excused herself, and made her way as quickly as possible to the door. As Lord Whitefall had promised, a page was waiting for her when she opened it. The boy escorted her back through the opulent hallways to a waiting buggy and, after politely refusing Miranda’s tip, left her to go on her way.
Miranda rode in silence all the way to the Spirit Court’s tower, wishing more than ever, as the buggy crept through the crowded streets, that she’d brought Gin. She had to talk to Master Banage, had to figure out what it really was she’d just agreed to. But the traffic had no respect for her urgency, and so she sat slumped in the cushioned seat, fuming while the morning sun beat down on the white walls of the Council capital.
CHAPTER
4
Josef, Eli, and Nico settled their bill and left the port of Mering in a bit of a hurry the morning after their unfortunate incident. They took a good chunk of the inn’s larder with them, for, as Eli pointed out numerous times, a thief could hardly be expected to pay for everything. Thus resupplied, they set off west and a little south along the coastal plain. Eli kept them to the back roads, cutting across the rolling hills on cart tracks that were little more than dents in the grass. Josef grumbled about more walking, but Nico rather liked it. Picking her way over rough roads kept her mind occupied just enough to push the voice back, and the exercise made her feel invigorated and human, a sensation she was learning to cherish. The whole experience was so pleasant, she didn’t even notice Eli’s strange path until they started seeing signs for the great port at Axley.
“No,” Josef said, stopping right below the signpost. “No major cities.”
“Relax,” Eli said. “We won’t have any trouble. I’m just going in for a pickup.”
Josef gave him a skeptical look. “A pickup?”
Eli nodded. “You’ll see.”
And he was right. When they reached the city walls, Eli went in alone, coming out less than an hour later with a cart, a mule, and an extremely smug expression.
“A cart?” Josef said, glaring. “You came here to pick up a cart? We could have gotten that anywhere.”
“I highly doubt it,” Eli said, beaming down from his perch on the cart’s seat. “Come around and have a look.”
Nico and Josef walked around to the edge of the cart, Nico hopping up on the little wall that ran along the road so she could see. The cart was covered with a thick oiled sheet, and underneath were large bags, each marked with a tag.
“Mr. Miller?” Nico said, reading one.
Josef just shook his head. “You’d think I’d be used to this by now.” He opened one of the bags, revealing a sparkling stack of loose diamonds in a variety of cuts and sizes. “You’re as bad as a squirrel, burying stashes all over the continent.”
“Ah,” Eli said. “But unlike a squirrel, I remember where I leave things. Reliable storage is vital to a thief, and the good merchants of Axley do most of their business with pirates and smugglers, so they’re very kind about not asking too many questions. They even threw in the cart for free.”
Josef looked sideways at the mule, which was standing perfectly still, glaring at him. “How generous,” he mumbled, taking a step back. “Is this it then?”
“Powers, no,” Eli said with a laugh. “I haven’t been home in a while. We’ve got three more stops to make. Hop on.”
He scooted over to make room, and Josef jumped up onto the seat beside him. Nico climbed into the back, holding her coat close. She kept clear of the mule. Animals were better than most spirits at sniffing out a demonseed.
Of course. They know a predator when they see one.
“Shut up,” Nico muttered.
“What?”
Her head shot up. Eli was looking back at her, his face concerned. “What did you say?”
Nico shook her head and scooted down among the bags, biting her tongue. She didn’t speak again until it was time to stop for the night.
They made four more pickups, two at smaller towns, one at a crossroads tavern, and one in the middle of an otherwise perfectly normal field. That one had looked like just a rest break to admire the scenery until Eli had a chat with one of the large stones. After a short exchange, the stone rolled away to reveal a small treasury of valuables, including two midsized statues and a large painting wrapped in waxed cloth.
“I don’t get it,” Josef huffed, lifting one of the statues into their straining cart. “When did you find the time to hide all of this stuff? I never see you do any work after a robbery.”
“You should pay more attention,” Eli said, carrying a wooden chest fixed with a broken exquisite gold lock. “I’m always working. There.” He shoved the chest into the final bit of open space left in the cart. “That should be it.”
“Can the mule carry it all?” Josef asked, looking doubtfully at the overloaded cart.
“Of course,” Eli said, hopping into the driver’s seat. “I asked the cart to help.” He winked at Josef. “I told you. I’m always working.”
“So I see,” Josef grumbled, helping Nico into the back of the overloaded cart before climbing up himself.
Nico settled herself as well as she could on the lumpy bags of treasure, pulling her knees in to avoid bumping them on the painting’s sharp edges. “Where now?” she said.
“Homeward bound,” Eli answered. He tapped the reins, and the cart lurched forward, down the field and back onto the dirt road, where Eli turned it north and west, toward the plains.
They rode for two days straight. They would have made better time, but Eli insisted on stopping in every village with a bounty board to see if his bounty had taken another spontaneous jump upward. It hadn’t, though Eli couldn’t figure out if that was because the number had ceased its strange inflation or if the towns they passed through were simply too small to receive timely bounty updates. Either way, he spent most of his spare breath coming up with theories.
“It’s probably an impostor,” he decided for the second time in as many hours. “Someone banking on my fame.”
Josef chuckled. “Don’t you mean robbing on your infamy?”
Eli gave him a sour look. “I would write the bounty office myself and ask if I thought I’d get an answer this year. Bunch of paper-pushers, they probably have five approved explanations and they still don’t know what’s going on.”
The farther they went up into the great plains at the heart of the continent, the more desolate the landscape became. Each village they passed was smaller and farther out than the one before until, at last, they gave out all together, leaving only the rolling hills of endless grass. Neither Josef nor Eli seemed concerned by the sudden nothingness, but Nico crouched down in the cart as far as she could get from the enormous empty space that stretched out all around her.
“It has been awhile,” Josef said as the mule trudged through the tall, yellow grass. “I can’t even make out the road anymore.”
“I don’t see how you would know,” Eli said. “Considering the last time I brought you here, you were unconscious.”
Josef grunted and Eli turned to grin at Nico. “This was before we had you to drag him around when he goes down. I had to use a wheelbarrow.”
Nico smiled back faintly, but his words drove a sharp barb into her mind, reinforcing how useful she’d been and, in contrast, how useless she was now. She held her breath, waiting for the voice to make a comment, but nothing came. Still, she could feel it, a cold, clammy blackness just behind her conscious mind, watching smugly, letting her draw her own bleak conclusions.
The sun was just beginning to set over the rolling hills when the cart came to a creaking halt. Nico dragged herself up to see why Eli had stopped them and saw the thief standing on the driver’s bench.
