The Legend Of Eli Monpress (94 page)

The figure made a small, beautiful gesture, and she understood. The black creatures were markers for something greater, their slow, crawling movements reflections of a larger scale.

My seeds
, the figure’s voice hummed in her bones, masculine and resonant with a dark beauty that filled her with a terrible longing for home.
Every single one of them, all across the world.

Nico swallowed.

Just ask
. The cold hand reached up to stroke her cheek.
Ask and all shall be given to you, my dearest daughter, seed of my own heart
.

She clutched the long, cold fingers, tears flowing down her cheeks. “Yes, Master.”

“Nico!”

Her eyes shot open. She was sitting on the grassy slope by Eli’s town. Josef was leaning over her, his concerned face inches from her own. This close, she could see the pale scars running below his stubble. Nico flinched away, squeezing her eyes shut before he could see the tears in them.

“Are you all right?” He ran his hands over her limbs. “You fell down. What happened?”

“Nothing,” she said, ashamed at the dreamy lilt in her voice. The haze of the memory still clung to her mind,
fogging her thoughts with overwhelming loss for the safety she’d felt standing beside the figure. Her body grew heavy as the memory of power faded, leaving her small and helpless as a blind grub on the grass. She wasn’t even sure if what she’d just seen was her own memory or a sent one, but the wetness on her face was real, and she wondered, not for the first time, if she was losing her mind.

You can’t lose what isn’t yours
, the voice whispered.
Every bit of you belongs to me, willingly given. Why do you hold back now?

“Leave me alone,” Nico whispered.

“What?” Josef leaned closer. “Did you say something?”

Tell him
, the voice said.
Just speak the truth. Tell him you can ask me to find Sted at any time, and through him, Slorn. Make them happy, or lie here and be a burden. Your choice, dearest.

Nico sat up, her coat twitching over her hands as she scrubbed her face. “I’m sorry,” she whispered. “I’m just tired.”

“Understandably,” Josef said, helping her up. “Let’s get to bed before Eli decides he needs to leave tonight.”

Nico nodded and started down the hill again, this time with Josef walking beside her, watching. His face was blank, but she knew him well enough to know he was worried. Well, she decided as she straightened up, he didn’t need to be. She wouldn’t lose, and she wouldn’t let them down. She’d find a way to be useful without the demon. She’d do everything she could to make sure Eli’s plan worked. She didn’t know what that was, but she’d do it. She didn’t need the voice.

But even as the thought spun through her head, she
could feel the weakness coming back, the feeling of being lessened, of being lost, and with it, the echoing memory of the power she’d had in the memory. The power and security she could have again, if she would only ask. That feeling was the only answer the voice made, but it was an answer for which she had no retort. Tiny and beaten, she followed Josef into the house and shut the door on the night.

T
he mist was still thick on the plains when three figures slipped out of the deputy’s house and into the sleeping town of Home. There was no one in the square to see them creep out through the window, or to see the large bag of foodstuffs they helped themselves to from the baker’s larder. Once they had shoved as much as they could carry into a flour sack, also pilfered, they vanished into the ghostly fog, slipping silently into the hills without a sound.

Across the grassy square, a young man slid down from his window and stretched the hours of waiting out of his joints. Finally, the thief had made his move. Shaking with excitement, he crept across his bedroom to the ostentatious writing desk his father had made for him out of a pair of matched thrones the mayor had brought in last year. He reached behind the desk’s left leg and felt around until his trembling fingers found the bit of extravagant carving he was looking for. Grinning, he pressed down, hard. There
was a little
clack
of a latch, and a small, wooden compartment popped out by the desk’s foot, just above what had been the larger throne’s clawed armrest. His hands went greedily for the tiny compartment. He’d discovered it by accident a few months ago, and even his father didn’t know about it. He’d always wondered what a king would store in that secret place. Poison maybe, or state secrets. Whatever it had been, surely not even the secret stash of a king had ever held a treasure like this.

He raised his hand, bringing up a marble-sized sky-blue globe of crystal bound by silver wires to a silver chain. Gentle as a new father, he rolled the globe in a circle around his palm as he had been told. As it moved, the blue globe began to change color, shifting from clear, calm sky to the deeper, turbulent blue of the north sea. As the color shifted, something inside the globe began to move as well, showing the sphere was ready. After looking over his shoulder one last time, the young man crouched and cupped the globe to his mouth. Then, as softly as he could, he whispered, “Sara.”

The response was immediate. The globe flashed between his fingers, and a woman’s voice, cross, clipped, and vaguely scratchy, answered. “Has he moved?”

“Yes,” the boy whispered. “All three of them left at dawn. They took a bunch of food with them.”

“A long trip then.” The woman’s voice paused, and he heard her let out a long breath. “What about the stranger girl?”

“The mayor met with her.” The young man was whispering quickly now, for the dawn was beginning to slip through his window, a sure sign that his mother would come looking for him soon. “Turns out he did know her.
She’s staying at the deputy’s house now. Only name I could get for her was Pele.”

“Pele?” The woman’s voice was sharp as razors. “You’re
sure
it was Pele?”

“Yes,” the boy said, grinning. When she cut in like that, it meant she was pleased. “Pele, tall girl, very upset. She had this crazy knife on her, never seen one like it before.”

There was a pause from the other end, and then, “All right, good work.” He heard the scratching of a pen. “Thank you. Keep me posted if the mayor reappears or the girl tries to leave.”

“And my reward?” the boy said quickly.

The woman made an irritated sound. “Your reward is the same as ever. Three years of service, and then I will bring you to Zarin. All you have to do is keep reporting and not blow your cover and it’s a done deal. That is, unless you keep bothering me about it.”

“Yes, Sara,” the boy whispered, his voice shaking. “I’m sorry.”

“Just keep me informed,” she said. “And don’t do anything stupid. Remember, idiocy is its own cure in time.”

“Yes, Sara,” he said again, but the globe in his palm was already fading back to light blue, a sure sign that she was already gone.

He sneered at the globe. The woman might be his only chance at getting out of this nowhere backwater, but Powers, was she high-handed. One day, when he was in Zarin living like a lord with followers and women and a big city house, he’d make her swallow that sharp tongue.

A clatter from downstairs disrupted that happy line of thought, and the boy lunged toward the desk, dumping the orb on the chain back into the secret compartment just as
his mother’s footsteps sounded on the stairs. He dove for his bed, still made up from the night before, and jumped between the sheets right as his mother banged on the door, yelling for him to get up and come do his chores before breakfast. He made a noncommittal sound and waited under the covers as she climbed back down. Only when her footsteps vanished did he let out his breath.

In the town of Home, betraying the mayor was an unthinkable crime. Sometimes even he couldn’t believe what he was doing, but he had to do it. It was his only way out of this tiny, isolated, prison of a town. Keeping that thought front and center in his mind, the young man threw open his door and clattered down the stairs. Under his window, hidden in the dark of the secret compartment of a wronged king, the orb lay quiet and still, listening.

“You have a spy in Monpress’s town?” Alric, Deputy Commander of the League of Storms, smiled thinly as the blue orb in the woman’s hands faded from stormy sea to calm blue. “Why am I not surprised, Sara?”

The woman sitting at the cluttered desk beside him leaned back in her leather chair and took a draw from her long-handled pipe. “Because you are a man incapable of surprise, Alric,” she said, blowing a line of smoke in his direction. “Though you seem to delight in surprising others. Now, did you stop by just to eavesdrop on my private correspondence, or do you have a matter you actually came to discuss? If so, you’d better get on with it. I’m very busy right now.”

With any other member of the Council of Thrones, Alric would have called that a bluff, but with Sara it was the absolute truth. Despite the Council’s supposed
indifference to magic, the office of its chief official on the subject was a hive of activity at all hours of the day. Actually, he didn’t know when Sara slept. He’d never seen her leave her labyrinthine compound deep below the Council keep. Even so, he took his time answering. Busy she might be, but her implied threat was an empty one. She would never kick him out before learning why he’d come. No reason he couldn’t use that edge to get a few answers of his own.

“Even the League isn’t exactly sure where Monpress goes to lick his wounds,” Alric said, taking a seat on the worn couch beside her desk. “Yet here you are, not only with knowledge of the village’s location but with a spy already set up inside. Very impressive; how did you do it?”

“Quite simple,” Sara said, putting her booted feet up on the desk in front of her and obviously trying not to look like she was bragging. “When Eli’s stolen goods failed to show up for resale, we knew he was hoarding them somewhere. With his flair for the dramatic, I was sure he wasn’t stuffing his treasures under some rock. That left stashing the property, probably in a town. So I put out a general search with the Council tax bureau for any unexpected prosperity, and sure enough I found an interesting report of a little town in the middle of nowhere that, mysteriously, despite losing its place on the central trade route thanks to the Council’s completion of the Great Road, has continued to pay its annual taxes every year, even while all the towns around it were defaulting.”

“You found him through tax fraud?” Alric was impressed despite himself.

“Just the opposite,” Sara said. “Eli’s a clever boy, far
cleverer than those idiots at the bounty office give him credit for. He knew there’s no faster way to get the Council’s attention than to skip on your taxes. Unfortunately, in his anxiety to slip under the audits, he neglected to take into account that the only thing more suspicious than defaulting on your taxes is to be the one town in a failing area that doesn’t.” She paused, giving Alric a smoke-wreathed glare. “But you didn’t appear in my office unannounced to talk about Eli. Why are you here, Alric?”

Alric leaned forward. “You are a great friend of Heinricht Slorn, are you not?”

Sara’s mouth twitched. “Heinricht is a colleague of mine. There’s no greater mind for Spirit Theory on the continent. We often work on problems together. But I don’t know why you’re coming to me. He’s
your
pet Shaper.”

“He is indeed very important to our interests,” Alric said benignly, refusing to rise to the bait. “However, a short while ago, he vanished. I had hoped that, as his friend, you would have some clue to his whereabouts. We’re very concerned, you see.”

“Yes, I’m sure you are,” Sara said, smiling as she cast a pointed look at the golden sword at Alric’s hip. “Swordsmith slipped the leash, did he?”

“Call it what you like,” Alric said, casually adjusting his coat to cover his sword’s hilt. “I’m only asking if he’s contacted you. Slorn is a proud man, but he’s in a desperate situation. Desperate enough that I wouldn’t be surprised if he’s tried to reach you through his own relay point.” His eyes flicked to the blue orb on its silver chain, still lying on Sara’s desk where she’d put it down. “The information and resources at your disposal are quite considerable, and Slorn’s not a man to pass up opportunities.”

“What makes you think I gave Slorn a relay link?” Sara said, quietly picking up the blue orb and dropping it into the strongbox on her desk, where it landed on top of a dozen other orbs just like it. “Each link is a monument of wizardry, the product of months of work by myself and my team.” She snapped the strongbox lid shut. “They are for Council use only.”

“Really?” Alric said. “How interesting, then, that you planted something so valuable in the hands of a boy spy just to keep an eye on Monpress.”

“Not at all,” Sara said. “Eli is of great interest to the Council.”

“Really?” Alric’s smile sharpened. “If that’s the case, then it’s even more interesting that you don’t share your information, or the town’s location, with the Council Bounty Office.”

“If you’re here to talk Council politics, Alric, I suggest you move on,” Sara said crossly. “I have quite enough of it without your nosing about. Now, the answer to your question is no. I have received no communication from Slorn for weeks. Is there anything else I can do for the League?”

“Just let us know if anything comes up,” Alric said, pushing himself off the couch. “The League’s interests rarely overlap with those of the Council, but we’ve worked together enough for you to know that our word is good. You can believe me when I say that we will not forget your cooperation in this matter.”