The Spirit Eater

CHAPTER 6

Miranda Lyonette squinted at the tiny script of the report in her hands, wishing, for the hundredth time that hour, that the Council had decided to save money in some way other than teaching its scribes to write in microscopic strokes. It would also help if the investigators could somehow manage to be thorough and interesting in their reports. It might be asking a bit much, but how anyone could make Eli Monpress’s theft of the Queen of Verdun’s diamond crown and his subsequent getaway through the burning canals boring was beyond her comprehension.

Miranda threw the report on the table and leaned back in her chair, rubbing her tired eyes. It had been three weeks since Lord Whitefall had made her head of the joint Spirit Court and Council of Thrones Monpress investigation. True to his word, he’d arranged an office for her the next day, and Miranda found herself operating out of a Council warehouse by the river that was uncomfortably warm during the day and damp at night. This was tolerable, however, for the space was large enough for Gin with plenty of room left for the enormous stacks of filing shelves Lord Whitefall had sent over from the main Council offices. She had also been provided with a staff, consisting of a runner, a scribe, and a file clerk. This had struck her as odd at first. She’d thought she’d be getting a Council investigator, or at least someone familiar with Monpress, but that was before she’d discovered exactly how much paperwork was involved in her new position.

One week into her new job and she understood why Lord Whitefall’s office looked the way it did. The Council produced paper at a spectacular rate. Every afternoon a cart brought boxes of reports, observations, and strategies from the central office. Each was copied in triplicate, one for her to sign and send back as proof that she had read it, one for her active use, and one for her records. Worse, nearly all of it was useless—commentary on past crimes and idiotic suggestions from Council members who seemed to get all their information on Monpress from the gossip sheets, where he was a regular and much followed figure, even when he hadn’t pulled a crime in over a month.

“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 beadwork 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.

The Council would have grown even faster if access to the Relay had been more widespread, but Relay points were famously rare. However, looking out over the endless rows of tanks, Miranda suddenly had a hard time believing the Relay was as small as people claimed. True, she had no idea how it worked, but there must be hundreds of tanks down here. How could such a huge infrastructure support only a tiny number of Relay points?

She was puzzling over this when Sparrow’s rapid pace suddenly slowed. They were approaching a brightly lit crossroads of several scaffoldings, the center of which seemed to be a single, enormous tank. As they got closer, however, Miranda realized the giant thing in the center wasn’t a tank at all. It was a building. A great, metal building inside the larger room, complete with a rounded roof and a half dozen little chimneys spewing steam. The building was several stories tall, but the main story seemed to be the one level with the scaffolding. The building was at an intersection of walkways, and the suspended scaffolding joined together to form a wide platform. On the platform, men and women in plain white jackets and trousers clustered around long tables, their work lit by enormous hanging lanterns that burned steady and bright. Metal doors opened and closed without sound as workers entered and left the metal building, which looked to have more workstations inside.

The workers shuffled out of the way as Sparrow, Miranda, and Gin stepped onto the ring of wooden scaffolding. Sparrow ignored them completely and walked straight across the wooden boards toward the building’s largest door. He pushed it with a grunt, and the heavy metal slab swung inward, revealing a dimly lit room.

“Go on,” Sparrow said, standing aside. “It’s a bit cramped, but Sara wanted to see you in her office so this visit wouldn’t interrupt her work too much. You understand, of course.”

“What work does she do?” Miranda said, stepping inside.

“Everything that matters,” a brisk voice answered.

Miranda’s head snapped up, and she found herself looking into the blue eyes of a small, formidable woman. She was sitting on a leather chair set directly between three large desks covered with… Miranda wasn’t quite sure. The farthest was swamped in Council papers, which Miranda could recognize too well these days. Most of these were dusty and untouched, however. The other two desks were far neater. One supported a large, bright lamp and a stunning variety of jars filled with various amounts of a clear liquid and a small book open to a page filled with neat, tight handwriting. The other desk was covered in what looked to be pages of lists and drawings, all laid out neatly, with arrows drawn across the edges connecting one page to another.

The large office was otherwise sparse. There was a bookcase filled with leather notebooks and a threadbare couch set against one wall, but otherwise, nothing. None of the niceties Miranda would have expected from a Council member with such obvious authority. Her walls, however, were far from bare. The metal was covered with notes and drawings on all sides, including diagrams of the tanks outside covered in the same tight, neat handwriting as the papers on the desk.

But all of these were to be expected in an office at the heart of the Relay. What caught Miranda off-guard were the posters papering the space above the largest desk. There, laid out in a neat grid, was a complete collection of Eli Monpress bounty posters. They started when his bounty had been a mere three hundred and went up all the way to the current ninety-eight thousand with a good bit of room at the bottom for new additions. Seen all together, the effect was quite impressive, and Miranda couldn’t help smiling at the thought of how Eli would react if he saw it. Probably insufferably.

The woman herself was dressed in the same plain white coat and trousers as the other workers, but any plainness ended there. Her hair was pale ginger streaked with gray, tied up in a coil of braids at the top of her head. Her face was lined, especially between her eyebrows where she scowled, but otherwise she didn’t look very old. She mostly looked serious, harried, and already out of patience. A long pipe dangled from her lips, which accounted for the spicy reek of smoke that permeated the room, and a pair of spectacles hung on a gold chain around her neck. Otherwise she wore no decoration, not even rings. However, from the way Miranda’s spirits were buzzing, she knew without a doubt that this woman was a wizard, and powerful one.

The woman looked Miranda over, starting with the feet and working her way up. Next, she switched her gaze to Gin, who had somehow managed to squeeze himself through the door and was now sitting nearly doubled over behind Miranda, his eyes narrow and sharp despite the indignity of his cramped position, and ended on Sparrow, who was pushing Gin’s tail out of the way in an attempt to shut the door.

“You must be Miranda Lyonette,” she said when she’d finished her inspection. “You’re not as pretty as I’d thought you’d be, considering your family. Nice hair, though, and strong spirits. I can see why Banage made you his favorite.”

Miranda bristled. “I assure you, madam,” she said through gritted teeth, “neither my looks nor my family has anything to do with my position.”

Sara rolled her eyes. “Don’t get your hackles up, girl. I was only making an observation.” She took a drag off her pipe and blew a long line of smoke into the air. “This is why I don’t usually work with Spiritualists. You’re all so prickly and bound in. Terrible waste of wizards. Though I suppose the world must have you.”

Miranda’s rage must have been clear on her face for Sara laughed. “Feel free to disagree all you like. I welcome constructive argument. But if you’re just going to be miffish, you’d better get over it quickly. Those who can’t take an honest opinion don’t last long down here. Right, Sparrow?”

Sparrow, who’d given up on Gin’s tail and taken a seat on the couch, merely smiled. “No one lasts long with you, Sara.”

“Not so,” Sara said curtly. “You’ve been with me five years.”

“That’s because I care more for your money than my ego,” Sparrow said. “Get to the point before the Spiritualist girl becomes terminally insulted and my trip becomes a waste.”

Sara turned to Miranda. “Right. Then let’s see it.”

Miranda stared at her. “See what?”

“Your Great Spirit,” Sara said, giving her a look that said this should have been obvious. “If you’re going to be working for me, I have to see what I’m dealing with.”

Miranda started to object, but stopped. It wasn’t actually an unreasonable request. Swallowing her temper, she closed her eyes and gave Mellinor a little mental nudge. A nudge was all it took. With that curious, skin-crawling feeling of being a faucet, the water spirit poured out of her. When Miranda opened her eyes again, Mellinor was floating beside her, a ball of pure, blue, strangely smug-looking water, spinning slowly before Sara’s obviously rapt attention.

“A Great Spirit,” she whispered, stepping forward, smiling and as bright eyed as a child. “I’ve met several, but I’ve never seen one come out of a person.”

“Nor will you,” Mellinor said. “So far as I know, my circumstances are unique.”

Sara reached out, tracing her fingers across the water’s surface. “Absolutely marvelous.”

Mellinor puffed up a little at that, and Miranda covertly rolled her eyes. Her sea could be as bad as her dog sometimes.

Sara didn’t notice. She was busy walking around Mellinor, stepping high over Gin’s paws where there wasn’t room. “Do you still have tides?” she asked. “Currents? What about your salinity?”

“No tides,” Mellinor said. “Not enough water. My currents were always my own. I changed my salinity to match Miranda’s blood. It seemed the easiest thing to do, and I don’t care for much salt, anyway.”

There was something dark in his voice as he spoke that last bit, but Sara just nodded and jotted several notes on a pad that she fished from her pocket. Miranda, however, was busy staring at her water spirit. She’d never even thought to ask questions like that, and she was starting to feel ashamed. Mellinor was her spirit. She should know all there was to know about him, not leave it to some stranger.

Sara looked as though she had more questions, but a whistle outside made her put away her pad.

“Well,” she said, “if the sea’s on your side, the tide may wait, but time never will.” She gestured at Miranda as she went back to her chair. “You can pull him back now. You’ve made the team.”

“Team?” Miranda said, stretching out her arm. “What do you mean?”

Mellinor took his time coming back, obviously appreciating the attention from Sara. Miranda resisted the urge to nudge him along.

“I’m the Head Wizard for the Council of Thrones,” Sara said, sitting back down at her desk. “Officially, I’m in charge of all wizards working for the Council, though I don’t bother with most of them. They’re dull dropouts from the Spirit Court mostly, with no will to speak of. They’re better left in the copy rooms ordering ink spirits around. But you,” she said, grinning. “You, Miranda, with your shining sea and your dog and whatever else you’ve got on your fingers, are different. I thought you would be. That’s why I had Phillipe Whitefall send you that letter.”

Miranda frowned. “I thought I was appointed as head of the Eli Monpress investigation on account of my experience with the thief.”

“Yes, well, that was the reason I fed the bounty office.” Sara took a long splinter from a box on her desk and held it near her lamp. At once, a spark jumped from the lamp flame to the splinter’s end. “Only way I could get you away from Banage, really. He doesn’t have much patience for me,” she said, touching the burning splinter to her pipe. “It wasn’t hard. Phillipe jumped at the chance to make the thief someone else’s problem. Of course,” she said between puffs, “it would be wonderful if you could catch Eli for me. I’m even more keen to meet him than I was to meet you. I’m very interested in the way this world works, you see, the different aspects of wizardry and spirits and how they interact. Things like how a Great Spirit could shrink himself down small enough to fit into a human while maintaining his essence as a Great Spirit. These are the curiosities I love to surround myself with. It keeps the mind young. But Eli’s the greatest mystery of them all. A wizard whom every spirit obeys.” Her voice grew almost wistful. “Now that is something I’d love to examine for myself.”

“You’d have to get in line,” Miranda said, crossing her arms over her chest. “There are a lot of people who want a piece of Eli Monpress.” Sara gave her a sharp look, and Miranda glared right back. “Perhaps I haven’t made this clear, but I am a Spiritualist first, foremost, and forever. I agreed to work for the Council to get support and information in my hunt for Monpress. With all due respect, Lady Sara, that doesn’t include being one of your ‘curiosities.’ If I’m only here so you could have a look at Mellinor, I’ll be on my way.”

Sara gave her a smoky smile. “Direct,” she said. “I like that. Very well, Spiritualist Lyonette, I will answer in kind. I pulled the strings to bring you here because we have a delicate matter on our hands. One of my dear friends, a Shaper and a great scholar of wizardry, has vanished. Though he’s not formally involved with the Council, it would be a great loss for all of us if Heinricht Slorn were to remain missing. Therefore, I am putting a group together to find him and bring him safely back to Zarin under the Council’s protection.”

“Slorn?” Miranda frowned. The name was desperately familiar, but it wasn’t the one she’d been waiting for. “I’m sorry to hear about your missing friend,” she said. “But I don’t have time to—”

“Slorn has many friends from all walks of life.” Sara’s voice rolled right over her. “Including a certain thief.”

She paused, and Miranda had to swallow her words, motioning for the woman to get on with it. Sara did no such thing. She merely sat there and smoked, watching Miranda squirm. Finally, when she obviously felt Miranda had stewed enough, Sara continued.

“We have a good tip that Slorn has asked for Eli’s help as well as mine. However, Eli doesn’t know where Slorn is.” Sara smiled. “I do.”

Miranda’s eyes widened as Sara’s implications hit her. The idea of getting somewhere before Eli did was almost intoxicating. “Where?”

Sara arched her eyebrows at Miranda’s abandoned aloofness. “You’ll go on the mission then?”

Miranda stopped cold. Powers, she’d stepped right into that one. She took a moment to think, keeping her eyes away from Sara’s cool, sure expression. If she left Zarin and Sara was wrong about Eli going after Slorn, she could miss his next theft altogether. Besides, one look at Sara and the company she kept was enough to set off a whole tower full of warning bells. Miranda’s eyes slid over to the couch where Sparrow was sitting with his legs crossed, watching her. Just being in the same room with him put her on edge. But if Sara was right…

She felt a warmth against her back as Gin leaned in behind her. “You should take it,” he growled low in his throat. “Even if Eli robbed Lord Whitefall’s mansion tomorrow, we’d still be eating his dust. A trap is always better than a chase.”

Miranda nodded. You could always trust a predator about these things. Still, she decided as she glanced at Sara, no need for the old lady to know her intentions just yet.

“If I went,” she said slowly, “where would I be going?”

“No, no, no,” Sara said, shaking her head. “That’s not how this works. You don’t get confidential information for free. I asked you, are you joining us? Answer, yes or no, and I’ll decide what to tell you after.”

Miranda took an angry breath and nearly marched out right then and there. It was her need to catch Eli that kept her in place. Could she really throw her chance at catching him away over rankled pride? After all, she had no other leads, and just the thought of going back to paperwork nearly made her ill. Miranda grimaced and looked over her shoulder at Gin, who flicked his ears as if to say it was her choice. Miranda bit her lip. Well, she’d already come this far. She might as well go in all the way.

“All right,” she said, looking Sara directly in the eyes. “I’m in.”

Sara grinned in triumph. “Are you familiar with Izo the Bandit King?”

Miranda nodded.

Sara waved her pipe in a grand gesture. “That’s your answer.”

Miranda stared at her. “What?”

“Be here tomorrow at dawn, packed for a long journey,” Sara said, sticking her pipe back in her mouth. “I’ll give you the rest when I explain the plan to everyone.”

“Everyone?” Miranda said.

“Yes,” Sara said, looking at her as though she were stupid. “Dawn tomorrow, don’t be late.”

And that was all the answer Miranda could get.

Hours later, Sara was still in her office. She sat at her least cluttered desk, reading through the day’s stack of observations while distractedly eating a bowl of fish soup that one of her assistants had brought down hours ago. The soup was congealed and cold, but Sara didn’t seem to notice, shoving a spoonful around her pipe and into her mouth whenever the thought of eating could get past the dozen other issues demanding her attention. She was just scraping the bottom of the bowl when the door to her office slammed open.

She dropped her spoon with a frustrated huff. “If this is about tank seven,” she said, spinning around in her chair, “I already know. There’s no reason…”

Her words trailed to a stop as she got a look at the man who’d barged into her room. He stood in the doorway, tall and impossibly imposing in his severe red robes. His black hair was touched with gray at the temples while his clenched fingers, wrists, and neck were laden with enough gems to make a king jealous. He looked angry enough to spit nails, and his blue eyes were flashing murder, but Sara couldn’t help smiling as she leaned back to take him in.

“Hello, Etmon,” she said, blowing a thin line of blue pipe smoke into the air between them. “It’s been too long.”

If possible, his fists clenched tighter still. “Not long enough.”

Sara’s smile widened. The sight of him was nostalgic enough, but the sound of Etmon Banage’s furious voice made her feel twenty years younger. “This seems to be my week for unexpected visitors,” she said. “To what do I owe the pleasure?”

“You never change, do you?” Banage said. “Still asking questions you already know the answers to just to make me say it. I’m here to tell you that my apprentice will not be accompanying your goons on whatever scheme you’re plotting. I lent her to the Council at the request of Lord Whitefall to assist in the capture of Eli Monpress, not so that you could use her as spiritual muscle whenever you had a problem your undertrained, impotent Council wizards couldn’t handle.”

Sara bit down on her pipe. “Don’t get angry, Etmon. It’s bad enough seeing you in those ridiculous red bed-sheets your little social club requires without your face changing to match. And for your information,” she added quickly, cutting off Banage’s furious retort, “I am doing nothing improper. Your little Miranda is going to help my people set a trap for the thief, among other things.”

“It’s the ‘other things’ that concern me,” Banage said through gritted teeth. “I knew I was taking a risk letting Miranda get anywhere near the Council, but Whitefall assured me you would keep your claws out of her affairs. Miranda is a strong wizard and a fine Spiritualist who’s been through a great deal in the last year. I won’t have you abusing her sense of duty to trick her into doing your dirty work.”

“As if I could,” Sara snapped, her anger rising to meet his. “She’s as moral and dutiful and closed-minded as any of your flock. You don’t have to worry about her.”

“Don’t tell me what to do with my own people!” Banage roared. “You’re sending her to the edge of the Council to make some kind of deal with Izo the Bandit King. Have you finally lost what little grip on reality you ever possessed?”

“You’re one to talk about reality,” Sara said. “Seeing as you live in some black-and-white fantasy where we catch thieves without dealing with the underworld.”

Banage sneered, and Sara blew out a long huff of bitter smoke. “Anyway,” she said, “the deal is done. The girl already agreed to go, and as a servant of the Council, she’s legally obligated to see the job through. So if that was the only reason you had for honoring me with your presence this evening, I’m afraid you’re out of luck, old man. Run on home to your tower and let me get back to my work. You know, the stuff that’s actually important.”

“Oh, yes,” Banage scoffed. “I forgot. Your work is more important than anything else.” He thrust a jeweled finger at her. “I’m taking this to Merchant Prince Whitefall.”

“Go ahead,” Sara said. “He’ll just side with me. Council matters are my playground, Etmon. Go back to your tower and your fawning, self-righteous Spiritualists. Tell you what, when we catch Eli, I’ll bring him by and you can preach him to death.”

Banage whirled around, his fists clenching in rage, and Sara heaved a frustrated sigh.

“Why did you even come?” she muttered. “You knew it would be like this.”

Banage didn’t look at her. “Because,” he said quietly. “Fool that I am, I still believe that, someday, you will remember your oaths.”

“What, to the Spirit Court?” Sara’s eyes narrowed. “Or to you?”

Banage didn’t answer. He walked out of her office without another word, slamming the door behind him with a crash that made Sara wince. She glared at the closed door for a long time, furiously puffing on her pipe until the bowl was nothing but dead ash. Shaking her head at the wasted time, she emptied her pipe into the dregs of her cold soup and got back to work.