The Legend Of Eli Monpress (71 page)

“Thought so,” Miranda said, coughing. “It’s graysalt. The servants used to put it down as a rat poison when I was a child.”

“And you licked it anyway?” Mellinor said, horrified.

“Well, it’s not lethal to humans,” Miranda said, scraping her numb tongue with her teeth. “As a dust it’s harmless, but get it wet and it becomes a paralytic. So the rats would run through and then get it wet when they tried to groom the dust off, and bam, dead rat.”

“Good thing you’re not a rat then,” Mellinor grumbled.

“No,” Miranda said, “but I’m trapped like one just the same. Look”—she pointed at the piles of gray dust on the floor—“there must be pounds of it down here. Sure, it’s nontoxic now, when it’s dry, but if we were to get it wet there’s more than enough here to paralyze me from head to toe, maybe for good.”

She peered up at the locked grate, high overhead. Even if she could reach it, she didn’t think she could break the lock without Durn or one of her other spirits. Mellinor could, maybe, if he got enough pressure, but in her experience, lots of pressure meant lots of water, which was precisely what they couldn’t have.

“Well,” Miranda grumbled, “nice and trapped. I must admit I never expected something thisingenious, or cheap, out of Hern. Twenty pounds of graysalt probably cost less than one of those bottles of wine he had with dinner.”

Mellinor shifted inside her. “Actually, I don’t think we’re in Hern’s tower.”

Miranda frowned, and the spirit explained. “Generally speaking, spirits who spend a lot of time around Spiritualists are pretty active, but it’s quiet as the dead down here.”

“That’s no different from anything else in Gaol,” Miranda said. “Hern’s got a stranglehold on this place.”

“You keep saying that,” Mellinor murmured. “But something’s been bothering me. You said before that Hern was always in Zarin, right?”

“Right,” Miranda answered.

“Well,” the water rippled in her head, “whatever’s controlling the spirits in Gaol, it’s acting like a Great Spirit. That kind of control doesn’t work if the controlling power’s not constantly in contact with the land, like a Great Spirit is. A land without a Great Spirit becomes sleepy and stupid, more so than usual. Just look at my old basin. But this land is disciplined, and easily woken. That’s not something you see when the commanding power is always somewhere else.”

Miranda bit her lip. Mellinor made a good point, and he would be the expert on this sort of thing. “But,” she said, “if it wasn’t Hern, then who? Who’s running Gaol?”

“The duke, of course,” said a cheery voice above her.

Miranda looked up in alarm, biting back a curse as she whacked her head again. She knew that voice, she realized, rubbing her poor, abused skull, but she certainly hadn’t expected to hear it here.

“Monpress?”

“Who else?” Eli’s laughing voice was muted, like he was behind something large and heavy.

“What are you doing in here?”

“I was caught.” She could almost hear his shrug. “It happens from time to time. The trouble, as always, is keeping me caught. I was just exhausting my options when I heard your voice. Now, I think I can safely assume, unless your little oration about the powdered poison was a cruel and elaborate ploy, that you are also an unwilling guest of our illustrious host, Duke Edward?”

“Duke Edward?” Miranda stood up. “The Duke of Gaol?”

“No, the Duke of Farley,” Eli said, sighing. “Yes, the Duke of Gaol. As I said, he’s the one running everything. Whose castle do you think we’re in?”

“Nonsense,” Miranda said. “The duke isn’t even a wizard.”

“Who told you that?” Eli scoffed. “Just because a man doesn’t wear rings or have WIZARD written across his forehead doesn’t mean he isn’t one.”

Miranda shut her mouth. Now that she thought about it, everything she knew about the Duke of Gaol came from Hern’s annual reports. This situation was getting stranger by the minute.

“So,” she said slowly, “the Duke of Gaol is a wizard, and he’s the one controlling the spirits, not Hern?”

“I don’t know who Hern is,” Eli said, “but that’s correct. Now that you know, however, I can’t imagine it makes you any happier to be locked up, so how about we work together and get out of here? It’ll be just like Mellinor, only with less enslavement and near-drowning.”

“
Me
,” Miranda cried, “help
you
? Do you have any idea how much trouble helping you has caused me?”

“Not in the slightest,” Eli said. “But think on this: I wouldn’t be sitting here talking if I had a way out, would I? I’m proper trapped, same as you. Now, the duke will be back in less than half an hour to take me away, and after that, I don’t think I’ll be coming back. Are you really going to let a wizard who runs his spirits through a system of fear and intimidation be the one to catch me?”

Miranda scowled. The thief had a point. She’d put Monpress to the side while she focused on getting dirt on Hern, and it had landed her in here. If circumstance had delivered the thief, and possibly her freedom, right into her hands, who was she to argue? Plus, she now knew who was behind the strange happenings in Gaol. If the duke had indeed set himself up as the tyrant Great Spirit of Gaol that would certainly fit the West Wind’s concern. If she played things carefully, she could very well walk out of Gaol with everything she’d come here to get, and that was worth taking a risk. After all, she thought and glared at the grimy filth on her skin, what did she have to lose?

“All right,” she called back up. “What do you want me to do?”

“Catch!” Eli shouted, and she heard the jingle of something metal flying through the air before a set of keys landed with a jangle on the grate to her cell. They tottered there a moment, and then fell. She caught them in her outstretched hand.

“I don’t believe it,” she said. “How did you get keys? And how did you know what cell I was in?”

“You
are
the only source of light in the room. It’s kind of hard to miss,” Eli said. “As for the first part, who do you think you’re dealing with? I’m Eli Monpress, the—”

“Greatest thief in the world. Yes, I know,” Miranda sighed, looking up at the lock high, high overhead. “How am I supposed to use these?”

“I can’t do everything for you,” Eli said. “Figure it out, and do it fast. The duke could come in at any moment.”

“Right,” Miranda grumbled. “No pressure.” She looked around at the walls for anything she could use as a grip to climb, but they were smooth, almost glossy, and she couldn’t find so much as a hairline fracture. Jumping was out of the question. Even standing on tiptoe on the wooden bucket, stretching with all her might, she couldn’t reach the halfway mark. She put her fists on her hips, scanning the cell. There had to be a way.

Her roving eyes stopped on the bucket under her feet. It was wide and low like a wash bucket, which was probably what it had been before being repurposed. It was made of cheap, light wood, but the joints were tight and waxed to hold water. Suddenly, she began to smile.

“Mellinor,” she said, “could you flood this cell?”

“Theoretically,” the water answered. “It’s dry, but I could probably get enough water out of the air to do it, but I thought we weren’t going to risk the powder.”

“We’re not.” Miranda grinned and clunked her heel against the bucket.

She felt the water’s attention flit down to the floor, and then Mellinor heaved a sigh like a tide. “Miranda, be reasonable. I don’t think that thing is buoyant enough to float, let alone support you. Even if it did, I’d be turning the cell into a pool of toxic sludge. One slip and you’d be paralyzed forever.”

“That’s just a risk we’ll have to take,” Miranda said. She patted her chest where the water’s glow was the brightest and gave her spirit a confident smile. “If any water can float this bucket safely to the top, it’s you.”

“Flattery might work on the dog, but it gets you nowhere with me,” the water grumbled. “I’ll try, but only if you understand that once we start, we can’t stop. I can’t just send the water away again if it has nowhere to drain.”

Miranda flipped the keys over in her hand. “All you have to do is get me to the grate. I’ll take it from there.”

“All right,” Mellinor said. “Brace yourself.”

Miranda stepped into the bucket. “Ready,” she said.

“The undersides of your wrists are clean, so I’ll use those.” Mellinor’s voice was moving through her, collecting at her hands. “Roll up your sleeve and hold out your arm.”

Miranda did as he asked, holding her hands out in front of her. What happened next was painless, but almost too intense to watch. The water spirit poured from the clean skin of her lower arms, flowing out of her pores like milk squeezed through cheesecloth. It hit the ground with a great splash, sending a splatter of the poison dust onto her skirt. Miranda closed her eyes and thanked whatever luck there was that she’d chosen the dress with thick, long skirts. Under her feet, the bucket groaned as water flowed around it, yet it did not start to float. Mellinor was completely out of her now, and she pulled her arms back, carefully holding them away from the parts of her dress that were still dry and dusty. The water kept rising as Mellinor pulled moisture from the air, the tiny specks of water too small to have consciousness, and into his body. When the water was less than a finger’s width from the lip of the bucket, the wooden slats beneath her feet finally began to wobble. The bucket left the ground with a pitch that made Miranda scramble. After that, she braced herself against the stone with both arms, using the straight walls as a guide as Mellinor gently floated her bucket up.

Even with Mellinor’s glow, the foaming water was filthy and foul smelling. Balancing became more and more difficult the higher they went, as the bucket began to bob on the swirling current. Miranda flailed her arms, keeping upright by pushing herself off the walls, first one way, then another, as the waves took her. Just when she’d finally gotten the rhythm of it, the game changed. She felt wetness in her boots. When she looked down between sways, she noticed about an inch of water on the low end of her makeshift boat.

Miranda gasped and jerked away, causing the bucket to pitch, and she almost fell in completely. She caught herself at the last moment, bracing against the wall as the water kept rising. Now that the water had found a way in, more and more of it was pushing up through the bucket’s cracks. Miranda bit her lip. Another moment and it would be up to her ankles. It was time to take a risk.

The grate was right above her, though still a foot out of reach. Before she could psych herself out, Miranda jumped. She jumped straight up, toppling the sinking bucket with her momentum. For a moment, her reaching hands caught nothing. Then her fingers slammed into the iron bars of the grate and she held tight.

“Mellinor!” she cried, grabbing the bars with her other hand as well and pulling her legs up. “Stop the water!”

The water stopped instantly, and for a moment Miranda hung there, gasping for breath as she clung to the bars. Only a moment, though, and then she was on the move again, pulling herself along the grate until she was right beside the iron padlock. It took several tries to find the right key, and then a great deal of pushing once she found it, for the lock was trying its best not to give in. But, in the end, purpose overwhelmed even spirit determination, and the lock snapped open. Unfortunately, in her hurry to get out, Miranda had neglected to determine which direction the grate opened. As it happened, it opened inward, something she found out very quickly when the grate swung down, taking her with it.

She yelped as the grate swung wildly, slamming her against the wall and knocking her breath out. But the hinges hadn’t been oiled in a while, and the grate, after its initial bout of movement, creaked to a halt, leaving her startled, upside down, and dangling mere inches above the foul water.

“Miranda,” Eli whispered frantically. “Are you all right?”

“More or less,” Miranda groaned, pulling herself around the grate. She climbed up the lattice of iron bars and then, with a final heave, onto the stone floor of the prison itself. The moment she hit flat rock, she flopped over, gasping, and didn’t move for at least a minute.

“Well,” Eli said, his voice floating through the dark, “at least it’s never dull, being with me.”

“Shut up,” Miranda gasped, pushing herself upright. Mellinor’s light was dimmer, thanks to the gallons of filthy water he had commandeered, but it was still enough to see by. As she’d expected, she was in a prison, though a strange one. It was all one long room with a wide variety of equipment, from a selection of manacles to things she didn’t recognize and didn’t want to, bolted to the walls. There were not, however, any cells she could see.

“Where are you?”

“Turn left,” Eli said. “Your left. I’m the door at the far back.”

Miranda turned as he said and found herself facing what she’d thought was an iron wall. Looking closer, however, she picked out a small rectangle cut at eye level and, peering out through the gap, a pair of familiar blue eyes glittered in the dim light.

“Hello,” Eli said. “Mind letting me out?”

Miranda stumbled over to the door. It didn’t seem to have a lock or hinges or a handle or anything normally associated with doors.

“I see why you had to give me the keys,” she said, running her finger along the smooth door crack. “I suppose the door isn’t in a talking mood?”