"I hate to admit it, but she does have a point," Eli said, frowning. He went into the cabin and came out a few moments later, carrying a few sticks and a leather sack. "Just a second," he muttered, laying his materials carefully on the dirt. He kneeled beside them and began to talk in a low, soft voice. Miranda tried to listen, but it was impossible to get close enough to hear what he was saying without making it obvious that that was what she was trying to do. At last, he scooped up the shortest stick and, with a few more words, bent the wood into a circle as easily as one would coil a length of rope.

Miranda watched in amazement as Eli laid the loop of wood and the two remaining straight sticks on top of the leather bag.

"When you're ready," he said.

No sooner did the words leave his mouth than the bag sat up. With a lively wiggle, the leather sack undid its seam and began wrapping itself around the wood, forming a tube around the two longer sticks. When the leather had wrapped itself as far as it could go, it pulled itself tight, and the thread from the seam st.i.tched itself lengthwise up the edge of the long, leather tube. When it was finished, Eli held up a long, but otherwise perfectly normal-looking, spear quiver, the exact size and shape to hide the Heart of War.

Eli thanked the quiver several times before handing it to Josef, who slid his sword into the leather with his own nod of thanks.

"How did you..." Miranda pointed a limp finger at the quiver that had been three sticks and a bag less than a minute ago.

"Easy enough," Eli said. "I've had the bag for a while. He always had higher ambitions than luggage, so he was happy to help. The sticks were greenwood, and they love any chance to move around a bit before they dry brittle." He walked over to Josef and examined his handiwork. "It's too bad we don't have any spears to really complete the effect."

He kept talking, but Miranda's mind was too dumbfounded to make sense of it. She was still processing the enormous list of impossible things she'd just watched him do like it was nothing, like he did this every day. Talking to trees was one thing, but to make something new, just by talking, it was unbelievable. Not even the great shaper wizards could craft spirits without opening their own souls at least a little. This was like the wood and leather had decided to do him a favor, just because he asked. If she'd tried to do something like that without getting one of her servants to act as a middleman, the wood would have ignored her completely. Yet it did what Eli asked joyfully, as if he were the one who needed impressing, and not the other way around. She watched Eli as he talked, his long hands moving in elegant circles, and, not for the first time, Miranda caught herself wondering just what he really was.

"Are you feeling all right?"

Miranda jumped. Eli was looking at her quizzically. "You were staring and not listening."

"It's nothing," Miranda muttered, fighting down her blush at being caught. "Let's just get going."

Eli shrugged and turned to follow Josef as he led the way toward the castle. Nico joined them at the edge of the clearing, fading out of the woods like a ghost. Miranda jumped when she saw the girl, half because of her sudden appearance, and half because she hadn't noticed Nico was missing in the first place. Then she realized that Nico didn't have a disguise.

"Wait, doesn't she need-"

"No," Nico said, without stopping or looking back.

Gin padded back over to her, his eyes on the girl. "Watch yourself," he growled, "and don't forget what she is. Demons can't be trusted."

"Duly noted," Miranda said, and she gave his fur a final ruffle before jogging into the forest after Eli and the others.

Though they were only half a mile from the city, it took over an hour to reach the wall. This was mostly because Josef led them in a crazy zigzag through the brush. They crossed back over their path more than once, and he insisted on keeping to the tall undergrowth and away from the game trails, so that with every other step Miranda had to beat back a branch or untangle her skirt from a nettle bush. To make things worse, Eli stopped every five minutes or so to murmur quietly to this tree or that rock. She made it a point to listen covertly, but so far as she could tell, his little talks were of the most mundane kind, an exchange of pleasantries, maybe a comment about the weather, like a country wife chatting with her neighbors. As he talked, he would do them little favors, flicking an ant away or sc.r.a.ping some moss off the peak of a rock so it could feel the sunlight. That was strange enough, but the truly amazing thing was the way the sleepy spirits perked up as soon as he spoke to them. Miranda could almost feel them leaning forward, eager to tell him anything he wanted to know. Whatever brightness Gin had been talking about, it seemed to have a universal effect.

Miranda expected Josef to complain about the seemingly meaningless stops, but he accepted Eli's little chats with bored inertness, as if he had long since argued every point of the process five times over and couldn't be bothered to care anymore.

At last, they had reached the edge of the forest, where the king's deer park met the city's northern border. The trees ended a good twenty feet from the wall, leaving a broad swath of open ground carpeted with overgrown gra.s.s and saplings. Josef made them crouch in the scrubby bushes at the edge of the clearing as he scouted ahead. While they were waiting for the swordsman to come back, Miranda took the opportunity to satisfy her curiosity and she crept over to where Eli was crouched in the gra.s.s.

"Okay," she whispered, "I give up. Is the weather talk some kind of code?"

"What?" Eli's eyebrows shot up. "No, no, I'm just building good will."

Miranda gave him a confused look. "Good will?"

"It's a harsh world," Eli said. "You never know when you'll need a little good will from the local countryside."

Miranda was skeptical. A mossy rock didn't seem like much of an ally. "So you weren't doing reconnaissance or anything?"

"Sorry, no," Eli said, shaking his head.

Miranda frowned. "But-"

"Quiet."

Miranda and Eli both jumped at the sudden command. Josef was kneeling in the tall gra.s.s not a foot away from them, glaring icily. Miranda hadn't even heard his approach.

"We move now," he said.

"Wha-" Before Miranda could even form her question, Josef took off for the city wall at a dead run, Nico and Eli right on his heels. Miranda took a deep breath and charged after them, covering the s.p.a.ce of open ground between the trees and the city wall faster than she had ever moved in her life. She slammed into the wall and dropped to a crouch just in time. No sooner had she reached the stones than a small troop of guards appeared out of the woods only a few feet from where they'd been hiding just moments before.

Miranda clapped her hands over her mouth as the soldiers fanned out. They patrolled the edge of the forest in a wide sweep, poking their short spears into the underbrush. Finding nothing, the leader waved his hand, and the unit faded back into the woods. Only when the sound of their boots had died to a whisper did Miranda release the breath she'd been holding.

"That was lucky," she said.

"Luck's got nothing to do with it," Josef said in a low voice, peering at her through the gra.s.s. "Those patrols have been sweeping the area all day. If it wasn't for the fact that the forest doesn't want them to find us, all the luck in the world wouldn't have gotten us this far."

Miranda started, and Eli winked at her from his hiding place farther down the wall.

Josef gave Miranda a look of grudging approval. "Nice sprint, by the way."

"Thanks," she muttered. "What now?"

"Now we have to find that panel," Josef said, turning to the wall. "It should be close."

"It's here." Nico's quiet voice made Miranda jump. Nico was crouched on Josef's right, one small white finger sticking out of her voluminous sleeve to point at the iron square, barely larger than a laundry chute, set into the wall beside her.

"What is it?" Miranda asked, leaning in for a better look.

"A bolt hole," Eli said, crawling over to crouch beside Nico, "in case the royalty need to make a fast exit. Very common in cities like this." He gave the iron door an experimental push, but it didn't so much as rattle. He tried again, harder this time, but he might as well have been pushing the wall itself. "Hmm." He frowned. "This one seems to be locked."

Miranda gave him a puzzled look. "Isn't this how you got in last time?"

"Of course not," Eli said, looking insulted. "First rule of thievery, never use the same entrance twice."

Miranda rolled her eyes. "How many 'first rules' of thievery do you have?"

"When one mistake can mean your head on a pike, every rule's a first rule," Eli said cheerfully.

The thief ran his long fingers along the door's edge, which was set flush against the stone. Miranda watched with growing uncertainty. There wasn't even a keyhole, so far as she could see. When he had tapped every inch of the metal, Eli leaned back, brow knit in thought.

"Can't you just talk it open?" Miranda asked, moving a little closer. "Like you did with the prison door?"

"I could," Eli said, "but-" He reached into his coat pocket and drew out a small leather case, monogrammed in gold with an ornate capital M M-"sometimes a simpler solution suffices."

He flipped the case open, revealing a startling selection of lock picks. Carefully selecting the longest and thinnest, he leaned down until his nose brushed the door. He held out his hand, and, without further prompting, Josef handed him a knife. Eli expertly wedged the slender blade into the hair-thin crack between the iron and the stone. Then, using the blade as a lever, he carefully lifted the door out of its niche. It opened just a fraction before sticking again with a soft clang.

"Lever and padlock," Eli muttered, switching out the thin lock pick for a slightly longer one with a crooked head. "Josef, if you would."

Josef took the knife from him and held it where Eli pointed, putting just enough pressure on the lever to keep the opening as large as possible without snapping the blade. Eli took a pair of delicate, extremely-long-nosed pliers out of his case and, using both hands, neatly slipped the pliers and the lock pick through the knife-thin crack.

He gripped with the pliers and began to deftly maneuver the lock pick, wiggling it right, then left, then right again, like he was trying to hook something. At last there was a loud click. Eli released the pliers and a muted crash came through the iron as the padlock hit the ground on the other side. He tucked his tools back into their leather case and opened the door with a flourish. The whole operation had taken less than a minute.

When he caught Miranda gawking, Eli's grin became unbearably smug.

"What were you expecting?" he said, still grinning. "I'm the greatest thief in the-ow!" He yelped as Josef punched him in the arm.

"Enough bragging," the swordsman grunted. "Inside, quick. The patrols move in a circle, you know."

Still rubbing his injured arm, Eli slid feet first into the dark bolt hole. Nico went next, casually wedging herself, bulky coat and all, through the narrow opening.

"You next," Josef said, looking at Miranda.

She swallowed. Suddenly, the bolt hole looked impossibly narrow and abysmally deep. However, she had an image to maintain as a Spiritualist, and that image did not include being afraid of holes, no matter how narrow or deep they might be. She sat down stiffly and began easing herself in, feet first. Just when she'd managed to convince herself it wasn't going to be that bad, she heard the crunch of men moving through the forest. She looked frantically over her shoulder in time to see the first patrolman reach the edge of the forest. She was about to whisper a warning when Josef shoved her, hard. Miranda yelped and lost her balance, sliding the rest of the way down the bolt hole. She landed in a pile on a cold, hard-packed dirt floor. A second later, Josef landed on top of her. The iron door clanged shut above them, and the room plunged into darkness.

CHAPTER 18.

The next few seconds were a confused, painful scramble as Miranda did her best to get out from under Josef. The man was amazingly heavy and, she grunted as she cracked her ribs against his elbow, full of sharp edges. It didn't help that the ground was horribly uneven. Just when she'd finally managed to untangle herself from the swordsman, a soft, yellow glow winked to life. Miranda's relief was almost physically painful as the darkness resolved itself into familiar shapes. They were in a root cellar. Other than the four of them being in it, it was a very normal root cellar, with potatoes, apples, and turnips rolling across the floor where Miranda and Josef's landing had knocked them loose from their bins.

Eli held up a tiny blackout lamp, one shutter cracked just a fraction, the source of the unsteady light. "Nice landing," he said with a grin.

"I would have been fine if someone hadn't pushed me," Miranda hissed, hurling a potato at Josef.

"If I hadn't pushed you, we would have been spotted," Josef said, catching the potato in midair, "and that would have been that."

"Well, now that we're all here and uncaught," Eli said, swinging his lamp toward the squat wooden door half hidden behind a large bin of potatoes, "let's get on with it."

Miranda stood up, slipping a little on the rolling tubers. "Where are we?"

"Under the city, inside the walls," Eli said, popping the crude lock on the wooden door with a wiggle of his lock pick. "I told you, we're in the bolt hole. Most castles would have their own tunnel to safety in case of invasion, but Allaze is so close to the river, a deep tunnel would flood, so it looks like they had to make do with linking a bunch of cellars together."

"Lucky thing for us, in any case," Josef said, walking through the door Eli held open and into the next cellar.

Nico followed close behind him, stepping between the rolling potatoes as if she had no problem seeing in the dark. Miranda tried to mimic her path, but ended up slipping on her second step. She fell with a stifled yipe, catching the demonseed's shoulder at the last minute. The strange, thick material of the girl's coat shifted like a living thing under her fingers, and Miranda jerked her hand away. Despite the Spiritualist's full weight landing on Nico's shoulder, the smaller girl had not so much as stumbled. She turned to meet Miranda's horrified look.

"Go ahead, Spiritualist," she said, her pale face impa.s.sive. "The lamp's more for you than for us."

Had that sentence come from Eli, Miranda would have brushed it off as bl.u.s.ter, but the strange glitter in Nico's eyes left no doubt in her mind that the girl spoke the truth. With a muttered thanks, Miranda slipped by, pressing herself against the grimy wall to make sure she didn't brush the strange, moving coat again, and hurried into the adjacent cellar where Eli was already popping the next door.

After that, Miranda kept as close to Eli as her pride could bear, desperate to stay in the tiny circle of light. The next door led to another cellar, which led to another. Sometimes they would walk through a short tunnel, crossing under a road, Miranda guessed, and then it was on to another door and another person's h.o.a.rd of vegetables. Mostly, the cellars were pitch black, but a few times they would open a door to see light streaming through the floorboards above their heads. When this happened, Eli would close the shutter on his lamp and they would scurry to the next cellar like mice in a larder.

One room, however, was nearly disastrous. After a long series of dusty, empty cellars, Eli had picked up the pace. Then, after finding a door that wasn't locked at all, he opened one right next to cook picking out vegetables for supper. They all froze in the doorway, and Miranda was sure their game was up. However, nothing happened. Minutes pa.s.sed, and the cook just kept sorting through vegetables, singing in an off-key, nasal voice, not a foot away from them. Finally, she finished picking her potatoes and, still singing, tromped up the ladder, her swollen ankles wobbling unsteadily as she swung her armful of tubers in time to her song, and Miranda realized the cook was sodden drunk.

"Thank the Powers for cooking wine," Eli said when the cook closed the door behind her. "Let's go."

After almost half an hour of navigating the endless maze of doors, the cellars took a noticeable turn for the affluent. The floors shifted from hard-packed dirt to laid stone, and there were wine casks and brandy stores as well as the standard potatoes and beets.

"Getting close now," Eli whispered, lowering the shutter on his small lamp until it gave off only a splinter of light.

As they pa.s.sed from cellar to cellar, Miranda began to wonder how they would know the castle door when they saw it. Every cellar they entered now seemed to have two or more locked doors leading off it. It wouldn't surprise her if the n.o.bles had their own network of secret tunnels down here, running from house to house to facilitate liaisons and any other secret activities the rich indulged in. As each cellar led to another just like it, she began to get the panicky feeling that they were lost in the underground maze of pa.s.sages, going around and around in circles forever. Then, Eli opened a triple-locked door, and Miranda realized she needn't have worried.

At the end of the next cellar was a heavy iron door. It was the same size as the other cellar doors, but the stone wall it was set in looked both older and st.u.r.dier than the walls around it. At the door's center, set so deep Miranda could have stuck her finger up to the first knuckle into the grooves, was the seal of House Allaze.

Josef snorted. "I thought this was supposed to be a secret entrance."

"Secret from outsiders, yes," Eli said. "But you don't want some maid or delivery boy coming down here and opening it by mistake."

"No chance of that." Miranda shook her head. "How do we get it open?"

"Leave that to me," Eli announced. He reached into the small leather bag he wore under his valet coat and pulled out two small gla.s.s bottles filled with clear liquid. "Two weak acids," he said, holding the bottles up, "used in metal working to etch patterns. Normally, it would take either of these a month to go through that much metal. However, these particular bottles of acid happen to hate each other."

"Hate each other?" Miranda frowned. "How did that happen?"

Eli swirled the bottles innocently. "I might have played the gossipmonger a bit too well. You see, acid spirits, though volatile and dangerous, aren't very bright. They are, however, very quick-tempered." As he spoke, the liquid began to slosh. Just a little at first, so that Miranda thought it was because of Eli's swirling, but by the time he finished speaking, the acids were practically boiling in their bottles.

"Now," Eli said, shaking the bottles violently, "we just have to get them good and mad, and-" He hurled both bottles at the door, landing them smack on top of each other. The gla.s.s shattered, and the acids fell on each other with a roar, sinking through the iron door like boiling water through fresh snow.

"A good fight does wonders for them!" Eli shouted over the din of the spirits' war.

"That's horrible!" Miranda shouted back. "Using a spirit's feelings like that, it's abusive!"

"Not at all." Eli looked hurt. "I'm treating them like living things, which is a lot more than I can say for the blacksmith I bought them from. Look, it's even waking up the door."

The acids' fight was indeed getting the door's attention. It squealed and ground on its hinges, trying to get away from the brawl that was eating through its core. The din was deafening, and Miranda clapped her hands over her ears. Eli cringed at the worst of it, but otherwise seemed content to watch the show. Josef just stood there, watching the door with bored interest. Nico crouched closer to the hissing metal than Miranda would have dared, staring in fascination as the hole in the door grew wider.

Finally, the acids fought themselves out, leaving a warped, melted hole in the iron just large enough to fit a small fist through. The door whimpered, and Eli rubbed it gently, whispering apologies and promising to have it recast as soon as possible. Whether he meant it or not, the words seemed to put the door at ease, and as it drifted back to sleep, Eli reached his hand through the melted hole and popped the lock on the other side.

"Swordsmen first," Eli said, swinging the door open.

Josef put his hand on his sword hilt and eased his way into the black tunnel.

"All clear," he whispered, and the rest of them hurried through the doorway, mindful of the spots where the last remnants of the acids were still steaming.

The hall on the other side was smaller than the cellar it joined. In fact, it was barely larger than the door itself. They walked single file, with Josef leading the way, absently twirling two knives in his hands. Miranda went next, followed by Eli, with Nico trailing behind as usual. For her part, the Spiritualist kept to the absolute center of the hall, as far as she could get from the cobwebby walls. Here and there, small roots had pushed through the ceiling, and she realized they must be under the palace grounds. Unseen things scuttled in the dark behind them, making Miranda's skin crawl. Apparently, Josef didn't like the scuttles either because he stopped suddenly, causing Miranda to nearly run into him.

"What now?" she whispered, regaining her balance.

Josef threw up his hand to silence her. She glowered at the command, but said nothing. Behind them, something skittered again, and Josef turned on his heel. Miranda didn't see the knife leave his hand, but she heard it hit. A squeal erupted behind them, and the skittering stopped. Eli whirled around, holding his lamp high. The light fell across their dusty footprints and, right at the edge of the glow, was a squirming, dying rat with Josef's knife sticking out of its side.

"Getting paranoid?" Eli muttered, lowering the lamp. "It's not like you to kill the wildlife."

"It's not paranoia." Josef walked over to reclaim his knife. "Have you ever seen a rat act like that?"

"What are you talking about?" Miranda said.