edge.
Eli rubbed his hands together. “For your information, I’ve just created a foolproof escape.”
“From what?” Josef said sullenly. “There’s nothing here. Are you sure your bird even made it?”
“Of course,” Eli said, leaning on the rock face next to him. “The falcon told me he dropped it straight into a guard’s dinner. They’re just late. I’m sure the ransom will be showing up any moment now. In the meanwhile,” he reached into his jacket pocket, “who’s for a nice, friendly game of-”
“No.” Josef’s dagger landed with a thunk in the dirt less than an inch from Eli’s boot. Eli glanced at the dagger, still quivering from the impact, and then back at the swordsman.
“You’re oversharpening those.”
Josef bent down to retrieve his knife. “I don’t tell you how to wizard, so don’t tell me how to fight.”
Eli’s eyebrows shot up. “I don’t think you can use ‘wizard’ as a verb like that.”
“And I don’t see how your little tea party with a rock is going to cover our escape,” Josef said, slamming the dagger back into his boot. “I guess we’ll just have to trust each other.”
Eli took a deep breath, preparing to point out all the ways that grammar and wizardry were different, but a look at Josef’s expression told him it could be a bloody argument, mostly his blood, and he decided to leave it at that. Thankfully, that was the moment the riders appeared at the opposite edge of the clearing.
“Nico,” Josef said, tightening the iron sword on his back as he and Eli took the forward positions. “Make sure his highness doesn’t get any ideas.”
Nico nodded and yanked the rope, knocking the king to his knees.
As Eli had the king specify in his instructions, there were only five riders. Three of them rode in a point formation while the other two hung back, riding as a pair, with an iron-bound, triple-locked chest slung between their horses. Eli’s grin widened. When they reached the clearing’s edge, one of the forward riders, a thickset balding man in polished armor, stood up in his saddle.
“Majesty!” he shouted. “Are you hurt?”
The king sprang up, jerking his tether. “Oban!”
Nico gave him a hard tug, and the king quickly sat down again. “I’m fine! Just don’t do anything stupid.”
“We had no intention to, Henrith,” the man at the point of the formation said flatly, removing his helmet to let his blond braid swing freely down his back. “This situation’s idiotic enough as it is.”
The king stopped straining against Nico’s hold. “Renaud?” he whispered. All at once, he lunged forward, fighting against the rope. “Renaud!” Nico slapped him hard behind the knees, and he tumbled to the ground, but his eyes were still on the blond rider. “What are you doing here, brother?”
Eli glanced back. “I didn’t know you had a brother.”
“Not many outsiders do,” Renaud said. He sat back on his skittish horse, looking them over. “You must be Eli, the thief.”
“The very same.” Eli smiled courteously, nodding toward the reinforced chest. “And unless you’re planning on setting up house in the woods,
Renaud raised his hand. At his signal, the soldiers dismounted and began unlocking the chest. It took a full minute to undo the locks and the three chains before the soldiers threw back the lid and stepped aside. Eli licked his lips. The chest was filled to the brim with sparkling, oblong, golden coins.
“Five thousand council standards,” Renaud said flatly. “As agreed.”
“Ah,” Eli said smiling. “And the other part of our bargain?”
Renaud took a tightly rolled scroll out of his saddlebag. “It arrived by special courier this morning,” he said, unfurling the paper. “The first one, straight from the Council’s copy rooms.”
Stretched between his hands was a bounty notice bearing an enormous likeness of Eli’s face at its center and his name in block capitals across the top. Best of all, however, was the number stenciled across the bottom in thick black blocks: fifty-five thousand gold standards. Eli let out a low whistle.
Renaud rolled the notice back into a tube and tossed it casually on top of the piled gold. “Everything you wanted, exactly as promised. Now give me my brother.”
“Gold first,” Eli said, putting his hand on the king’s rope.
Renaud nodded, and the third rider, a dark-haired swordsman with a scar across one side of his face, dismounted. He took the reins of the chest carriers and led them out to the center of the clearing, twenty feet from either party. There, he cut the straps, and the chest fell with a thud onto the dusty grass. He led the horses back to their riders and took his place again beside Renaud.
When he stopped completely, Eli nodded to Nico, and she released her death grip on the king’s tether. Eli picked up the slack and twisted the rope around his arm until it was tight. Then he put his hand on the king’s shoulder and, tied together, they started the slow, silent walk to the center of the circular field.
Five feet from the gold, Eli stopped. “All right,” he said slowly, “I’m going to let him walk forward. Any funny moves on your part, and”-he tugged the rope, nearly taking the king off his feet-“Got it?”
Renaud nodded, and Eli unclamped his hand from the king’s shoulder. The king walked forward. As soon as he passed the gold, Eli reached for the chest.
He heard the spirit almost too late, and he jumped back just in time as a bolt of blue lightning shrieked inches from his face. He fell backward, tugging hard on the rope. The king came flailing after him, and they landed in a heap a few feet from the chest.
“That’s enough,” said a cold voice. The thick brush at the edge of the clearing rustled, and the enormous ghosthound stepped into view, Miranda sitting high on his back. They were dirty, and Miranda looked like she was having trouble staying mounted, but the hand she pointed at Eli was steady as a stone, and the blue lightning arcing from the large aquamarine on her right middle finger was nothing to be flippant about.
Gin padded silently across the open ground. “I don’t know how you dodged Skarest,” Miranda said, and the lightning on her arm crackled angrily, “but the next shot will kill you before the girl can move.” She shot Nico a glare before turning it on Eli. “Step away from the king and put your hands out where I can see them.”
“What do you think you are doing, Miss Lyonette?” Renaud said, reining in his nervous horse.
“The Spirit Court is done playing politics, Renaud,” she said. “My orders were to placate the local officials only if it did not interfere with my primary mission.” She gave him a cold look. “Mellinor is free to deal with Mellinor’s problems, prince, but this thief will answer to us. Now,” she continued and turned her glare back to Eli, and the lightning arced high above her head, “release your hostage and put out your hands, Mr. Monpress.”
Eli got to his feet, smiling cockily. “And if I don’t?”
“My orders are to apprehend you and bring you to the Rector Spiritualis.” She smiled right back at him. “But they didn’t specify what condition you had to be in when you got there.”
Eli opened his mouth to reply, but Miranda never got to hear it, for at that moment, her lightning spirit discharged.
It happened instantly, as if some giant hand had plucked the lightning off her finger and hurled it across the clearing. The world became very still, and she could do nothing but watch in horror as Skarest arced through the air with an ear-ripping crack and struck the center of the king’s chest. King Henrith convulsed and toppled to the ground, a thin wisp of smoke rising from his open mouth. Lightning sparked on her fingers as Skarest returned to his ring, and the spirit’s fear racing through their connection made her blood run thin.
“Mistress!” he crackled. “He was too strong, mistress. I couldn’t fight him!”
“Who?” Miranda shouted, but the spirit had buried himself in his ring.
The Mellinor group was frozen in shock, and even Eli was gaping at her. Only the prince kept his composure, turning on her with a look of triumphant hate.
“Foul murder!” Renaud shouted, breaking the stunned silence. “The Spiritualist has killed our king! She’ll stop at nothing! Soldiers, attack! We won’t let her sacrifice our king to catch her mark!”
His words were like a match in a hayloft, and they were barely out his mouth before a wave of spearmen wearing House Allaze blue poured out of the brush behind him and charged the center of the clearing.
Master Oban started to ride with the charge toward his fallen king, but Renaud grabbed his horse’s reins. “No, Oban! I’ll handle this! Get back to the castle and tell the others!”
Oban shouted curses, but he turned his horse and rode madly back into the woods, parting the line of archers that was forming up on the clearing’s edge.
“Kill them all!” Renaud shouted, waving the soldiers forward. “Avenge our king!”
The first volley of arrows launched with a ringing twang, and Miranda ducked low on her hound’s back. “Gin!”
