Banage reached up to stroke its glossy stone muzzle before taking a pile of gold from the spirit’s mouth. “Didn’t I tell you,” Banage said, slipping his rings onto his fingers. “Not a problem.”
“If you could do that, why didn’t you do it before?” Eli shouted.
“Because Durrel couldn’t break through the cell door without chipping himself, and I would never knowingly do him harm,” Banage said, glancing at his son. “Shouldn’t you be going?”
“Well, after all that noise, I guess I’d better,” Eli muttered, shaking his head. Powers, what theatrics. Banage’s horse would lead everyone right to them. “Do what you want, old man.”
But as he started to jog away, he heard Banage’s voice softly over the din of shouts that was rising from the walkways above.
“It was good to see you again, Eliton.”
Eli heaved an enormous sigh and ran into the dark, waving with one hand before vanishing into the forest of tanks.
At the other end of the Citadel, Sara was busy with a confrontation of a different sort.
“How dare you?” she shouted, slamming her hands down on the glossy wood of the Merchant Prince’s desk. “How dare you take my son for your games, Alber! He is a vital resource for the expansion of the knowledge of magic. He is not a bargaining chip!”
“You were the one who tried to keep him from me in the first place,” Alber said, not even looking up from the pile of papers his assistant was passing him to sign.
“To keep you from doing something like this!” Sara roared.
Whitefall sighed. “Sara, I am very busy—”
“I don’t care,” Sara snapped. “You shouldn’t, either, not if that business comes at the cost of our alliance. Your precious Council would never have stayed together if it wasn’t for me and my work. Work that you’ve just put in terrible jeopardy, if you care to know. What were you thinking, trying to trade Eliton to that bloodthirsty, no- account swordsman?”
“Considering that bloodthirsty, no-account swordsman pretty much owns the Council at this point, I should think you’d be happier if he’d taken my offer,” Whitefall said drily. “Now I’m going to have to sell your son for the bounty so we can make ends meet for the next few years.”
“I won’t allow it!” Sara cried. “He is not going before the Judiciary today or ever. And I can’t believe you thought you could just order me out of your office and keep it a secret!”
“I’m not going to waste my breath pointing out the hypocrisy of that statement,” Alber said drily, but Sara bowled over him.
“I have not put up with you for almost three decades to be treated like this now, Alber!” she cried. “This is absolutely unacceptable!”
“I don’t care if you accept it or not,” Whitefall snapped, slamming down his papers to look her straight in the eyes. “I don’t have a choice in this, Sara. I have a government to run, a government that foots the bill for all of your fiddling, I might add. Considering how vital you’re always insisting your work is, I’d think you’d take a greater interest in the financial health of the Council that supports it.”
“Not everything is about money,” Sara said through gritted teeth.
“There’s too much money at stake right now for this to be about anything else,” Alber said. “I’ve been a very lenient patron to you, Sara. I built your facility. I pay your staff’s wages. I buy whatever equipment you ask for. I even let you keep Sparrow.” Whitefall narrowed his eyes in a stinging glare. “Do you even know what that cost me? The man killed my cousin.”
“A very distant cousin,” Sara reminded him. “One you said you didn’t like.”
“Like has nothing to do with it,” Alber said. “Your man killed a Whitefall. His head should be rotting on a spike over the river, but no. You wanted him. Powers knew why, but you wanted that murderer, so I covered it up. Though it jeopardized some of the closest ties in the Whitefall family to do so, I hid Sparrow’s involvement and gave him to you. I did this because I believe your work is vital to making this Council the dominant political force for centuries to come, but we are nearing the limit of what I can give, Sara.”
Sara started to answer that, but Whitefall cut her off. “Since we’ve got fifty years to pay Osera, I have time to call in the Monpress bounty slowly and hopefully avoid economic collapse, but I will not take the absurd risk of keeping the greatest escape artist in history locked in a cell. He goes to the noose tonight, and that is not open to negotiation. So if you have something you want from your wayward son, I suggest you wring it out of him in the next few hours, because that’s all you’re going to get.”
Sara slammed her hands on the desk, scattering his papers. “You’re going to regret this, Whitefall,” she growled.
“I already regret this whole situation,” Alber said, gathering his papers back into their piles. “But if you need someone to scream at, I suggest taking your rage out on Josef of Osera. He’s the one who decided to let your son hang. I’m just the middleman.”
Sara scraped her nails across the polished wood, and then, without another word, she turned on her heel and stalked out, slamming the heavy office door so hard she heard books fall from Alber’s shelves. Sara didn’t care. Her mind was a seething fury when she spotted Sparrow waiting by the stairs. He was the picture of obedience, and it didn’t help her mood one bit.
“You,” she hissed, glaring murder at her garishly dressed assistant. “You’re in more trouble than he is. I told you to watch the Court, and where have you been? Sneaking behind my back and taking my son to Whitefall, of all people—”
“He asked me,” Sparrow said, pleading.
“And how did he know?” Sara snapped.
“I told you. Whitefall always finds out,” Sparrow said.
“Not that fast,” Sara said, eyeing him suspiciously.
Sparrow looked aghast. “Surely you don’t think I did it? You’re the only lifeline I’ve got, Sara. I’d never betray you.”
“Then why did you bring my son to Alber?”
“He’s my boss, too,” Sparrow said, exasperated. “I can’t just—”
He cut off with a wince as Sara’s hand slipped inside her coat.
She let him dangle like that a bit, rolling his orb between her fingers before reaching past it to pull out her hastily extinguished, half-smoked pipe instead. “I am the only authority you should worry about, Sparrow,” she said quietly, setting the pipe between her teeth. “You’d do well to remember that your capacity to please and serve me is the only thing keeping the ax off your neck. Do you understand?”
“More than you will ever know,” Sparrow said, stepping forward to offer her a light.
Sara puffed against the match flame, glaring at him through the rising smoke. “This isn’t over,” she said once the pipe was going. “It won’t come tonight, because that’s all I have to learn whatever it is Eliton’s keeping secret, but one night won’t matter. You’re going to be doing penance for this for the next decade. I’ll make you wish—”
She froze midstep, her pipe falling from her mouth. Sparrow caught it neatly, holding it between her slack teeth. “What?”
“The door to Eliton and Etmon’s cell just cried out,” Sara said, snapping her jaw shut. He started to say something else, but she held up her hand. “And there’s Etmon’s spirit,” she said, pushing past him. “Downstairs. Now.”
Sparrow followed dutifully, bobbing behind her like a brightly colored shadow. They cleared the citadel proper in record time, bursting through the door at the top of the cavern with a clang that was lost in the roar below. Sara stooped cold, clinging to the iron railing as she stared down in disbelief.
The usually dark cavern was bright as day, lit by a bird of fire the size of a ghosthound that was flying in slow circles just below the hollowed-out ceiling. Down on the floor, her wizards were shouting, holding up their hands against what looked like a mass of twisted wood. She could feel their open spirits against her own, but as her staff had always been limited to the Spirit Court’s leavings, it was a pathetic showing. The lot of them couldn’t stop the roots as they shot out and twisted around the closest tank.
The iron groaned as the roots began to pull, and then it toppled, spilling a flood of beautiful blue water onto the dusty floor. As this happened, another spirit, a great jade horse, ran past her line of sight, its glossy legs splashing through water that was already a foot deep. It reared as Sara watched, kicking the next tank with