The Mirror Prince

by Malan, Violette

  Still, half an hour, give or take a few minutes, and they would be close enough to the crossroads for her to Move them. Once in the Australian outback, they’d be safe. The Portal there was long destroyed, in the last Cycle according to what the Songs told, though the crossroads still existed. No Rider, and precious few humans, would think to look for them there.

  Of course, then, instead of collapsing into a warm bed to nurse her bruises and rest her sore muscles, she’d have to think about what to tell the Exile. Anyone else would be satisfied with having his life saved, but not him—oh, no. All the answers she had, she’d promised him. She’d told him the truth before, more than once, and he’d believed her, every time. But something told Cassandra that Max Ravenhill wasn’t going to be so easy to convince. In the old days, perfectly ordinary people were ready to believe in the strange truths that were outside their own experience. In this day, even bards and prophets weren’t likely to recognize truth when they heard it.

  Besides, she’d promised herself that she’d never tell him this particular truth again.

  Cassandra reached the end of the platform and peered over the edge. She was prepared to jump down into the track bed, but though the old iron ladder was much rustier than she remembered, it held firm when she gave it a good kick. She swung herself around and let herself down, rung by rung, and waited at the bottom of the ladder so that Max could see his way down.

  Enough light shone from her armor that Cassandra could just make out, about two yards away, the bottom of the narrow, concrete steps leading up out of the tunnel into the maintenance shaft for the station adjacent to this one, the real station. Cassandra squinted. Was there a shadow where one had never been before? She let go of the iron ladder and walked closer to the steps.

  “Hey.”

  Cassandra ignored him; even concentrating as she was, she could tell Max was annoyed, not scared. Let him move faster if he didn’t want to be left in the dark. Damn. One of the support columns had crumbled since the last time she had been through here and blocked the opening at the top of the stair. She took a step back and bumped into Max.

  “Can’t you Move it?”

  It took Cassandra a second to realize what he was saying.

  “We’re Riders, we can only Move what lives.” She touched the rubble gingerly, laying the palm of her hand carefully on a large chunk of concrete. It was old, and there was enough natural rock and sand in the mix that a Troll could probably shift it, she thought. Where was Diggory when she needed him?

  “Well, we won’t shift this mess ourselves,” Max pointed out, in a warped echo of her own thinking. “Not without a backhoe, anyway.”

  Cassandra worried her bottom lip between her teeth. As much as she might feel like it, there was no arguing with that. And where there was a choice between two dangers . . .

  “There’s another way,” she said as she turned back to retrace their steps, “but we’ll have to go through a tunnel that’s in use.”

  “Somehow I had a feeling that was coming.”

  Max followed Cassandra in silence as she led him back up the ladder to the platform. When they reached the bricked-over opening, she slipped out of her shoulder bag and handed it to him.

  “We’re going to pull this down?”

  She ignored his tone and answered his question. “Can you see up there, at the top of the arch? That bit where it’s darker? Whoever bricked this didn’t bother to fill in the very top. They knew the passageway behind this was being filled, so they were sloppy about it.”

  Max watched, holding her bag, as Cassandra moved nimbly up the wall, finding finger- and toeholds in the crumbling mortar between the old bricks.

  “What use is this to us if it’s filled in?”

  “There’s a crawl space.” She looked down at him, hanging by fingers and toes. “What, no smart remark?”

  Max’s lips twisted in irritation, and only partly because he had been trying to come up with something to say about Riders having to crawl. What did she want from him? Here he thought he’d been holding up pretty well, given the number of impossible things he’d seen and done in the last few hours.

  “I’m not saying I wouldn’t rather be sitting in a nice pub with a pint,” he said. “But if my alternative is the Hunt, I’m willing to concede that there are worse things than crawling in underground tunnels.”

  Cassandra grinned at him. “Glad to see you haven’t lost your sense of humor,” she said, as she reached the top.

  Max fought down another wave of irritation. Whether or not he believed her preposterous assertions, Cassandra certainly acted as if she knew him inside and out.

  And didn’t like him much.

  He watched her wriggle into the dark hole at the top of the arch; her legs waved in the air a couple of times before disappearing. A second later her face appeared in the opening. There was a new smudge obscuring the blood on her left cheek.

  “Pass up my bag.”

  Max picked up the bag and held it up above his head at arm’s length, just high enough for Cassandra to reach it and pull it into the hole with her.

  “Need any help getting up?”

  Max didn’t need to see her face clearly to know she was smiling again. Or smirking, more like it. He shook out his arms and legs and, bending his knees only slightly, jumped up and hooked his fingers in the top layer of brick, inches from Cassandra’s face. He drew himself up, careful to breathe normally, until their noses were almost touching.

  “Want to give me some room here?” he asked, pleased that his voice didn’t show the strain his arms were feeling.

  With the only available light attached to Cassandra, crawling along in the semidarkness took longer than a history professor could have imagined. There wasn’t enough space to get on his hands and knees, and dragging himself along was hard work on the elbows. Max had time to think about the tons of rock—and steam pipes, and rusty support columns, and maybe subway trains—above them, and time to wonder what they would do if they found the other end blocked. It didn’t seem likely that he would be able to turn around in this confined space, and he could only hope that Cassandra could Move them somewhere from here.

  Preferably somewhere aboveground where they could walk to Union Station in the upper air. Or maybe take a cab. Crawling was much harder work than he would have thought, and at one point they passed a spot where they were separated from what must have been live steam lines by only a few inches of concrete.

  Once a train passed nearby, deafening them with the screaming of wheels, and sending an earthquake-sized rumbling through their little space.

  “Finally some luck,” Cassandra said, her voice pale in the quiet left by the train. “That train went through the tunnel we’re heading for. It will be clear for us.”

  Max grunted, trying to keep his breathing steady, and continued to shuffle forward. After what seemed like another mile, he bumped his nose on Cassandra’s bootheel, and swallowed a curse.

  “Here we are,” she said over her shoulder, “Are you ready?”

  “As ready as I’ll ever be,” Max said. He thought about the spot on his side where the Hound had wounded him and wondered if Cassandra would be able to fix him if he were hit by a subway train. Of course, if they were both hit, it wouldn’t matter.

  Max heard a soft thump that could only be Cassandra’s shoulder bag hitting the floor of the tunnel below them. The space had narrowed here, but somehow Cassandra managed to wriggle around so that she could go out feet first. She hung by her fingers for a second before she let go. Max moved forward as quickly as he could so as not to lose the light. He peered out over the edge at her. She was wiping her hands on her jeans.

  Exercise in futility, Max thought; they were both as filthy as crawling through rubble-filled, hundred-year-old tunnels could make them. With some relief Max saw that the electrified third rail was on the side farthest from their exit hole.

  “Max, we haven’t got a lot of time.”

  Max came out of his reverie
with a start. “There isn’t enough room here for me to turn around,” he said. Even if he was limber enough to do it, which he had been when he was six. Maybe. His only option was to go out head first.

  He looked more closely at the wall beneath him and snorted. Of course, the hole they were coming out of was at center of the tunnel, with no wall or support column anywhere near.

  “Wriggle out,” she said. “I’ll catch you.”

  “The hell you will,” he muttered. But really, what choice did he have? He edged forward until he was hanging by his hipbones, the edge of the rough cement cutting painfully into the tops of his thighs. He craned his neck to look at Cassandra, but that movement arched his back too much for balance and he started to slip—

  “Don’t look at me, just reach down.”

  He did as he was told. Two hands clamped painfully around his upper arms, and before he knew it, he had been dragged out of the hole and was being shoved upright.

  “There, that’s better.”

  Max was glad she thought so; he was going to have bruises on his arms to match the ones on the front of his thighs. He looked around. This tunnel was the tidy younger brother of the one in the abandoned station. There were lights here and—

  And a rumbling.

  “Oh, shit,” he said, even as Cassandra knocked the breath out of him, pressing him against the wall with her own body. Max wrapped his arms around her and hung on for dear life.

  Max had an instant to register the feeling of Cassandra’s body pressed against his, thigh against thigh, breasts flattened against his chest; to breathe in the saffron scent of her hair, to realize that her armor was pliable and ever-so-slightly warmer, not colder, than her skin—then the wall of air pushed through the tunnel by the train behind it slammed into them.

  Some indeterminable time later, the world stopped shaking.

  “Max.”

  “Hmmmm.”

  “You have to let go of me.”

  Max loosened his grip just enough to be able to look her in the eyes. “I know what you’re thinking.”

  “Of course you do,” she said in a tired voice. “Bards and Poets always think they know what other people are thinking.”

  “Well, I’m a history teacher, so what does that prove?”

  “It proves you study the wrong kind of history, not to know that Bards and Poets were the history teachers before there were people like you.”

  Max shrugged without letting go of her. She had moved her hands so that her palms were flat against his chest, but she wasn’t pushing him away. “Were they usually right, or wrong?”

  The look Cassandra gave him was as good an answer as any, and Max smiled.

  “Very well, what am I thinking?” she said.

  “You’re thinking that this,” he tightened his hold and moved against her ever so slightly so that she could be in no doubt as to what he meant, “is just a reaction to almost dying . . . several times. It isn’t.” Max’s voice lowered as his teasing tone died away, and he knew that he’d never been more serious. “It isn’t.”

  He felt Cassandra begin to tremble. By the time she was actually laughing out loud, Max let her go and she collapsed to the floor, holding her sides and trying to draw in enough air to take a deep breath.

  “I didn’t think it was that funny.”

  “I’m so sorry, really, my deepest apologies, it’s just,” she took another deep breath. The laughter faded slowly, but it did fade. “That isn’t at all what I expected you to say.”

  “Which was?” Max held out his hand and drew her to her feet.

  “I expected you to tell me what I was thinking.”

  “Which was?” he repeated through clenched teeth.

  The echo of her laughter reappeared for a moment on her face. “Oh, no, Bard you may be, or history teacher as you prefer, but you don’t get my thoughts as easily as that. When we reach safety, I said, and that’s what I meant.”

  “You might reach safety a little faster, Truthsheart, if you were less noisy about it.”

  One second Cassandra was facing him, smile fading on her face, the next she had her back to him, knees bent, sword drawn and point raised to eye level. Max tried to step around her—or at least beside her; whoever it was seemed ready to talk, after all—but no matter how he moved, she managed to stay in front of him.

  The person coming toward them through the shadows created by the uneven lighting loomed grotesque and misshapen. A Gargantua that dwarfed a tunnel big enough to contain a subway train. Max couldn’t shake the chilling feeling that what he saw was actually an indescribable distance away, making the figure horribly larger than he could imagine. And yet, through some trick of perspective, the giant seemed to become smaller and less misshapen as it neared them. Until it stepped into the clear soft light cast by Cassandra’s armor and became much shorter than either Max or Cassandra. Became, in fact, a small boy, complete with beanie cap and skateboard.

  Max shook his head. “I must be more tired than I thought,” he said.

  “Are you well, Younger Sister?” The boy’s voice was the soft croak of a kid with a cold.

  “A little startled, Elder Brother, but otherwise well, I thank you. I thank you also for the true warning you gave me.”

  “You guys know each other?”

  “This is the third time we have met,” Cassandra said.

  “Third time lucky, so they say.” With those words the boy tilted his head to look at Max. “Like yourself, my lord Prince, I am not entirely what I seem.”

  His voice deepened into gravel while he spoke, and by the end of the sentence the childlike seeming had fallen from the boy like a discarded cloak. Max took a step backward as the figure grew taller, wider, until it had to stoop, its shoulders pressing against the top of the subway tunnel. He was the pale gray of limestone, even his eyes, with only the pupils black, even the inside of his mouth, even his sharp teeth.

  Troll, said a voice in Max’s head.

  Max’s lungs felt tight, and then he remembered to breathe. Cassandra touched him on the arm, and he managed not to flinch.

  “Max,” she said, “this is Diggory.”

  Max managed to incline his head to the Troll’s shallow bow.

  “How did you find us?” she said.

  “Think where you are, Truthsheart. The Earth guides me.”

  “And can they find us as well?”

  Damn good question, Max thought, glad of something else to think about. Those were awfully sharp teeth.

  “There are no Solitaries among them, but Those Who Hunt eventually find, and this time I think sooner rather than later. Knowing you make for the crossroads, they are already in the tunnels. I think you must use the Portal; they will not expect that.”

  “I cannot take the Exile through the Portal,” Cassandra said. “The end of the Banishment may be near, but it is not ended. His life would be forfeit and mine as well.”

  “His life’s forfeit here, if the Hunt has its way. Those Who Hunt will follow your Moves, but they cannot follow through the Portal, not without a Rider to help them. Even with my help,” he added when she still hesitated, “you cannot kill them all. It may be that you have no choice.”

  “Wait a minute, no choice about what?”

  Diggory grinned as Cassandra looked back and forth between them, frowning.

  “You’ve said that the Prince’s safety had value above all other things,” she said finally. “Do you hold to that now?”

  “Younger Sister, I do. I will guard your back, Sword of Truth. But we must go now.”

  Cassandra waited a long moment before nodding. “Very well.” She turned to Max and laid a gentle hand on his arm. “Please, trust me.”

  “But—” he turned back to the Troll, and wasn’t really surprised to find the boy Diggory back, skateboard and all.

  “I see you are full of questions, my lord Prince, but I advise you to follow your Warden. The time for answers has not yet come.”

  “That’s what she ke
eps telling me.”

  With Diggory right behind him, Max caught up with Cassandra just as she reached the iron ladder that would let them up onto the platform. He could tell from the color and shape of the tiles, even before he was close enough to read the signs, that they were already at the subway station at Union, only two levels and maybe a hundred yards away from the train station proper.

  At first he was surprised to see the platform empty, but once they were all off the ladder and he could make out the platform clock, he understood. Somehow it had gotten to be after two in the morning; the theaters that kept the downtown streets crowded were long closed, and the bars would have given last call. The train that almost got them must have been empty, on its way to bed in the yards.