Mirror Sight

  “I want to know where the coffin is, and the old bones that were supposed to be in it. I want them back and with all the goodies intact.”

  There was a moment of heavy silence before the professor responded. “Mr. Hadley, I had no part in this hoax of yours. Perhaps you should speak to your supplier before heaping groundless accusations upon me.” Karigan detected the distaste in the professor’s voice.

  “Groundless? You are the one always speaking against me, calling me a desecrator. How is that any different from you, hmm?”

  “I do not open the resting places of the dead for entertainment, and then sell their burial goods for profit.”

  “They’re dead,” Mr. Hadley said, “and they don’t care. What you do is not so different, opening tombs for your own audiences. Why shouldn’t I profit from it, too?”

  “My audience, as you call it, consists of other archeologists and scientists. We do so to study our ancestors, and in dignity, not to entertain the crass multitudes.”

  Mr. Hadley laughed. “Sure, sure, whatever you say.”

  “I think this interview is quite over, Mr. Hadley, and I will thank you not to return. You are not welcome here. If you’ve any commentary to make, take it to my solicitor. Grott! See Mr. Hadley out, please.”

  A man in domestic livery stepped into the foyer with a brimmed, bowl-shaped hat in his hands and waited. Mr. Hadley, the circus boss, entered the foyer from the opposite direction, grabbed the hat from Grott, and clapped it on his head. He turned toward the room he’d just left. “If I discover you had anything to do with the other night, I will not be back, but I will send Inspectors in my stead and you can answer to them. Your solicitor be damned.”

  Grott opened the door, and Mr. Hadley stomped out into the glare of the street. The butler wasted no time in closing the door after him.

  The professor emitted a long, thunderous sigh. “Grott,” he said, “I need a brandy.”

  “Yes, sir.” The butler left the foyer in measured steps.

  Karigan watched in fascination as the man whose house this must be, the man who either sheltered her or held her prisoner, emerged in the foyer. She remembered him. She’d seen him in the . . . had it been a lecture? The one with the drooping mustache who had spotted her hovering on the building’s threshold.

  He paused before a mirror, fussing with his cravat and grumbling to himself about bloody-minded grave robbers, and then said to his reflected image, “A little early for brandy, old man, but Hadley does that to you, doesn’t he.” He chuckled, then patted his cravat and turned when Grott appeared with a glass on a silver tray.

  Perhaps catching Karigan in the corner of his eye, or sensing her gaze on him, he glanced up the flight of stairs and found her. Karigan wanted to flee, for she’d become accustomed to running and hiding, but resolutely she held her ground and stared unflinchingly back at him. She would not be afraid, and she would demand answers.

  “Grott,” the professor said removing his brandy from the tray, his own gaze not leaving Karigan. “I believe we’ll need another.”

  UNCLE

  A door at the far end of the corridor burst open, making Karigan jump. An imposing woman, all swishing skirts and matronly bulk, charged through the doorway and down the corridor toward her. Karigan tensed to flee.

  “Don’t you trouble yourself, Professor,” the woman boomed. “I’ll deal with her.”

  Karigan glanced down at the professor, who held his brandy frozen halfway to his mouth, a bemused expression on his face.

  Then, before Karigan could utter a protest, the woman swooped down on her, took hold of her good arm, and swept her down the corridor. “You should not be out of bed, missy.”

  “But—”

  “Mender Samuels ordered bed rest, and bed rest it shall be.”

  “But—”

  The woman’s expression brooked no argument, and Karigan held her tongue. In moments they were back in her room, and the woman helped her into bed, her assistance gentle in contrast to her brusque manner. As Karigan sank into the mattress, she had to admit it was good to be off her bad leg.

  “I don’t know what they did to you at the asylum or why,” the woman said, clucking as she observed Karigan’s bandaged wounds. “One hears such horrid stories. But you are safe now, free of that wretched institution.”

  “But where am I?”

  The woman paused with the covers in her hand and raised an eyebrow. Her hair, streaked with gray, was bundled on top of her head, and a monocle hung from a silver chain around her neck.

  “Dear, dear,” the woman said. “I thought you knew, but the mender said you’d be disoriented. You are in your uncle’s house in Mill City. I am his housekeeper, Mirriam.”

  Karigan had never heard of Mill City, and why did they insist she had an uncle here? “Where are my things?”

  “Things? What things?”

  “That came with me.”

  “I could not say.”

  As Mirriam busied herself with tucking Karigan in, Karigan realized she was not likely to get much in the way of answers from the housekeeper. Either she did not know the answers, or she’d been ordered to reveal nothing. In that case, Karigan needed to see her “uncle,” whom she assumed to be the professor. That was another question: why would this stranger claim to be her uncle?

  “Now, will you be needing more morphia?” Mirriam asked. “Mender Samuels showed me how to administer it.”

  Karigan closed her eyes, remembering how the morphia had vanquished her pain, made everything so pleasant she did not care about where she was or why. She’d be able to rest without worry, allow her hurts to mend. She almost craved it. Yet she wished to remain alert, not muddle-brained, and discover exactly where she was and figure out how she was to get home and report to her king and the captain. There was much she wished to tell them about Blackveil, the most troubling being the return of Mornhavon. She hoped once more that her companions had not been harmed by the shattering of the looking mask and were making their way home even now. The morphia was a tempting escape, but she could not allow herself to be seduced by it. No, she needed answers first.

  “No, no morphia,” she finally replied. Was that a look of approval on Mirriam’s face?

  “Then tea with extract of willow ought to do you,” she replied. “Are you hungry? I can have breakfast brought up.”

  Karigan was, but she said, “I’d like to see my—my uncle.”

  “You will see him when he wishes you to,” Mirriam said, hands on hips. “He is a very busy man. Meanwhile I’ll send Lorine up with your breakfast.” She glanced under the bed. “And if you can walk, you can use the privy two doors down, eh? But don’t let me find you wandering the halls. Mender Samuels would not approve.”

  Karigan nodded, and when Mirriam strode from the room, she exhaled in relief. Mirriam seemed to take up a lot of space and air.

  Karigan would have to be patient and go along with whatever game these people were playing. They appeared to be concerned with her well-being, and the rest couldn’t but help her body, which had been so abused in Blackveil. Another point in their favor, at least in Mirriam’s, was that the morphia had not been forced upon her. Considering the lethargic quality it produced, it would be an easy way to control her. Instead, she’d simply been urged not to wander the hallways, an admonition she’d likely ignore if she wanted to learn more about this world and its people, and locate her belongings. She’d just have to make sure she wasn’t caught in the process. Mirriam did not strike her as a woman who would easily forgive disobedience.

  She gazed at the sunlight falling through her window and wondered what her fellow Riders were up to, if anyone missed her. Specifically, she wondered if King Zachary noticed her absence, and then she shook her head in an effort to reject such painful, yearning thoughts.

  Her door opened slowly as the maid she’d seen earlier bac
ked in with a tray laden with covered dishes. In contrast to Mirriam, the young woman moved softly. Her name, Mirriam had said, was Lorine. She brought the tray over and helped settle it across Karigan’s lap.

  “Your breakfast, miss.”

  Lorine removed the covers from the dishes and steam rose, the scents of bacon and eggs making Karigan’s stomach rumble. And there was toast slathered with jam, a pot of tea, and a generous scoop of butter melting into a mound of fried potatoes.

  “If you need anything else, miss, just ring the bell.”

  Karigan glanced up and noted that the headscarf did more than just cover Lorine’s hair, it concealed scarring that puckered at her temple.

  “Thank you,” Karigan murmured. “I’m hungry enough that I may eat the dishes and tray, too.”

  But Lorine was already on her way out of the room. Karigan sighed and ate as she had not eaten since the equinox when she crossed the wall into Blackveil. Hardtack this was not.

  As starved as she’d been, though, she did not even come close to eating the dishes or tray. She’d subsisted on so little for so long that it did not take much to fill her stomach. She gazed at the remaining food with regret, but did not think she could possibly handle another mouthful without bursting, so she rang the bell and sipped her tea.

  It was not, to her surprise, Lorine, or even Mirriam, who answered her summons. When the door opened, it was the professor who peered in at her, then stepped inside. He was halfway across the room and looked like he was about to speak when Lorine appeared in the doorway behind him.

  “Sir? I—” Lorine’s eyes were wide and her voice quavered.

  The professor turned to her. “Not to worry, my dear, I happened to be almost at the door when I heard the bell ring. You were very prompt.”

  Lorine curtsied, but looked flustered, especially when the professor handed Karigan’s tray to her. It was clear the maid was not accustomed to her employer helping her.

  “Do you require more tea?” he asked Karigan.

  She shook her head.

  “Very well. Off with you, Lorine. If we’ve need, we shall call.”

  Lorine bowed her way out of the room, tray in hand. The professor watched after her for a moment. “Poor thing is still nervous after all these years that she might make a mistake,” he said. “She was a mill slave before I brought her here, you know, and mistakes aren’t tolerated in the mills.”

  Karigan’s mouth gaped open. Mill slaves? Slavery was outlawed in Sacoridia. What a strange place this was, and what a horrifying institution it permitted. She wondered what was being milled that it required slave labor.

  The professor dragged a chair to her bedside. Closer up, there was a wolfish aspect to his appearance, his coarse hair shot through with salt and pepper strands, his piercing eyes and direct gaze.

  “Are you rested well enough for some company?” he asked.

  “Yes!”

  He smiled beneath his mustache at her emphatic answer. “I believe we’ve much to talk about, and it has not been easy waiting these three days as you slept.”

  Three days, Karigan thought, glad that she had declined another dose of the morphia, though she thought the healing sleep had probably done her much good.

  “Are you the one who is supposed to be my uncle?” she asked.

  His smile grew even broader. “I am indeed your uncle,” he said, “at least for the purpose of keeping you safe.”

  GOODGRAVE

  “Allow me to introduce myself properly.” The professor rose and with a half-bow, said, “I am Bryce Lowell Josston, adjunct professor of licensed archeology to the Imperial University.” And he sat once again.

  Archeology. The term was not well known in Karigan’s world, but she had visited enough museums to recognize it. “You dig up old things.”

  “That is quite right, my dear, and study the artifacts so my colleagues and I may understand the past.”

  “I’m afraid I have not heard of your Imperial University,” Karigan replied. “In fact, all I know about where I am is that this place is called Mill City.”

  “What is your name and from where do you hail?” the professor asked, his gaze on her sharpening.

  Karigan returned his gaze no less keenly. She wanted to trust but was not sure how much. Still, she was a Green Rider whose embassy made her a representative of the king, which meant she should not hide but declare herself, especially in the presence of someone who seemed intent on helping her.

  “My name is Karigan G’ladheon. I am a king’s messenger, a Green Rider, from the realm of Sacoridia. I noticed you have some furnishings in your house that are from Sacoridia, which tells me you are not unfamiliar with my country.”

  When she had said her name, he leaned forward staring right into her eyes, squinting as if to divine something about her, and then opened his mouth to speak. But instead, he clamped it shut and rose abruptly from his chair to pace as though deeply unsettled.

  Karigan watched as he walked furrows across the floorboards, his hands clasped behind his back, his posture stooped. He spoke as if to himself. “Delusional. Delusional is the only rational explanation. But the objects. Those appear to be authentic.” He paused once more, pivoting toward her. “The objects. How did you come by them?”

  “If you are referring to my belongings,” she replied, her irritation flaring, “the crystal I inherited from my mother, and the walking cane was a gift. I would like them back, please, and my uniform, too.”

  “You do not claim the winged horse brooch?”

  He could see it? Another indication magic was not working here. Rider brooches had spells of concealment on them so that only other Riders could see them.

  “The brooch is my badge of office.”

  He leaned over her, the friendly smile absent from his face. “Do not lie to me, girl. You are playing a very dangerous game. Where did you acquire those artifacts?”

  “Who is the one playing games here, I wonder. I am telling you the truth.” If he actually reached out to shake her, which it looked like he wanted to do, she would break his nose. “I demand you return my belongings to me, and that you present me to an authority of your government.”

  “You would not want me to do that,” he said, backing off without touching her. “Tell me,” he continued, “who is the king you serve?”

  “Zachary Hillander.”

  “Zachary the first, or the second?”

  “There is only one Zachary.”

  “And his queen?”

  Karigan raised her eyebrow. Did he believe there was more than one Zachary, or was he testing her? “He is not married, though he is betrothed to Lady Estora Coutre.”

  “Coutre,” the professor murmured, looking as if he might faint. Then he grew sharp and intense all over again. “Where did you learn this information? Who told you?”

  “I am a Green Rider,” Karigan said through gritted teeth. “I serve Zachary, the king of Sacoridia. The betrothal is general knowledge.”

  The professor slid weakly into his chair, all intensity vanishing. “My dear, King Zachary and Queen Estora have not reigned for one hundred and eighty-six years.”

  Karigan’s mouth dropped open. “One hundred . . . ?”

  “And eighty-six,” the professor supplied, nodding. “I can only conclude you are a very disturbed young woman, delusional as I said. But how you acquired information and artifacts of our history that are forbidden is another matter entirely.”

  “This is Sacoridia—the mask brought me forward,” Karigan said with a start but maybe less surprised than she might have been, for she had traveled in time before, though never this far forward. Considering the involvement of the looking mask in all this, she shouldn’t be surprised at all. Still, discovering oneself in a future time was a bit of a jolt. But how far forward had she come? When had the reign of Zachary ended relative t
o her entering Blackveil and smashing the looking mask?

  “There was no mask among your items,” the professor said, “and how one would . . . bring you forward is a notion I do not understand.”

  Karigan didn’t understand it herself, but the mask had been an object of great power. She said no more of it, however, and would not speak of her ability to cross thresholds, to step into other times. He’d only think her more mad than he already did. If this future was without magic, then how would he believe her anyway? Not to mention, Rider abilities were not discussed outside the messenger service.

  “You are correct,” the professor continued. “This is Sacoridia, though it is no longer called such, and it would be best if you did not say any of these names to anyone. The land that was once called Sacoridia has been incorporated into the Serpentine Empire.” His gaze searched her face. “I’d say you were a ghost, but you are all too real. I’ve seen the wounds of your flesh.” He pointed at her plaster encased wrist. “Ghosts don’t wear casts. You must be a scholar, then, of secret history, to know these things. Rare for a woman to be of a scholarly bent, but not unheard of. A scholar then, with a sickness of the mind. It appears my claim that I’d removed you from the asylum is rather apt.”

  There were times, Karigan thought, that she wouldn’t argue with the idea that she’d a “sickness of the mind,” but this was not one of them. “I want my things back,” she said. And somehow she’d have to discover a way to return to her own time. Traveling to the future explained both the strangeness of this world and its similarities with her own, but it looked to be a dangerous future. And the empire? Did this mean Mornhavon had overcome all to conquer her homeland?

  “I have placed your artifacts in safe keeping,” the professor said. “It would not be prudent to leave them lying around. I am shocked no one found you before we did, elsewise you’d be in Inspector custody, or in the hands of Adherents.” He shuddered. “Good thing about the asylum story. Now no one will take your ravings about Green Riders or the old realm seriously, though I warn you not to speak of it at all. The emperor forbids that aspect of history, and he has spies everywhere.”