reaching awkwardly behind her, tied it with the strings sewn into the back. Next, she reached up and pulled her hair as tight as she could, knotting it in place at the base of her neck with a bit of twine. She grabbed the thick veil from a waiting branch and draped it over her forehead, letting the rest hang down her back so that her red hair was completely covered. Last of all, she fixed the small cap at the crown of her head with a long stickpin that held the whole affair in place. She gave her head an experimental shake to make sure the veil wouldn’t slide off. When it stayed put to her satisfaction, she turned around.
“There,” she said, putting her hands on her hips. “How do I look?”
Gin eyed her up and down. “Like a librarian.”
“Such flattery!” Miranda folded her hands over her chest dramatically. “Be still, my trembling heart!”
“What? That’s the point, right?” Gin said, getting up.
Miranda grinned at his confusion and tucked her discarded clothes under her arm before pushing her way through the giggling trees. Gin padded after her, muttering under his breath.
The tiny clearing outside the hut that served as Eli’s hideout had become quite crowded since Nico and Josef had returned. Most of the space, however, was taken up by the new additions. Laid out on a ratty blanket, two men and a woman, dressed only in their underclothes, were sleeping peacefully in the tree-dappled sunlight—castle servants, the sources of the costumes. King Henrith was crouched beside them, his hands moving in worried circles on his knees. He had traded out his filthy silk clothes for what looked like a set of Josef’s spares, though it was hard to tell without the knives. The bad fit and the king’s dour expression as he hovered over the unconscious servants made him look like a refugee from a tragedy play.
“I don’t see why you had to knock them out like this,” he muttered.
“It was the simplest way to get the sizes correct,” Josef said in a bored voice. He was lounging beside the hut, with his back propped against the ever-present camouflage thatch of branches provided by Eli’s arboreal admirers. His enormous sword was stabbed into the ground beside him and a pile of throwing knives was spread out in the grass at his feet. His normal array of cross-belted sheaths was gone, and in their place he wore the chain and blue surcoat of a House Allaze royal guard, which, judging from the gaps at the shoulders, had recently belonged to the narrower of the sleeping men. “They’ll wake up soon enough, no worse for wear.”
“And you’ll be here, sire,” Eli chimed in, fastening the cuffs of his valet’s coat. “A free evening off work and a touching reunion with their monarch. I’d say we’re doing them a favor.”
“What I don’t understand,” Miranda said, kneeling beside the distressed king, “is why we’re stealing costumes to sneak into the castle when Josef and Nico already snuck into the castle to grab these three.”
“We did nothing of the sort,” Eli said. “Every servant doesn’t live in the palace, you know. Josef spotted this lot walking into town from the outlying village. He merely gave them an involuntary night off. Oh, don’t look like that.” He waved his hands at Miranda’s horrified expression. “If Josef says they’ll be fine, they’ll be fine. He’s a professional. He does this all the time.”
Josef nodded sagely at the pile of knives he was polishing. Somehow, Miranda failed to find the gesture comforting.
“Of course,” Eli put his hands in his pockets, “the real question here is why we had to resort to this in the first place. I thought you said you had a contact in the palace?”
Miranda shook her head vehemently, making her veil fly. “There’s no way I’m letting you drag Marion into this, not after she already stuck her neck out for me once. Just look what you did to one of her coworkers.” She pointed at the unconscious girl, whose librarian uniform dress Miranda was now wearing. “Besides,” she muttered, “I spent a good deal of time correcting her ideas about wizards. I don’t want her meeting you lot and getting the wrong impression all over again.”
“You cut me to the bone, lady,” Eli said, clutching his chest. “Are you implying that I blacken the reputation of wizardry?”
Miranda cocked an eyebrow at his theatrics. “The Rector Spiritualis wouldn’t have sent me out here if