The Spirit War (27 page)

For a moment, Miranda considered just asking Sparrow about the flickering, but quickly decided it would be a waste of time. Sparrow wasn’t a wizard. He probably had even less of a clue than she did about whatever it was about him the spirits didn’t like. Even if he did know, this was Sparrow. Getting a trustworthy answer out of his mouth was like a flood in the desert—not impossible, but very unlikely, and cause for alarm if it did actually happen. So Miranda dropped the subject and moved on to questions she might actually be able to get a straight answer for.

“Everything’s fine,” she said. “Where to?”

“Zarin, where else?” Sparrow said. “I’ve had all I care to see of mountains.”

“There at least we agree,” Miranda said. “Did you hear that, Gin?”

“No,” Gin growled, more annoyed than ever. “I can’t even hear him unless I concentrate. What is wrong with that man?”

“I don’t know,” Miranda said. “But I’m going to find out. Zarin, fast as you can.”

“Got it,” Gin said, laying his ears back. “Hold on tight.”

Miranda didn’t have time to relay the warning before Gin launched himself down the pass, nearly knocking Sparrow off. By the time Sparrow had regained his seat, they were well away from the Shaper Mountain. Miranda leaned forward over Gin’s neck, getting as far away from Sparrow as she could, which wasn’t very far. She had a lot to think about, but her mind kept drifting back to the mountain looming behind her and the man it still held prisoner somewhere deep beneath its stone. The image of the Shaper Mountain’s memories still stood clear in her mind, and she gripped Gin’s fur even tighter. Lock her up, would it? Well, she would tell everyone. She would tell Banage, she would tell Sara, she would tell anyone who would listen. That was her promise to Slorn, and she made it over and over again as they ran through the icy pass back toward civilization.

At the very, very top of the Shaper Mountain, perched on the crusted snow at the tip of the mountain’s peak, a man stood with his arms crossed. Pure white hair covered his body like a coat except for the white hands stroking the long white beard that covered his front as he watched the three specks of the wizard girl, the ghosthound, and the man who looked like nothing flee down the path through the mountains.

You play a risky game, Durain.

“Nonsense,” the mountain rumbled under his feet. “I am ever a loyal servant to the Shepherdess. And to you, Weaver.”

The white man smiled.
I wouldn’t say that too loudly. The Shepherdess doesn’t like to share.

“All the Powers are equal,” the Shaper Mountain said. “Though she seems to have forgotten.”

My sister forgets many things
, the Weaver said bitterly.
And what she remembers, she ignores. But that is no call for you to risk our plans by openly defying her. Showing your memories to that group of children and then letting all but one free, what were you thinking?

“They saw nothing that was not true,” the mountain said. “I cannot help if I remember the truth. Anyway, I tried to keep her from escaping, but I am an old spirit. Too old to be looking after young idiots and too busy to spend my limited energy catching them when they run away.”

Of course.
The Weaver chuckled.
Very old. But do be careful, Durain. This is the Shepherdess’s domain. I cannot protect you here. If she suspects, she will not hesitate to act, and we have lost too many irreplaceable spirits to risk another.

“I have not forgotten Gredit,” the mountain said, his great voice heavy with anger. “And I am not the only one. When the Hunter returns, we will be ready. I have already started the process. Heinricht is being briefed by his father as we speak.”

The bear man?
The Weaver frowned.
You put a great deal of faith in him.

“I must,” the mountain said. “He is the only one who can finish Fenzetti’s work.”

Is that so?
The Weaver pursed his lips.
How fortuitous that he should appear now.

“Fortune has nothing to do with it,” the mountain rumbled. “The Creator is still with us. We will be free again.”

You still believe that?
the Weaver said.

“Yes,” the mountain said. “You forget. We old ones, we were the first. I am older than you or your siblings, Shaped by the Creator’s own hand. I remember the world as it was, as it was meant to be, and I know that world will return. It
must
return, or why are we still living?”

Why, indeed
, the Weaver said, looking up at the sky.
I must go. I leave it to you.

“We will not fail,” the mountain said, but the Weaver was already gone, vanishing through a white cut in the thin air as though he had never been. The mountain rumbled at the Power’s sudden absence and shifted its focus away from the outside world and the distant feel of the fleeing figures. Instead, it tilted its attention inward, down toward the long hall at the very heart of its roots. There, two humans, the current Guildmaster and the wizard who shared his spirit with a bear, walked the mountain’s deepest path toward the vault where Durain, the Shaper Mountain, kept its greatest hope, the small, white kernel of a desperate plan many, many years in the making.

CHAPTER

11

J
osef woke with a gasp. He froze, hands knotted in the sheets, body braced to kick or leap away, whichever was needed. That was when he realized he was in his old bedroom. He collapsed back into bed with a silent curse and took stock of his situation. He was naked, his knives stacked carefully on the bench against the wall beside him. But he had no memory of removing his knives or his clothes. He had no memory of going to bed.

Josef frowned. To wake that violently, he must have been sleeping very soundly. Even now, his head was still groggy, and that made him nervous. He’d shaken the sound-sleeping habit the first year he’d left home. Maybe being back in his old room had brought back old habits, but Josef didn’t think so. He glanced at the bed. The space beside him was rumpled. Someone had slept there, but the sheets were cold when he slid his hand over them. His frown deepened. Whatever bad-sleep habits his old room could have lured him into, he’d
never
sleep that soundly next to a stranger, married or not. Something was going on, and he meant to find out what.

Josef slid silently out of bed and looked around for his clothes, but they were gone. He cursed under his breath and quietly took a
knife from the pile. The door to the sitting room was closed, but he could hear movement on the other side of door that led to his dressing room. He put the knife in his teeth and pressed himself against the wall, easing his bare feet along the carpet until he was directly beside the dressing room door. Then, in one lightning-fast movement, he stepped in, opening the door with one hand while grabbing his knife with the other. He swung forward and grabbed the man on the other side, pressing the blade against his jugular.

The man screamed and began to thrash, nearly slitting his own throat in the process. Josef grabbed his shoulders and whirled him around, lowering the knife before slamming the man face-first against the wall.

“What are you doing here?” Josef growled, pressing the knife into the man’s back.

“Please, my lord,” the man whimpered. “I am here to help you dress.”

Josef glanced down, noticing for the first time that the man was dressed in the well-cut, somber suit of Osera’s high-ranking servants. With a horrible, sinking feeling, Josef released his grip and stepped back. The man fell to the floor, gasping and grabbing his throat.

The servant looked up with horrified eyes, and Josef felt his stomach sink even further. This wasn’t going to help his reputation.

“Sorry,” he muttered, reaching out to help. The man shied away from Josef’s hands, using the shelves to pull himself up instead.

“Forgive me, your highness,” he whispered, averting his eyes from Josef’s nakedness. “I did not mean to startle you.”

“Forget it,” Josef said. “Where are my clothes?”

The man’s eyes bulged like Josef had just asked for a carcass. “I gave them to the laundry, sir. I have fresh clothes for you, straight from the tailors.” He nodded toward the chest against the wall where several starched shirts, jackets, and breeches lay neatly
folded. “I can fetch your old clothes back, if you would like,” he added cautiously.

“Those are fine,” Josef said. He grabbed a shirt, jacket, drawers, and pants at random, pulling them on carelessly. He could still see the servant out of the corner of his eye, but the man made no move to help Josef dress. He seemed to be glued to the wall, eyes wide as a fish’s. Josef grit his teeth and dressed faster, ticking the facts over in his head. It had been this man who’d taken his clothes, not Adela. Sleeping through Adela he could maybe understand; she was a fighter and knew how to move, but he would never sleep through this idiot entering his room, collecting his clothes, and leaving. There was simply no way two nights in Osera could have dulled his senses to the point where a servant could sneak past him.

By the time Josef had finished dressing, the man had collected himself enough to fetch Josef’s boots, freshly polished and resoled, from the boot stand. He held them out with a shaking hand, keeping his eyes on the floor as Josef took them.

“Thanks,” Josef said, sitting down to tug his boots on over his new socks. “Where’s Adela?”

The man had already returned to his corner. “I’m not sure of the princess’s whereabouts, sir,” he said, wringing his hands. “I can send someone to find her, if you desire.”

“No,” Josef said, standing up. Best not to let Adela know he was looking for her before he knew what role she played in this. First, he had to find Eli. If the thief was good for anything, it was rooting out trouble.

He went back to the bedroom and grabbed the rest of his knives, slinging them into place as he walked into the sitting room. His frown tightened into a solid grimace at the bright, midday sunlight streaming through the narrow window. Not only had he slept soundly, he’d slept late.

“Worse and worse,” he muttered, grabbing the Heart of War
from the fireplace where he’d left it the night before. He slid the enormous sword over his shoulders and onto its spot on his back. When the blade was secure, he stomped toward the door that led to the rest of the castle. He stopped when he reached it, looking over his shoulder at the servant who was still clutching the dressing room door, trembling like a kicked dog.

“Sorry, again,” Josef said, struggling to think of the appropriate action for cases like this. “You can, um, have the rest of the day off.”

The servant just stared at him blankly as Josef slipped out of the prince’s chamber and started jogging through the halls toward Eli’s room.

Eli’s door was partially open when he reached it. Josef stopped, eyeing it suspiciously. He couldn’t see any outward signs of trouble, but he checked his blades anyway, easing the knives down in his sleeves in case he needed them. When he was satisfied he could get any weapon he needed in a moment’s notice, he stepped inside.

He stopped again almost immediately. The room was a disaster. There were piles of junk everywhere—furniture, produce, paper goods, candles, silverware, weapons, tapestries, building tools, a pile of locks, and the other things he couldn’t see enough of to name. It was all piled around the room as though it had been thrown there, and sitting in the middle, perched on the rubbish like the king and queen of trash, were Eli and Nico. Judging by the dark circles under their eyes, they’d been up all night, but doing what he couldn’t even begin to say. Neither of them seemed to have heard him enter. Instead, they were both staring at what looked to be the carved wooden end of the banister from the grand staircase in the castle’s front hall.

“All right,” Eli said, hefting the carved wooden hunk in his hands. “Closer to the door or the chess piece?”

“Neither,” Nico said, scowling. “It looks almost fuzzy.”

“Fuzzy,” Eli muttered, scribbling on a piece of paper so covered with similar scribbles it was almost entirely black. “Interesting. Fuzzy like the fork or fuzzy like—”

“
What is going on?
” Josef roared.

They both jumped and looked at Josef, eyes wide with surprise.

“Good morning,” Eli said.

“Don’t ‘good morning’ me,” Josef said, kicking the junk aside until he’d made enough space to close the door. “Did you rob a dump? What is all this garbage?”

“Not garbage,” Eli said. “Experiments.” When Josef gave him a skeptical look, he clarified. “Wizard stuff, as you would say.”

“You know what?” Josef said. “I don’t even want to know. All I care about is where you’ve been.”

This last bit was leveled at Nico, and she flinched appropriately.

“Doesn’t matter,” she said quietly. “I’m here now.”

“Doesn’t matter?” Josef was surprised at his own anger. “
Doesn’t matter?
Of course it matters! Do you even know how… how…”

“Worried?” Eli supplied.

“You keep out of this,” Josef snapped. Eli held up his hands, and Josef locked his eyes back on Nico. “I didn’t even know where you were! How can we be a team when you’re not here?”

“I’m sorry,” Nico said, fiddling with her coat. “It’s done now, anyway. Won’t happen again.”

Josef clenched his fists. She wasn’t giving him an answer, but he didn’t know if he was ready to press for one. He was fighting battles on all fronts right now, and forcing Nico to tell him the truth would open up another. A close, dangerous fight that he wasn’t sure he could win. Worse, he was still mad, furiously mad, though he couldn’t say exactly what he was mad at. But he couldn’t deal with this now. He needed his wits about him, so he took a deep swordsman’s breath and made himself let it go.

“So long as we’re all on the same front going forward, everything is well enough for now,” he said. “We’ve got other problems. Something happened last night.”

Eli leaned back with an infuriating smile. “Things tend to happen on wedding knights, Josef.”