The Spirit Eater (11 page)

“As I said,” Sara said, grinning, “the stakes have changed. If Slorn sent his daughter to Eli, then we can only assume the thief is in this race as well.

Banage’s pet has a strange connection with Monpress, and that’s exactly the kind of leverage we’re going to need to pull this off. I must have her.

No one else will do.”

Sparrow ran a long hand through his glossy hair. “Banage won’t like it.”

“Hang Banage,” Sara said, blowing a ring of smoke at him. “Just go find the girl and convince her to come along. That’s what I pay you for.”

“As you wish,” Sparrow said, turning back toward the door.

“Have her here tomorrow morning,” Sara called as he left. “First appointment.”

The door closed without an answer, but she knew Sparrow had heard. Even if he hadn’t, she didn’t care. There were larger games afoot. Sara turned back to her desk and reached under the piles of drafting parchment scribbled with designs and notes. After a little fumbling, she pulled out the long, narrow slip of paper she’d hidden when Alric had stepped unannounced into her room, right before the badly timed call from her spy in Eli’s village had come in. It rankled her that Alric had been there to yank that bit of information, but she pushed her annoyance aside. He was the sort of man who it was better to assume knew everything already anyway. That way you were never caught off-guard.

She smoothed the strip of paper between her fingers. It had arrived this morning, dropped through her window by a large bird she didn’t recognize.

That much wasn’t unusual. She often received messages that way, but the contents of this paper were something else entirely. It was a short letter, barely more than a paragraph, asking for assistance in a chase. The letter was not signed, but there was no need for a name. It was a hand she knew well. After years spent poring over whatever of his documents she could get her hands on, Slorn’s writing was as familiar as her own.

“Well, well, Heinricht,” she murmured, feeding the note into the little furnace in her office. “Looks like you’ll get your help after all.”

She smiled as the paper curled into ash. As it burned, she looked up at the wall above her desk. There, pasted to the metal, were two rows of nearly identical wanted posters. They were arranged chronologically, each bearing the same name above a portrait of the same smiling, boyish face. The only differences between them were the list of crimes, which grew longer and denser with each printing, and the number below the portrait. It was the number that was truly impressive, climbing exponentially from its start on the first poster at three hundred standards to the newest entry, a freshly printed sheet at the end bearing a number large enough to be a national budget: ninety-eight thousand gold standards.

Sara reached up to touch the closest poster, tracing her finger along the boy’s intricately shaded jawline. “High stakes indeed,” she whispered, her face breaking into a smile. “Let’s see whom luck favors this time around, my little Eliton.”

On the wall, the poster’s unchanging face smiled back, just as it always did.

Miranda Lyonette squinted at the tiny script of the report in her hands, wishing, for the hundredth time that hour, that the Council had decided to save money in some way other than teaching its scribes to write in microscopic strokes. It would also help if the investigators could somehow manage to be thorough and interesting in their reports. It might be asking a bit much, but how anyone could make Eli Monpress’s theft of the Queen of Verdun’s diamond crown and his subsequent getaway through the burning canals boring was beyond her comprehension.

Miranda threw the report on the table and leaned back in her chair, rubbing her tired eyes. It had been three weeks since Lord Whitefall had made her head of the joint Spirit Court and Council of Thrones Monpress investigation. True to his word, he’d arranged an office for her the next day, and Miranda found herself operating out of a Council warehouse by the river that was uncomfortably warm during the day and damp at night. This was tolerable, however, for the space was large enough for Gin with plenty of room left for the enormous stacks of filing shelves Lord Whitefall had sent over from the main Council offices. She had also been provided with a staff, consisting of a runner, a scribe, and a file clerk. This had struck her as odd at first. She’d thought she’d be getting a Council investigator, or at least someone familiar with Monpress, but that was before she’d discovered exactly how much paperwork was involved in her new position.

One week into her new job and she understood why Lord Whitefall’s office looked the way it did. The Council produced paper at a spectacular rate.

Every afternoon a cart brought boxes of reports, observations, and strategies from the central office. Each was copied in triplicate, one for her to sign and send back as proof that she had read it, one for her active use, and one for her records. Worse, nearly all of it was useless—commentary on past crimes and idiotic suggestions from Council members who seemed to get all their information on Monpress from the gossip sheets, where he was a regular and much followed figure, even when he hadn’t pulled a crime in over a month.

“Especially when he hasn’t pulled a crime in over a month,” Miranda muttered, looking balefully over at the other stack of papers on her desk.

Shorter than the Council reports but still an impressive pile, these were great sheets of cheap yellow paper folded in half and printed with enormous lettering. The top one proclaimed MONPRESS STILL AT LARGE!!! above a dramatized engraving of a jaunty Monpress carrying a fat man with a crown, presumably the king of Mellinor, over his shoulder while a tall man with rings on his fingers and another figure in the white uniform of the Council guards looked around cluelessly in the background.

Miranda rubbed her throbbing temples. If the Council reports were dull and overresearched, the gossip sheets were the exact opposite. Below the picture were paragraphs full of exclamations and bold claims with the important points underlined for maximum impact. Where was Monpress now?

Why hadn’t he been active? Was it a cover-up? Why wasn’t the Spirit Court doing anything? Where are the bounty hunters?

The speculations ran all the way to the fold, which was a bit long even for cheap sensationalism. Still, with Eli gone to ground, the public was hungry for more coverage, even when it was a simple rehashing of known information. Miranda reached out and flipped the paper open, grimacing as the cheap ink smudged onto her fingers. The feature on Monpress continued below the fold, ending with an editorial piece from an anonymous Concerned Council Member titled OUR GREATEST THREAT.

“Who is the greatest threat to our security today? Besides the ever-present threat of the Immortal Empress from across the sea, a look down the Council’s bounty list provides a feast of villainy. Yet ask the man on the street, the farmer in the field, and the answer is always the same: wizards. We all know of the events in Mellinor, where a wizard nearly took control of a kingdom single-handedly through force of his magic. The so-called Spirit Court has told us this was the doing of Eli Monpress, but if that’s so, then why does Monpress go uncaught? How does an organization that can talk to the wind itself fail to capture a man so notorious? The answer is simple enough for a child: Because they are in allegiance with the thief! How many more disasters will we allow the wizards to blame on Monpress, their ‘supposed’ rogue? How much higher must Monpress’s bounty get before we wake up and realize that our anger should be focused not on the thief, but on his masters, the so-called Spirit Court and its king, Etmon Banage!”

There was more, but Miranda didn’t bother to read it. She balled up the paper and threw it as hard as she could across the room. It landed beside Gin, who woke with a snort, glaring at the paper before turning his orange eyes on his mistress. “I told you not to waste your time with that trash.”

“It gets worse every day!” Miranda shouted, slamming her hands on the table.

“It’s always been like this,” Gin said. “It just seems worse because you’re paying attention to it now.”

“Look.” She grabbed a fistful of yellow sheets from the stack and shook them at the hound. “Every one of these sorry excuses for print sings the same tune: ‘The Spirit Court is a bunch of bungling idiots who can’t catch a thief,’ ‘Eli Monpress is working for the wizards!’ And it’s always us. You never see one of these anonymous letters criticizing the Council.”

“That’s because the Council outsources all its catching to bounty hunters rather than sending its own people,” Gin said, yawning. “Easier to blame someone when you know their name.”

“That’s not it and you know it.” Miranda glared at him. “It’s just what Master Banage said would happen. That thief is ruining the reputation of the Spirit Court! Master Banage’s name, all our names are being dragged through the mud on the front page of the Zarin gossip sheets and it’s all Monpress’s fault!”

“So why are we sitting around here?” Gin said, standing up. “You’re head of the Eli investigation. Let’s go catch him.”

“Catch him doing what?” Miranda cried, gesturing at the snowdrift of paper on her desk. “Eli hasn’t robbed so much as a roadside charity box in a month.”

“At least we’d be out there doing something,” Gin snapped back. “Better than being in here, pushing paper and getting angry at gossip sheets.

Who ever heard of catching a thief by reading reports?”

“No,” Miranda said fiercely, shoving her reports into order. “This is where I need to be. The Council has the best information network on the continent. If Eli pulls anything, I’ll be the first to know. And this time it won’t be like Mellinor or Gaol. This time I’ll have the full backing of the Council.

No more going after him alone, no more playing up to local officials. We’ll come down on that thief with the combined forces of the Council of Thrones and the Spirit Court. Bam!” She slammed her hands on the table. “I’d like to see him wiggle out of that.”

Gin flicked his ears back at the crash. “Why are you getting so worked up? I thought we kind of liked Eli now.”

Miranda stuck her nose in the air. “Thinking he’s not evil isn’t the same as liking him. He’s a scoundrel and a lawbreaker and a thief, not to mention a liar, and though I will admit he’s not a bad sort of guy underneath all that, it hardly makes up for the rest.” She clenched her fists. “I’m going to catch that thief, Gin. I’ll bring him trussed up like a hog before Master Banage and clear the Spirit Court’s name once and for all. And then I’m going to use the bounty money to put these liars”—she swatted the stack of gossip sheets—“out of business for good.”

“Don’t waste your gold,” said a lilting, unfamiliar voice. “More would just spring up.”

Miranda and Gin both jumped and whirled around to face the sound. There, five steps inside the locked and bolted door, was a man. He was very tall and dressed extremely oddly. He wore red snakeskin boots with pointed toes, black trousers that were far too tight and were embellished with lemon-yellow thread, and a green velvet jacket the color of new grass over a bright pink shirt and a maroon vest. His long hair was ice blond shot with black (an obvious dye job, though she couldn’t say which, if either, had been his original color), and his head was crowned with a large red hat trimmed with gold that he wore swooped down over his eyes.

“Anyway,” he continued, traipsing into the room as if he’d been invited. “There’s no point in getting angry at the gossips. If it wasn’t the Court, they’d be after someone else.”

“Who are you?” Miranda shouted, jumping up, her rings flashing as her chair toppled over behind her. But Gin was even faster. By the time the words were out of her mouth, he had launched himself off the floor and pounced on the man, pinning him to the ground.

“How did you sneak in here?” Gin snarled, his orange eyes blinking rapidly, as though he was having trouble focusing. “How do you make no sound? Why do you flicker like that?”

The man smiled up at the large, sharp teeth hovering inches above his head. “Easy, doggie,” he said, his eyes darting toward Miranda. “I’m afraid I’m not a wizard. So if your guard dog is addressing me, he’s wasting his rather terrible-smelling breath. If you wouldn’t mind?” He wiggled helplessly.

Miranda made no move to call Gin off. Instead, she walked across the room to stand over the man as well. “You haven’t answered my question,”

she said. “And I’ll add Gin’s to it, since you can’t hear. Who are you? How did you get in here? What are you doing?”

“You left out the part about the flickering,” Gin growled, leaning harder on the stranger’s shoulders until the man’s face turned pasty against the garish backdrop of his hat. “Can’t you see it?”

Miranda shook her head. Other than questionable color choices, the man looked normal to her.

The stranger wiggled one hand into his pocket and flipped out a card, which he tossed toward Miranda’s feet.

“The name’s Sparrow,” he said as she picked it up. “I got in through the door, and I do almost anything. Tonight, I’m an errand boy. I’ve been sent by our mutual employer to request your presence at a meeting tomorrow morning.”

“Employer?” Miranda said, holding the card by its edges. “Lord Whitefall?”

“That windbag?” The man laughed. “No, dear, I’m no paper-pusher. I’m talking about Sara, the lady running the show.”

Miranda looked at the card in her hand. It was surprisingly plain, considering the man it belonged to, just a white rectangle on heavy stock with a small engraving of a sparrow in flight in the lower left-hand corner. She flipped it over. The back was as blank as the front, save for a small notation written in slanting script: 8:40.

“Eight forty?” Miranda read, brows furrowed.

“Yes, and don’t be late,” Sparrow said. “Sara keeps an extremely tight schedule. She’ll be intolerable if you throw it off.”

She gave him a suspicious look. “Where am I going?”

“The Council citadel, of course,” Sparrow said, tilting his head sideways so that he wasn’t directly under Gin’s bared teeth. “Just show up and I’ll bring you down. I play doorman as well as messenger.”