him in a vise. He stumbled a little as she hit him, but the weight on the city didn’t even flicker. Miranda wouldn’t have noticed if it had. Her eyes were too blurry with tears to see anything other than her master.
“Where have you been?” she cried, burying her face in his shirt. She knew she was making an undignified scene, but she didn’t care. Master Banage was smiling down at her with one of his rare, true smiles, and the sight of it was almost enough to dissolve her.
“I’m still a criminal,” he said. “I thought it best that I stayed away, but now I’m sorry I didn’t come sooner.”
His voice was low and strained, no doubt from the effort of keeping so much pressure on the city. Miranda dropped her arms at once and stepped back guiltily. Powers, what was she doing? Master Banage was maintaining the largest open spirit she’d ever seen. He was pressing down an entire city; she’d never even heard of such a thing. She beamed up at him, remembering yet again why he was her Rector.
“Here,” she said, reaching to take the golden mantle of the Tower off her shoulders. “This is yours.”
His hand stopped her before she’d gotten it to her chin.
“No,” he said, shaking his head. “I gave up being Rector. But the fact that you’re wearing the Tower’s chain proves I made the right gamble on the beach at Osera. The Tower and Court are yours by bound oath now. I cannot take them back.”
Miranda stopped, stricken. “But you’re the—”
“Not anymore,” Banage said, looking out over the silent city. “But I am still a Spiritualist, and I mean to hold Zarin as long as I can.”
“I can’t let you do that alone,” Miranda said. Calming the Tower had taken everything she had, and that was just one spirit. How long could Master Banage possibly expect to keep a whole city calm?
“It won’t be as hard as you think,” Banage said, smiling again. “I’m not alone in my work. The Tower is here as well, and we don’t need the mantle to work together. Do we, old friend?”
“No, indeed,” the Tower said, its deep voice buzzing through the gold-wrought chain. “We will hold here.”
“That we will,” Banage said. Then he caught Miranda’s eyes with his, and his look grew deathly serious. “You have greater work to do, Rector. This disaster is the sort of thing this Court was created for. Whatever this is, the spirits are powerless before it. We must stand for them, and you must stand for the Court.”
“But what do I do?” Miranda cried.
Banage tilted his head. “What do you think you should do?”
Miranda bit her lip and looked down at her rings. They glittered back at her, each of them keeping strangely silent. She thought about what the Tower had said earlier. The end, he’d called it. Miranda didn’t know about that, but whatever this was, it was something the Shepherdess had forbidden the spirits to speak of, something they feared above all else. Something was broken, that much was clear, but she had no idea what.
Miranda’s hands curled into tightly balled fists. This worry was getting her nowhere. If she was going to do any good at all, she needed knowledge. She needed answers, real, straightforward ones, and she had a good idea where to get them. Of course, going there would likely get her killed, but if she did nothing she was pretty sure she’d end up dead all the same, along with everything else. In that light, the risk didn’t look so bad.
“I’m going,” she said, raising her head. “I’ll be back as soon as I can.”
“We’ll hold as long as it takes,” Banage said. “Keep the Tower’s mantle close to you. He’ll need your strength.”
“I’ll need no such thing,” the Tower rumbled. “Go, little Rector. We will hold.”
Miranda nodded and looked over her shoulder only to see Gin sitting right behind her.
She jumped in surprise. “How long have you been there?”
“Since about a second after you got here,” the dog answered, showing his teeth. “Come on, Banage’s spirit coming down on everything? Not hard to guess where you’d be.” His orange eyes shifted to Banage. “Though your weight did slow me down, old man. I’d have beaten her otherwise.”
“I’m sure you would have,” Miranda said walking over to put a hand in his fur. “Ready to jump into the fire?”
“Always,” Gin growled, his tail lashing back and forth.
Miranda nodded and closed her eyes, steeling her determination into an iron wall. When her mind was set in stone, she raised her hand and pictured her destination in her mind, lingering on the white stone and the soft, constant white light she still sometimes saw in her dreams. The cut appeared immediately, ripping down through the air. The moment it was clear, she stepped through the world into the Shaper Mountain, her demands ready on her lips… and ran into Eli Monpress.
Eli stumbled as Miranda slammed into him, almost falling over Josef in his rush to get back. She looked just as startled to see him as he was to see her. The Spiritualist scrambled back as soon as she realized whom she’d run into, only to get pushed forward again as Gin stepped through the white hole behind her.
Miranda caught herself at the last second, clinging to her ghosthound. Gin, to his credit, immediately fell into guard position, ears back and teeth bared as he growled at Eli and Josef. Through the hole in the veil, Eli caught sight of his father’s tense face looking out at what appeared to be a ruined Zarin before the white portal closed, the line fading away as fast as it had appeared.
Realizing suddenly that he looked like a proper idiot, Eli pushed off Josef and stood on his own two feet. He was about to call the Spiritualist out for barging in like that, but the words died in his throat. Miranda looked terrible, like she hadn’t slept in a week. Her eyes were a mix of dark circles and puffy edges, as though she’d been crying, and she looked utterly confused, almost fragile in her bewilderment.
The illusion was gone in an instant. The second she caught him looking, she pulled herself straight, casting off tiredness and doubt like a veil. It was then he noticed that she was dressed in the formal crimson robes of a high officer of the Spirit Court. The intense color was almost painful to look at after the blank white of the Shaper Mountain, and the effect was only enhanced by the glittering rainbow of rings on her fingers and, brighter still, the enormous collar of woven gold and gems draped across her shoulders.
Eli pursed his lips, impressed. Banage really had made her Rector, and she seemed to be playing her part full force. But, for all the trappings, it was still Miranda, a fact that was hammered home as she crossed her arms over her chest and glared icy death in his direction, her curly red hair bristling with righteous fury.
“Eli Monpress,” she said, speaking his name the same way most people said dead skunk. “Is there any disaster in this world that doesn’t have you at its center?”
Eli blinked in surprise. “Now hold on,” he said. “What makes you think any of this is my fault?”
“The fact that it’s always your fault,” she snapped. Beside her, Gin’s growl swelled in agreement.
“And you always jump to conclusions,” Eli snapped back. “I’ll have you know I am an innocent bystander.” That wasn’t completely true, but this was Miranda. Give her a handhold and she’d pull the whole rope down. “And I’m trying to make things better, believe it or not. The real question should be why are you here? You’re no Shaper, and that was one of the Shepherdess’s portals, if I’m not mistaken.”
“You are,” Miranda said. “It’s a League portal.”
“Same difference,” Eli grumbled, but Miranda was already rolling over him.
“I’m here on behalf of the Spirit Court and all spirits under our protection,” she announced. “I demand to know what is going on, and I’m not leaving until I get some answe…”
Her voice faded off as she finally realized that Eli wasn’t alone. Her eyes darted across the group, pausing longest on Slorn, but when she got to the Weaver, they stopped altogether. “Are you the Teacher?” she whispered, her voice shaking with wonder.
Overhead, the Shaper Mountain made a disgusted sound. “I would never put any part of my power into a human form. That is the Weaver, a Power of Creation. If you’re going to barge in whenever you like, Spiritualist, the least you can do is try to be informed.”
“The Weaver?” Miranda sounded more confused than ever. Suddenly, even her self-righteousness didn’t seem to be enough to hold her up. Her body began to shake, legs wobbling like jelly. She would have fallen into a heap had Eli not grabbed her arm.
Miranda let him ease her down without comment, another sign of how bad a shock all this must be for her. When she was safely seated on the floor, she looked up again, her eyes flicking between the white man, the bright white wall hanging in the air, Eli and Slorn standing beside him, Josef and the Heart, Nico’s coffin, the Shaper Guildmaster, and then she put her hands over her face as though she were dizzy.
