The Spirit Thief(61)

Miranda expected Josef to complain about the seemingly meaningless stops, but he accepted Eli’s little chats with bored inertness, as if he had long since argued every point of the process five times over and couldn’t be bothered to care anymore.

At last, they had reached the edge of the forest, where the king’s deer park met the city’s northern border. The trees ended a good twenty feet from the wall, leaving a broad swath of open ground carpeted with overgrown grass and saplings. Josef made them crouch in the scrubby bushes at the edge of the clearing as he scouted ahead. While they were waiting for the swordsman to come back, Miranda took the opportunity to satisfy her curiosity and she crept over to where Eli was crouched in the grass.

“Okay,” she whispered, “I give up. Is the weather talk some kind of code?”

“What?” Eli’s eyebrows shot up. “No, no, I’m just building good will.”

Miranda gave him a confused look. “Good will?”

“It’s a harsh world,” Eli said. “You never know when you’ll need a little good will from the local countryside.”

Miranda was skeptical. A mossy rock didn’t seem like much of an ally. “So you weren’t doing reconnaissance or anything?”

“Sorry, no,” Eli said, shaking his head.

Miranda frowned. “But—”

“Quiet.”

Miranda and Eli both jumped at the sudden command. Josef was kneeling in the tall grass not a foot away from them, glaring icily. Miranda hadn’t even heard his approach.

“We move now,” he said.

“Wha—” Before Miranda could even form her question, Josef took off for the city wall at a dead run, Nico and Eli right on his heels. Miranda took a deep breath and charged after them, covering the space of open ground between the trees and the city wall faster than she had ever moved in her life. She slammed into the wall and dropped to a crouch just in time. No sooner had she reached the stones than a small troop of guards appeared out of the woods only a few feet from where they’d been hiding just moments before.

Miranda clapped her hands over her mouth as the soldiers fanned out. They patrolled the edge of the forest in a wide sweep, poking their short spears into the underbrush. Finding nothing, the leader waved his hand, and the unit faded back into the woods. Only when the sound of their boots had died to a whisper did Miranda release the breath she’d been holding.

“That was lucky,” she said.

“Luck’s got nothing to do with it,” Josef said in a low voice, peering at her through the grass. “Those patrols have been sweeping the area all day. If it wasn’t for the fact that the forest doesn’t want them to find us, all the luck in the world wouldn’t have gotten us this far.”

Miranda started, and Eli winked at her from his hiding place farther down the wall.

Josef gave Miranda a look of grudging approval. “Nice sprint, by the way.”

“Thanks,” she muttered. “What now?”

“Now we have to find that panel,” Josef said, turning to the wall. “It should be close.”

“It’s here.” Nico’s quiet voice made Miranda jump. Nico was crouched on Josef’s right, one small white finger sticking out of her voluminous sleeve to point at the iron square, barely larger than a laundry chute, set into the wall beside her.

“What is it?” Miranda asked, leaning in for a better look.

“A bolt hole,” Eli said, crawling over to crouch beside Nico, “in case the royalty need to make a fast exit. Very common in cities like this.” He gave the iron door an experimental push, but it didn’t so much as rattle. He tried again, harder this time, but he might as well have been pushing the wall itself. “Hmm.” He frowned. “This one seems to be locked.”

Miranda gave him a puzzled look. “Isn’t this how you got in last time?”

“Of course not,” Eli said, looking insulted. “First rule of thievery, never use the same entrance twice.”

Miranda rolled her eyes. “How many ‘first rules’ of thievery do you have?”

“When one mistake can mean your head on a pike, every rule’s a first rule,” Eli said cheerfully.

The thief ran his long fingers along the door’s edge, which was set flush against the stone. Miranda watched with growing uncertainty. There wasn’t even a keyhole, so far as she could see. When he had tapped every inch of the metal, Eli leaned back, brow knit in thought.

“Can’t you just talk it open?” Miranda asked, moving a little closer. “Like you did with the prison door?”

“I could,” Eli said, “but—” He reached into his coat pocket and drew out a small leather case, monogrammed in gold with an ornate capital M—“sometimes a simpler solution suffices.”