The Spirit War(96)

The sun was going down by the time he reached the palace at the top of mountain. Servants threw themselves out of his way as he stomped through the rear gate. He heard them whispering his name as he crossed the yard, as well as other things—thief, deserter, murderer, disappointment, failure—before he shut his ears and set himself on a single-minded path back to his room.

When he arrived, he opened his door to find Nico and Eli sitting at his table eating his dinner.

“Welcome back,” Eli said around an enormous mouthful of food, glancing over his shoulder just long enough to give Josef a stuff-cheeked smile. “How was the meeting?”

Josef ignored the question. “What are you doing?” he said, shutting the door.

“Dinner,” Eli said, turning back to the table. “We started without you. Hope you don’t mind.”

“Wouldn’t matter if I did,” Josef said, looking at the decimated plates. “There’s not enough left to get mad over.”

“You should be grateful,” Eli said, shoving another forkful of potatoes in his mouth. “A man came by about a half hour ago with a message from your wife. Something about a fire? Anyway, he said that she said to tell you that she’s going to be late tonight and you should eat without her, so I took the liberty of telling him to go ahead and bring up your dinner. After all”—Eli swallowed loudly—“we’ll never get a better chance to test it for poison without having to worry about the sweet princess.”

Josef’s eyebrows shot up. “So you decided to test the food for poison by eating it all? That’s the stupidest idea I’ve ever heard.”

“You have no vision,” Eli said. “I’ll have you know I have a very sophisticated pallet for this sort of thing. The old Monpress fed me every poison under the sun during my thief training days. Ah,” he said, licking his fingers. “Memories.”

Josef shook his head. “So what have you found?”

“Nothing,” Eli said, snatching the last delicately folded roll from the basket at the center of the table. “Your food seems perfectly safe, so either your poisoner decided to take the night off, or it’s not coming through the food.”

“Or it’s something you don’t recognize,” Josef added.

“Impossible,” Eli said. “If it’s used in the Council Kingdoms, I’ve tasted it. Poisoning’s a subtle art, but it’s very set in its ways.”

“I’ll keep that in mind,” Josef muttered. He walked over to the table and picked up a plate of beef scraps, all that was left of what must have been a lovely roast. “Meanwhile, you can get out. I’m going to wait up for Adela. I have some questions to ask her.”

Eli shrugged and stood, taking his wineglass with him. “I’m going to poke my nose down around the castle,” he said, refilling his glass to the rim from the bottle on the mantel. “Do a little goodwill work with the spirits, just in case we have to make a quick getaway.”

Josef ignored the stab of bitterness that came with that. “What makes you think we’ll be leaving?”

“First rule of thievery: Never be without a quick exit,” Eli said, sipping the top of his now very full glass. “Of course, there’s also the fact that you just walked in from a meeting with a powerful man who doesn’t like you very much looking like you’re ready to kill something. Even without the rules, that’s reason enough for me.”

Josef couldn’t argue that point, so he let Eli go. But when Nico got up to follow, he reached out.

“Stay,” he said, grabbing her shoulder gently. “Please. I want you to help keep an eye on things, in case I fall asleep again.”

“You want me to stay here,” she said, slowly. “With you and your wife?”

“Yes,” Josef said. “In case I—”

“Fall asleep again,” she finished, turning away. “I heard you the first time.”

She vanished into the long shadows of the dressing room before he could add anything else, and Josef bit back a curse. He was trying to think of something to say when the door creaked, and he snapped his head around to see Eli hovering.

“Josef,” he said, very quietly. “Do you want to talk about—”

“No,” Josef said.

Eli bit his lip and, for a long, tense moment, Josef worried that the thief would push. But then Eli nodded and vanished into the hall, closing the door silently behind him. Once he was sure Eli was gone, Josef sat down on the couch and stared at the destroyed remains of his dinner, mechanically shoving the last scraps of the roast into his mouth as he waited for his wife to appear.