by Toby Forward
“Go find,” said Smedge. “Off you go. Find her. Bring her to me.”
Tim bounded off, nose to the ground, delighting in the many scents of the market and the countryside, and always following the scent of Tamrin. How pleased Smedge would be when Tim found her. How pleased Tim would be when Smedge called him a good boy again.
Smedge watched him disappear. He skirted the walls of the college, found back streets, the town middens, the earth closets. He crouched, silent, simple. The creatures of the dank alleys, who had scurried away, stopped noticing him and returned. When all was still he snapped out his arm and seized a rat. He bit off its head, sucked at the neck, tore the stomach open and ripped at it with yellow teeth. Pleasure of rat flooded through him. He shrank, shifted and shaped himself into rat and set off for Boolat with news.
Vengeabil watched Tim disappear, too. The old storeman leaned on the parapet on the tower of the college.
“You’ll need keeping an eye on, young Tim,” he said. ||
Part Five
DOUBLEDEATH
Dragon looked at startled dragon.
Glass reflected steel. The image bounced off the surface and rebounded over and over again.
Starback arced his back, reared up and flexed long talons.
The air was thick with reflected light. The mirrors caught it, threw it back, tossed it with pitiless mimicry, till it meshed and trapped Starback in its net.
The door slammed open. The first kravvin moved into the perplexed space. It hesitated, saw itself, stepped back, recovered and scurried in.
Another followed and another. Starback wheeled, spewed fire and spattered them, staining the nearest mirrors. Reckless of death they poured in, clambering over the ruins of the first. There was not enough fire in the world to destroy them all.
They crammed into the doorway, forbidding escape. They swarmed on the floor, grabbing at Starback. Sharp legs prodded and pierced his skin. Sharp spit from blank mouths stung his eyes. He flapped and rose up and sought an escape.
He looked at himself in a large mirror, trapped and tormented, frightened beyond fear. For a moment it seemed to Starback that, instead of looking at himself, he looked at Sam.
The illusion passed and he saw himself again.
The reality passed and he saw, through the reflecting surface, a room, a route.
With a shriek of anger and pain he flew directly towards the sheet of polished steel, ready to crack his head open on the cold resistance rather than submit to the fury of the kravvins.
Tamrin screamed and the figure stepped through the mirror into the room and seized her.
“Stop. Who are you?” she shouted.
The grip wrenched her wrist. She screamed again, in pain.
A shower of flame sprayed her face. She tumbled down. The figure fell over her and landed beyond.
The creatures behind the glass pressed their no-faces against it. Were they looking through? Could they see her? It seemed they couldn’t pass.
She wheeled her feet, not knowing which way to escape.
The bloodied tailor lay in one way, wet-gasping, eyes wide and weak.
The mirror lay another way, with monsters clawing at the fragile barrier.
The other way lay a hunched form, with scaled skin, fierce talons, smoke-wreathed and unknown.
She clambered to her knees and looked at it.
The smoke began to clear.
The face emerged.
Sam.
Winny watched helplessly as the kravvins broke the barrier and surged forward, attacking her home, her father, and Starback.
She heard the hissing, the screams, the rattling feet on the storeroom. She watched the red army devour the building. Saw the roof torn open, the door penetrated.
“Sam.”
She only dared make an urgent whisper, like a child in the night, desperate for attention, fearful of being heard calling.
Sam moaned and twitched. He flung off the corner of his cloak in his sleeping frenzy. A tongue of flame licked his lips.
“Please, Sam,” she said. “Please. They’re being killed.”
She leaned over to shake him.
The shattering sound of a thousand windows ripped the air.
Winny jumped to her feet, looked back at the house. It was embraced by a rainbow of light. Numberless shards of glass showered down over the storeroom, catching the lamplight and breaking it into a shout of colour.
She held her gaze until the glass settled, the colour faded and fled. She turned back to Sam.
“Sam?”
The boy had gone.
Starback crouched, teeth bared, nostrils wide, eyes of polished yellow stone.
He sprang up, tested his wings, soared high, swooped down, and settled by her in a fret of smoke and flame.
“Where’s Sam?” she shouted. “What’s happening?”
Tamrin couldn’t decide if it was a cloak or wings that covered Sam. She edged nearer.
“Sam?”
He opened his eyes.
She touched his cheek.
“Sam.”
He gasped. She drew back to avoid being licked by the flames.
He sat up. The wings decided to be a cloak. The talons and scales had been only a trick of the half-light.
He looked at her, shook his head, closed his eyes, looked again.
He started to lie down again, exhausted.
Tamrin shook him.
“Sam. Wake up.”
He struggled to sit upright. She helped him to steady himself. He looked at her, looked around and let his eyes settle on something just behind her. Tamrin looked over her shoulder.
Shoddle was grasping his throat with both hands. Blood flowed from between his fingers.
“What’s happened?” asked Sam.
“I stabbed him. In the throat.” She held up the scissors. “It was an accident.”
Sam managed to stand.
“Can we help him?” he asked.
Tamrin indicated the mirror. A legion of kravvins clawed at the polished surface.
“Him first,” said Sam.
Shoddle mouthed sloppily at them. The words drowned in blood. Only the expression on his face revealed his thoughts.
“He doesn’t like you,” said Sam. “Why’s he dressed in rags?”
Shoddle’s neat suit was exposed as a jumble of stitched sacking.
“Never mind. He’s going to die. And I need him to talk to us.”
Sam ripped Shoddle’s left sleeve away and, moving the tailor’s hands to one side, slid it beneath them, winding it round his throat. He leaned back, fingered the weight around his neck, as he always did when he was concentrating.
“Give me the scissors,” he said.
Tamrin didn’t like to hand them over.
“Come on.”
“Can’t I do it?”
“What?”
“Whatever you want them for.”
“Give them to me.”
Tamrin set her mouth into a hard line.
“You never used to be so bossy.”
Sam smiled.
“It’s good to see you again,” he said.
She couldn’t stop herself from smiling back.
Shoddle beat his fist against the floor and made a wet noise of contempt.
Tamrin handed them over and felt as though she was betraying herself.
Sam closed the scissors, held the handles in his fist, and, before Shoddle could flinch away, thrust them into the tailor’s neck.
Tamrin shouted.
Sam felt sick.
Shoddle shrieked, spraying blood over them both. His hands unclenched. He relaxed. The blood had stopped flowing. It seemed to Tamrin that his pain had gone.
“That won’t last for long,” said Sam. “Now, if you want me to do something better you’ll have to talk first.”
Shoddle was instantly sly and aggressive, now that the danger was, for the moment, tamed. He looked at the mirror.
“Come on,” he whispered to th
e kravvins. “Come and get them.”
“Stop that,” said Tamrin. “Or I’ll pull out the scissors and watch you bleed to death.”
“You would, too,” said Shoddle. “I think you would.” He looked at Sam. “You wouldn’t, though.”
“Maybe,” said Sam. “But I wouldn’t stop her.”
Shoddle leaned back.
“I’m too tired to tell you now,” he said. “Finish the job and I’ll tell you.”
Sam walked over to the window and looked at the stars.
“Pull the scissors out,” he said to Tamrin. “We’re wasting our time.”
Tamrin took them by the handle.
“No!” Shoddle screamed.
“Tell us,” said Tamrin. “Who am I? And where did I come from?”
“I was sent for,” said Shoddle. “To make new clothes, expensive ones.” He wasn’t spitting blood any more but his voice still gurgled. “It was not much of a journey, the way soft, the roads good. And the house. When I saw the house—” He tried to rub his hands together but it made him topple over and Sam had to help him to sit upright again. “You’ve got your hands wet,” Shoddle laughed. “Straighten these scissors, will you?”
Sam walked away.
“No? All right. To say it was a big house would not be enough. It was big, and it was fine, with enough rooms for a village to live in. A small village, anyway. And it had a moat, with a little bridge, and there were chimneys shaped like willow catkins. Come to think of it, there were willow catkins on the trees when I got there, so it must have been spring. And I knew I could make a lot of money, at a house like that.”
“Why would they send for you?” asked Tamrin.
Shoddle spat a gout of blood at her.
“Because I’m good. I’m a great tailor. That’s why. Better than you’ll ever know.”
“You should have stuck to that,” she said. “And not tried to cheat with magic.”
He spat again and missed her this time.
Sam looked at the stars.
“Go on,” he said.
“I had a cart,” said Shoddle, “and a pony to pull it. I had bolts of cloth, silk and worsted, linen and fine cotton. I had lace and I had damask. I had brocade. There wasn’t a coat wanted that I couldn’t make. The servants carried it all in and looked after the pony and cart. I had a room to myself, as grand as you could want.”
“Why didn’t they come to your shop?” asked Tamrin. “Why would they want you to be with them in their house?”
“Folk like that don’t go to shops. They bring shops to them. Besides,” his face took on the sly look again, “they were the sort to keep to themselves. They liked secrets.”
“Secrets?” asked Sam.
“All in good time. I have secrets to tell. The lady of the house, she was expecting. The baby was due very soon. I measured the man and took his instructions. Three coats. Three. And leggings and more. I told him it would take a month to do it all. Should I come home and have it sent? He wanted me to stay, so I could make fittings, a tuck here, a dart there. Perfection. I was there best part of a week, and the first jacket was ready for fitting. He came and tried it on, and I made the adjustments. I wanted him to look at it, but there wasn’t a mirror in my workroom. I asked to go to another room, and he brushed me away, saying it wasn’t needed. He could see well enough and it felt right.”
Shoddle paused in his story to look at the mirror to his side. The kravvins still pressed against it, almost motionless now, silent, watchful. The edges had grown blurred.
“Can they see us?” he asked.
“Go on,” said Sam.
Tamrin didn’t like the way the story was going. When she heard of the woman expecting a baby she felt sure it was her mother and equally sure that it wasn’t. She didn’t feel like the child of a rich woman in a big house with a moat and servants. She tried to see if Sam knew that this story was going to be about him as well. He gave no sign.
“Once I saw that there were no mirrors in the house I grew curious. I searched everywhere. Not one. Not in a chamber. Not in a bedroom or a parlour. Not in a corridor. Not a looking glass on a dresser. Even the servants were not allowed a reflection of themselves.
“Above the servants’ rooms there was an attic. I must have been careless. I thought no one had noticed my curiosity. The attic was locked, but needles can do more than sew, and I was soon through the door. You’ve seen attics before?” he asked.
Sam ignored him.
Tamrin told him to get on with his story.
“Attics,” said Shoddle, “embrace lost lives. They hold all the remains of people long gone. Toys and books, unfashionable furniture, dresses too small for women grown stout, letters and bills, boots and shoes, things too precious to throw away, too useless to leave lying around. Not this attic. This attic was empty, quite empty, save for one thing.”
He stopped and put his hand to the scissors.
“Go on,” said Tamrin.
“I have a pain, in my throat,” he said, his voice growing hoarse.
“No you don’t,” said Sam.
Shoddle glared at him.
“How do you know?”
“Because I have the pain in my throat.”
Tamrin had been giving all her attention to Shoddle. She looked now at Sam and understood how he had made the spell to staunch the blood and take away the pain. She saw sweat on Sam’s forehead; his lips were blue. She kicked Shoddle.
“Get on,” she said. “Hurry up or I’ll pull the scissors out and let you die.”
“What was in the room?” whispered Sam. “The attic?”
“What do you think?”
Tamrin couldn’t look at him any more. She stood and joined Sam at the window. She had never seen so many stars. Lowering her eyes, she saw Solder in the street, sitting on his barrel, looking up at her. He waved, not his usual, cheery wave, a tentative question of a wave. She nodded. He half-smiled and folded his arms.
Shoddle coughed. When Tamrin looked round she saw he had sent a fine spray of blood over the gleaming metal of the mirror. The image faded. The kravvins dissolved.
“That was there,” said Shoddle. “That mirror. It was covered with a length of cotton cloth. Poor stuff, but thick enough to keep the light from it. I didn’t know then, of course, what it was. I put my hand to pull the cloth away and look at it. The lady of the house screamed at me to stop. She had followed me up there. It took her longer to climb the stairs, what with her belly big and her legs tired.
“As soon as she told me to leave it alone I tugged at it, before she could get near and stop me. She ran at me and as the cloth fell she stood full in the path of light. Where there had been one there were two. Her reflection was pin perfect. The shine and smooth of the metal were beyond imagining.”
He struggled to his knees, hand at his neck, fingers in the loops of the scissor handle.
“You tell me what happened next,” he said.
“You tell it,” said Sam.
“I won’t. If you want to know, you say it. I’ll tell you if you get it wrong.”
“She fell,” said Tamrin.
“They carried her downstairs,” said Sam.
“Her baby started to come.”
“They forgot about you.”
“Yes, they forgot about me,” said Shoddle. “Clever of you to think of that.”
“The baby was born,” said Sam.
“It was a girl.”
“It was a boy.”
“It was twins,” said Tamrin.
“Stop there,” said Shoddle. “You know that’s not true. Remember the story.”
“Was it a girl or a boy?” asked Sam.
“Yes,” said Shoddle. “It was a baby. I never heard what. She was delivered of only the one. They were clear about that.”
He fell back again.
“My throat does hurt,” he complained.
“It really doesn’t,” said Sam. “You’d know.”
Sam and Tamrin turned together to fa
ce Shoddle. They left their examination of the stars and looked inward. They moved forward, two steps, and stood directly in front of the mirror.
Sam looked at his reflection in the polished metal, and he saw Tamrin. Tamrin looked at herself and saw Sam.
Sam reached out his hand to the mirror and his fingertips touched the outstretched fingertips of Tamrin. Tamrin pulled a face and Sam’s reflection pulled a face back at her.
“That’s right,” said Shoddle. “When the house was still and the dark had come I crept to the room and looked at the child. There were two of them. Just as in the first time of magic. Two babies where there had been one.”
“Which one did you take?” asked Tamrin.
“You, of course.”
She rushed forward and kicked him in the stomach. He bent double and coughed blood.
“Which one? Tell me. Did you take the baby that was born or the second one, the reflected one?”
She had to wait while Shoddle coughed out his recovery. He raised a look of hate at her.
“You’ll pay for that,” he said.
“Which one?” she shouted. “Which one am I?”
She had never hated anyone as much as when he gave her the self-satisfied smile that she knew meant he was speaking the truth.
“I don’t know,” he said. “I didn’t care then, and I don’t care now. I just took the one that was nearest. I took you and I took the mirror and I put you both on my cart and brought you here.”
Tamrin went back and stood next to Sam. Their reversed images stared back at them.
“One of us isn’t real,” she said.
He pointed to Shoddle, hunched in a wounded crouch, blood-smeared, scissors sticking out from a sack bandage.
“You think that’s real?” said Sam. “Cover the mirror.”
There was a lot of catching up to do, news to share, stories to tell. Solder was halfway up the stairs when they left the room, come to look for Tamrin. Jaimar was waiting for them. She had tidied up till there was nothing left to tidy and then she tidied some more. She hugged Tamrin most and longest. Solder skipped out of the way of her arms and she seized Sam and hugged him even though she didn’t really know who he was.
“But you’re welcome,” she said. “You must be hungry.”
“I couldn’t eat anything,” said Sam.