The Spirit Thief

CHAPTER 17

The morning mists hovered thick and wet over the forest. Deer, the king’s own stock, had come out to feed on the delicate new leaves sprouting in the scattered open spaces, but they shied away from the tiny clearing by the stone hut, and for good reason.

Gin lay by the door with his head on his paws, his orange eyes half open. The door to the hut creaked and a growl rumbled up from deep in the ghosthound’s chest as Josef stepped out into the gray morning with Nico close behind him.

The swordsman was shirtless, but the wide swath of bandages wrapped around his chest kept the mist off him. For the first time Gin had seen, he was unarmed save for the enormous iron sword that he held in one hand.

The swordsman and the girl walked a short distance through the forest, stopping at a spot where the trees were farther apart, not quite a clearing, but room enough for their purposes. Nico took a seat on a fallen log while Josef took up position at a wide spot between two young poplars. When he judged he had enough space, he held out his arms and, very carefully, raised his black blade. He brought it up in a slow arc until it was over his head. His shoulders tensed as the barely healed cut under his bandages stretched, but his face remained calm and serious as he brought the blade down again.

When he had lowered the point all the way to the leaf litter, Nico spoke. “Will it do?”

Josef let out a pained breath. “The stitches held,” he said. “That’ll have to be enough. It’s not like we have time to lie around.”

Nico stood up and went around to his back, adjusting the bandages to sit higher. As she reached up to get his shoulders, the wide sleeves of her enormous black coat fell away from her scrawny arms revealing the scuffed silver manacles she wore clamped tight on each wrist. A dozen feet behind them, Gin’s growl grew louder.

“What is he going on about?” Josef grunted, rolling his shoulders to test the new bandage arrangement.

“The usual,” she murmured.

Josef scowled. “I can make him stop if it’s bothering you.”

Nico shook her head. “Eli needs them for his plan, and things like that stopped bothering me long ago, after you found me.” She reached into her coat and pulled out a clean shirt, which she held out to the swordsman.

Josef took it and pulled it over his head, ignoring the pain in his chest. “I’ll talk to Eli about it, then. You shouldn’t have to put up with that idiocy just so he can get another ten thousand on his bounty.”

“I’d put up with more for less,” Nico said. She caught his eye and gave him one of her rare smiles. “The higher we make his bounty, the better the bounty hunters get. Soon you’ll have the kind of fights you’ve been searching for.”

“Fights seem to find us no matter what Eli’s bounty is,” Josef grumbled, but he was grinning when he looked at her. “Still, that Coriano and his awakened blade will be a challenge worth remembering. If the higher bounty attracts more of that sort of opponent, all of this stomping around in the woods will be worth it.” He paused. “Which isn’t to say I’ll agree to another of your idiot kidnapping ideas, Monpress.”

He turned around and folded his arms over his chest. A moment later, Eli stepped out of the underbrush with an enormous sigh.

“Too much suspicion will lead to an early grave,” he said, strolling over to stand beside Nico.

“I would argue it’s the other way around,” Josef said. “So, did you need something, or did you just come out here to bother us?”

Eli made a great show of looking hurt. “For your information, I came out to see if you were all right. Nico was still putting your chest back together when I drifted off last night, so when you weren’t in the hut when I woke up, I decided to investigate. Now I’m glad I did. What’s this about an awakened blade?”

Josef plunged the Heart of War into the soft ground and leaned on it. “The swordsman I fought had an awakened blade.”

“Must be a good one considering it put a hole in your tough hide,” Eli said. “Good thing yours is better. We’ll make short work of him if we see him again.”

“I’m not going to use the Heart,” Josef said solemnly.

“Josef, not this again,” Eli groaned. “You’re the swordsman; you decide how you fight. I respect that, but every time you get this way, half your blood ends up on the ground. If things go down the way they’re looking like they will, we’re going to have to make a quick exit, and that’s hard enough without Nico having to drag your sword-riddled carcass across the countryside. The Heart of War chose you for a reason, and it wasn’t to get carted around the world on a strap. Can’t you just smash the swordsman and take the easy win for once in your life?”

“An easy win is meaningless,” Josef growled. “If I’m going to get stronger, I have to defeat Coriano on my own, the right way.”

“Nonsense!” Eli smiled. “We think you’re plenty strong already, don’t we, Nico?”

Nico stared at him. “Do you think your bounty is plenty high?”

Eli’s grin faded. “Point taken.” He shook his head. “Fine, do whatever you want. Just don’t do something stupid like die on us, all right?”

Josef snorted. “Who do you think I am?”

“For the sake of our friendship, I’m not going to answer that.” Eli met Josef’s glare with a wry grin. “Now, I’m going back to the hut to mind our guests. Can you two handle getting the costumes?”

“Shouldn’t be a problem,” Josef said, pulling his iron sword out of the ground and resting it on his shoulder. “The real question is, will the Spiritualist follow orders?”

“Oh, yes,” Eli said, nodding. “She’s in this neck deep now. When Renaud showed his true colors, he put her duty to Spirit Court doctrines on the line. She’d break just about any law to keep her oaths to the spirits. So while she may try and moralize us to death, I think we can count on her not to flub the plan.”

“Just make sure you actually have a plan this time,” Josef called as he walked back toward the hut for the rest of his weapons.

Eli folded his arms over his chest, glaring at the swordsman’s bandaged back. “Do you believe that?” he grumbled. “And after all the scrapes I’ve gotten him out of.”

Nico shrugged. “With all the scrapes you get him into, I think it works out about even.”

“Don’t you start, too,” Eli sighed. “In the year you’ve been with us, have I ever let us down? Don’t you trust me yet?”

“Josef trusts you,” Nico said, starting toward the hut as well. “That’s enough for me.”

Eli sighed again, louder this time, but Nico didn’t look back. Shaking his head, he jogged after her, stopping a moment to say good morning to Gin, who was still growling, before joining the others in the hut.

“You know this is a terrible plan,” Gin growled.

“Yes,” Miranda said, pulling the long tunic dress over her head. “You’ve told me so every ten minutes since sunrise.”

They were in the tiny space behind the forester’s hut, wedged between the trees and the crumbling stone. Gin was slouched by the hut’s corner, his body blocking the opening to the clearing so Miranda could have some privacy while she changed into the costume Josef had shoved into her hands a few minutes ago, when he and Nico had finally returned from wherever they’d been. She’d never been so happy to see them. A whole morning alone with the king and Eli had almost been more than she could stand.

“Disguise yourselves and sneak into the castle?” Gin snorted, making the low-hanging branches dance. “How are you going to get through the doors with no spirits? Wait for the thief to charm them all? And he didn’t say a thing about what you’d do when you actually got in. I’m telling you, it’s never going to work.”

“I wouldn’t be so sure about that,” Miranda said, finding the opening for her head at last. “Eli’s terrible plans have an interesting habit of working out.”

Gin rolled his eyes. “Because his kidnapping plan went so well.”

“Up until us, yes it did,” Miranda said, giving him a sharp look. “I don’t like this any more than you do, mutt, but we’re in deep now, so we might as well do our best.”

Gin kept grumbling, but Miranda ignored him. She smoothed the bulky dress over her shift with a final wiggle, and then, reaching awkwardly behind her, tied it with the strings sewn into the back. Next, she reached up and pulled her hair as tight as she could, knotting it in place at the base of her neck with a bit of twine. She grabbed the thick veil from a waiting branch and draped it over her forehead, letting the rest hang down her back so that her red hair was completely covered. Last of all, she fixed the small cap at the crown of her head with a long stickpin that held the whole affair in place. She gave her head an experimental shake to make sure the veil wouldn’t slide off. When it stayed put to her satisfaction, she turned around.

“There,” she said, putting her hands on her hips. “How do I look?”

Gin eyed her up and down. “Like a librarian.”

“Such flattery!” Miranda folded her hands over her chest dramatically. “Be still, my trembling heart!”

“What? That’s the point, right?” Gin said, getting up.

Miranda grinned at his confusion and tucked her discarded clothes under her arm before pushing her way through the giggling trees. Gin padded after her, muttering under his breath.

The tiny clearing outside the hut that served as Eli’s hideout had become quite crowded since Nico and Josef had returned. Most of the space, however, was taken up by the new additions. Laid out on a ratty blanket, two men and a woman, dressed only in their underclothes, were sleeping peacefully in the tree-dappled sunlight—castle servants, the sources of the costumes. King Henrith was crouched beside them, his hands moving in worried circles on his knees. He had traded out his filthy silk clothes for what looked like a set of Josef’s spares, though it was hard to tell without the knives. The bad fit and the king’s dour expression as he hovered over the unconscious servants made him look like a refugee from a tragedy play.

“I don’t see why you had to knock them out like this,” he muttered.

“It was the simplest way to get the sizes correct,” Josef said in a bored voice. He was lounging beside the hut, with his back propped against the ever-present camouflage thatch of branches provided by Eli’s arboreal admirers. His enormous sword was stabbed into the ground beside him and a pile of throwing knives was spread out in the grass at his feet. His normal array of cross-belted sheaths was gone, and in their place he wore the chain and blue surcoat of a House Allaze royal guard, which, judging from the gaps at the shoulders, had recently belonged to the narrower of the sleeping men. “They’ll wake up soon enough, no worse for wear.”

“And you’ll be here, sire,” Eli chimed in, fastening the cuffs of his valet’s coat. “A free evening off work and a touching reunion with their monarch. I’d say we’re doing them a favor.”

“What I don’t understand,” Miranda said, kneeling beside the distressed king, “is why we’re stealing costumes to sneak into the castle when Josef and Nico already snuck into the castle to grab these three.”

“We did nothing of the sort,” Eli said. “Every servant doesn’t live in the palace, you know. Josef spotted this lot walking into town from the outlying village. He merely gave them an involuntary night off. Oh, don’t look like that.” He waved his hands at Miranda’s horrified expression. “If Josef says they’ll be fine, they’ll be fine. He’s a professional. He does this all the time.”

Josef nodded sagely at the pile of knives he was polishing. Somehow, Miranda failed to find the gesture comforting.

“Of course,” Eli put his hands in his pockets, “the real question here is why we had to resort to this in the first place. I thought you said you had a contact in the palace?”

Miranda shook her head vehemently, making her veil fly. “There’s no way I’m letting you drag Marion into this, not after she already stuck her neck out for me once. Just look what you did to one of her coworkers.” She pointed at the unconscious girl, whose librarian uniform dress Miranda was now wearing. “Besides,” she muttered, “I spent a good deal of time correcting her ideas about wizards. I don’t want her meeting you lot and getting the wrong impression all over again.”

“You cut me to the bone, lady,” Eli said, clutching his chest. “Are you implying that I blacken the reputation of wizardry?”

Miranda cocked an eyebrow at his theatrics. “The Rector Spiritualis wouldn’t have sent me out here if you were doing it a benefit, Mr. Monpress.”

“Ah yes, the great Etmon Banage.” Eli smiled. “How nice of him to draw the line between good wizard and bad wizard so clearly. Truly a civic-minded man.”

“Master Banage is twice the wizard you are, thief,” Miranda hissed, leaping to her feet. “How dare you even mention—”

A black blur shot in front of her face, and Miranda flinched as the long, pitted blade of Josef’s sword came into focus an inch from her nose. The swordsman was lounging against the hut with his arm extended, holding the enormous blade between Miranda and Eli with one hand.

“Children,” he said, “not now.”

Miranda blinked nervously. The sword hung in the air in front of her. This close, she could see the deep gouges from a lifetime of battles that ran like canyons along the blade, though the sword’s surface was like no metal she had ever seen. It was blacker than pot iron, and dull as stone. Its cutting edge was uneven, splashed here and there by a redder darkness, like old blood that could never be scoured off. The blade looked impossibly heavy, but Josef’s arm was firm as an iron beam, and the sword did not once waver in his grip.

His point made, Josef plunged his blade back into the moss beside him and calmly resumed cleaning his knives as though nothing had happened.

Miranda turned to Gin as much to get away from Eli’s triumphant grin as to fix the small bag containing her rings to the rope around his neck.

“I could eat him for you,” Gin growled in her ear, his eyes on the swordsman. “It wouldn’t be any trouble.”

“No,” Miranda said, adjusting the small bag, her fingers lingering over the familiar shapes outlined through the soft doeskin. “Without you around, we’ll need someone who can look threatening. Besides, he’d probably give you indigestion.”

“Without me?” Gin snorted. “I’m going with you.”

“No, you’re not. We’ve been over this.” Miranda pulled his head down, bringing his orange eyes level with her own. “If there’s one thing we do know about Eli, it’s that he’s a master thief. If he says he can get us in, then I believe him, but even Eli can’t work miracles, and that’s what it would take to sneak your fluffy face past the walls. No, your job is to stay and guard the king. The Powers know he can’t guard himself.”

Gin glanced over at the king, who was prodding the passed-out guard with his finger, and gave a mighty sigh. “All right,” the dog growled and shuffled over to sit next to Henrith, who looked none too pleased by this turn of events, “but I’ll be listening.”

“I’ll call if I need you,” she said.

Gin snorted, but left it at that.

“All right,” Eli said. “If the girl and her puppy are finished saying their good-byes, let’s get a move on.”

Josef nodded and stood up, his ill-fitting armor clanking loudly. Since his outfit didn’t have room for his usual arsenal, he had been forced to make do with a knife in each boot, one behind his neck, and one at his waist. Still, he could almost pass for a normal soldier. Almost, that is, until he ruined the whole look by fastening his black sword across his back with a leather strap.

“You can’t wear that,” Miranda said, pointing at the blade. “What’s the point of wearing disguises if you’re just going to give it away by carrying that monstrosity around? I mean, if I left my rings, surely you can go an hour without your sword?”

Josef looked her straight in the eye and pulled the strap tighter. “If the Heart stays, I stay.”

“I hate to admit it, but she does have a point,” Eli said, frowning. He went into the cabin and came out a few moments later, carrying a few sticks and a leather sack. “Just a second,” he muttered, laying his materials carefully on the dirt. He kneeled beside them and began to talk in a low, soft voice. Miranda tried to listen, but it was impossible to get close enough to hear what he was saying without making it obvious that that was what she was trying to do. At last, he scooped up the shortest stick and, with a few more words, bent the wood into a circle as easily as one would coil a length of rope.

Miranda watched in amazement as Eli laid the loop of wood and the two remaining straight sticks on top of the leather bag.

“When you’re ready,” he said.

No sooner did the words leave his mouth than the bag sat up. With a lively wiggle, the leather sack undid its seam and began wrapping itself around the wood, forming a tube around the two longer sticks. When the leather had wrapped itself as far as it could go, it pulled itself tight, and the thread from the seam stitched itself lengthwise up the edge of the long, leather tube. When it was finished, Eli held up a long, but otherwise perfectly normal-looking, spear quiver, the exact size and shape to hide the Heart of War.

Eli thanked the quiver several times before handing it to Josef, who slid his sword into the leather with his own nod of thanks.

“How did you…” Miranda pointed a limp finger at the quiver that had been three sticks and a bag less than a minute ago.

“Easy enough,” Eli said. “I’ve had the bag for a while. He always had higher ambitions than luggage, so he was happy to help. The sticks were greenwood, and they love any chance to move around a bit before they dry brittle.” He walked over to Josef and examined his handiwork. “It’s too bad we don’t have any spears to really complete the effect.”

He kept talking, but Miranda’s mind was too dumbfounded to make sense of it. She was still processing the enormous list of impossible things she’d just watched him do like it was nothing, like he did this every day. Talking to trees was one thing, but to make something new, just by talking, it was unbelievable. Not even the great shaper wizards could craft spirits without opening their own souls at least a little. This was like the wood and leather had decided to do him a favor, just because he asked. If she’d tried to do something like that without getting one of her servants to act as a middleman, the wood would have ignored her completely. Yet it did what Eli asked joyfully, as if he were the one who needed impressing, and not the other way around. She watched Eli as he talked, his long hands moving in elegant circles, and, not for the first time, Miranda caught herself wondering just what he really was.

“Are you feeling all right?”

Miranda jumped. Eli was looking at her quizzically. “You were staring and not listening.”

“It’s nothing,” Miranda muttered, fighting down her blush at being caught. “Let’s just get going.”

Eli shrugged and turned to follow Josef as he led the way toward the castle. Nico joined them at the edge of the clearing, fading out of the woods like a ghost. Miranda jumped when she saw the girl, half because of her sudden appearance, and half because she hadn’t noticed Nico was missing in the first place. Then she realized that Nico didn’t have a disguise.

“Wait, doesn’t she need—”

“No,” Nico said, without stopping or looking back.

Gin padded back over to her, his eyes on the girl. “Watch yourself,” he growled, “and don’t forget what she is. Demons can’t be trusted.”

“Duly noted,” Miranda said, and she gave his fur a final ruffle before jogging into the forest after Eli and the others.

Though they were only half a mile from the city, it took over an hour to reach the wall. This was mostly because Josef led them in a crazy zigzag through the brush. They crossed back over their path more than once, and he insisted on keeping to the tall undergrowth and away from the game trails, so that with every other step Miranda had to beat back a branch or untangle her skirt from a nettle bush. To make things worse, Eli stopped every five minutes or so to murmur quietly to this tree or that rock. She made it a point to listen covertly, but so far as she could tell, his little talks were of the most mundane kind, an exchange of pleasantries, maybe a comment about the weather, like a country wife chatting with her neighbors. As he talked, he would do them little favors, flicking an ant away or scraping some moss off the peak of a rock so it could feel the sunlight. That was strange enough, but the truly amazing thing was the way the sleepy spirits perked up as soon as he spoke to them. Miranda could almost feel them leaning forward, eager to tell him anything he wanted to know. Whatever brightness Gin had been talking about, it seemed to have a universal effect.

Miranda expected Josef to complain about the seemingly meaningless stops, but he accepted Eli’s little chats with bored inertness, as if he had long since argued every point of the process five times over and couldn’t be bothered to care anymore.

At last, they had reached the edge of the forest, where the king’s deer park met the city’s northern border. The trees ended a good twenty feet from the wall, leaving a broad swath of open ground carpeted with overgrown grass and saplings. Josef made them crouch in the scrubby bushes at the edge of the clearing as he scouted ahead. While they were waiting for the swordsman to come back, Miranda took the opportunity to satisfy her curiosity and she crept over to where Eli was crouched in the grass.

“Okay,” she whispered, “I give up. Is the weather talk some kind of code?”

“What?” Eli’s eyebrows shot up. “No, no, I’m just building good will.”

Miranda gave him a confused look. “Good will?”

“It’s a harsh world,” Eli said. “You never know when you’ll need a little good will from the local countryside.”

Miranda was skeptical. A mossy rock didn’t seem like much of an ally. “So you weren’t doing reconnaissance or anything?”

“Sorry, no,” Eli said, shaking his head.

Miranda frowned. “But—”

“Quiet.”

Miranda and Eli both jumped at the sudden command. Josef was kneeling in the tall grass not a foot away from them, glaring icily. Miranda hadn’t even heard his approach.

“We move now,” he said.

“Wha—” Before Miranda could even form her question, Josef took off for the city wall at a dead run, Nico and Eli right on his heels. Miranda took a deep breath and charged after them, covering the space of open ground between the trees and the city wall faster than she had ever moved in her life. She slammed into the wall and dropped to a crouch just in time. No sooner had she reached the stones than a small troop of guards appeared out of the woods only a few feet from where they’d been hiding just moments before.

Miranda clapped her hands over her mouth as the soldiers fanned out. They patrolled the edge of the forest in a wide sweep, poking their short spears into the underbrush. Finding nothing, the leader waved his hand, and the unit faded back into the woods. Only when the sound of their boots had died to a whisper did Miranda release the breath she’d been holding.

“That was lucky,” she said.

“Luck’s got nothing to do with it,” Josef said in a low voice, peering at her through the grass. “Those patrols have been sweeping the area all day. If it wasn’t for the fact that the forest doesn’t want them to find us, all the luck in the world wouldn’t have gotten us this far.”

Miranda started, and Eli winked at her from his hiding place farther down the wall.

Josef gave Miranda a look of grudging approval. “Nice sprint, by the way.”

“Thanks,” she muttered. “What now?”

“Now we have to find that panel,” Josef said, turning to the wall. “It should be close.”

“It’s here.” Nico’s quiet voice made Miranda jump. Nico was crouched on Josef’s right, one small white finger sticking out of her voluminous sleeve to point at the iron square, barely larger than a laundry chute, set into the wall beside her.

“What is it?” Miranda asked, leaning in for a better look.

“A bolt hole,” Eli said, crawling over to crouch beside Nico, “in case the royalty need to make a fast exit. Very common in cities like this.” He gave the iron door an experimental push, but it didn’t so much as rattle. He tried again, harder this time, but he might as well have been pushing the wall itself. “Hmm.” He frowned. “This one seems to be locked.”

Miranda gave him a puzzled look. “Isn’t this how you got in last time?”

“Of course not,” Eli said, looking insulted. “First rule of thievery, never use the same entrance twice.”

Miranda rolled her eyes. “How many ‘first rules’ of thievery do you have?”

“When one mistake can mean your head on a pike, every rule’s a first rule,” Eli said cheerfully.

The thief ran his long fingers along the door’s edge, which was set flush against the stone. Miranda watched with growing uncertainty. There wasn’t even a keyhole, so far as she could see. When he had tapped every inch of the metal, Eli leaned back, brow knit in thought.

“Can’t you just talk it open?” Miranda asked, moving a little closer. “Like you did with the prison door?”

“I could,” Eli said, “but—” He reached into his coat pocket and drew out a small leather case, monogrammed in gold with an ornate capital M—“sometimes a simpler solution suffices.”

He flipped the case open, revealing a startling selection of lock picks. Carefully selecting the longest and thinnest, he leaned down until his nose brushed the door. He held out his hand, and, without further prompting, Josef handed him a knife. Eli expertly wedged the slender blade into the hair-thin crack between the iron and the stone. Then, using the blade as a lever, he carefully lifted the door out of its niche. It opened just a fraction before sticking again with a soft clang.

“Lever and padlock,” Eli muttered, switching out the thin lock pick for a slightly longer one with a crooked head. “Josef, if you would.”

Josef took the knife from him and held it where Eli pointed, putting just enough pressure on the lever to keep the opening as large as possible without snapping the blade. Eli took a pair of delicate, extremely-long-nosed pliers out of his case and, using both hands, neatly slipped the pliers and the lock pick through the knife-thin crack.

He gripped with the pliers and began to deftly maneuver the lock pick, wiggling it right, then left, then right again, like he was trying to hook something. At last there was a loud click. Eli released the pliers and a muted crash came through the iron as the padlock hit the ground on the other side. He tucked his tools back into their leather case and opened the door with a flourish. The whole operation had taken less than a minute.

When he caught Miranda gawking, Eli’s grin became unbearably smug.

“What were you expecting?” he said, still grinning. “I’m the greatest thief in the—ow!” He yelped as Josef punched him in the arm.

“Enough bragging,” the swordsman grunted. “Inside, quick. The patrols move in a circle, you know.”

Still rubbing his injured arm, Eli slid feet first into the dark bolt hole. Nico went next, casually wedging herself, bulky coat and all, through the narrow opening.

“You next,” Josef said, looking at Miranda.

She swallowed. Suddenly, the bolt hole looked impossibly narrow and abysmally deep. However, she had an image to maintain as a Spiritualist, and that image did not include being afraid of holes, no matter how narrow or deep they might be. She sat down stiffly and began easing herself in, feet first. Just when she’d managed to convince herself it wasn’t going to be that bad, she heard the crunch of men moving through the forest. She looked frantically over her shoulder in time to see the first patrolman reach the edge of the forest. She was about to whisper a warning when Josef shoved her, hard. Miranda yelped and lost her balance, sliding the rest of the way down the bolt hole. She landed in a pile on a cold, hard-packed dirt floor. A second later, Josef landed on top of her. The iron door clanged shut above them, and the room plunged into darkness.