The Spirit Rebellion(81)

He stepped in close to the stone and ran his fingers across it, very gently. It felt hard, like stone, but different—soapy and almost hollow when he tapped it. A slim grin crossed Eli’s face. He raised his foot and, taking aim, gave the wall a good, hard kick. A clean, sharp crack appeared down the middle of the block of wall, and the stone crumbled to dust, revealing a dark tunnel just the right size for a man to crawl through.

“What was that?” Josef said.

Eli waved him away, focusing instead on what was waiting inside the tunnel. A few feet in, leaned carefully against the tunnel’s wall, was another square of wall identical to the one he’d just broken, and stuck to it was a small, white card. Eli reached in and snatched the card between his fingers. There was no printing on it, no identification, just a sentence written in neat, masculine cursive.

Thought you would need this.

Eli cursed under his breath and shoved the card in his pocket. “All right,” he said. “Let’s move.”

“What was that?” Josef said again. “Is this a trap? Is it safe?”

Eli gave him an incredulous look. “Anything’s safer than this! Get in the tunnel! And watch that square. One whack at the wrong place will cause it to crumble.”

Without further hesitation, Josef crawled in, pressing himself against the wall to squeeze by the square of fake wall. Nico followed right behind him, buried deep in her coat. When they were through, Eli paused for a moment and dug around in his pockets, pulling out a large, white card printed with an elaborate, cursive M.

“First rule of thievery,” he muttered to himself. “Never waste an opportunity.”

With that, he tossed the card toward the center of the room. It swooped through the air and landed at the foot of the fake Lion of Ser. Eli nodded and ducked into the tunnel. Crawling on his hands and knees, he turned and, very, very delicately, lifted the square of fake wall. Behind them, the dusty remains of the old fake stones were already indistinguishable among the grit and rubble showering down from the ceiling. Satisfied that they wouldn’t be followed, at least not immediately, Eli gently plugged the entrance. The square of fake wall fit perfectly, as he’d known it would, and the tunnel plunged into darkness. Their path secured, Eli turned and made his way down the tunnel after Josef and Nico.


The tunnel ended unceremoniously twenty feet later in the ceiling of a wine cellar. Josef and Nico were already waiting when Eli jumped down, and Josef reached up to press the loose boards on the ceiling back into place behind him, leaving no sign that they’d ever moved.

Eli stood doubled over for a moment, catching his breath. When he’d coughed up enough dust to start a mortar company, he straightened and took off his gaudy red coat, which was now a dull, pinkish gray.

“Come on,” he said, shoving the balled-up coat behind an ancient wine barrel. “Let’s go.”

“We’re getting out, then?” Josef said, slapping the dust out of his shirt.

“Nope,” Eli said. “We’re going to get our Fenzetti.”

Josef gawked at him. “Are you mad? The duke knows you’re here. The jig is up. Only thing for us to do now is get out with our skins. Anyway, you don’t even know where the other thief is. How are you going to find him when there’s a whole duchy out there looking for you?”

“I know how to find him,” Eli said, taking off his wig and carefully placing the dusty blond mess into his pocket for cleaning later. “He certainly hasn’t left Gaol.”

“Why wouldn’t he?” Josef said. “You said he was smart. Leaving seems like the smart thing to do.”

“Ah,” Eli said, smiling. “But you’re forgetting the first rule of thievery.”

“Which one?” Josef sighed. “You have a hundred at least.”

“This one is very important,” Eli said, stepping up to the cellar door and putting his ear against the coarse wood. “The last place a man looks is under his own feet.” He paused for a moment, holding his breath, and then opened the door with a flourish. “After you.”

Josef stomped out, followed by Nico. But as she passed, Eli caught the edge of her sleeve. She looked over her shoulder, her eyes still suspiciously bright.

Eli tightened his grip. “I’m sorry if I was rough earlier, but I meant what I said. I know you did it to save us, but you really can’t go around doing that to spirits. There’s a lot I don’t know about how you work, Nico, and I’m sorry I haven’t helped you like I should, but there’s a big difference between giving a spirit a little scare and giving it an order.”