numbers myself. Did he say what payment he was here to inspect?”
“No, my lord,” Wallace said. “But he made it seem deadly urgent.”
“It’s always urgent when it comes to the Council and money,” Lord Obermal said, voice trembling. “The queen will have my head if we get audited now, what with everything going on.”
Wallace jogged ahead to open the door to the treasury office. “I had Higgins put them in the receiving room,” he said as Lord Obermal rushed past him. “Anything else I can do for you, my lord?”
“Yes,” Obermal said, grabbing a stack of ledgers from his assistant’s desk. “Don’t tell anyone about this until I’ve had a chance to talk to the queen. We can’t afford a panic.”
“Understood, sir,” Wallace said, stepping back into the hallway. “Good luck, sir.”
Obermal nodded and took a deep breath. Then, hugging the ledgers to his chest, he walked through his office and into the receiving room.
“Lord Whitefall,” he said, trying his best to sound like he wasn’t panicking. “I’m sorry to have kept you waiting. I have all of Osera’s payment records right—”
He stopped, the account books slipping as his fingers went slack.
The receiving room was empty. Obermal stood frozen for a moment as his brain switched from one panic to another. When he could move again, he turned and ran for the hall as fast as his old legs could go, shouting for Wallace.
“There,” Eli said, peeling the fake beard off his face as they walked briskly through the back halls of the palace. “What did I tell you? Not even ten minutes.”
“Fine, you were right,” Josef said, unbuttoning the stuffy longcoat. “How did you know it would work?”
“Have you ever been through a Council audit?” Eli said, taking off his spectacles. “Nasty, expensive business, and the auditors are the last people you want to be out of sorts. That’s actually the third time I’ve pulled that scam. Works every time.”
Josef rolled his eyes. “Uh-huh, and why do I always have to be your bodyguard when we do these things?”
“Because, my dear Josef, you are a fighter, not an actor,” Eli said with a smile. “The only expressions your face can produce are surly and murderous, so I have to cast you in rolls that highlight those particular aspects. Also, since I have about as much chance getting you to leave your swords behind as you have of convincing me you’re lead soprano at the Zarin Opera, it seemed the most prudent course of action.”
Josef shook his head. “Why do I even bother?”
“I haven’t any idea,” Eli said, grinning wider. “Where’s Nico?”
Josef glowered at the convenient subject change, but let it slide. He was wondering the same thing. “She should be somewhere around—”
A brush on his shoulder stopped him, and he turned to see Nico stepping out of a deep-shadowed corner.
Eli bundled his somber coat together with Josef’s and put them, along with his false beard and spectacles, into the leather satchel, which he then stashed in the nearest closet. He made a mental note of the door just in case they ever got a chance to come back. The Council Audit scam was a sure bet, but it was horrendously expensive to set up. He didn’t want to abandon the coats unless he had to.
When he was satisfied he could find the closet again in a hurry, he turned to Josef. “Well, my lord prince, where now?”
“Don’t call me that,” Josef snapped, setting off down the hall. “And this way. We’re going to see the queen.”
“Just like that?” Eli said, frowning.
Josef nodded. “Just like that. Nico, you’re on scout. I’ve got point. We’re headed for the north wing. Keep the guards away.”
“Right,” Nico said, vanishing into the shadows like smoke.
Eli whistled, impressed. “Nice to see she’s got it back.”
Josef stomped off down the hall without comment. Eli sighed and fell into step behind him.
They took a convoluted path through the servant passages, though any route would have been twisty, considering how the old palace wrapped around the mountain peak. Eli had been disappointed to see that the palace’s outward shabbiness continued on the inside. The whole place seemed to be nothing but oppressive stone walls and wooden floors hollowed by centuries of feet. The narrow halls would have made avoiding people difficult, but, fortunately, most of the palace seemed occupied with after-dinner entertainment. Eli heard voices through doors and around corners, but they never encountered another person, servant or guard, even when they entered what was obviously a private wing. He was just starting to feel a little unsettled by this when Josef turned a corner and stopped.
They were standing in a long gallery. One wall had sets of narrow windows paned with leaded glass; the other was lined with portraits of stern, fair-haired men. At the end of the gallery, directly across from where they stood, two guards were slumped on the floor. Nico stood beside them, rubbing her hand.
Eli sighed. Of course.
“Nice work,” he said flatly as Josef went to help Nico roll the soldiers aside.
“They’ll be fine,” Josef said. “I taught her how to do it. Right, Nico?”
Nico nodded. “Clean strike to the neck from behind,” she said, looking at Eli. “What? It’s never bothered you before when we knocked out guards.”
“But these are his mother’s guards,” Eli said, pointing at Josef. “It feels rude.”
Josef’s lip curled into a dark smile. “They’re guards in Osera. If they can’t take a little hit to the head, they shouldn’t be here.” He turned away from Eli’s grimace to face the closed door at the end of the gallery. “Let’s get this over with.”
He strode down the hall and opened the door with a shove. The first thing Eli noticed about the royal chamber was that, for the home of the monarch of a wealthy nation, it was remarkably cramped. The room was as narrow as the gallery, and the dark tapestries depicting battles and hunts that covered most of the stone walls made it feel only smaller. Same for dim light coming from the half-lit candelabra that hung from the high, but not impressively high, ceiling. There was a raised, wooden dais at the far end of the room, obviously meant for receiving guests in royal fashion, but the ornate chair at its center was empty and the gold-plated lamps were dark. For several seconds, Eli thought they’d come all this way for nothing, but then his eyes drifted to the small fireplace in the corner. There, a low couch was pulled up to the feeble fire, and on it, lying buried under a large blanket, was an old woman.
The firelight dug deep shadows below her eyes, painting her wrinkles in long black gouges. There was a stack of papers on her lap, but she wasn’t looking at them. Instead, she lay back on the pillows with her eyes shut and her thin mouth pressed in a tight line, as though she were biting her teeth against some long-running pain. Her hair, a thin, brittle mix of pale gold and white, lay spread out on the pillows behind her, freshly washed and combed, though Eli saw no one who could have combed it. The three of them hung at the door, hesitant. The room was so dark, the scene of the old woman sleeping by the fire so private, Eli felt almost guilty stepping inside. Even Josef seemed to have lost his urgency. He stood hovering beside Eli, his scarred face strangely blank as he watched the old woman sleeping.
It was the woman herself who broke the silence. One second Eli would have bet his bounty she was deep asleep, the next her voice rang clear and cold through the room.
“I gave strict orders I was not to be disturbed,” she said, pale eyes cracking open under her narrow, furrowed brows. “If this is not a matter of national emergency, I…” Her voice trailed off when she spotted Josef, and her whole, skeletal body went white as chalk.
Josef stiffened, and Eli leaned back to watch. He loved family reunions. He rather hoped the old woman would cry, if for no other reason than to see how Josef’s stony swordsman routine would hold up under a mother’s tears. But when the queen spoke again, her voice was even colder than before.
“Home at last,” she said. “Why am I not surprised to find you sneaking in like a thief in the night, Thereson?”
“You put the bounty on my head,” Josef said. “How else did you expect me to arrive when you made me a criminal, mother?”
The anger in Josef’s voice made Eli wince, but the woman, whom Eli now knew was Queen Theresa,
