A sickening crunch finished his sentence for him, and all three of them winced. They sat for a moment in silence before Josef pushed himself up. “I’ll check the body,” he said, his voice calm, as though he did this every night. “Nico, you’re with me. Eli, take the innkeeper.”
Eli and Nico nodded and the group split, Josef and Nico slinking down the stairs, quiet as cats, Eli somewhat more loudly, shouting for the innkeeper. Fortunately, the old man was already rushing across the common room in his night cap and dressing gown, a fluttering lamp in his shaking hands.
“Oh, sir!” Eli cried, jumping away from the stairs to cut him off. “Something dreadful has just occurred!” And with that Eli launched into a terrible story of robbery, foul play, and tragic ends. By the time he finished, the innkeeper, the night staff, the guests, and every neighbor within earshot was gathered in the inn’s common room wearing unified expressions of horror. Eli kept going until he saw Nico wave at him from the front door, signaling that Josef had finished whatever he’d needed to finish. Eli wrapped up his hysterics just as the night watch appeared. Claiming exhaustion, Eli retired to Josef’s room, stopping first at his own to retrieve the large stash of coins he’d hidden beneath a loose board. All evidence safely loaded onto his person, he went next door to Josef’s somewhat smaller room and locked the door behind him.
“That,” he said, “was not how I intended to spend my evening.”
Josef didn’t even look up from the basin where he was washing his hands. “I think your evening came out better than his, if it makes you feel better.”
“It certainly does not,” Eli said, flopping down on the bed beside Nico. “Josef, what is going on? We came to this… wherever we are, to get away from the hunters for a few days. They’re worse than mosquitoes lately. I can count on one hand the number of incident-free days we’ve had in the last two weeks. Did bounty hunting suddenly become the stylish profession? Have we stumbled into a hunter boom, or do I have a ‘Please Ambush’ sign on my back that you haven’t told me about?”
Josef chuckled, wiping his now clean hands on the towel. “Nothing so complicated. Check out the poster on the table.”
Eli glanced over at the end table in surprise, and then reached out to snatch the oversized square of folded parchment, shaking it open as he did so. “It’s just my poster,” he said, frowning. “Wait, this isn’t right.” He looked at Josef. “It has to be a joke. Where did you get this?”
“From the inside pocket of our visitor’s coat,” Josef answered, tossing the towel into the linen bin. “Not that he’ll miss it. And it’s no joke. That’s an official Council bounty notice.”
“Impossible,” Eli scoffed. “I know my own bounty! Counting what Gaol just threw in, I should be at an even seventy-five thousand, eighty thousand if Miranda would ever do as she promised and combine the Spirit Court’s bounty. But even if she accidentally combined it twice over, it wouldn’t explain this.” He flipped the poster around and held it up. There, below the usual picture of Eli’s smiling face, was a number written in tall, blocky strokes: 98,000 gold standards.
“This is a breakdown of government,” Eli said. “What’s the Council of Thrones coming to if it can’t even keep something as important as my bounty straight?”
“Whatever the reason,” Josef said, “we may need to lie low for a bit.”
“I thought we were lying low,” Eli said, still frowning at his poster.
“Lower, then,” Josef snapped back. “All this attention is causing problems, like the one that just fell out of your window. That man wasn’t your standard thug chasing the Eli lottery. He was a professional. He didn’t wake you up or brag or try to take you alive. No, he did it exactly how I would have, clean and quick in the night. If you hadn’t woken up when you did, you never would have felt a thing.”
Eli gave him a dirty look. “Just how you would have? Have you thought about this before?”
“Only when you’re being a jerk,” Josef said dryly. “Listen, I don’t know why the number is so high, but attacks like this one are only going to happen more often. And once your bounty breaks a hundred thousand, we’re going to start seeing armies coming after us. We need our trail to be ice cold when they do.”
Eli heaved a defeated sigh. “Fine, fine, where would be low enough for you? And don’t say the mountains. I’ve had more than enough wandering through the wilderness.”
Josef leaned against the washstand. “I was thinking we could go home.”
Eli froze. That was not the answer he’d expected. Nico, on the other hand, lifted her head. “Home?”
Josef nodded. “It’s as low as we get. No one will find us there.”
“But home is so boring,” Eli said. “Nothing happens.”
Josef crossed his arms over his chest. “Nothing’s supposed to happen. Do you not understand the concept of lying low?”
“Fine, fine,” Eli said, shaking his head. “We’ll slip out tomorrow morning before whatever passes as the guard in this boring depression of a town gets too close and decides I look familiar.”
“I’m surprised it hasn’t happened already,” Josef said. “Since you didn’t even bother with disguises.”
“My disguises are for my jobs,” Eli said with a sniff. “I wouldn’t waste them on places like this.”
Josef just shook his head.
“Anyway,” Eli said, lying back on the bed, “if we’re going to be cutting out early, let’s get some sleep at least. It would be a horrible shame to waste a rare night of sleep in a bed.”
“Right,” Josef said. “So get out of mine.”
Eli looked at him innocently. “But my room still has people poking around in it.”
“Too bad,” Josef said, glaring. “Floor or hallway, pick one.”
After some argument, Eli ended up on the floor with one of Josef’s pillows and an extra quilt from the chest. Nico excused herself halfway through the bickering, trailing back to her room with a weary look that stuck with Eli long after Josef put out the light.
“Josef,” Eli said in the dark, “what’s going on with Nico?”
The swordsman’s quiet breathing continued without interruption, but somehow he knew Josef was listening.
“What happened in Gaol?” Eli asked, more quietly this time. “I’ve seen her lift you over her head like you weighed nothing, so why couldn’t she pull you out of the window by herself? There’s something going on with her demon, isn’t there?”
His question hung in the silence. Then, at last, Josef answered. “Leave it alone.”
Eli took a deep breath. “I have left it alone. We haven’t pulled any thefts since leaving Gaol. I’ve been waiting to see if she’d snap out of it, or at least say what’s happening. But she doesn’t tell me anything!” He crossed his arms over his chest. “Everyone’s got secrets, but this could get dangerous for us if I can’t trust her on a job anymore. Her not telling me she was a wizard was bad enough, but I can get over that. I can understand. This?” He shook his head. “I don’t even know anymore.”
He heard the bed creak as Josef rolled over. “I don’t know what’s wrong either,” the swordsman said. “And I’m not going to push it. Whatever’s going on with Nico, it’s a battle she has to fight herself. If she needs us, she’ll ask.”
Eli frowned. “Are you sure about that?”
Josef’s long breaths were his only answer, and Eli knew the conversation was over. He tried to think of a way to bring the topic up again from a different angle, but all he got were more dead ends until, at last, he drifted off to sleep as well, curled up in a ball on the rug in the middle of Josef’s floor.
Nico sat on the floor in the dark, her coat wrapped around her, her bony knees clutched to her chest. She sat perfectly still, listening through the wall until Eli’s breaths evened out into sleep at last. Only then did she let out the long, shuddering sigh she’d been keeping in. Of all the demon-enhanced senses the seed could have left, why did it have to be hearing?
It’s for your own good, the voice whispered, smooth and confident as ever. I help you hear the truth.
“Shut up,” Nico grumbled, pulling herself toward the narrow bed.
You can’t shut the truth out, the voice said. Ignoring the problem won’t change how the thief feels. He’s a clever, efficient man. It’s only a matter of time before he decides to cut the dead weight. I wouldn’t be surprised if he left you here. After all, you’re nothing but a weak girl who couldn’t even pull Josef through a window. Why would they ever want—
“SHUT UP.”
Nico’s words roared through her head, but the voice just chuckled and began to hum a song from Nico’s childhood, one of the only things she could remember from before the morning she woke up on the mountain.
