“You can’t wear that,” Miranda said, pointing at the blade. “What’s the point of wearing disguises if you’re just going to give it away by carrying that monstrosity around? I mean, if I left my rings, surely you can go an hour without your sword?”
Josef looked her straight in the eye and pulled the strap tighter. “If the Heart stays, I stay.”
“I hate to admit it, but she does have a point,” Eli said, frowning. He went into the cabin and came out a few moments later, carrying a few sticks and a leather sack. “Just a second,” he muttered, laying his materials carefully on the dirt. He kneeled beside them and began to talk in a low, soft voice. Miranda tried to listen, but it was impossible to get close enough to hear what he was saying without making it obvious that that was what she was trying to do. At last, he scooped up the shortest stick and, with a few more words, bent the wood into a circle as easily as one would coil a length of rope.
Miranda watched in amazement as Eli laid the loop of wood and the two remaining straight sticks on top of the leather bag.
“When you’re ready,” he said.
No sooner did the words leave his mouth than the bag sat up. With a lively wiggle, the leather sack undid its seam and began wrapping itself around the wood, forming a tube around the two longer sticks. When the leather had wrapped itself as far as it could go, it pulled itself tight, and the thread from the seam stitched itself lengthwise up the edge of the long, leather tube. When it was finished, Eli held up a long, but otherwise perfectly normal-looking, spear quiver, the exact size and shape to hide the Heart of War.
Eli thanked the quiver several times before handing it to Josef, who slid his sword into the leather with his own nod of thanks.
“How did you…” Miranda pointed a limp finger at the quiver that had been three sticks and a bag less than a minute ago.
“Easy enough,” Eli said. “I’ve had the bag for a while. He always had higher ambitions than luggage, so he was happy to help. The sticks were greenwood, and they love any chance to move around a bit before they dry brittle.” He walked over to Josef and examined his handiwork. “It’s too bad we don’t have any spears to really complete the effect.”
He kept talking, but Miranda’s mind was too dumbfounded to make sense of it. She was still processing the enormous list of impossible things she’d just watched him do like it was nothing, like he did this every day. Talking to trees was one thing, but to make something new, just by talking, it was unbelievable. Not even the great shaper wizards could craft spirits without opening their own souls at least a little. This was like the wood and leather had decided to do him a favor, just because he asked. If she’d tried to do something like that without getting one of her servants to act as a middleman, the wood would have ignored her completely. Yet it did what Eli asked joyfully, as if he were the one who needed impressing, and not the other way around. She watched Eli as he talked, his long hands moving in elegant circles, and, not for the first time, Miranda caught herself wondering just what he really was.
“Are you feeling all right?”
Miranda jumped. Eli was looking at her quizzically. “You were staring and not listening.”
“It’s nothing,” Miranda muttered, fighting down her blush at being caught. “Let’s just get going.”
Eli shrugged and turned to follow Josef as he led the way toward the castle. Nico joined them at the edge of the clearing, fading out of the woods like a ghost. Miranda jumped when she saw the girl, half because of her sudden appearance, and half because she hadn’t noticed Nico was missing in the first place. Then she realized that Nico didn’t have a disguise.
“Wait, doesn’t she need—”
“No,” Nico said, without stopping or looking back.
Gin padded back over to her, his eyes on the girl. “Watch yourself,” he growled, “and don’t forget what she is. Demons can’t be trusted.”
“Duly noted,” Miranda said, and she gave his fur a final ruffle before jogging into the forest after Eli and the others.
Though they were only half a mile from the city, it took over an hour to reach the wall. This was mostly because Josef led them in a crazy zigzag through the brush. They crossed back over their path more than once, and he insisted on keeping to the tall undergrowth and away from the game trails, so that with every other step Miranda had to beat back a branch or untangle her skirt from a nettle bush. To make things worse, Eli stopped every five minutes or so to murmur quietly to this tree or that rock. She made it a point to listen covertly, but so far as she could tell, his little talks were of the most mundane kind, an exchange of pleasantries, maybe a comment about the weather, like a country wife chatting with her neighbors. As he talked, he would do them little favors, flicking an ant away or scraping some moss off the peak of a rock so it could feel the sunlight. That was strange enough, but the truly amazing thing was the way the sleepy spirits perked up as soon as he spoke to them. Miranda could almost feel them leaning forward, eager to tell him anything he wanted to know. Whatever brightness Gin had been talking about, it seemed to have a universal effect.