The Mirror Prince

by Malan, Violette

  “Arcosa? That would have been in Nyl-aLyn’s time, the old Tarkin.”

  Parno nodded. The Marked woman had left Dhulyn and was making her way toward the gangplank, and the section of deck on which he and the captain stood. “This business with the Marked, would that be the new man’s idea?”

  “Not from what I hear, eh? But it’s all he can do to prevent an open breach between those as support the New Believers and those who would just as soon let be. I’ll tell you straight, since it’s you I speak to Lionsmane, and I leave here on the next tide, no good will come of any persecution of the Marked, it’s madness, pure and simple.”

  Huelra turned, fixing his eyes on Parno’s. “I tell you plain, it goes against my heart to let you off here. Money or no money, I’d rather you stayed aboard. The whole of the west country was flooded last spring, an earthquake leveled Petchera in the summer—and there’s rumors the Cloud People are looking to break their treaty. Imrion’s luck has turned bad, you mark my words.”

  Parno laughed to cover the chill that had come over him, raising the hairs on his arms. “Why, captain, we’re Mercenary Brothers looking for work. What better place for us to go than a country with trouble coming?”

  Anything else the captain might have said was cut off as he turned to greet the Marked woman, who, having made her way up the gangplank was hovering at the captain’s elbow. Parno nodded to them both and stepped aside, knowing he’d learn nothing more just now, and thinking it was high time he joined Dhulyn with the horses.

  Bloodbone and Warhammer showed every sign of putting their sea voyage behind them. As Parno walked up, Bloodbone was snuffling Dhulyn’s shoulder, but both horses were alert, flicking their ears, bobbing their heads and generally taking an interest in what was going on around them, as battle-trained mounts tended to do.

  Dhulyn was doing the same, though in her own peculiar way. Still holding fast to the horses’ bridles, she was watching a group of children play a skipping game farther along the pier, not far from where she stood with the horses. Having had no real childhood herself, it had always seemed to Parno natural that Dhulyn showed a great curiosity in the childhoods of others. She smiled as he neared her, her eyes still watching the children’s game.

  “It’s the same rhyme,” she said. “That sweeping rhyme the children were singing in the street in Destila.”

  “You sure? Those kids were playing a game with blindfolds.”

  “Nevertheless, it’s the same rhyme, same cadence, same consonance. I’m curious, how do these rhymes and games get transplanted from one place to another?”

  Parno shrugged. Dhulyn had spent a year in a Scholar’s Library before taking her final vows to the Mercenary Brotherhood, and she’d never lost the habit of making these scholarly observations. “Adults like you see them, I would suppose, and carry them home for their children, like new toys.”

  “It would be interesting to trace the songs and the games back, try to find the point of origin from which they spread.”

  “You think such a point could be found?” Parno said, smiling. His years with Dhulyn had taught him that many the countries of the eastern continent told folk-tales and stories of amazing similarity. Why, it didn’t take a Scholar to see that the God Dreamer of the Western Horde was the same deity known as the Sleeping God here in the Letanian Peninsula.

  “Unless it goes back to the time of the Caids, then it will appear to have sprung up everywhere at once.” Dhulyn shrugged one shoulder. “Ah well, a dissertation subject for some Scholar no doubt. And meanwhile, here we are back in the land of the Sleeping God.”

  “The Sleeping God’s worshiped everywhere,” Parno said, taking Warhammer’s rein from her.

  “But here, on the Letanian Peninsula, he is the first god, is he not?”

  “The Brotherhood recognizes all gods,” he reminded her.

  “And all gods recognize the Brotherhood.” She turned fully to look at him. “I told Huelra where to send our packs. Has the place changed very much? Do you remember the way to the inn you’ve been telling me about?”

  “What do you think?” he said, grinning as he took Warhammer’s bridle from her.

  “I think you got lost in our cabin last night.”

  Parno swung, Dhulyn ducked, and the children looked over from their game, excitement plain in their faces—as was the disappointment when no fight broke out. Dhulyn, grinning for the benefit of the children, tilted her chin toward the Catseye.

  “What’s that about? The woman in green?”

  “When we get to the inn,” he answered, turning away.

  They led the horses away from the Catseye, dodging seamen and dockworkers loading and unloading from the ships and fishing boats tied up along the pier. It really was too crowded, Parno told himself, to tell Dhulyn what he’d learned from Captain Huelra. That could wait until they could find some private corner at the Hoofbeat Inn. And besides, he needed to think a bit, find a way to tell her what they were heading into so she wouldn’t just turn around and get back onto the ship. Dhulyn had been uneasy with the idea of returning to Imrion ever since he’d suggested it, looking for a reason not to come. And he couldn’t be sure where a civil war might weigh on the scale of come or go.

  The horses were spoiling for exercise, but the streets close to the docks proved to be so uneven that Dhulyn suggested they continue afoot. Parno was just leading the way down a narrow lane when his Partner froze.

  “Did you hear that?” she said, her rough voice unusually loud in the cold air.

  “The market?” Parno said dryly, bracing his feet as Warhammer, not as well trained as Dhulyn’s Bloodbone, shied slightly, pulling him forward.

  Dhulyn held up one finger to silence him and listened again, eyes narrowed, head tilted. Parno shrugged, wishing he’d worn his heavier cloak, and waited for Dhulyn to agree with him. The main market, if he remembered correctly, was off to the east, closer to the saltworks, but the barrows and stalls of the fish market, the one that served the docks and the ships, could be seen off to the other side of the pier they’d just left. Even this late in the afternoon, the buzz of the buyers and sellers, the calls of the merchants hawking their wares, even the sound of an optimistic flute, were still clear in the crisp air. But if Dhulyn thought she’d heard something else . . .

  “There!” Dhulyn’s head jerked up and she swung herself into the saddle urging Bloodbone with her knees into an opening between two houses, turning away from the docks. Parno was mounted and only half a length behind his Partner before Bloodbone’s tail disappeared from view.

  The alleys between the houses and buildings in this quarter of Navra were none too clean, and the streets were not much better, Parno found as he followed Dhulyn out into a wider avenue. The freezing and thawing of early spring had heaved the cobbles and paving stones and left them slick underfoot. Even the dirt lanes were more than half slippery mud. Not the best conditions to be racing your horses, but Parno knew better than to argue with his Partner. He ducked an overhead sign with a swallowed curse. He was willing to wager practically anything he owned that it wouldn’t be her horse that went down as she rode it much too fast around the next tight corner.

  And he still had not heard anything out of the ordinary.

  The laboring breath and clattering hooves of their horses made enough noise that the few people they encountered had plenty of time to get out of their way. Market day it might be, but away from the market itself and the busy areas around the docks, most townspeople finished their business early in weather like this; the day was turning cold, and the sky promised snow. One tall old man, well-wrapped in a red wool cloak, looked up in surprise as Dhulyn Wolfshead galloped past him, and called out angrily, not noticing the tattoos of their Mercenary’s badges, even though both she and Parno were bareheaded from habit.

  They turned into a street of better class houses, a few of them as much as four stories tall with the featureless lower walls that spoke of interior gardens or courtyards, or both. Not so
fine as nobles’ houses, to Parno’s experienced eye these looked like the homes of well-to-do merchants. And suddenly Parno smelled smoke, and saw as they rounded yet another corner a three-story house with flames dancing in two upper windows that gave on the street.

  Even now, he could not hear the sound of the fire, and he knew that Dhulyn—Outlander or no—could not possibly have heard it either. This burning house must have been some Vision she had Seen.

  The usual crowd of people who gather out of nowhere at any sign of trouble were milling around in the irregular square in front of the burning building, but something was wrong—more wrong than just a house on fire. Parno frowned as he urged Warhammer forward. He’d seen many a mob in his time as a Mercenary, and this one wasn’t behaving normally. Those closest to the fire acted as he would expect, some craning for a better view, others pointing and yelling—shock and excitement apparent in faces and stances. As for those farther away, far too many were standing far too still, hands hanging limp, heads all, as he now realized, at the same angle. And aside from some shoving, and what looked like a fistfight breaking out on the far side of the crowd, no one was doing anything. Not putting out the fire, not bringing water, not even helping to drag out furniture. In fact, two men seemed to be preventing someone from coming out of the house. Parno edged forward into the opening Dhulyn had made in the crowd just as a man put his hand on Warhammer’s bridle. Parno bared his teeth as the man looked up. His eyes widened when he saw the red and gold tattoo reaching from Parno’s temples to back above his ears, and he backed away.

  Closer now, Parno could hear the flames as they ate through the house wall, blistering the stucco to the right of the doorway. A woman at the front of the crowd threw a stone at the upper window on the left, screaming something Parno couldn’t make out.

  Flames or no, Dhulyn rode Bloodbone right through to the front of the house, swung her leg over the pommel of her saddle, and jumped off, knocking the two men who’d been blocking the doorway sprawling over one another. The darker of the two sprang to his feet, a cudgel ready in his fist. Dhulyn stepped in close to him, knocked his arm away with her left forearm, brought her booted heel down sharply on his instep, and drew her sword from the sheath that hung down her back. All without taking her eyes from the doorway.

  A young girl burst out of the now unguarded door, but was choking too much to actually speak.

  “Children upstairs,” Dhulyn called out to him as Parno drew rein beside her, using Warhammer’s size and wickedly rolling eyes to push the crowding people farther back.

  “I’ll go,” he said, tossing her his reins. Demons and perverts, he thought, not for the first time thankful that he didn’t See what Dhulyn sometimes Saw. Children. He pulled his feet from the stirrups and, steadying himself with his hands on the pommel, hopped up on the saddle until he was balancing on Warhammer’s back, wishing he was wearing something with more grip than his boots.

  “Keep your eyes open.” He didn’t have to tell her to watch the crowd. She’d have noticed before he did that something was amiss.

  Out of the corner of her eye Dhulyn Wolfshead watched Parno make the small jump that got his fingers hooked on the windowsill above them. The muscles in his arms bulged as he drew himself up, swung one leg over the sill, and was gone into the smoky darkness within the house.