“I know,” the duke said absently. “I have several of yours. Intercepted in travel and bought for a price higher than I was wise to pay.”
Eli gave him a shocked look. “You bought my mail?”
“Yes,” the duke said. “To learn more about you. To learn how to catch you. As you see, it paid off. Here you are.”
“Here I am,” Eli said. “And are you satisfied?”
“I must admit,” the duke said, looking Eli over, “I didn’t expect you to be quite so like the caricature you present to the world. You seem every bit as cocky and irresponsible as your deriders make you out to be. I had hoped to find the real Monpress a man of greater depth than the boy in the posters.”
“Well, you did just trap and arrest me,” Eli said. “I could hardly be expected to show my true colors under such conditions.”
“Quite so,” the duke said and nodded. “But we shall see what you are made of soon enough.”
Eli swallowed. Something in the way the duke spoke hinted that he wasn’t using the phrase in a figurative sense.
“So,” Eli said, shifting in his chair. “If you didn’t catch me for the sixty thousand, and you didn’t catch me for the conversation, why am I here?”
The duke gave him a thin smile. “Fifty-five thousand, which is what the Council lists as your bounty, is hardly enough money to justify the great expense and enormous trouble of catching you. Especially once we factor in what the Council will take back in taxes, tariffs, and fees. I’d be surprised if there was enough left over to pay Gaol’s Council dues.”
“Then why bother?” Eli said. “Conscripting that army of millers, farmers, and shopkeepers outside must have been an enormous headache, and let’s not forget the spirits.” He glared at the duke. “I don’t know how you got control over so many spirits at once, or what you threatened them with so that they won’t talk to me, but I can guarantee that if the Spiritualists ever find out about your little dictatorship here, they will come down on Gaol like a swarm of locusts. Seems a great risk on your part for a reward you claim not to want.”
“Don’t flatter yourself too much,” the duke said. “The spirits of Gaol have been mine since long before you appeared.”
“So what then?” Eli leaned forward. “Did you just catch me to prove something? Personal challenge? If so, bravo and well done; can I go now?”
The duke chuckled and leaned back in his chair. “Catching the uncatchable thief does bring a certain feeling of accomplishment—pleasant enough, but meaningless in the end. I’m a duke, Mr. Monpress, and as a duke I must think as a country, not as a man.”
He stood up from his seat, pacing back and forth like a professor expounding his theory. “As I said earlier, I’ve followed your exploits for some time now, and over the years, I’ve noticed something of a discrepancy. Let’s take your robbery of Kerket. The crown jewels consisted of eight pieces, including the scepter of Kerket, which contains the Sea Star, the largest sapphire in the world. Technically priceless, though I imagine you would get only around ten thousand standards for it on the open market, and that’s if you could find a buyer willing to take the risk. Still, ten thousand standards, and that’s just one jewel in one piece of the set. Any normal thief would have retired to a life of luxury after that, but you, you show up in Billerouge not a month later to steal seven paintings from the royal collection. Again, technically priceless, but I estimate fifteen thousand for each at least, likely more.
“How strange, then,” the duke said, fanning his fingers as he spoke, “that none of these famous items have ever re-emerged. In fact, nothing you steal ever shows up again. Every time you’re spotted, you’re wearing the same threadbare clothing. You seem to have no lands, or, if you do, you certainly spend no time on them, considering you’re spotted in a different country nearly every month. So far as I can tell, you travel mostly by foot, primarily through wilderness, and of all the hundreds of reports I’ve collected from the Council about your exploits, not a single one has mentioned you ever spending more than twenty standards at a go.” He stopped and looked at Eli. “Do you see where this is headed?”
Eli shrugged, and the duke gave him a slow smile.
“You’ve been on the Council bounty list for what?” He shrugged. “A little more than three years? I estimate that in that time you’ve stolen approximately three hundred and fifty thousand Council standards’ worth of goods, not counting what was stolen from my own treasury.” His grin widened. “To put that in perspective, three hundred and fifty thousand standards is more than the entire yearly tariff income of the Council of Thrones. That is the number that caught my attention, Mr. Monpress, not the fifty-five thousand those idiots in Zarin say you’re worth.”