He took another bite.
“They have only two guards at the door,” Josef went on, ignoring them both, “and no one checking the servants. The cooks didn’t even look sideways at us.”
“Maybe they don’t know we’re here,” Eli said. “The spying rat we caught could have been the only one. Or maybe they know we’re in the castle, but they weren’t expecting us to come to the kitchens. Or maybe my plan is actually working. The whole point of breaking in at dinner was to catch the shift change so no one would notice three newcomers.”
“Or maybe they’re just incompetent,” Miranda said, remembering how the castle had reacted when she’d arrived for the first time. “Renaud may be in charge, but Mellinor is still Mellinor. Common sense seems to be as forbidden as wizardry in this country.”
“You have a point,” Josef said, leaning back in his chair and pretending to drink while he scanned the room. “But this was too easy even for incompetence. Mellinor may be slack, and I don’t know about Renaud, but Coriano isn’t someone who would leave an opening like this, not unless he was planning something.”
“Coriano?” Eli wiped his mouth with a greasy napkin. “Didn’t he run off?”
“He’s a swordsman; he only retreated. Besides”—Josef dropped his hand to where the carefully wrapped Heart of War was leaned against his leg—“the Heart can feel his sword. They’re calling to each other.”
“Josef,” Eli said patiently, “for the last time, you’re not a wizard. You can’t hear a damn thing that sword is saying.”
“I don’t have to hear him to know what he wants,” Josef growled. “You’re just mad you can’t talk to him.” Josef flashed Miranda a conspiratorial grin. “It’s the only spirit we’ve found that won’t talk to Eli.”
“Who’d want to talk to a spirit that chose you, anyway,” Eli muttered, reaching for his spoon to finish the last of his impromptu dinner. “He must have horrid taste.”
“Enough,” Miranda said, shoving Eli’s bowl out of reach before he could take another mouthful. “We’re wasting our time. What are we waiting for, anyway?”
A chorus of screams erupted from the kitchen, and Eli’s face broke into an enormous grin. “That.”
A crowd of cooks poured screaming out of the kitchen, followed by a thick plume of white smoke. The servants at the front tables started to panic, screaming “fire.” The soldiers ran forward, shouting for order as the servants rushed the doors to the kitchen gardens. While the overwhelmed guards yelled and tried to keep people from trampling each other, Eli and Josef calmly got up and jogged toward the now unguarded door to the upper castle. Miranda watched the panic in shock for a moment and then stood up and stomped after the thief.
The main hall of the servant level was even more crowded than the dining room. Alarm bells were ringing up and down its length, and the smell of wood smoke and burning tar hung heavy in the hazy air. Servants seethed from the dozens of interconnecting hallways like ants out of an overturned hill, shouting and shoving as they rushed the exits. Eli let them surge past him, nimbly working his way upstream along the wall. Only when a platoon of guards carrying buckets appeared at the far end of the hall did he change course and duck down one of the small connecting corridors.
“I can’t believe it!” Miranda whispered fiercely as they half walked, half ran down the narrow hall. “You started a fire just so you could get past some guards? Do you ever consider the consequences of your actions!?”
“We didn’t start a fire,” Nico’s voice said calmly.
Miranda jumped and whirled around. At first, she saw nothing but the empty hallway filled with hazy smoke, dark except for the sputtering wall sconces set at wide intervals. Then, Nico appeared from the shadows a foot behind them, as if she had emerged from the wall itself, looking very pleased with herself.
Miranda refused to be intimidated. “What did you do?”
“Nothing bad,” Nico said. “I just let the furnace know what I was, and now it’s trying to burn down the castle.”
“You deliberately terrified a fire spirit?” Miranda gasped. “That’s horrible!”
Nico crossed her arms over her chest, her brown eyes perfectly calm. “I didn’t terrify it. I introduced myself. It was the furnace’s decision to try and kill me by burning everything. Don’t worry, though; it’s a slow, fat spirit. The servants will have no trouble holding it back, if they can get over their own panic.”
“Don’t