with shallots and an excellent bottle of wine he’d lifted from the Whitefall family’s private cellar, when he heard a knock on his door.
Monpress froze. This was one of his most secure hideouts. He was high in the Sleeping Mountains, deep in bandit country. But he had an understanding with the local gang, and anyways, bandits didn’t knock. He swirled the wine in his glass, considering his options as the knock came again, louder this time.
With a long sigh and a sip from his glass, Monpress decided he’d better answer it.
He pushed his chair back and walked to the door, grabbing his dagger from the mantel, just in case. The knock was sounding a third time when Monpress opened the door and glared down at his most unwelcome visitor.
It was a boy. Monpress pegged him at a young fifteen. He was scrawny and short for his age with untrimmed black hair and a face that was too likable to mean any good. He was dressed in rags, his feet shoved into ill-fitting shoes that were far too thin for the half foot of snow on the ground, and he looked as if he hadn’t had a good meal in weeks. But, hungry as he must have been, the boy didn’t even glance at the succulent duck sitting on the table. Instead, he looked Monpress straight in the eye and flashed him what the boy probably considered a deeply charming smile.
“Are you Giuseppe Monpress?”
Monpress leaned on the door, framing the duck behind him with his crooked arm, just to be cruel. “That depends,” he said slowly. “Unless you can give me a very compelling reason why you know that name, you can think of me as your death.”
To his credit, the boy’s smile didn’t falter. “I heard from a reliable source that Giuseppe Monpress was the greatest thief in the world, so I set off to find him. Took me the better part of a month to pin him down to this part of the mountains, but I couldn’t get an exact location, so I’ve been checking each likely valley.”
“Impressive,” Monpress said. “And what were you going to do when you found him?”
The boy straightened up. “I’m going to ask him to take me as an apprentice.”
“I’m sorry you’ve wasted your time, then,” Monpress said. “Giuseppe Monpress doesn’t take apprentices.”
“Since only Giuseppe Monpress would know that, I think you’ve answered my question,” the boy said. “And I can assure you, Mr. Monpress, that you’ll take me.”
Despite himself, Monpress began to chuckle. “And why is that?”
“Because I’m going to be the greatest thief in the world,” the boy said proudly. “And because, if you don’t take me, I’m going to sit on your doorstep until you change your mind.”
Monpress smiled. “Assuming, for the moment, that you’re right, you can hardly expect the greatest thief in the world to be trapped by a boy at his door. What will you do when I give you the slip?”
“Find you again,” the boy said with a shrug. “As many times as I need to.”
“I see,” Monpress said. “Why are you so determined, if I may ask?”
The boy looked insulted. “I told you,” he said. “I’m going to be the greatest thief in the world. You don’t get to the top by apprenticing yourself to amateurs.”
“So you’re serious about just sitting there?” Monpress said.
“Absolutely,” the boy said, and then, to prove his point, he sat down on the icy step, propping his legs up in Monpress’s door. The position only helped to highlight how pathetically thin he was, and Monpress felt a tiny twinge of pity. Fortunately, it was easily quashed.
“Well,” he said, stepping back, “then I hope you have a lovely night.”
He held just long enough to see the boy’s smile begin to crumble before he shut the door in his face.
Nodding at a job well done, Monpress slipped his dagger into his belt and returned to the table. As he sat down in his chair, he braced himself for a racket as the boy began to demand to be let in, but none came. Except for the howl of the wind outside, the cabin was silent. If Monpress hadn’t just shut a door in his face, he’d have never known the boy was outside.
He glanced sideways at the shutters, rattling in their grooves as the storm blew back up, and then he looked back down at his rapidly cooling dinner. He’d just raised his knife and fork to carve the duck when the wind gave a low, mournful howl. Giuseppe rolled his eyes and set his silverware down with a sigh. He stood up and marched over to the door. Sure enough, the boy was sitting on the doorstep just as Monpress had left him, only his black hair was now full of snow.
“Change your mind?” the boy said, looking up.
“Not as such,” Monpress said. “Happy as I would be to let you sit out there until you starved, it seems that my conscience is heavy enough without a boy’s life weighing on it. I’m not agreeing to anything, mind you, but since it’s clear you’re the suicidally stubborn type, you might as well come in and eat.”
The boy grinned from ear to ear and rushed inside so fast Monpress was nearly knocked off his feet. The boy sat down in Monpress’s chair and began devouring the duck like he’d never tasted food in his life. The thief sighed and walked over to rescue his wine before it, too, disappeared into the boy’s maw.
“What’s your name?” he said as he spirited his drink to safety.
“Eli,” the boy gasped between bites.
Giuseppe frowned. “Eli what?”
The boy shrugged and kept eating. Monpress sat down with a sigh, sipping his wine as he watched the boy reduce his fine roast duck to bones. The child was cracking them to suck the marrow when he caught Giuseppe looking.
“What?” he said, shoving a leg bone into his mouth.
“Nothing,” Monpress said. “Just trying to shake the feeling that I’ve let my doom in by the front door.”
“I wouldn’t fret about it too much,” Eli said. “I was planning to come down the chimney once you’d banked the fire anyway.” He flashed Monpress a smile before spitting out the bone in his mouth and reaching for another. “When do we start training?”
Monpress drained his glass and poured himself another. He briefly thought about continuing his denials, but he was rapidly running out of energy to fight the boy’s seemingly endless optimism. “Tomorrow morning,” he said, taking a long drink.
Eli’s eyes widened, and his face broke into an enormous grin. “What am I doing?”
“Fetching a cask of whiskey from my stash up the mountain.”
Eli’s face fell dramatically. “Whiskey? Why?”
“Because, if you’re going to be staying here, I’m going to need it,” Monpress said. “Finish your supper. I think a speck of duck still exists.”
Eli gave him a skeptical look before turning back to the far more important task of making sure no bit of duck flesh escaped his attack.
Outside the little cabin, far from the cheery light of the little fire, the white shape of a woman vanished into the deep, drifting snow.
CHAPTER
1
Eleven Years Later
The vast desert that stretched across the Immortal Empire’s southwestern tip was still and quiet in the moonlight. At its edges, the coast was calm, the ocean lapping tiredly against the beaches. The great storm that had raged for weeks up and down the continent’s seaboard had died as suddenly as it began, the clouds dissipating in a handful of seconds to leave the night sky clear and blank as though there had never been a storm at all. Only the wreckage of the sea towns and the wall the Empress had raised to protect them remained, an improvised barrier standing awkwardly at the edge of the placid sea.
Suddenly and without warning, a light cut through the stillness. All across the dark desert, white lines appeared. They sliced high in the air, forming long needles of light that dangled several dozen feet above the sand. One after another they appeared until the sky was full of them, their white light filling the desert until it was bright as noon, and then the quiet shattered as the Immortal Empress’s invasion fleet fell through the white lines
