“Are you done gossiping with the scenery?” Josef said, holding his knife out in front of him to check the edge.
Eli rubbed his hands together. “For your information, I’ve just created a foolproof escape.”
“From what?” Josef said sullenly. “There’s nothing here. Are you sure your bird even made it?”
“Of course,” Eli said, leaning on the rock face next to him. “The falcon told me he dropped it straight into a guard’s dinner. They’re just late. I’m sure the ransom will be showing up any moment now. In the meanwhile,” he reached into his jacket pocket, “who’s for a nice, friendly game of—”
“No.” Josef’s dagger landed with a thunk in the dirt less than an inch from Eli’s boot. Eli glanced at the dagger, still quivering from the impact, and then back at the swordsman.
“You’re oversharpening those.”
Josef bent down to retrieve his knife. “I don’t tell you how to wizard, so don’t tell me how to fight.”
Eli’s eyebrows shot up. “I don’t think you can use ‘wizard’ as a verb like that.”
“And I don’t see how your little tea party with a rock is going to cover our escape,” Josef said, slamming the dagger back into his boot. “I guess we’ll just have to trust each other.”
Eli took a deep breath, preparing to point out all the ways that grammar and wizardry were different, but a look at Josef’s expression told him it could be a bloody argument, mostly his blood, and he decided to leave it at that. Thankfully, that was the moment the riders appeared at the opposite edge of the clearing.
“Nico,” Josef said, tightening the iron sword on his back as he and Eli took the forward positions. “Make sure his highness doesn’t get any ideas.”
Nico nodded and yanked the rope, knocking the king to his knees.
As Eli had the king specify in his instructions, there were only five riders. Three of them rode in a point formation while the other two hung back, riding as a pair, with an iron-bound, triple-locked chest slung between their horses. Eli’s grin widened. When they reached the clearing’s edge, one of the forward riders, a thickset balding man in polished armor, stood up in his saddle.
“Majesty!” he shouted. “Are you hurt?”
The king sprang up, jerking his tether. “Oban!”
Nico gave him a hard tug, and the king quickly sat down again. “I’m fine! Just don’t do anything stupid.”
“We had no intention to, Henrith,” the man at the point of the formation said flatly, removing his helmet to let his blond braid swing freely down his back. “This situation’s idiotic enough as it is.”
The king stopped straining against Nico’s hold. “Renaud?” he whispered. All at once, he lunged forward, fighting against the rope. “Renaud!” Nico slapped him hard behind the knees, and he tumbled to the ground, but his eyes were still on the blond rider. “What are you doing here, brother?”
Eli glanced back. “I didn’t know you had a brother.”
“Not many outsiders do,” Renaud said. He sat back on his skittish horse, looking them over. “You must be Eli, the thief.”
“The very same.” Eli smiled courteously, nodding toward the reinforced chest. “And unless you’re planning on setting up house in the woods, that must be my gold.”
Renaud raised his hand. At his signal, the soldiers dismounted and began unlocking the chest. It took a full minute to undo the locks and the three chains before the soldiers threw back the lid and stepped aside. Eli licked his lips. The chest was filled to the brim with sparkling, oblong, golden coins.
“Five thousand council standards,” Renaud said flatly. “As agreed.”
“Ah,” Eli said smiling. “And the other part of our bargain?”
Renaud took a tightly rolled scroll out of his saddlebag. “It arrived by special courier this morning,” he said, unfurling the paper. “The first one, straight from the Council’s copy rooms.”
Stretched between his hands was a bounty notice bearing an enormous likeness of Eli’s face at its center and his name in block capitals across the top. Best of all, however, was the number stenciled across the bottom in thick black blocks: fifty-five thousand gold standards. Eli let out a low whistle.
Renaud rolled the notice back into a tube and tossed it casually on top of the piled gold. “Everything you wanted, exactly as promised. Now give me my brother.”
“Gold first,” Eli said, putting his hand on the king’s rope.
Renaud nodded, and the third rider, a dark-haired swordsman with a scar across one side of his face, dismounted. He took the reins of the chest carriers and led them out to the center of the clearing, twenty feet from either party. There, he cut the straps, and the chest fell with a thud onto the dusty grass. He led the horses back to their riders and took his place again beside Renaud.