“His smell is everywhere.” Gin’s nostrils flared. “He was probably scouting the palace for days before he let himself get caught. The smells are all knotted together, though, so I can’t tell where he made his final exit.”
“So much for doing things the easy way,” Miranda said and sighed, running her hand through her curly hair. “All right, we’ll do this by the book. I’ll start with the throne room and work my way down. You check the grounds and try not to scare anyone too badly.”
“Shouldn’t you get some rest?” Gin said, eyeing the sinking sun. “I can take two days of hard travel, but we don’t want you flopping over like last time.”
“That was an isolated incident.” Miranda said, bristling. “No breaks. We’re finally in the same country as that thief, possibly the same city. I’m not going to risk letting him slip away again, not when we’re this close.”
“You’re the boss,” Gin said, trotting across the courtyard. “Don’t get carried away.”
“That’s my line,” Miranda called after him, but the enormous hound was already slinking away behind the stables, sniffing the ground. Miranda shook her head and fanned out her fingers, nudging her rings awake.
“Time to get to work,” she muttered, smiling as the stones began to glow. With a final look at the setting sun, she turned and tromped up the castle stairs. With any luck, she’d have Eli by the time it rose again.
CHAPTER 3
Down below the stable yard, quivering away from the ghosthound’s fearsome scent, a rat darted through a narrow crack in the castle’s foundation and made a break for the wall. It bounded through the ornamental gardens as if all the cats in Mellinor were on its tail, though nothing followed it in the dim evening light. What terrified the rat was not behind it, but inside it, pressed like a knife against its brain. It hit the castle battlements at full speed and began to climb the rough white stone, running vertically as easily as it had run along the ground. The knot of guards at the castle gate didn’t notice as the rat crested the wall behind them and, without so much as pausing for balance, launched itself into the air. For a terrifying moment, the rat scrambled in free fall, then, with a clang that made the guards jump, landed on a drainpipe. The rat clung to the pipe, stunned for a moment, and then the pressure was back, the inescapable voice pressing down on its poor, fright-addled mind, and it had to go on. The rat scurried down the drainpipe to the cobbled street. Keeping to the gutters and dark places people forget to sweep, it made its way through the tangled streets of Allaze, following the sewer ditches away from the castle, down and west toward the river, into the darker parts of the city.
Scooting between the tilting wooden buildings, the rat threaded its way through the blind turns and back alleys to a ramshackle three-story nestled at the end of a row of identical ramshackle three-stories. Without missing a beat, the rat jumped on a gutter pipe and, quick as it had climbed the castle wall, scaled the pipefitting to the building’s third floor. The window had been left open for it, and the rat tumbled inside, squeaking in relief that the horrible journey was almost over. It landed on the floor with a scrambling thud, but the momentary triumph was pushed from its mind by a wave of pressure that thickened the air to syrup. The attic room it had landed in was scarcely bigger than a closet, and the slanted ceiling made it smaller still. Broken furniture and discarded rags were stacked in dusty piles, but the rat’s attention was on the figure sitting in the far corner, the source of the pressure.
The man sat slumped against the wall, rolling a black ball in a circle on his left palm. It was the size of a large marble, black and shiny like a wet river stone. He was thin and long, with matted blond hair that hung around his face in a dirty curtain. For a moment, the man didn’t move, and then, slowly, lovingly, he slid the black sphere into his pocket and beckoned the rat closer. The pressure spiked, and the rat obeyed, crawling on its belly until it was an inch from the man’s bare foot.
“Now,” the man said, his whisper humming through the room, resonating against the pressure that threatened to crush the rat’s mind. “Tell me what you saw.”
The rat had no choice. It told him everything.
Crouched on the floor in the hall with his eye pressed against a crack in the baseboard, the boy had to cover his mouth to keep from shouting. The blond man who rented the spare room had always made him nervous, which was why the boy took it upon himself to spy on him. He’d told his father over and over that their renter wasn’t right in the head. He’d seen him talking to the walls, the floor, even the junk in the room as though they could answer back. Every time, his father had told him to lay off and leave the renter be. The blond man had come with the house when they’d moved in last year, and his money kept the family in shoes and off the street when times were hard. But this time was different. This time, the boy had actually seen the blond man open the window for a rat. His father was a butcher who kept his shop on the first floor. Once he told him the renter was letting vermin into the house, his father would have to throw the crazy man out, money or no. Grinning fit to break his face, the boy got to his feet and started to tiptoe toward the stairs. Before he took two steps, a strange sound stopped him. It was coming from the rented room, and it took the boy a moment to realize that the renter was laughing.
The door to the renter’s room burst open, and the blond man was on him before he could run. Still laughing, the man grabbed the boy by his patched collar and dragged him up with surprising force.
“Young man,” he said in a smooth voice, and something cold and heavy slid into the boy’s shaking hand. “Take this. Find whatever passes for a tailor in this pit and bring him here. If you’re quick, I’ll give you another.”
He dropped the boy as suddenly as he’d grabbed him. The boy landed on his feet and immediately looked at the object in his hand. It was a gold standard. His eyes went as wide as eggs, and, for a moment, he forgot that he disliked the strange blond man. “Yes, sir!”
“Tell your mother to bring some hot water up as well,” the renter called as the boy tumbled down the stairs.
The child began to bellow for his mother, and the blond man stepped back into his rented room. The rat lay twitching in the corner where he had left it, and he kicked it aside with his foot. Such weak spirits were only useful once. He’d need something else. He turned his attention to the dusty wall beside him and grinned as the timbers creaked in fear.
“Find me another spy.”
A fine cloud of grit fell from the ceiling as the wall shuddered its response. “Yes, Master Renaud.” The room began to buzz as the order spread through the building, asking for a new rat.
Renaud slumped against the dusty piles of junk and stared out the open window at the last glow of the setting sun as it lit up the tall towers of castle Allaze, just as white and beautiful as he remembered from his childhood. Now, finally, after eight years of shame and banishment, eight years of watching for a chance, any chance, fate, it seemed, had paid out in spades.
He began to chuckle, and it was all thanks to a simple wizard thief.
His chuckle became a full-fledged cackle, and Renaud doubled over, his shoulders shaking. He laughed like that until the butcher wife’s timid knock interrupted him.
There was much coming and going at the butcher’s house that night, enough to attract the neighborhood’s attention. Contrary to his usual nature, the butcher wasn’t talking, and that just made the whole thing more interesting. Down the road in the raucous Merrymont Tavern, men with missing teeth made wagers about what was going on. Some put money on a murder; others said it had to do with the ruckus up at the castle. One man was blaming wizards, though he was a bit unclear about what exactly he was blaming them for. This led to more betting and speculation and, in their excitement, no one noticed the swordsman sitting at the corner table quietly nursing the same drink he’d been on for hours.