Mirror Sight

  Then a gentleman along the wall caught her eye. He stared at her. Karigan’s heart leaped. She realized she’d been drawn almost across the threshold of the building, to get a better view of the map, and could be plainly seen by anyone who bothered to look.

  The gentleman, whose gray-speckled brown hair swept luxuriantly across his brow, twitched his mouth, which wiggled his bushy mustache. He had full side whiskers, too. He touched the shoulder of a younger man beside him. When the second man turned to look, Karigan ducked from the lit doorway, shaking.

  She did not know these people, this place. She was not ready to trust anyone until she learned more. She ran-limped away. Did she hear footsteps running after her, or was it her own that echoed against the canyons of brick walls?

  She turned into another alley, breathing hard, sweat slicking down her sides. She decided to call on her fading ability, and in this way she could survey the city, town, or whatever this place was, without being observed. But when she touched the winged horse brooch clasped to her greatcoat, she felt no change. She glanced at her hands and down at her body. She remained solid—she had not faded out. She tried again, and nothing.

  “What . . . ?” What had the looking mask done to her?

  A scent of putrid, decaying matter wafted to her. She glanced down the alley. She thought she detected movement, but the alley was too shrouded in darkness. Hesitating but a moment, she withdrew her moonstone from her pocket, but it emitted only a weak, dying glow as it had in the sarcophagus.

  Magic does not work here, Karigan thought. At least not much.

  The moonstone emitted enough light to sketch out a heap of rubbish at the other end of the alley. There was more movement. A cat? An oversized rat looking for food scraps?

  But then the heap stood and the low gleam of the moonstone caught in the whites of its—his—eyes . . . and on the metallic sheen of a knife.

  Karigan gasped and pocketed her moonstone, intending to flee, but when she turned, her escape was blocked by two hulking figures.

  She found herself wishing, absurdly, she was back in Blackveil. She raised the bonewood staff to a defensive position, thankful it had made the journey with her, but regretting the loss of her saber, which had served her so well since she became a Green Rider, and F’ryan Coblebay before her. Lost forever, she suspected, in the deeps of Castle Argenthyne.

  Even as the two at the open end of the alley rushed her, so did the one with the knife from behind. Karigan did not think, she moved. With her right hand all but useless, she swept the staff at the two forward assailants relying on the strength of her left. She smashed the closest one in the chin. As he staggered away, she rammed the butt of the staff backward catching the knife-bearing assailant in the gut. He fell back with a grunt of pain.

  She thrust the staff forward again, battering the metal handle into the bridge of the third assailant’s nose. She felt warm splatters across her face, and he reeled away clutching at his bleeding nose.

  Not bad, Karigan thought, for being one-handed and pretty much one-legged.

  She made to retreat from the alley, only to find half a dozen more figures blocking her way.

  MORPHIA

  Karigan backed away as the thugs advanced on her. One of her original assailants recovered enough to grab her from behind. She smashed the heel of her boot into his instep, and he hopped away howling. The others paused as one as if reassessing their prey, indistinct in their ragged cloaks. She held her staff in a defensive position, keeping an ear open to anyone creeping up on her from behind. Mostly she heard whimpering from that quarter.

  Her limbs quivered from having expended so much of her energy in Blackveil, as well as in the streets of this nameless city. Her mauled leg was likely to give out at any time now, and truly she wanted nothing more than to drop where she stood, but that would mean worse consequences.

  “Put down yer stick, girlie,” one of the thugs said, “and we won’t hurt ya. Real gentlemen we are, ain’t we, boys?”

  The others answered with affirmative grunts.

  “Let me go, and I won’t hurt you,” she said, her dry throat making her voice harsh.

  “Got ya some sass, eh? There’s them that’d pay good for the likes of you.”

  Karigan did not wait for them to make the first move. She charged into them with a guttural yell, staff humming as the metal handle thudded into the leader’s skull. She had hoped they’d scatter after that, but they grabbed for her, their rags rancid with filth. The staff became entangled in their arms, and when one kicked her injured leg, she sank with a moan, and they descended on her as predators on wounded prey.

  Karigan momentarily blanked out beneath their vile stench as they tore at her greatcoat, tried to force the staff from her hand, groped her. It would be so easy to let go, to give up. . . .

  In another moment they were inexplicably off her. She shook her head, the air freshened around her. The predators scattered as a new presence swung a club and threw them aside.

  She couldn’t move. She lay on the paving only able to watch as the last thug loped away, the one who had fought them off looming over her, a man, she observed, from the silhouette of his profile. The shadows of his hood obscured his features, but she felt his gaze upon her. Was he her savior or a new danger?

  He tossed the club aside, and it clattered loudly on the paving. He knelt beside her and helped her sit up. He produced a nondescript cloak from nowhere and tossed it around her shoulders.

  “It is foolish to be out here at this hour unescorted,” he said.

  “Who are you?” she asked.

  He did not answer but helped her to stand. She’d kept a death grip on her staff and did not loosen it now.

  “Can you walk?” he asked.

  “Not very well.”

  “Lean on me, then.”

  She did not. “Who are you, and where are we going?”

  He made an impatient noise from beneath his hood. “I am the one who drove off your attackers. I am taking you to safety.”

  Karigan wanted to trust him, to pass the responsibility of her safety on to someone else, but could she trust this man? Really, at this point, how much of a choice did she have? With all her injuries, the lapse in her ability to fade, and not knowing this city and its ways, her choices had diminished significantly. So far the man had only aided her. Coming to a decision, she allowed him to put his arm around her so he could bear some of her weight. At least he did not smell offensive.

  He led her toward the alley’s outlet and paused to peer both ways down the street. He hissed and suddenly pulled her back into the concealment of the shadows.

  “What is it?” she asked.

  “Shhh. You ask too many questions.”

  She had a sharp retort on her tongue but held it when she heard footsteps out on the street and a curious metallic click-click-click sound. When the footsteps paused so did the clicking, which was replaced by an odd purring hum. Light flowed down the alley, but Karigan and her rescuer were pressed hard enough against the brick wall that the light did not touch them. It focused on a trio of thugs left moaning on the pavement.

  “What is it?” a man’s voice asked.

  “Dregs is all,” another answered. “Rubbish collectors’ll pick ’em up later. C’mon.”

  The footsteps continued on, and there was an odd toot, and the click-click-click started again.

  Her rescuer waited at length before peeling away from the wall.

  “Who were they?” she demanded.

  The man sighed in irritation. “Inspectors. Now come. We don’t want to be caught out.”

  Inspectors? she wondered. What were they inspecting? They had not cared about the men lying in the alley, and her rescuer certainly did not like them.

  Karigan hated relying on this stranger’s strength. He was not gentle, she thought, as they moved out into the empty
street. It wasn’t, she suspected, that he was intentionally being rough, but that he was being more vigilant of their surroundings than of her comfort. And perhaps he did not realize the extent of her various hurts.

  “Ow!” she cried, when he bumped her bad leg.

  “Silence,” he whispered. “There could be more thugs about, or Inspectors.”

  “Then be more careful,” she said.

  “I am very sorry, but I’ve a job to do.”

  Karigan halted, planted herself on the street. If he wanted to move forward, he’d have to drag her.

  “What do you mean job?” she asked, darkening with suspicion. “Are you one of those clowns?”

  “What? Clowns?” His voice held a tone of incredulity. She still could not see his face beneath the shadow of his hood, but his eyes glinted in the lamplight.

  “Then who are you? Where in the name of the gods am I? You sound Sacoridian, but this is like no place in Sacoridia I’ve ever seen.”

  He did not answer, just stared at her.

  “I’m very sorry,” he said finally, “but you do ask too many questions, and this is not the time or place.”

  Before Karigan could reply, he withdrew a cloth from beneath his cloak and thrust it into her face, pressing it over her mouth and nose, overpowering her with its sickly sweet stench. At first she fought, but he held her fast, and her strength, the little that remained to her, leaked out of her. Her knees gave way, the stranger supporting her as she spiraled into oblivion.

  The face belonged to a balding man who peered down at her out of the haze. “Well, hello there, young lady. How are we feeling?”

  At first she felt numb, but all her various pains were intensifying with every moment. She appeared to be, however, comfortably situated in a huge bed with a downy mattress and warm blankets pulled up to her chest.

  “Who are you? Where am I?” It seemed to take a great deal of strength just to speak.

  “I am Mender Samuels, and you are safe and sound in your uncle’s house.”

  “Uncle? What uncle?”

  Mender Samuels turned away to address someone behind him. “A little disorientation is not unusual, considering what you said about her time in the asylum, which must have been most distressing.”

  Asylum? Karigan’s heart thudded. She tried to sit up, but the pain took her breath away, and she fell back into her pillows.

  “There, there, young lady,” the mender cooed. “We’ve reset your broken wrist, pulled shards of a mirror from your flesh, and tended the ghastly wounds on your leg. You have been through quite an ordeal, it seems, and now you can rest.” To someone else he said, “The syringe, please.”

  An assistant in the shadows handed him a long, sharp needle, which protruded from a glass tube filled with fluid.

  This could not be good. “What—what is that?” Karigan asked, feeling like a trapped animal. She glanced around the dim room—too many people hovering in the shadows and standing between her and the door.

  “It is only morphia,” the mender said. “It shall ease your pain and help you rest.” He pressed a plunger on the end of the tube and a small amount of fluid squirted out of the tip of the needle.

  Karigan had to get away. She threw her blankets aside and lunged forward to leap out of bed, but she was caught by strong hands that pressed her back into the pillows and did not let her go. The needle descended and stabbed into the meat of her upper arm. She yelped.

  “Why?” she asked plaintively. “Why are you doing this to me?”

  “Do not worry, my dear,” the mender replied with a shadowed smile. “It is for your own good.”

  BRANDY

  The morphia had been, Karigan thought, really quite pleasant, vanquishing her pain for the first time in what felt like forever. One never really knew just how taxing pain was till one was free of it and could feel the difference. She’d given herself over to the lulling, floating quality of the morphia and slept, slept the sleep of tombs, vacant of dreams and visions.

  But when the pain began to nag at her again, she found herself surfacing from the depths of slumber. Perhaps in the wakening world she’d find more morphia to once again release her from the pain that ached throughout her body with growing intensity.

  Her eyes cracked open to an amber glow, like the dawning light that filtered through her window at Rider barracks and onto the wooden floor.

  Rider barracks. Was she there? Was she home after some seriously awful adventures? The barracks burning down and everything that had followed, could they have been dreams?

  A shifting inside her. A dislocation. Nothing had really changed, not the light, her pain, the bed. But a brief lightheadedness spun her round and when it settled, she knew she was not home, that this was not Rider barracks. Barracks was gone forever, had been gone for some time, just ashes and ruins. A tear formed in the corner of her eye, the grief fresh all over again.

  I am not supposed to be here, she thought, though she still did not know where “here” was.

  She heard soft footsteps on floorboards—someone was in the room with her. A young woman folding sheets, her back toward Karigan. Her long skirts rustled as she worked. She wore a scarf about her head, concealing her hair. One last sheet was folded, and the young woman, who must be a household maid, placed the sheets in a cabinet. She cast a quick glance at Karigan, who closed her eyes and pretended to still sleep. The maid then strode from the room, softly clicking the door shut behind her.

  Karigan lay there, feeling the full brunt of returning pain. Her wrist especially, and when she lifted it, it felt much heavier than it should. She discovered it was immobilized in a hardened plaster. Much more clever, she thought, than the wood and linen affairs the menders at home used. Those tended to loosen and slip, and often bones did not knit back together properly. Wherever she was, the menders here were much more advanced.

  Gazing beneath her blankets, she inspected herself further and found she’d been garbed in a very fine linen sleeping gown; so tightly and perfectly woven that she’d never seen anything of like quality, which was saying something for a textile merchant’s daughter. And the sheets, too. Her attention moved to her mauled leg and dozens of smaller wounds—from the shattered looking mask? All had been bandaged. However she had gotten here, by her own will or not, she’d been well tended.

  Her room was large and airy with a high ceiling. The furnishings, though spare of ornamentation, appeared to her merchant’s eye to have been crafted by masters, and they gleamed with a high polish. On the walls, paintings of bowls of fruit broke up the busy, flowery pattern of wall coverings.

  She found a hand bell on her bedside table. If she rang it, she supposed someone would attend her, perhaps bring food and drink, which was tempting because she was hungry and thirsty. She could also demand answers from whomever answered her summons. But first things first. She eased out of bed, her body trembling and weak, and pulled a chamber pot out from beneath the bed.

  That necessity accomplished, she crossed the room to peer out the only window, espying dull sunlight and the brick wall of a neighboring building. She began to explore her room further and, to her dismay, found no sign of her uniform or the bonewood. She limped over to a wardrobe but found nothing inside except for a lonely shawl. Not only had she been disarmed, but they, whoever they were, possessed her brooch and moonstone. It did not matter her magic was not working here, those items were important to her and not intended for the idle hands of others.

  She wanted her things back. She needed answers. She returned to the wardrobe and removed the shawl of soft lamb’s wool and placed it around her shoulders. Then she went to the door, cracked it open, and listened. The tones of male voices in heated discussion drifted to her from somewhere else in the house.

  She peered out into the corridor and, upon seeing no one, she stepped out onto a plush runner with an intricate floral pattern, which
muted her limping footsteps. She crept past imposing behemoths of mismatched furniture—a few Second Age pieces and several lesser examples from the Third; and busts on pillars, portraits of stern personages in garb of unknown style, and statuettes of young shepherds and milkmaids cast in gaudy gilt. Definitely not to her own taste. There appeared to be no set scheme to the décor, and it had more the look of the jumbled accumulation of a collector who lacked focus. Or discernment.

  She came to the top of a curving flight of stairs with a handsome banister of deep mahogany. Under different circumstances she’d enjoy sliding down it to the bright foyer at the bottom. The voices came to her more loudly now, and one she immediately recognized as the circus boss. He must have figured out she was here. As she could not see either of the speakers, she determined they must be meeting in a room—a parlor, perhaps?—just off the foyer.

  “I want you to keep your nose out of my business,” the circus boss declared. “No more hoaxes.”

  “I am sure I’ve no idea of what you are talking about,” replied the other man in a milder tone. “You have come into my home accusing me of the most ridiculous—”

  “I’ve five hundred witnesses who saw it, some girl, a live girl, stepped out of the sarcophagus.”

  “I am still mystified as to why you believe I’ve anything to do with this.”

  “Who put her in there?” the circus boss demanded. “Eh, Professor? Who put her in there? You are the one constantly attacking me with your libelous detractions.”

  “I do not care for your tone, sir,” the one referred to as the professor replied, “or your accusations.”