the fires. The Shaper Mountain knows as well as I do that Karon will die unless he finds a volcano willing to take him or I get him back. The old rock pile might put on a good front as a loyal star, but I know for a fact he’s not as law abiding as he pretends, especially not when one of his children, however distant, is on the line.”
Josef sighed. “Should I be concerned that I understood none of that?”
“Nope,” Eli answered. “Not unless you have a problem with going back to the mountains.”
“Mountains are fine,” Josef said. “While I know Osera will fare better without me, the rest of the country doesn’t seem to agree. I’m sure they’ll come around once they realize that not having a king actually sitting on the throne doesn’t mean the world is ending, but for right now the farther away from Osera we get, the better I’ll feel.”
“That makes things easier,” Eli said. “Nico?”
Nico shrugged. “If Josef doesn’t care, I don’t. I lost my fear of the mountains months ago.”
“Easier still,” Eli said, tossing his cards on the table. “It’s decided then. Let’s get out of here. That was a lousy draw anyway, and I’ve had more than enough of Zarin to last me another twenty years.”
“Figures,” Josef said, handing his cards to Nico. “The one time I get the Shepherdess.”
“She’s not all she’s cracked up to be,” Eli said, slapping his hat back onto his head.
Josef tossed some coins on the table as Nico tucked the Daggerback deck into her coat. The barkeep nodded to them as they left, never realizing that he’d just let the three most wanted criminals in the Council stroll out his front door.
“Do we need to pick up any operating funds?” Josef asked, adjusting the wrapped shape of the Heart on his back as they walked.
“Nope,” Eli said. “I’ve got it covered.”
He turned them down an alley and reached into his shirt, drawing out a set of tiny golden spoons. Josef’s eyes widened as the spoons were joined by a silver-wrought paperweight, a pair of delicate porcelain horses, and a miniature landscape still in its gilt frame.
“Where were they keeping you?” he asked as Eli piled his wealth in Nico’s hands. “A museum?”
“Oh, come on,” Eli said, fishing around in his pockets. “I was in the Council Citadel. I couldn’t leave empty- handed, could I?”
Josef rolled his eyes as Eli added several rare coins, a jeweled curtain pull, and an inkwell bearing the Whitefall family crest to the pile.
“That’s all I could fit,” he said with a regretful sigh. “We have to go back, though. Whitefall has amazing taste, and we could really use a wider collection of porcelain at Home.”
“Put it on the list,” Josef said. “Now, let’s find a fence and get going.”
Eli held out his arms in a grand gesture for Josef to lead the way, and they set off down the street toward a square filled with exactly the sort of dark, seedy stalls that would suit their purposes. Behind them in the distance, the Council Citadel’s golden spires trembled, sending pigeons fleeing across the sunset sky.
CHAPTER
11
Sara lashed out. A wave of fire followed her motion, washing Banage under. For a moment he was lost in the flames, but then cool mist fanned out around him, quenching the fire in midair.
When the flames were gone, the mist returned to its master, circling his body in a protective blanket. Sara drew the remains of her fire back, the wind and flame hissing together as they retreated. Behind his wall of fog, Banage glared and stretched out his hand to touch the metal wall of the closest, unspilled tank.
“Stop!” Sara cried, holding up her hands. Her eyes went wide as Banage’s fingers pressed against the metal, the great black ring on his thumb glowing like the sun through smoked glass. As the ring’s light grew, the cavern floor started to rumble as a great stone hand yanked itself from the ground. It rose up with a grinding sound, folding its dark, rocky fingers in a mirror of Banage’s own around the tank’s metal supports.
“Etmon, please,” Sara begged, eyes locked on Banage’s stone spirit as her tank began to wobble. “Do you even know what you’re destroying?”
“Oh, I know.” Banage’s voice was as cold as his fog. “For the first time, Sara, I know. I always suspected, but I thought surely, surely I couldn’t be right. You were a Spiritualist once. You couldn’t possibly have strayed that far. Now, I know better.”
The metal tank groaned as the stone hand began to push.
“This isn’t the Spirit Court,” Sara said calmly. “You have no right to come in here and shove your morals —”
“I have every right!” Banage roared. “Morals don’t change with location! There is truth in this world, Sara. Right and wrong. These things don’t vanish when you close your eyes, and you can’t make them go away by burying them in a cave.”
Sara flinched at the scorn in his voice. “I’ve nothing to be ashamed of.”
“Of course you do,” Banage said, his deep voice rich with power. “Or you wouldn’t be hiding down here. You always were a show-off. You’d done the impossible, created a spirit that could be broken into three parts separated by any distance and yet still be connected enough to pass words between them. The Relay is possibly the greatest innovation in the history of magic, and yet you’ve never said anything about how it works. Nothing. That alone was proof.”
“Proof of what?” Sara snapped. “That I was guarding the Council’s secrets? The Relay is the base of the Council’s power. Of course I hid it.”
“So you really think you’ve done nothing wrong?” Banage said, looking at the tank. “Well then, since I’m a traitor and no one will listen to me anyway, it won’t matter if I see for myself.”
“Etmon,” Sara said, her voice ringing with warning. “Etmon, no.”
She flung out her hand, too late. Banage’s ring flashed as his stone spirit pushed up, breaking the tank’s metal supports like straws. The tank fell with a groan of twisting metal. The floor shook as it hit, and the metal casing broke with a loud, cracking pop. The only thing that didn’t make a sound was the water that spilled from the tank’s sundered side.
The water shone bluer than blue as it fell. Heartbreakingly clear, even as it mixed with the dust and grime on the floor below. It made no sound as it fell and no sound when it landed, not a splash, not a burble, nothing at all. Banage was just as silent as he watched it pour, but when he raised his eyes to Sara again, they were full of fury.
“I thought it would be happy,” he whispered. “When I broke the first tank, I thought the water would leap to freedom. Even then, I didn’t realize how bad it was. I didn’t know you’d taken everything from it, even its voice.”
Sara watched the blue water pouring from the tank stoically, resisting the urge to scrub her eyes. All her work, gone.
“You collected the water,” Banage went on. “You picked the small spirits, the ones too weak to have a full consciousness of their own.” His voice grew disgusted. “I saw the hole where you combined them below your office. You poured the water together in utter, oppressive silence, quieting and mixing them in that stone hole in the ground until you had a new spirit large enough to be awakened. And you did awaken it. That’s the worst part. You kept the water awake, but you never let it speak. You never even let it discover its name, did you? You couldn’t. In order for the spirit to be quiet enough, still enough, empty enough to transfer voices clearly, it had to be isolated. Stunted.”
“It’s not like that,” Sara said. “You’re skipping several key—”
Banage’s hand shot out, his finger pointed accusingly at the silent fountain flowing from the broken tank. “You created something pure, a distilled water spirit, and you locked it in the dark. It’s water’s nature to flow and mix and create new spirits wherever it pools, but you, you trapped it in a tank and pushed it down. You and your wizards took a newborn spirit and locked it away like a child in a closet.”
“There was no other way,” Sara snapped. “I needed to transmit a human voice instantly between one place and another. Any human voice, wizard or spirit deaf, and the only way to accomplish that was through vibrations.
