Rachel Aaron - The Spirit War

“It’s not even eight,” Josef said, his voice low and annoyed as he nudged the wrapped Heart of War farther under the bench with his foot. “The post isn’t due until eight fifteen. And can you at least pretend to be discreet? I love a good fight, but we walked all night to get here. I’d like some breakfast and a few hours of shut-eye before I have to put down an entire room of bounty hunters, if it’s all the same to you.”

Eli made a disgusted sound. “Go ahead. I could wear a name tag on my forehead and these idiots still wouldn’t notice. No bounty hunter worth his sword goes to a regional office for leads. There’s not a soul here who’s good enough to see what they don’t expect.” He slouched on the bench. “Sometimes I think there’s no pride in the profession anymore. You were the last of the bounty hunters worth the name, and even you got so bored you took up with the enemy.”

“Not bored,” Josef said. “I just learned that working with you got me better fights than trying to catch you. Anyway, Coriano was perfectly decent, and what about that man who attacked you at the hotel? Gave you quite a scramble for a dying profession, didn’t he?”

Beside him, Nico did her best to stifle a laugh, but her coat gave her away, moving in long, midnight waves as her shoulders shook. Eli rolled his eyes at both of them.

“Well, too bad you killed them, then,” he said with a sniff. “Knocking over the best of a dying breed without even leaving a calling card—it’s such a waste. No wonder your bounty’s only ten thousand.”

Josef shrugged. “Unlike some people, I see no need to define myself by an arbitrary number.”

Eli bristled. “Arbitrary? I earned every bit of that bounty! You should know; you were there for most of it. My bounty is a reflection of our immense skill. You should take some pride in it. After all,” he said, grinning painfully wide, “I’m now the most wanted man in the Council Kingdoms. Two hundred and forty-eight thousand gold standards! That even beats Nico’s number. My head is worth more than a kingdom—no, two kingdoms! And to think, just last year I was struggling to break thirty thousand. This is an achievement no one else in the world can touch, my friends. You are sitting beside a national power. Tell you what. When they hand out my new posters, I’ll sign them for you. How’s that?”

Josef looked decidedly unimpressed and made no comment.

“It is a large number,” Nico said when the uncomfortable silence had gone on long enough. “But you’re not the highest. There’s still Den the Warlord with five hundred thousand.”

“Den doesn’t count,” Eli snapped. “He was the first bounty, made right after the war. The Council hadn’t even decided on a valuation for its currency yet. If they’d made the bounty properly with pledges from offended kingdoms rather than just letting old Council Daddy Whitefall pull some grossly large number out of his feathered helmet, Den would never have gotten that high. Anyway, it doesn’t matter. I’ll be passing him soon enough, just you watch. This time next year I’ll be at a million, and see if I offer to autograph your poster then.”

“I’ll take my chances,” Josef grumbled, eyeing the crowd. “Look lively. I think the post is here.”

Eli was on his feet in an instant, elbowing his way through the crowd that was no longer even pretending to look bored. The hunters thronged around the door as a sleepy-eyed bounty officer and two harried men in Council uniforms with piles of paper under their arms attempted to push their way in.

“No shoving!” the officer shouted. “Stand back! Individual posters can be purchased after the official notices are hung!”

The crowd took a grudging step back as the Council postmen began tacking up the latest posters under the bounty officer’s direction. First they hung up the small-fry, lists of names with tiny descriptions and even tinier numbers beside them. Next came the ranking bounties, criminals with a thousand or more on their heads whose notoriety had earned them a sketch and a small poster of their own. These were all pinned between the floor and waist level. The top of the wall was reserved for the big money. Here, the Council men hung up the famous names.

Izo was gone. The men stripped his old poster down with minimal fanfare, moving those bounties below him up a notch. The old, yellowed poster offering two hundred thousand for the Daughter of the Dead Mountain was left untouched, as was Den’s large poster at the top of the board. Between these, however, the men tacked up a fresh, large sheet featuring a familiar face grinning above a rather astonishingly large number.

Eli stopped shoving the men in front of him and gazed up at his poster, his eyes glowing with pride. “It’s even more beautiful than I imagined,” he whispered. “Two hundred and forty-eight thousand gold standards.”

Josef pressed his palm to his forehead as Eli resumed shoving his way forward. Thankfully, no one else seemed to have heard the thief’s remark. The bounty hunters were all loudly clamoring for copies, shouting over each other while the bounty officer tried to shout over everyone that no one was getting posters until the official copies were up.

Eli vanished into the fray only to reappear moments later with a scroll tucked under his arm. Josef raised his eyebrows and began easing the knives out of his sleeves, just in case, but the bounty officer was too busy screaming at the bounty hunters to get in line to notice that one of his carefully protected posters was already missing.

“They get better with every likeness,” Eli said, proudly unrolling his poster. “If it wasn’t black and white, I’d say I was looking in a mirror.”

Nico nodded appreciatively, but Josef wasn’t even looking. Eli turned to berate his swordsman for his shocking lack of attentiveness, but Josef was just standing there, staring at the bounty board like he’d seen a ghost. Eli followed his gaze, glancing over his shoulder at the bounty wall where the Council men were hanging one last poster, just below Den’s and just ahead of Eli’s. As the Council men tacked the poster’s corners up, a familiar, stern face glared down at the room, and below it, in tall block letters, was the following:

JOSEF LIECHTEN THERESON ESINLOWE.

WANTED ALIVE, 250,000 GOLD STANDARDS.

“Josef,” Eli said, very quietly. “Why is your bounty larger than mine?”

Josef didn’t answer. He just stood there, staring. Then, without a word, he turned, pushed his way through the crowd to their bench, grabbed his bag and his wrapped sword, and stomped out the back door.

Eli and Nico exchanged a look and ran after him.

“Josef,” Eli said, running to keep up with the swordsman’s ground-eating strides. “Josef! Stop! What’s this about? Where are you going?”

Josef kept walking.

“Look,” Eli said, jogging beside him. “If you’re worried I’m upset that you have a higher bounty than I do, you shouldn’t be. I mean, I am upset, but you shouldn’t be worried. I’m sure it’s just a mistake. If you’ll stop walking for a second, I can go nick your poster and we’ll take a closer look. Maybe they added an extra zero by accident or—”

“I don’t need a closer look.”

Eli stumbled a little. Josef’s voice was quivering with rage. Quick as he’d taken off, Josef stopped and turned to face them. Eli shrank back at the cold, white anger on his face, nearly falling into Nico.

“It’s no mistake,” Josef said. “That bounty is her last card. I can’t let her do this.”

“Her who?” Eli said.

“Queen Theresa.”

“I see,” Eli said, though he didn’t. “Well, if it’s not a mistake, then I’m stumped. What did you do to this queen to earn a number like that?”