The Spirit War(26)

“Prince?” he shouted. “You’re a prince and you never told me?”

Though he could have broken Eli’s hold easily, Josef let it stay, leaning in to the wall at his back. “Not anymore.”

“Well, your mother’s a queen,” Eli said. “That sounds like a prince to me.”

“Eli.” Nico’s hand closed on his shoulder. “Stop it. Now. I’m sure Josef had his reasons.” She looked at Josef. “Didn’t you?”

Josef glowered at them. “Do I need reasons?”

“Oh come on!” Eli cried. “What kind of a question is that? I thought we were partners. I thought we were friends. How do you just go hiding something like that? Never mind all the times before, how do you justify hiding it when you’re bringing us back to your own country to turn yourself in?”

“Because I’m not a prince anymore,” Josef growled. “I told you before. And I am your friend. That’s why I let you come along.”

Eli let his look say exactly what he thought of that logic, and Josef lay back with a deep sigh. “You know what? Never mind. This is all wrong.”

Despite his anger, despite how hurt he was, Eli couldn’t help laughing at that.

“Of course it’s all wrong, idiot,” he said, letting Josef go. “You didn’t have a plan. You just expected to walk right in and then walk right out. This is what you get for not clueing us in, you know. If you’d just told me what you wanted to do, I could have made a plan that would have had us in your mother’s throne room enjoying your embarrassing childhood stories at this very moment.”

Josef shook his head. “All right then, Mr. Greatest-Thief-in-the-World, I give up. How would you do it?”

Eli straightened up and casually tossed the silver coin the guard had given him in the air, catching it in his palm. “I thought you’d never ask.”

He gave Josef a final I-told-you-so sniff and started down the alley, tossing the coin as he went. Josef pushed himself off the wall with an enormous sigh. “Now I’ve done it.”

“You should have done it days ago,” Nico said, crossing her arms.

“Right as usual,” Josef said. “Shall we?” He nodded down the alley.

Nico gave him an exasperated look and they started after Eli, walking side by side down the clean-swept alley.





CHAPTER


5


In the stinking swamp that would one day become the richest soil in the Empire, a girl ran through the muck. She ran wildly, arms flailing as she scrambled over clumps of grass and sticky clay. Behind her, men with lanterns were giving chase, the lights bobbing in the dark. The girl was quick and desperate, but the men knew this swamp better than she did. By the time she realized she’d gone the wrong way, they had surrounded her.

She cowered in the mud as their circle tightened. When the men were an arm’s length away, the largest held up his lantern to get a good look at her face.

“This is the one,” he said. “Gutted the captain proper, she did.”

“ ’Swhat the old coot gets,” said another. “Messing around with trash.” He grabbed the girl’s hair, yanking her up. “Mountain monkeys are for working, not sleeping with.”

He spat in her face, and they all began to laugh. The girl hung by her hair, kicking wildly. And then, from nowhere, silver flashed in the lamplight. The man dropped her with a scream to clutch his arm. The girl landed hard and rolled to her feet, brandishing her small knife, its tip bright red.

“Filthy animal!” the man shouted, clutching his bloody arm. “We’ll string your carcass up for the birds! Get her!”

The men charged her. The girl lashed out, swinging her knife, but the men were too many, too large. They grabbed her hand and pinched the nerve until her fingers went slack. The knife fell to the ground and was quickly trampled into the mud. She gasped for breath as their hands gripped her throat. The long, cold blades of their machetes pressed against her chest, and the girl realized that she was going to die. She was going to die in this swamp miles from her home. Die under the boots of the slavers with nothing to show for her suffering but an old, dead captain who would probably be replaced with someone even worse. But as despair swallowed her mind, something even deeper suddenly snapped, and her spirit ripped itself open.

Years ago, before the invaders had come, she’d learned spirit talking from the village elder. The old woman always said that spirit talkers may only ask, never demand. To demand was to lose the world’s respect, and thus lose everything. But now, with the machetes pressing into her ribs and the fingers crushing her throat, what did she have left to lose?