“Powers,” the older one said, wiping his eyes. “No offense, friend, but you three look like beggars. Monpress is stinking rich. Wasn’t even six months ago he robbed Gaol blind, so I hear. You do look like him, though. I’ll give you that. ’Cept for the hair, of course.” He eyed Eli’s blond wig. “Tell you what.” The guard reached into his pocket, pulling out a silver coin and tossing it at Eli. “Take this and get out of here. Go get a haircut and some better clothes, and then you come back and try that line again next shift. I’d love to see Wallace handle Eli Monpress at his door, the old stuffed shirt.”
“Next shift,” Eli said, catching the coin neatly. “I may just do that. What time?”
“Eight o’clock even,” the guard said.
“Much obliged,” Eli said. With a final, farewell grin, he grabbed Josef’s arm and began to steer the swordsman back across the square. “Thank you, gentlemen. You’ve been exceedingly kind.”
The guard waved. “Shove off. And if Wallace guts you later, you got none to blame but yourself.”
“I’ll bear that in mind,” Eli called. “Good afternoon.”
The guards started laughing again and walked back into the guard box. Eli kept grinning the whole way across the square. When they were safely out of sight around a building, he dropped the smile and slammed Josef against the wall.
“Prince?” he shouted. “You’re a prince and you never told me?”
Though he could have broken Eli’s hold easily, Josef let it stay, leaning in to the wall at his back. “Not anymore.”
“Well, your mother’s a queen,” Eli said. “That sounds like a prince to me.”
“Eli.” Nico’s hand closed on his shoulder. “Stop it. Now. I’m sure Josef had his reasons.” She looked at Josef. “Didn’t you?”
Josef glowered at them. “Do I need reasons?”
“Oh come on!” Eli cried. “What kind of a question is that? I thought we were partners. I thought we were friends. How do you just go hiding something like that? Never mind all the times before, how do you justify hiding it when you’re bringing us back to your own country to turn yourself in?”
“Because I’m not a prince anymore,” Josef growled. “I told you before. And I am your friend. That’s why I let you come along.”
Eli let his look say exactly what he thought of that logic, and Josef lay back with a deep sigh. “You know what? Never mind. This is all wrong.”
Despite his anger, despite how hurt he was, Eli couldn’t help laughing at that.
“Of course it’s all wrong, idiot,” he said, letting Josef go. “You didn’t have a plan. You just expected to walk right in and then walk right out. This is what you get for not clueing us in, you know. If you’d just told me what you wanted to do, I could have made a plan that would have had us in your mother’s throne room enjoying your embarrassing childhood stories at this very moment.”
Josef shook his head. “All right then, Mr. Greatest-Thief-in-the-World, I give up. How would you do it?”
Eli straightened up and casually tossed the silver coin the guard had given him in the air, catching it in his palm. “I thought you’d never ask.”
He gave Josef a final I-told-you-so sniff and started down the alley, tossing the coin as he went. Josef pushed himself off the wall with an enormous sigh. “Now I’ve done it.”
“You should have done it days ago,” Nico said, crossing her arms.
“Right as usual,” Josef said. “Shall we?” He nodded down the alley.
Nico gave him an exasperated look and they started after Eli, walking side by side down the clean-swept alley.
CHAPTER
5
In the stinking swamp that would one day become the richest soil in the Empire, a girl ran through the muck. She ran wildly, arms flailing as she scrambled over clumps of grass and sticky clay. Behind her, men with lanterns were giving chase, the lights bobbing in the dark. The girl was quick and desperate, but the men knew this swamp better than she did. By the time she realized she’d gone the wrong way, they had surrounded her.
She cowered in the mud as their circle tightened. When the men were an arm’s length away, the largest held up his lantern to get a good look at her face.
“This is the one,” he said. “Gutted the captain proper, she did.”
“ ’Swhat the old coot gets,” said another. “Messing around with trash.” He grabbed the girl’s hair, yanking her up. “Mountain monkeys are for working, not sleeping with.”
He spat in her face, and they all began to laugh. The girl hung by her hair, kicking wildly. And then, from nowhere, silver flashed in the lamplight. The man dropped her with a scream to clutch his arm. The girl landed hard and rolled to her feet, brandishing her small knife, its tip bright red.
“Filthy animal!” the man shouted, clutching his bloody arm. “We’ll string your carcass up for the birds! Get her!”
The men charged her. The girl lashed out, swinging her knife, but the men were too many, too large. They grabbed her hand and pinched the nerve until her fingers went slack. The knife fell to the ground and was quickly trampled into the mud. She gasped for breath as their hands gripped her throat. The long, cold blades of their machetes pressed against her chest, and the girl realized that she was going to die. She was going to die in this swamp miles from her home. Die under the boots of the slavers with nothing to show for her suffering but an old, dead captain who would probably be replaced with someone even worse. But as despair swallowed her mind, something even deeper suddenly snapped, and her spirit ripped itself open.
Years ago, before the invaders had come, she’d learned spirit talking from the village elder. The old woman always said that spirit talkers may only ask, never demand. To demand was to lose the world’s respect, and thus lose everything. But now, with the machetes pressing into her ribs and the fingers crushing her throat, what did she have left to lose?
She reached out with the roar of her open spirit and stabbed her will into the mud. The dirt screamed as she touched it, but her will was absolute, and it had no choice. The blades vanished from her chest as the men were yanked off her. Their laughter turned to terrified screams as the ground beneath their feet turned against them. They flailed as they started to sink, screaming in panic, but the girl dug her now-freed hands into the mud and tightened her grip, snarling as she slammed her will down. The moment it landed, the men vanished into the swamp, the sticky mud closing over their heads without a trace.
The swamp fell suddenly silent, empty except for the droning of distant insects. The girl crouched in the mud, her dark eyes bright in the flickering light of the toppled lanterns until the mud took those, too, and everything fell dark. Sensing its chance, the mud began to buck against her Enslavement. She let it go, staring dumbstruck at the bloody knife in her hand. What had she done? Killing the captain had been bad enough, but now she’d killed the foremen as well. They would slaughter the camp for this. They would find her and kill her, kill her brothers, kill her people, all to make an example for the other camps. They would all die and it would be her fault.
Bleak despair filled her mind, drowning out even her panic, and she began to weep. The sobs shook her until her bones ached, but the more she cried, the worse she felt. There was no escape, no hope. Nothing.
Finally, her crying subsided, and she realized something was different. The swamp was silent. Not just night silence, true silence. There was no rustle of water, no insects chirping. Even the gentle wind had stopped. Her body went tense, and the girl edged her head up, peeking cautiously through her tangled hair. The dark swamp was bright as noon, but that was impossible. Dawn was still hours away, and in any case, this was no golden daylight. The light was white, stark, and cold as fresh snow. She would have called it moonlight, but no moon had ever shone this bright. She raised her head to stare, and that was when she caught sight of a woman’s white foot resting delicately on the surface of the swamp.
The girl jumped and scrambled back. The woman stood less than a foot away. She was naked, her skin flawless and alabaster white. White hair fell in a cascade across her white shoulders, and her white eyes were
