ceiling, and she realized they must be under the palace grounds. Unseen things scuttled in the dark behind them, making Miranda’s skin crawl. Apparently, Josef didn’t like the scuttles either because he stopped suddenly, causing Miranda to nearly run into him.
“What now?” she whispered, regaining her balance.
Josef threw up his hand to silence her. She glowered at the command, but said nothing. Behind them, something skittered again, and Josef turned on his heel. Miranda didn’t see the knife leave his hand, but she heard it hit. A squeal erupted behind them, and the skittering stopped. Eli whirled around, holding his lamp high. The light fell across their dusty footprints and, right at the edge of the glow, was a squirming, dying rat with Josef’s knife sticking out of its side.
“Getting paranoid?” Eli muttered, lowering the lamp. “It’s not like you to kill the wildlife.”
“It’s not paranoia.” Josef walked over to reclaim his knife. “Have you ever seen a rat act like that?”
“What are you talking about?” Miranda said.
“Rats are scavengers and foragers,” Josef said. “This one’s been following us since the first cellar. What kind of rat leaves a cellar full of food to follow people into an empty hallway?”
Miranda hurried over to the dying animal and hovered her hand over its head. Sure enough, she could feel the faint echo of Renaud’s spirit slipping away as the rat’s movement stilled. She snatched her hand back.
“Josef’s right,” she said.
“If he has control of the rats, that could be a major problem,” Josef said, looking at Eli. “Even you can’t sneak past rats.”
“He can’t control all of them,” Miranda said, rubbing her hand on her skirt. “Controlling lots of small spirits is harder than controlling one large one.”
“He wouldn’t need to control all of them,” Eli said thoughtfully. “Rats talk among themselves, and two wizards aren’t exactly inconspicuous. Two or three informants would be enough.”
Josef pushed past them and began walking in quick, impatient strides down the dark hall toward the castle. “We’ll just have to assume Renaud knows we’re down here,” he said. “And that means we need to be somewhere else.”
Miranda hurried after him. The dark, dirty tunnel was the last place she wanted to face another of Renaud’s mad spirits. The swordsman set a grueling pace, not running but walking so fast they might as well have been. The tunnel around them was growing lighter or rather, less dark. She still couldn’t see anything beyond the lamplight, but the tone of the darkness was shifting to something friendlier, more human. Even so, the tunnel seemed to go on forever, and Miranda’s legs were beginning to ache. The gardens hadn’t seemed this long when she was aboveground. As the tunnel went on and on, she started to wonder if this wasn’t some new trap they had stumbled into.
At last, she saw real light up ahead. Josef slowed his pace a fraction and then came to a complete stop. Eli held up the lamp, revealing a wrought-iron gate kept closed with a simple chain and padlock. The chain had rusted long ago, and Josef was able to reach through the iron bars and yank it off without difficulty. The gate swung open with a creak, and they piled into the final room of their journey.
“Great,” Miranda said, “more potatoes.”
“Ah,” Eli countered, “but these are royal potatoes! We’re here.”
Miranda looked around skeptically. The stone cellar, with its bins of root vegetables and its cold, earthy smell, was uncomfortably like every other wealthy cellar they’d tromped through. On the opposite wall, dim light shone through the cracks of a squat wooden door. Eli blew out his lamp and set it on the lip of the potato bin. He put his finger to his lips and then, slowly and silently, opened the door.
The hallway beyond was lit with indirect firelight from the room at its end. Distorted voices echoed up and down its length, and Miranda could make out the shadows of servants as they sat around the hearth. Eli craned his neck out as far as he could, then pulled back, grinning.
“All right,” he said, brushing the last bits of cobweb off his valet’s jacket, “time for phase two. Ready, Nico?”
The girl nodded and pulled her coat tighter.
“Wait,” Miranda whispered. “What’s phase two?”
Eli shook his head and put his finger to his lips before stepping out into the hall. Miranda made a rude gesture at his back and crept after him.
CHAPTER 19
Something’s not right,” Josef muttered.
“You’ve got a point,” Eli said, thunking his slab of bread against his wooden plate. “This bread’s two days old at least.”
Miranda hunched over her stewed beef and said nothing. The three of them were crowded around a small table in the kitchen surrounded by a crowd of servants who were all eating their dinners with determined efficiency. So far, phase two had consisted of sneaking into the kitchens and blending in with the other servants for the dinner rush. No one had noticed them, but they weren’t getting any closer to Renaud, and, even worse, Nico was nowhere to be seen.
“We’re wasting our time,” Miranda grumbled, shoving her plate away. “There was no need to get food as well.”
“Nosunse,” Eli said around his enormous mouthful of beef. He swallowed with gusto. “A servant who rejects food? Now
“They have only two guards at the door,” Josef went on, ignoring them both, “and no one checking the servants. The cooks didn’t even look sideways at us.”
“Maybe they don’t know we’re here,” Eli said. “The spying rat we caught could have been the only one. Or maybe they know we’re in the castle, but they weren’t expecting us to come to the kitchens. Or maybe my plan is actually working. The whole point of breaking in at dinner was to catch the shift change so no one would notice three newcomers.”
“Or maybe they’re just incompetent,” Miranda said, remembering how the castle had reacted when she’d arrived for the first time. “Renaud may be in charge, but Mellinor is still Mellinor. Common sense seems to be as forbidden as wizardry in this country.”
“You have a point,” Josef said, leaning back in his chair and pretending to drink while he scanned the room. “But this was too easy even for incompetence. Mellinor may be slack, and I don’t know about Renaud, but Coriano isn’t someone who would leave an opening like this, not unless he was planning something.”
“Coriano?” Eli wiped his mouth with a greasy napkin. “Didn’t he run off?”
“He’s a swordsman; he only retreated. Besides”-Josef dropped his hand to where the carefully wrapped Heart of War was leaned against his leg-“the Heart can feel his sword. They’re calling to each other.”
“Josef,” Eli said patiently, “for the last time, you’re not a wizard. You can’t hear a damn thing that sword is saying.”
“I don’t have to hear him to know what he wants,” Josef growled. “You’re just mad you can’t talk to him.” Josef flashed Miranda a conspiratorial grin. “It’s the only spirit we’ve found that won’t talk to Eli.”
“Who’d want to talk to a spirit that chose you, anyway,” Eli muttered, reaching for his spoon to finish the last of his impromptu dinner. “He must have horrid taste.”
“Enough,” Miranda said, shoving Eli’s bowl out of reach before he could take another mouthful. “We’re wasting our time. What are we waiting for, anyway?”
A chorus of screams erupted from the kitchen, and Eli’s face broke into an enormous grin. “That.”
A crowd of cooks poured screaming out of the kitchen, followed by a thick plume of white smoke. The servants at the front tables started to panic, screaming “fire.” The soldiers ran forward, shouting for order as the servants rushed the doors to the kitchen gardens. While the overwhelmed guards yelled and tried to keep people from trampling each other, Eli and Josef calmly got up and jogged toward the now unguarded door to the upper castle. Miranda watched the panic in shock for a moment and then stood up and stomped after the thief.
