left, one final duty: disappear, fade into the world, and never give Hern another inch of leverage against her master.
Miranda sat back against the cave wall, digging her fingers into the hard-packed sand as the rabbit began to sizzle. Outside, the gray ocean crashed and foamed, throwing cold spray deep into the cave. She grimaced. Gin was right about one thing: They couldn’t stay here forever. She had no spare clothes, no blankets, and she was filthy with sea grime and sand. Even her rings had cataracts of salt on them. Still, she didn’t know where else to run, or what to do when she got there. When she tried to imagine life separated from the Spirit Court, her mind went blank.
She supposed that was understandable. She’d been in the Spirit Court since she was thirteen, and from the moment she’d taken her vows the Court had been her life. That, she’d always suspected, was the main reason Banage had accepted her as his apprentice over all the others. She was only one who would work the hours he worked. But she’d done it gladly, because when she was doing the Spirit Court’s work, she felt as if she was doing something that mattered, something worthwhile. It gave her purpose, meaning, confidence. Now, without the Court, she felt like a block of driftwood bobbing on the waves, going nowhere.
She leaned back, staring up at the firelight as it danced across the smooth curve of the sea-washed stone. The wind blew through the cave, whistling over the rock like it was laughing at her. Then, out of nowhere, a voice whispered, “Miranda?”
Miranda leaped to her feet with her hands out, ready, but the cave was empty. Only the fire moved, the little flames clinging for life in the high wind. She pressed her back against the wall. A trick of the wind? Spirits sometimes mumbled as they went, especially winds, who seldom slept. Yet the voice had been clear, and it had certainly said her name.
She was turning this over frantically in her head, trying to keep a watch on everything at once, when her eyes caught something strange. At the mouth of the cave, silhouetted by the strip of sunlight, a figure landed.
Miranda blinked rapidly, but it didn’t change what she saw. With the light at their back, she couldn’t tell if it was a man or a woman, but it was certainly human, even though she’d just seen it do something a human shouldn’t be able to do. Whatever it was had not walked up or climbed down—it had landed in front of her cave. Landed neatly, as though it had hopped down off a step, but that made no sense at all. The cliff was nearly a hundred feet tall.
Even as she was trying to sort this out, the figure ducked under the cave’s low entrance and walked forward with quick, sprightly steps. Miranda pressed her back to the wall and sent a tremor of power down to her rings only to find that they were already awake and ready, glimmering suspiciously. As the figure stepped into the circle of the firelight, Miranda saw that it was a man. She placed him at late middle age, maybe older, with gray hair and skin that was starting to droop. He had an intelligent, wrinkled face and large spectacles, which gave him the air of a kindly scholar. This effect was aided by the long, shapeless robe he wore wrapped several times around his bony shoulders so that he looked like someone who’d lost a fight with a bed sheet. Other than the robe and the spectacles, he wore no other clothes she could see. Even his feet were bare, and he took care to walk only on the sand, stepping around the washed-up patches of sharp, broken shells.
Miranda didn’t move an inch as he approached. Nothing about him was threatening, yet here was a stranger who’d appeared from nowhere, and she was a wanted fugitive. But even as the thought crossed her mind, she felt almost silly for thinking it. Anyone could have seen that the man wasn’t from the Spirit Court. If the lack of rings wasn’t proof enough, the fact that he just walked up to a Spiritualist, who had all her spirits buzzing, without a trace of caution completely tossed out all suspicion of Spirit Court involvement. That left the question, what was he?
As he approached, the wind continued to roar, drowning out all other sounds.