Eli Monpress 1 - The Spirit Thief by Rachel Aaron

Author:Rachel Aaron
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Tags: FIC009020
Publisher: Orbit
Published: 2010-09-30T03:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER 18

The next few seconds were a confused, painful scramble as Miranda did her best to get out from under Josef. The man was amazingly heavy and, she grunted as she cracked her ribs against his elbow, full of sharp edges. It didn’t help that the ground was horribly uneven. Just when she’d finally managed to untangle herself from the swordsman, a soft, yellow glow winked to life. Miranda’s relief was almost physically painful as the darkness resolved itself into familiar shapes. They were in a root cellar. Other than the four of them being in it, it was a very normal root cellar, with potatoes, apples, and turnips rolling across the floor where Miranda and Josef’s landing had knocked them loose from their bins.

Eli held up a tiny blackout lamp, one shutter cracked just a fraction, the source of the unsteady light. “Nice landing,” he said with a grin.

“I would have been fine if someone hadn’t pushed me,” Miranda hissed, hurling a potato at Josef.

“If I hadn’t pushed you, we would have been spotted,” Josef said, catching the potato in midair, “and that would have been that.”

“Well, now that we’re all here and uncaught,” Eli said, swinging his lamp toward the squat wooden door half hidden behind a large bin of potatoes, “let’s get on with it.”

Miranda stood up, slipping a little on the rolling tubers. “Where are we?”

“Under the city, inside the walls,” Eli said, popping the crude lock on the wooden door with a wiggle of his lock pick. “I told you, we’re in the bolt hole. Most castles would have their own tunnel to safety in case of invasion, but Allaze is so close to the river, a deep tunnel would flood, so it looks like they had to make do with linking a bunch of cellars together.”

“Lucky thing for us, in any case,” Josef said, walking through the door Eli held open and into the next cellar.

Nico followed close behind him, stepping between the rolling potatoes as if she had no problem seeing in the dark. Miranda tried to mimic her path, but ended up slipping on her second step. She fell with a stifled yipe, catching the demonseed’s shoulder at the last minute. The strange, thick material of the girl’s coat shifted like a living thing under her fingers, and Miranda jerked her hand away. Despite the Spiritualist’s full weight landing on Nico’s shoulder, the smaller girl had not so much as stumbled. She turned to meet Miranda’s horrified look.

“Go ahead, Spiritualist,” she said, her pale face impassive. “The lamp’s more for you than for us.”

Had that sentence come from Eli, Miranda would have brushed it off as bluster, but the strange glitter in Nico’s eyes left no doubt in her mind that the girl spoke the truth. With a muttered thanks, Miranda slipped by, pressing herself against the grimy wall to make sure she didn’t brush the strange, moving coat again, and hurried into the adjacent cellar where Eli was already popping the next door.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.