The officials put their heads together for a moment, and then the Master of the Courts nodded. “You drive a hard bargain, Miss Lyonette, but we do not have the luxury of time. Your terms are acceptable. We must have our king.”
Miranda stood up with a triumphant smile. “In that case, gentlemen, let’s get to work.”
An hour later, when Miranda had wrung almost every provision she wanted out of the old men, they adjourned. After being shown to her room, she threw down her pack, grabbed a handful of bread off the dinner tray, and went to find Gin. This proved an easy task, for he was lounging in the afternoon sun right where she’d left him, surrounded by a gawking circle of stable boys at the main entrance to the castle.
Miranda approached with a grin, scattering the boys like sparrows. “Time to work, mutt.”
Gin sat up slowly, stretching his paws. “You’re in a good mood.”
“There may be hope for this country yet.” She smiled.
The dog snorted. “What about that artifact thing Banage made us rush down here for? Find out anything about that?”
“The bureaucrats didn’t mention it, so I felt no need to bring it up,” she said. “Gregorn’s Pillar is only dangerous to wizards, and the only one of those we have to worry about is off having a slumber party with the king. Besides, I don’t think I could have spoken ill of their honored founder and lived to tell about it. Though, mind you, I could tell them a few things about their precious Gregorn that would set their hair on end.”
“So why didn’t you?” Gin yawned, showing all of his teeth.
“Telling people what they don’t want to hear gets us nowhere,” Miranda said. “My duty is to catch Eli before he can mess things up more than he already has, not force old men to change their prejudices. That’s the unhappy job of whichever poor sap Master Banage promotes to Tower Keeper of Mellinor when we’re done.” She flopped down on the marble step with a sigh. “So long as Eli isn’t interested in Gregorn’s Pillar, I’m not either. There’s no point in trying to convince a panicked kingdom to let us poke around in their treasury if we don’t need to. Besides, if we play our cards right, Mellinor will be crawling with Spiritualists by year’s end. We’ll have a Tower and a court envoy with plenty of time to talk the king into giving the Spirit Court all the pillars and artifacts and whatever else Gregorn left lying around. Right now, we focus on catching Monpress, and speaking of which”—she leaned forward—“what did you find?”
“His smell is everywhere.” Gin’s nostrils flared. “He was probably scouting the palace for days before he let himself get caught. The smells are all knotted together, though, so I can’t tell where he made his final exit.”
“So much for doing things the easy way,” Miranda said and sighed, running her hand through her curly hair. “All right, we’ll do this by the book. I’ll start with the throne room and work my way down. You check the grounds and try not to scare anyone too badly.”
“Shouldn’t you get some rest?” Gin said, eyeing the sinking sun. “I can take two days of hard travel, but we don’t want you flopping over like last time.”
“That was an isolated incident.” Miranda said, bristling. “No breaks. We’re finally in the same country as that thief, possibly the same city. I’m not going to risk letting him slip away again, not when we’re this close.”
“You’re the boss,” Gin said, trotting across the courtyard. “Don’t get carried away.”
“That’s my line,” Miranda called after him, but the enormous hound was already slinking away behind the stables, sniffing the ground. Miranda shook her head and fanned out her fingers, nudging her rings awake.
“Time to get to work,” she muttered, smiling as the stones began to glow. With a final look at the setting sun, she turned and tromped up the castle stairs. With any luck, she’d have Eli by the time it rose again.
CHAPTER 3
Down below the stable yard, quivering away from the ghosthound’s fearsome scent, a rat darted through a narrow crack in the castle’s foundation and made a break for the wall. It bounded through the ornamental gardens as if all the cats in Mellinor were on its tail, though nothing followed it in the dim evening light. What terrified the rat was not behind it, but inside it, pressed like a knife against its brain. It hit the castle battlements at full speed and began to climb the rough white stone, running vertically as easily as it had run along the ground. The knot of guards at the castle gate didn’t notice as the rat crested the wall behind them and, without so much as pausing for balance, launched itself into the air. For a terrifying moment, the rat scrambled in free fall, then, with a clang that made the guards jump, landed on a drainpipe. The rat clung to the pipe, stunned for a moment, and then the pressure was back, the inescapable voice pressing down on its poor, fright-addled mind, and it had to go on. The rat scurried down the drainpipe to the cobbled street. Keeping to the gutters and dark places people forget to sweep, it made its way through the tangled streets of Allaze, following the sewer ditches away from the castle, down and west toward the river, into the darker parts of the city.