Gray light provided dim illumination through the barred windows high above. As Karigan made her way around the back of the stage after Cade, she saw that the mule and Raven had been dozing, but with her arrival, Raven perked up and whickered.
“Cade,” she said, sounding as tired as she felt, “why do you meet in an auction house for slaves?”
“Abandoned auction house,” he replied. “It closed years ago, and the trade moved across the canal to the horse market in the center of town. This location, when we use it, reminds us of what we are fighting for.”
“To free the slaves?” The dream images of so many terrified people penned up in the cellar to be bought and sold came back to her.
“To free us all.”
Karigan checked Raven’s girth and untied him from the railing. “And those men downstairs? They are . . . opposition?”
Cade stowed his lantern in a saddlebag. “Yes, but a different opposition. The real folk of the empire, the laborers, the merchants, the Dregs. Not the elite like the professor and his friends, who have gotten nowhere. Jax, Thadd, and Jonny? They see the professor’s opposition as a bunch of useless old men, and as much as I love the professor, I’m beginning to agree. Just seems like there is never enough of us, though, or power enough, to oppose the might of the empire. Too many are too scared to go against the empire, as well they should be.”
Karigan leaned against the railing while Cade tightened the straps of his mule’s gear. The gray light revealed paint peeling off walls and debris strewn across the floor. She imagined the room thronging with people bidding on human livestock.
“I once told you,” she said, “how in the Long War women took up weapons to fight Mornhavon the Black because so many of the men had perished in battle.”
Cade paused what he was doing. “Yes . . . ?”
“Don’t exclude half the empire’s population in your efforts. To do so would be very stupid. This is their home, too, and they have, perhaps, more to lose.”
“Well, that half of the population isn’t entirely unrepresented—”
“Do not underestimate what ingenuity and support they could bring to your opposition. And I’m not just talking about cooking your dinner or darning your socks.”
“I don’t—”
“Furthermore, don’t forget those who may be your most ardent supporters.”
Cade stood there just staring at her.
“The slaves,” she told him. “Remember? The ones you want to free? They have more to fight for than anyone.” Free us, the ghost slaves murmured in her mind.
“But they—they don’t know how to—”
“How to work?” Karigan snapped. He looked stung by her response. “They may be uneducated, but that doesn’t mean they’re stupid. And some must know how to fight. If I recall, many are captives from rebellious areas of the empire. Wouldn’t some of them have a military background? Don’t you think they know how to fight, and willingly, if it’s against the empire?”
The gray in the windows lightened subtly. Doves cooed in broken panes of glass.
“It is not so simple,” Cade said quietly.
“Perhaps,” Karigan replied. “After all, the empire is a powerful state, and it can’t be taken down with ease. But you are sounding very like the professor, finding excuses not to act.”
Cade glowered at her. “Is that all?”
“Pretty much. It’s your rebellion. I’m just observing from the outside. After all, I have my own problems—a riddle to solve, an Eletian to rescue, and a home to find my way back to.”
Cade bowed his head, gazing at the reins in his hands. “You are so determined to leave us?”
“If you are asking that question, then you have not heard what I’ve been telling you. Cade, if I can reach home, maybe there is some way I can—I can affect what has happened here. If I get home, maybe I can help prevent the empire from rising in the first place.”
If only, she thought derisively. As if she were so powerful. If she were able to get home, wouldn’t the events in this future have changed already? No, she must not think in terms of the paradoxes—it would only drive her mad, make her lose hope.
“Then,” Cade said, “perhaps I can come with you.”
Karigan’s mouth dropped open, but before she could think of something to say, he was leading his mule away toward the other end of the building.
She hurried to follow, Raven bobbing his head eagerly beside her, as ready to leave the deserted building as she.
Would Cade be able to come with her? she wondered. Through time? Give up his own world, everything he knew, for hers?
She’d seen his longing for the old realm at the Heroes Portal, but she thought that, just maybe, she might have something to do with it, too.
A MAP OF THE CAPITAL
Karigan and Cade did not encounter trouble as they, along with many city denizens, moved through the early morning murk. The fog was thicker than ever, and people hurried to and fro on the streets with hoods drawn up or the brims of hats pulled down low. These were the earliest of workers, Cade told her; the ones who opened up shops, lit the lamps, tended the locks on the canal system, and fixed the machines in the mills.
Cade rode with his collar turned up and dark hair lank against his face. He’d a night’s growth of beard, a swollen lip and bruises, and he looked more than a little disreputable.
They had hardly spoken once they’d left the old slave market. He was now more the terse, guarded Cade she’d come to know. Silent as a Weapon, she realized, but now he looked like a bedraggled man on a mule. She’d never seen a Weapon ride a mule—until now. Those at the Heroes Portal had validated his status, so yes, he was a Weapon on a mule. She was so tired the thought almost made her burst out laughing.
He rode with her as far as the professor’s house, but did not rein his mule onto the drive. “I will see you soon,” he said.
She did not know what to say. They’d been through much during the night, but no words seemed adequate. Raven danced beneath her, sensing his grain bucket nearby.
“I’ll see you,” Karigan said quietly, but Cade was already riding Widow Hettle’s mule back down the street at a steady jog.
When she led Raven into the stable, Luke nearly pounced on her.
“There you are, there you are! Where have you been?”
“I couldn’t sleep,” Karigan replied, drawing on the excuse she’d planned earlier.
“Couldn’t sleep?” There was a tightness to Luke’s voice as though he wanted to scream at her and only protocol restrained him. “Don’t you know how dangerous it is to go out on your own and at such hours?”
“I was not alone.”
“You weren’t . . . ?”
“Mr. Harlowe was with me.”
“He was? I thought he knew better than that. I thought he was more sensible.”
Karigan smiled at him. “He was lovely.” Let Luke make of that statement what he would. Then she decided to build on it, encourage Luke’s direction of thought. “Please don’t tell my uncle. I—I don’t know what he’d think if he found out I was alone with Cade—I mean, Mr. Harlowe—all night.”
“Oh, Miss Goodgrave.” Luke looked like he wanted to yank all the hair out of his head. “You know I can’t lie to the professor.”
“You don’t have to lie, Luke. Just don’t tell him. I can’t imagine how he’d react if he found out you let me go out on Raven at so late an hour and didn’t stop me.”
Luke just stood there shaking his head as Karigan started to remove Raven’s tack.
“Oh, Miss Goodgrave,” he said. “The Inspectors are thick as a hill of ants in the dark hours. How could you endanger yourself so? How could Mr. Harlowe?”
“We were careful.”
He muttered to himself, but when Karigan reached for a curry comb, he grabbed her wrist.
“No,” he said. “I’ll take care of Raven. We will discuss this again later. But now you change your clothes and go to the house. You get in there before the professor comes down for his breakfast. Hopefully Mirriam is not yet up and about.”
Karigan didn’t waste another moment and did as Luke told her. He would keep her secret, she was sure, then she shook her head. One more secret to layer on top of all the others.
Inside, the only ones who appeared to be up and about were the cooks, firing up the ovens to prepare breakfast. She hastened past the kitchen and all the way to her room without being seen.
When she reached her room, she threw herself into bed and fell asleep before she could even finish the phrase, The scything moon is held prisoner in the chamber of forgotten days . . .
She dreamed she was taking tea with Yates. “Yates,” she mumbled.
They sat at a table draped in a lacy white cloth with a silver tea service between them, and plates of fancy tea cakes and scones. Yates paid her no heed for he was intent on sketching in his journal . . .
“What is it you draw?” She was so tired, even in the dream, that it was difficult to make her mouth form words properly. She felt deadened.
He did not reply. It was then she realized their tea table was surrounded by the dusky environs of Blackveil Forest, shadowed limbs writhing around them, and pairs of malicious eyes glowing from behind tree trunks and in the snarled brush.
Why am I here? she wondered.
She reached for the teapot, but it had transformed into a looking mask—not the perfectly smooth oval mask that had encased the tumbler’s head at the king’s masquerade, no. No, it was riddled with spidery cracks, and when she touched it, it fell to pieces, so many shards glimmering in the middle of the table.
She picked one up and held it to her eye. In it she beheld the universe, stars piercing black emptiness. She traveled, the stars sweeping by, falling ever more distant, racing away. To where was she traveling? Why?
She gripped the table to steady herself, but the shard of the looking mask stayed in her eye so that she still hurtled through nothingness.
Out of her other eye, however, she could still see Yates sketching obliviously in his journal.
“Help me,” she told him between gritted teeth. “Make it stop.”
He paused, and looked at her with mirror eyes. All the beasts of the forest who had been watching stared at her with mirror eyes.
Karigan sat up in her bed with a muffled scream and clawed at her eye. It took her several seconds to realize she was awake and her vision was normal. It took even longer for her quickened pulse to slow down. “Gods,” she murmured. Shaken, she fell back into her pillows and drew her covers back up.
Her room had lightened, and when the bells tolled in the city, they rang six times. She’d been asleep maybe an hour, hour and a half. What had brought on the dream? Why hadn’t she dreamed of the tombs or heard the spirit voices of slaves? She thought to pull out her mirror shard and look into it—put it up to her eye—but after the dream, she feared what she’d see. She snuggled beneath the safety and warmth of her blankets, and before she knew it, she became heavy with sleep once more.
• • •
It seemed like she’d barely drifted off when she was roused by Lorine’s arrival to ready her for breakfast. A good hot bath helped wake her up, but by the time she reached the dining room, breakfast was already underway. The professor and his students all politely stood at her entrance, except Cade who was nowhere to be seen. Where was he? Had he gotten home safely?
“Good morning,” she murmured, and took her place at the end of the table opposite the professor. The gentlemen sat, and the professor, his usual aloof self, was quickly nose-deep into his paper of news. The students resumed the conversation she had presumably interrupted, and she turned her attention to the plate of eggs and sausage Lorine brought her. She sipped tea, her reflection in the dark liquid reminding her of mirror eyes. She set it aside hastily and decided to worry about Cade and where he might be, which turned out to do anything but calm unsettled nerves. She did not listen to the students at all, until she caught the word “circus.” She looked up and listened attentively.
“Does the paper say anything about it, Professor?” Mr. Card asked.
“Eh?” the professor peered over the top of a page.
“The circus. I heard it’s packing up.”
“Oh. Yes. The paper only says it’s ending its season here and moving on.” With that, the professor returned to his reading.
“I heard the Eletian is going to the Capital,” Mr. Stockwell said, “to show him off to the people there.”
Karigan almost dropped her fork with its piece of sausage impaled on the tines, her attention now focused on the students.
“Wish they’d exhibited him here,” Mr. Ribbs said. “Who knows if he’s the real thing.”
“Oh, he’s got to be authentic,” Mr. Card replied, “or Dr. Silk wouldn’t bother with him. Dr. Silk found him and owns him, so it’s not surprising the Eletian would be heading to the Capital. I heard the Eletian will be a gift to the emperor himself.”
“Heard Dr. Silk will be accompanying him.”
The professor remained glued to his paper, making no indication he was aware of the topic of conversation. Karigan, however, was more than aware. If they were readying to move Lhean, she could no longer wait. She had to find out the professor’s decision on whether the opposition would help her rescue Lhean. Whatever the answer, time was running short, and she must act.
The students had moved on to other topics: Who would supervise the excavation in the Old City during Dr. Silk’s absence? What artifacts had been found? Nothing notable as yet, it turned out, since the drill destroyed most everything in its way.
“They’ve got a hundred slaves just to sift the tailings,” Mr. Stockwell said.
“I heard fifty,” Mr. Card countered.
The two began arguing over numbers.
Would the professor help her rescue Lhean? she wondered again. Would Cade?
“Excuse me,” she said. When they did not hear her over their argument, she tried again more loudly. “Excuse me.” Unaccustomed as the students were to her speaking to them during breakfast, they gazed at her in surprise, as if she had awakened from the sleep of the dead and arisen from one of the circus’s sarcophagi. Even the professor peered at her over his paper.
“Where is Mr. Harlowe this morning?” she asked.
Mr. Card shrugged. “Said he had some personal business to attend to and took the morning to do it.”
Karigan was so relieved to hear this that she almost missed the young men’s snickering about Cade’s bruised face and their speculation over how he must have gotten in a drunken brawl last night.
Let them believe it, she thought. Better that than the truth.
Lorine entered the dining room and sidled nervously over to the professor. She whispered in his ear.
“Eh?”
Lorine whispered some more.
The professor tossed his paper on the table and stood abruptly, his brow furrowed. He followed Lorine out of the dining room and down the hall, Karigan and the students watching curiously after him. No one interrupted the professor from his paper without good cause.
A minute later, his roar shook the whole house. “ARHYS!”
Karigan and the students looked at one another stunned. When had the professor ever raised his voice so?
There was a patter of light footfalls down the hall, no doubt Arhys’, followed by the professor’s angry tones rumbling in an upbraiding, the actual words of which they couldn’t quite make out. Arhys’ shrill protestations countered the professor, and then there was silence. Lorine reappeared in the dining room.
“Miss Goodgrave? Your uncle would see you now in the library.”
What was this about? Karigan w
ondered, doubly startled. She set down her piece of toast and followed Lorine out and down the hall to the library. Inside, she discovered a red-faced professor staring down at Arhys. The girl turned and pointed at Karigan, a malicious expression on her face.
“She did it! I saw her using the atlas lots. She tore it up.”
Karigan saw that the object of the argument was on the floor, its pages ripped out and strewn about.
The professor gazed at Karigan. “Is this true?”
Of all the idiotic things. “Yes, I have been looking through the atlas of late. Lorine saw me. It is not true that I damaged it. Why would I do so?”
The professor glanced at Arhys. “Why would Miss Goodgrave damage the atlas, girl?”
“Because! Because she wants to get me in trouble! She hates me.”
“That’s absurd,” the professor replied. “It’s rather the other way around, I should think.”
“You hate me, too! Ever since she came!”
“That’s not—”
“You give her nice things, and I just got these old, ugly dresses. And you take her places, even secret places. Mr. Harlowe, too.”
Both Karigan and the professor stilled. Had the girl witnessed their disappearances through the secret door in the library? Lorine looked on, uncomprehending.
“It’s not fair!” In a final bout of rage, Arhys kicked the remains of the atlas, scattering the pages.
The professor snatched her arm. “That is quite enough. You come with me, young lady.” He dragged her from the library, she wailing all the way. When she was gone, Lorine and Karigan both sighed.
“It’s about time the professor took action,” Lorine declared. “That girl has become a little monster.”
And not fit to be a queen, Karigan thought. Certainly not until she learned how not to be such a brat.
Lorine knelt to start picking up the pages of the destroyed book. Karigan did so, as well.
“Oh, Miss Goodgrave, you do not have to help.”
“I’d like to.”
The two worked in silence for a time, until Lorine asked, “What was Arhys getting on about when she mentioned the professor taking you to secret places?”