too tight and were embellished with lemon-yellow thread, and a green velvet jacket the color of new grass over a bright pink shirt and a maroon vest. His long hair was ice blond shot with black (an obvious dye job, though she couldn’t say which, if either, had been his original color), and his head was crowned with a large red hat trimmed with gold that he wore swooped down over his eyes.
“Anyway,” he continued, traipsing into the room as if he’d been invited. “There’s no point in getting angry at the gossips. If it wasn’t the Court, they’d be after someone else.”
“Who are you?” Miranda shouted, jumping up, her rings flashing as her chair toppled over behind her. But Gin was even faster. By the time the words were out of her mouth, he had launched himself off the floor and pounced on the man, pinning him to the ground.
“How did you sneak in here?” Gin snarled, his orange eyes blinking rapidly, as though he was having trouble focusing. “How do you make no sound? Why do you flicker like that?”
The man smiled up at the large, sharp teeth hovering inches above his head. “Easy, doggie,” he said, his eyes darting toward Miranda. “I’m afraid I’m not a wizard. So if your guard dog is addressing me, he’s wasting his rather terrible-smelling breath. If you wouldn’t mind?” He wiggled helplessly.
Miranda made no move to call Gin off. Instead, she walked across the room to stand over the man as well. “You haven’t answered my question,” she said. “And I’ll add Gin’s to it, since you can’t hear. Who are you? How did you get in here? What are you doing?”
“You left out the part about the flickering,” Gin growled, leaning harder on the stranger’s shoulders until the man’s face turned pasty against the garish backdrop of his hat. “Can’t you see it?”
Miranda shook her head. Other than questionable color choices, the man looked normal to her.
The stranger wiggled one hand into his pocket and flipped out a card, which he tossed toward Miranda’s feet.
“The name’s Sparrow,” he said as she picked it up. “I got in through the door, and I do almost anything. Tonight, I’m an errand boy. I’ve been sent by our mutual employer to request your presence at a meeting tomorrow morning.”
“Employer?” Miranda said, holding the
card by its edges. “Lord Whitefall?”
“That windbag?” The man laughed. “No, dear, I’m no paper-pusher. I’m talking about Sara, the lady running the show.”
Miranda looked at the card in her hand. It was surprisingly plain, considering the man it belonged to, just a white rectangle on heavy stock with a small engraving of a sparrow in flight in the lower left-hand corner. She flipped it over. The back was as blank as the front, save for a small notation written in slanting script: 8:40.
“Eight forty?” Miranda read, brows furrowed.
“Yes, and don’t be late,” Sparrow said. “Sara keeps an extremely tight schedule. She’ll be intolerable if you throw it off.”
She gave him a suspicious look. “Where am I going?”
“The Council citadel, of course,” Sparrow said, tilting his head sideways so that he wasn’t directly under Gin’s bared teeth. “Just show up and I’ll bring you down. I play doorman as well as messenger.”
Miranda slipped the card into her pocket. “Is that all you have to tell me?”
“Yes,” Sparrow said. “Can you get this dog off of me? I’m having trouble feeling my legs.”
Miranda looked at Gin and jerked her head to the side. With a final growl, Gin pulled back, circling around to stand beside Miranda as Sparrow sat up and wiped his face with an orange handkerchief.
“I can see you’ll be a delightful addition to our team,” he said, standing up stiffly. “I’ll see you tomorrow, yes?”
“Eight forty.” Miranda nodded. “I’ll be early, and your Sara had better have a good explanation.”
“Oh, she has dozens,” Sparrow said. “Getting one out of her is the challenge.” He straightened his coat and turned to face her, tipping his extravagant hat politely. “Until tomorrow, Miss Miranda.”
He flashed her a wide smile and then, spinning on his tall heel, walked out the previously locked door. Gin watched him intently, ears swiveling, but Sparrow made a perfectly normal amount of noise as he left, and the dog seemed disappointed. He stared at the door as it swung shut, growling low in his throat. “I don’t trust that man.”
Miranda could only laugh at that. “What was your first clue?”
“No,” Gin said sharply. “There’s something really wrong about him.”
Miranda stopped laughing. “What do you mean?”
“He flickers,” the dog said. “He’s hard to look at, like he’s there but not.”
“Flickers how?”
Gin made a frustrated sound. “I can’t explain it. It’s just wrong. I had to look at him with my eyes to see him clearly. I’ve never had to do that before.” He looked at her intently. “You should be careful tomorrow.”
“I always am,” Miranda said. “Still, I don’t care what’s wrong with the man. There’s something going on and I want to know what. Whitefall said this Sara person was in charge of wizard affairs for the Council. If she’s calling me in, it could mean she has some information about Eli. Anyway, whatever this meeting is about, it has to be better than paperwork.”
Gin gave her a firm look. “I’m going with you.”
Miranda shook her head, reaching out to scratch his long nose. “I wouldn’t have it any other way.”
Gin leaned into the scratch, but he stayed put as Miranda gathered her things and closed up the office for the night. Only when she blew out the lamp did he rise and pad through the doorway, going ahead of her into the rowdy Zarin night.
The next morning, thirty minutes after the eight o’clock bell, Miranda and Gin trotted up to the front of the Council fortress. As the Council’s offices didn’t open for formal business until ten (since no Court official worth his silks would be up before then), the gates were still closed, but Miranda was able to get past the guards with her official title and a well-placed growl from her ghosthound.
The growl was, perhaps, a little harsher than it needed to be. Gin was in a foul mood this morning. He’d spent the whole ride over trying to convince her to turn around, but Miranda would hear none of it. Truth be told, Sparrow’s sudden appearance last night was the most exciting thing that had happened since Lord Whitefall’s letter arrived, and she wasn’t about to waste her chance, even if Gin’s hunches had a bad habit of being right.
They waited in the courtyard, out of the way of the few carriages that came and went. Miranda spent the time checking her rings. She woke each spirit, soothing and nudging it until each ring glowed with its own light. Mellinor was already awake and waiting at the base of her soul, his cool presence dark and cautious.
After about ten minutes (ten minutes exactly, Miranda would wager), Sparrow appeared from a small door on the far side of the yard. He was dressed this morning in a long fuchsia coat that dropped to his knees with gold buttons and cream lace spilling out of the cuffs. His pants were orange and covered with some sort of black bead-work that clacked as he walked. They were wide-legged, and their ends were stuffed into the tops of his low black boots, which boasted silver heels and toes. He wore no hat, and his hair was all blond now, but a different shade from last night, more honey than white blond, and tousled in a way that suggested he’d spent an hour arranging it to fall just so.
Miranda winced at the clashing colors and leaned in close to Gin. “Is he still flickering?”
“Worse than ever,” Gin growled.
“It’s more like he’s fading,” Mellinor put in. “I don’t like it.”
“No one seems to,” Miranda muttered. “Keep watch; let me know if it changes.”
“Why?” Gin said. “You won’t be able to see it.”
“That’s why you’re the ones watching,” Miranda hissed, and then smiled graciously as Sparrow stopped before her.
Sparrow dropped a flourished bow. “Miranda,” he said. “Right on schedule. I’ll take you in directly.” He paused. “Will you be bringing your pet as well?”
Gin snarled at that, and Miranda put her hand on his nose in a warning gesture. “Gin goes where I do,” she said.
Sparrow shrugged. “We’ll have to take the back way, then. Follow me.”
He led them through an arched breezeway and out onto a side path that had been cleverly hidden behind the ornamental trees. It was narrow going. They were walking down an alley with the outer wall of the Council fortress towering over them on one side and the side of the fortress itself going up on the other. There was room for the three of them to walk single file comfortably enough, but Miranda couldn’t help feeling trapped as the road circled downward and the walls grew higher and higher around them.
At last, when the morning sky was a thin strip far overhead, the steep road stopped at an enormous pair of double doors set deep in the citadel’s base.
“Apologies for taking you in through the service entrance,” Sparrow said, fishing a ring of keys out of his monstrosity of a coat. “But I doubt your puppy would fit down the tunnels.”
“This is fine,” Miranda said over Gin’s growling. “I had more than enough of Council finery on my previous visit to last me awhile.”
Sparrow unlocked the door and held it open for her, motioning for Miranda to go first. Miranda stepped inside with a curt nod of thanks, then stopped again, her mouth dropping open. She was standing inside the largest room she’d ever seen. It was twice the size of the throne room in Mellinor and easily half again as tall as the Spirit Court’s hearing chamber. Or that’s what she guessed, since she couldn’t actually see the ceiling. The chamber was huge and hollow, with pillars sprouting from the stone floor at regular intervals, climbing up into the darkness. Between the pillars, set in rows like the giant, gray eggs of some enormous insect, stood tall, fat, cylindrical towers. The towers stretched off forever in all directions, a forest of identical gray metal ovals suspended on an iron framework that kept their ends off the floor. Miranda was still gawking at the sheer number and size of … whatever they were when Sparrow shut the door behind them and locked it again.
“This way,” he said, starting off into the darkness
.
Miranda followed, craning her neck as they walked between the metal cylinders and up a set of wooden stairs that had been built into the framework. Gin followed more slowly, delicately picking his way along the narrow path. The stairs led to a wide wooden scaffolding that ran like a suspended road between the strange metal cylinders. Tiny glass lanterns lined the metal railing that separated the walkway from the straight drop down to the stone floor, their collective soft glow casting large, ominous shadows behind the iron towers.
“What are they?” Miranda whispered as they walked down the scaffold, gawking at the endless forest of metal silos just out of arm’s reach.
“Tanks,” Sparrow said, picking up the pace. “This is the Relay Room. Don’t touch anything, please.”
Miranda’s eyes widened. “You mean the Ollor Relay?”
“You know any other relay the Council cares about?” Sparrow said. “Watch your step; we’re turning.”
Miranda followed him blindly. Her mind was entirely on the metal cylinders around him, the tanks. The Ollor Relay was the backbone of the Council of Thrones. The precise way it worked was a closely guarded secret, but it had something to do with water, which explained the tanks. She wasn’t exactly sure how it was used, but common knowledge was that a person with a Relay point could speak to a person at the base Relay from any distance, and the person at the base could speak back, or pass the message on to another Relay point somewhere else entirely. It was this ability to communicate instantly across the kingdoms that had allowed the Council armies, which had included only a handful of countries at the time, to beat back the much larger invading army of the Immortal Empress twenty-five years ago. That impossible victory had sealed the Council of Thrones as the foremost power on the continent, an achievement Merchant Prince Whitefall had leveraged to form the greatest coalition of nations in the world.