by Rachel Aaron
“Grenith Hern?”
“He is the head of the Tower Keepers,” Banage said. “It isn’t unreasonable that he should represent them in—”
“Grenith Hern?” She was almost shouting now. “The man who has made a career out of hating you? Who blames you for stealing the office of Rector out from under him? He’s the one responsible for this ‘fair and legal’ accusation?”
“Enough, Miranda.” Banage’s voice was cold and sharp.
Miranda blew past the warning. “You know he’s doing this only to discredit you!”
“Of course I know,” Banage hissed, standing up to meet her eyes. “But I am not above the law, and neither are you. We must obey the edicts of the Court, which means that when a Spiritualist receives a summons to stand before the Court, no matter who signed it or why, she goes. End of discussion.”
Miranda threw the petition on his desk. “I will not go and stand there while that man spreads lies about me! He will say anything to get what he wants. You know half the names on that paper wouldn’t be there if Hern hadn’t been whispering in their ears!”
“Miranda!”
She flinched at the incredible anger in his voice, but she did not back down. They stared at each other for a long moment, and then Banage sank back into his chair and put his head in his hands, looking for once not like the unconquerable leader of the Spirit Court, but like an old, tired man.
“Whatever we think of Hern’s motives,” he said softly, “the signatures are what they are. There is no legal way I can stop this trial, but I can shield you from the worst of it.”
He lowered his hands and looked at her. “You are my apprentice, Miranda, and dear as a daughter to me. I cannot bear to see you or your spirits suffer for my sake. Whatever you may think of him, Hern is not an unreasonable man. When he brought this petition to me yesterday, I reacted much as you just did. Then I remembered myself, and we were able to come to a compromise.”
“What kind of compromise?” she said skeptically.
“You will stand before the Court and face the accusations, but you will neither confirm nor deny guilt.”
Miranda’s face went bright red. “What sort of a compromise is that?”
Banage’s glare shut her up. “In return for giving Hern his show, he has agreed to let me give you a tower somewhere far away from Zarin.”
Miranda stared at him in disbelief. “A tower?”
“Yes,” Banage said. “The rank of Tower Keeper would grant you immunity from the trial’s harsher punishments. The worst Hern would be able to do is slap you on the wrist and send you back to your tower. This way, whatever happened, your rings would be safe and your career would be saved.”
Miranda stared at her master, unable to speak. She tried to remind herself that Banage’s plans always worked out for the best, but the thought of sitting silently while Hern lied to her face, lied in the great chamber of the Spirit Court itself, before all the Tower Keepers, made her feel ill. To just be silent and let her silence give his lies credence, the very idea was a mockery of everything the Spirit Court stood for, everything she stood for.
“I can’t do it.”
“You must do it,” Banage said. “Miranda, there’s no getting out of this. If you go into that trial as a simple Spiritualist, Hern could take everything from you.”
“It’s not certain that Hern will win,” Miranda said, crossing her arms over her chest stubbornly. “Tower Keepers are still Spiritualists. If I can tell the truth out in the open, tell what actually happened and show them Mellinor, let the spirit speak for himself, there’s no way they can find me guilty, because I’m not.”
“This is not open for debate,” Banage said crossly. “Do you think I like where this is going? This whole situation is my fault. If you had another master, this would never have grown into the fiasco it is, but we are out-maneuvered.”
“I can’t just sit there and let him win!” Miranda shouted.
“This isn’t a game, Miranda!” Banage was shouting, too, now. “If you try and face Hern head-on, you will be throwing away everything we worked together to create. You’re too good a Spiritualist for me to let you risk your career like this! You know and I know that you are guiltless, that your only crime was doing the right thing in difficult circumstances. Let that be enough. Don’t fool yourself into thinking that your fighting Hern on this will be for anything other than your own pride!”
Miranda quaked at the anger in his voice, and for a moment the old obedience nearly throttled her with a desperate need to do what Master Banage said. But Mellinor was churning inside her, his current dark and furious, his anger magnifying hers, and she could not let it go.
Banage must have felt it, too, the angry surge of the great water spirit, for she felt the enormous weight of his spirit settle on top of her as the man himself bowed his head and began to rub his eyes with a tired, jeweled hand.
“It’s late,” he said quietly. “A late night after many long days is no time to make weighty decisions. We’ll pick this up tomorrow. Maybe after a night’s rest you’ll be able to see that I am trying to save you.”
Miranda’s anger broke at the quiet defeat in his voice. “I do see,” she said, “and I am grateful. But—”
Banage interrupted her with a wave of his hand. “Sleep on it,” he said. “I’ve given orders for you to be under house arrest tonight, so you’ll be comfortable at least. We’ll meet again tomorrow for breakfast in the garden, like old times. But for now, just go.”
Miranda nodded and stood stiffly, mindful of every tiny noise she made in the now-silent room. As she turned to leave, she stopped suddenly. Her hand went to her pocket and fished out a white square.
“I’d almost forgotten,” she said, turning back to Banage. “This is for you.”
She laid the envelope on his desk. Then, with a quick bow, she turned and marched across the great stretch of empty marble to the door. Pulling it open, she plunged out of the room and down the stairs as fast as her feet could carry her.
Banage watched the door as it drifted shut, the iron hinges trained after centuries of service to never slam. When the echo of her footsteps faded, Banage let go of the breath he’d been holding and let his head slump into his hands. It never got easier, never. He sat for a while in the silence, and then, when he felt steady enough to read whatever she had written him, he let his hand fall to the letter she had placed on his desk.
When he looked at the letter, however, his eyebrows shot up in surprise. The handwriting on the front was not Miranda’s, and in any case, she never addressed him as “Etmon Banage.” Curious, he turned the letter over, and all other thoughts left his mind. There, pressed deep into the soft, forest-green wax was an all too familiar cursive M.
Banage dropped the envelope on his desk like it was a venomous snake. He sat there for a few moments staring at it. Then, in a fast, decisive motion, he grabbed the letter and broke the seal, tearing the paper when it would not open fast enough. A folded letter fell from the sundered envelope, landing lightly on his desk. With careful, suspicious fingers, Banage unfolded the thick parchment.
It was a wanted poster, one of those mass copied by the army of ink-and-block spirits below the Council fortress. An achingly familiar boyish face grinned up at him from the creased paper, the charming features older, sharper, but still clearly recognizable despite more than a decade’s growth. His mocking expression was captured perfectly by the delicate shading that was the Bounty Office’s trademark, making the picture so lifelike Banage almost expected it to start laughing. Above the picture, a name was stenciled in block capitals: ELI MONPRESS. Below the portrait, written in almost unreadably tiny print so they could fit on one page, was a list of Eli’s crimes. And below that, printed in tall, bold blocks, was WANTED, DEAD OR ALIVE, 55,000 GOLD STANDARDS.
That’s what was printed, anyway, but this particular poster had been altered. First, the 55,000 had been crossed out and the number 60,000 written above it in red ink. S
econd, the same hand had crossed out the word WANTED with a thick, straight line and written instead the word WORTH.
“Eli Monpress,” Banage read quietly. “Worth, dead or alive, sixty thousand gold standards.”
A feeling of disgust overwhelmed him, and he dropped the poster, looking away as his fingers moved unconsciously over the ring on his middle finger, a setting of gold filigree of leaves and branches holding a large, murky emerald as dark and brooding as an old forest. He stayed like that for a long, silent time, staring into the dark of his office. Then, with deliberate slowness, he picked up the poster and ripped it to pieces. He fed each piece to the lamp on his desk, the heavy red-stoned ring on his thumb glowing like a star as he did so, keeping the fire from spreading anywhere Banage did not wish it to spread.
When the poster and its sundered envelope had been reduced to ash, Banage stood and walked stiffly across his office to the small, recessed door that led to his private apartments. When he reached it, he said something low, and all the lamps flickered, plunging the office into darkness. When the darkness was complete, he shut the door, locking out the smell of burnt paper that tried to follow him.
CHAPTER 2
Eli Monpress, the greatest thief in the world, was strolling through the woods. His overstuffed bag bounced against his back as he walked, and he was whistling a tune he didn’t quite remember as he watched the late afternoon sunlight filter through the golden leaves, bringing with it a smell of cold air and dry wood. So pleasant was the scene, in fact, that it took him a good twenty paces to realize he was walking alone.
He stopped on his heel and spun to see Josef, his swordsman, sitting twenty paces back in the middle of the path with Nico, Josef’s constant shadow, sitting beside him. Beside her, Josef’s famous sword, the Heart of War, stood plunged into the hard-packed dirt, and beside it lay the enormous sack of gold they’d liberated from Mellinor’s sadly destroyed treasury. Despite the fine weather, none of them looked happy.
Eli heaved a dramatic sigh. “What?”
Josef stared right back at him. “I’m not taking another step until you tell me exactly where we’re going.”
Eli rolled his eyes, this again. “I told you before. I told you this morning, we’re going to see a friend of mine about getting Nico a new coat.”
“I didn’t ask what we were going to do when we got there.” Josef folded his arms over his chest. “I asked you, where are we going? We’ve been walking vaguely north for almost a month now, and since yesterday we’ve been walking in circles around the same four miles of woods. This is the second time today we’ve passed that beech tree, and I’m tired of lugging your ill-gotten gains.” The sack of gold jingled as his large fist landed on it. “Admit it,” the swordsman said, giving Eli a superior sneer. “You’re lost.”
“I am not.” Eli threw out his arms, taking in the scant undergrowth, rocky slopes, and slender, white-barked trees of the small valley they were in the middle of climbing out of. “We’re in the great north woods, which the Shapers call the Turningwood, and the Council of Thrones doesn’t have a name for because we left the Council maps a week ago. Specifically, we are in the Thousand Streams region of the Turningwood, a name you might appreciate, considering all the valleys we’ve had to climb through. Even more specifically, we are in the northeast corner of the Thousand Streams, where the streams are slightly less numerous. A little farther north and we’d be in the foothills of the Sleeping Mountains themselves, and a little farther east and we’d hit the frozen swamps on the coastal plain. So, as you see, I know exactly where we are, and it is exactly where we are supposed to be.”
Despite such a grand display of navigation, Josef did not look impressed. “If we’re where we’re supposed to be, why are we still walking?”
Eli turned and started up the hill again. “Because the house of the man we are looking for isn’t always in the same place.”
“You mean the man isn’t always in the same place,” Josef said, making no sound of following him.
“No.” Eli panted as he reached the crest of the valley. “I mean the house. If you don’t like it, complain to him.
“If we ever find him,” Josef said.
Eli shook his head and started down the other side of the hill, wishing that the swordsman would apply his stubbornness to something useful, like being a perfect gold carrier, or finding them something tastier than squirrel to eat. By the time he’d reached the bottom of the next valley, Josef had still not crested the ridge of the one before. Eli grimmaced and kept walking, though more slowly and with one ear out for the sound of jingling gold, which would tell him if this was just a Josef bluff or if he was actually going to have to go back and push the man up the hill. Fortunately, the decision was rendered moot when he took another step forward and found nothing but air.
He yelped as the world spun upside down and sideways. Then, with a sharp pain in his ankles, it stopped, and he found himself hanging high in the branches of a tree. Blinking in surprise, Eli looked down, or up, depending, and saw he was strung up by his ankles in the branches of an large oak. That much he’d been prepared for, but how he was hanging took him by surprise. Instead of ropes, a knot of roots with dirt still clinging to them bound his feet, ankles, and lower legs. They moved as he watched, creaking with a sound very much like snickering. He was still staring at the roots and trying to figure out what had just happened when he heard Josef come over the hill. Eli craned his neck and started to yell a warning, but it was too late. The second Josef was off the rocky ravine, a snaking cluster of roots erupted from the ground and grabbed his feet. The swordsman flew into the air with a lurch and came to rest neatly beside Eli.
“Well,” Eli said. “Fancy meeting you here.”
Josef didn’t answer, he just scowled and bent over, wiggling his foot. There was a flash, and a long knife dropped out of his boot before the roots could tighten. The swordsman caught it deftly an inch from Eli’s face and bent over, reaching for the closest root.
“I wouldn’t do that,” Eli said, glancing up, or down. “It’s a bit of a drop.”
Josef followed his gaze. The ground swung dizzyingly a good thirty feet below them, but the drop was made even longer by the enormous hole the roots had left when they’d sprung. Josef shook his head in disgust and stuck the knife into his belt. “I thought you were friends with trees.”
“For the last time, it doesn’t work like that,” Eli said. “That’s like saying, ‘I thought you were friends with humans.’ Anyway, don’t be a grouch. We’ve found it! This is the Awakened Wood that guards the house.”
Josef sighed. “Wonderful. Fantastic welcome. Is your friend always this friendly, or are we a special exception?”
Before Eli could answer, a woman’s voice interrupted.
“Eli Monpress.” The words were heavy with laughter. “I wouldn’t have thought we’d catch you.”
Both men craned their necks. Directly below them a tall, young woman in hunter’s leathers stepped out from behind the tree they were dangling from, a smug smile on her tan face. She was very young, not more than sixteen, and lanky, as though she hadn’t quite grown into her limbs yet. She crossed her long arms over her chest and stared at them as though daring Eli to try and talk his way out of this one. Eli opened his mouth to oblige her, but he never got the chance. From the shadows behind the girl, a pair of white, thin hands in silver manacles shot out and closed around her throat. The girl’s eyes bulged and she dropped to her knees as Nico flickered into sight behind her.
“Release them,” Nico said in a dry, terrifying voice. “Now.”
“No, Nico!” Eli shouted. “She’s not going to—”
The rest of it was lost in the girl’s roar as she ducked and tumbled forward, using Nico’s own iron grip to take the smaller girl with her, slamming them both into the ground with Nico on the bottom. As soon as she was on top, the girl elbowed Nico hard in the ribs. Nico gasped, and her grip faltered. The girl shot up, rolling gracefully to he
r feet. When she turned around, she had a long, beautiful knife in her hands, the blade glowing with its own silver light.
Nico was back on her feet in an instant, and for a breathless moment the two watched each other. Then the girl in the hunting leathers shook her head and slid her knife back into the long sheath on her thigh.
“I begin to understand why you needed that coat,” the girl said, not taking her eyes off of Nico. “Let them down, gently please.”
The tree made a sound like a disgruntled sigh and lowered its roots, releasing Eli and Josef just a little higher than would have been a safe drop. The men landed hard in the dirt, and while Josef was on his feet almost immediately, Eli took a bit longer to get his breath back.
“Hello, Pele,” he coughed, trying to discreetly determine if his back was broken. “Always a pleasure.”
Pele arched an eyebrow. “Can’t say I feel the same.” She glared at Nico, who was still watching her from a crouch. “Must you always bring such trouble?”
FB2 document info
Document ID: 20b6f5dd-9881-44dd-9ec8-f5621f1b4d99
Document version: 1
Document creation date: 10.8.2011
Created using: calibre 0.8.13 software
Document authors :
Rachel Aaron
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