The Silvered

by Tanya Huff

  “Seriously?”

  Tomas frowned. “Of course. A crazy Pack Leader can’t take care of the Pack.”

  “Politicians…”

  “They’d likely be the nearest Alphas.”

  No using the insanity of their leader to consolidate their own hold on power. “I like your system.”

  “So do we.”

  “So, if it isn’t easy to commit treason,” Mirian said quietly, “when did you decide to make the effort?”

  “When I saw you in the square.” When he saw her in the square, but with luck he sounded like he meant both of them. “If you were stupid enough…”

  “Hey!”

  “…to come into the heart of the empire,” Reiter continued, ignoring Tomas’ protest, “knowing what would happen to both of you if you were caught, then I can be stupid enough to help.”

  “It’s not stupid.”

  “It’s not smart. He has…Pack as well as the mages. It’s going to take all three of us to get them out. This is it.”

  “This is what?”

  “The guesthouse.”

  There was a room available, and his old purse held just enough for one night, so he took them to the tavern next door and bought them dinner, emptying his new. Leaving them on their own unsupervised was just asking for trouble. They had better table manners than he did.

  He escorted them up to their room and stepped inside to murmur, “The palace gates will open at nine. Be careful. Don’t attract attention and, most of all, don’t…” He waved a hand. “…you know. He knows you’re coming. It was Seen and he’s had word from Tardford.”

  She flushed. “That was an accident.”

  “Don’t have another.” He nodded and backed away, allowing the door to close between them.

  * * *

  The first night after they’d escaped from the Imperials, Mirian had slept curled around him, clutching his fur, taking what comfort the presence of the Pack provided. They’d slept together in caves, old barns, on a filthy carpet in the midst of the homeless, under trees, in a nest of blankets on Jake and Gryham’s floor. She’d defined both the distance and the closeness between them.

  But this, this wasn’t adventure. This wasn’t war. This wasn’t excusable. This was something he’d have to explain to his mother. Or worse, to her mother. He couldn’t pace in fur; his toenails clicked against the wooden floor exposing him to the people in the rooms around them, so he paced in skin. And his trousers.

  “Tomas.”

  Wiping his palms against the fabric covering his thighs, he turned and faced her.

  “Take a deep breath.”

  A pillow hit him in the face as he inhaled.

  “Through your nose!”

  Familiar. Powerful.

  “Tell me how I smell?”

  He rolled his eyes but told her. “Amazing. You smell amazing.”

  His trousers ended up on the chair with the rest of his clothes. The mattress gave under him as he rolled onto his side, then gave again as Mirian fitted herself against his back, her hand over his heart. The same way they slept when he was in fur. The sheets smelled of soap.

  Her breath lapped warm against the back of his neck when she sighed. “I can’t believe after all we’ve been through and what we have to face tomorrow, you got upset by a bed.”

  * * *

  When Danika closed her eyes, she dreamed of the white room. But not of Kirstin, of Ryder. Of his skin hanging from jutting bones, of his throat pierced by silver spikes, of his teeth…of blood on his teeth.

  She lay in her nest on the floor by the door and she stared into an artificial darkness. She whispered strength to the others and listened for the fall of Stina’s door.

  * * *

  Reiter stared at the ceiling and thought of treason.

  * * *

  Mirian woke with the Sunrise bell, snuggled her face into the pillow, and wished that she’d stayed in the carriage and continued on to Trouge with her parents. That she’d never been cold or wet or hungry or afraid. That she’d never had to discover how a man’s flesh smelled as it burned. That she’d never had to wake in the morning and face anything more difficult than the new books still not having arrived at the lending library. That she’d tested too low to enter the university and she’d married the dark-haired young clerk at her father’s bank who had sad eyes but had nearly smiled at her once or twice. That she wasn’t about to get up and get dressed and walk into the Imperial palace and do whatever she had to do to steal both Pack and Mage-pack away from a crazy emperor.

  After a moment, she sighed. Given the chance to do it again, she knew she wouldn’t stay in the carriage, so there was no point pretending she could have faced a life of walks and shopping and a safe, affectionate marriage without screaming. She couldn’t honestly say she’d been fundamentally changed by everything that had happened to her and around her since that morning. She was who she’d always been. Practical. Stubborn. More aware of what she could do. Less naive, perhaps. But not really any different.

  She carefully pulled away from the warmth of Tomas’ back, rolled over, and slid out of bed.

  The bucket of hot water had already been left outside the door. She didn’t see it at first, stubbed her toe on the side, then brought it in and emptied it into the large washbasin. At home, one of the maids would have brought in a pitcher of hot water, opened the curtains, and lit a fire depending on the time of year. The guesthouse, with the chipped basin, the frayed wash flannel, and the mug half filled with soft soap, would have appalled her mother. Her mother had never spent a night under the bent boughs of an evergreen. Or in a cave. Or on a pile of straw that smelled strongly of goat.

  Mirian liked the room. She liked the worn furniture, the too-soft mattress, the uneven floor. She liked that someone had made an attempt to dress it up with chintz curtains and bits of glass that hung in the window to catch the sun. Although, they worshiped the sun in the empire, so maybe the glass pieces were religious rather than decorative.

  The window faced east, and she reached out a finger and touched patterns of light that danced across the faded wallpaper. Followed the places where sunlight poured through clear pieces of glass and broke into rainbows. When she was young, Mirian used to sneak down early to the dining room and open the curtains to watch the crystal drops on the chandelier paint the walls with rainbows, courting a lecture on how sunlight faded expensive, imported silk carpets.

  Light that broke into colors…

  White light. The Soothsayer by the well in Herdon had touched her and said white light.

  Leaning over the washstand, Mirian stared into the small oval mirror, forcing her eyes open as wide as possible. She’d tested high but had no mage marks. She smelled of power but had no mage marks.

  Her eyes were paler than she remembered. The edges of her pupils no longer smoothly curved. As she turned her head, she could see patches of silver slide across the black, the blurring of her vision following the movement.

  The more powerful the mage, the more mage marks they carried.

  The Air-master at the university had marks enough that, at first sight, her brown eyes looked almost blue.

  Gryham told her that mages had become unwilling to pay the price the old way of power demanded and had bound mage-craft in rules.

  She could work in all six crafts. Blue, green, gold, brown, red, indigo…

  Her mage marks were white.

  The more power she used, the more there were.

  Eventually…No. She touched the mirror. Soon, if she kept pouring power through the crafts, there’d be marks enough to fill her eyes and blind her. Logically, inevitably, given what they were about to do…She clutched the mirror’s frame to keep her fingers from shaking. Now she wanted to go home more than she’d ever wanted anything in her life.

  Her vision blurred.

  Cleared.

  “Lorela?”

  Her sister turned, dress half on, and staggered toward her side of the mirror. “Miri! You’re aliv
e! Lord and Lady, you’re alive! Where are you?”

  Leaning so close her breath fogged the glass, Mirian swallowed and said, “I’m in Karis.”

  “What? What are you doing…? Mama said you died! That you were killed trying to rescue the Mage-pack, but there was no body. The elder Lady Hagen actually visited her. Mama was in her glory. But you’re not dead. Cedryc said you weren’t. He said he Saw you, but I couldn’t tell…” Lorela swiped her palm across her cheek and took a deep breath. “Were you captured with the Mage-pack? Have you escaped? Are you coming home?”

  “No, I wasn’t captured. Well, I was, but I escaped.” She almost giggled as Lorela frowned, clearly about to accuse her of not taking things seriously. “I’m here, with Tomas Hagen, to rescue the Mage-pack.”

  “Tomas Hagen is alive and you’re with him?”

  “Yes.” Mirian braced herself. Her mother was, after all, Lorela’s mother.

  Lorela ran both hands up through her hair. “Lady Hagen needs to be told her younger son is alive.”

  “Yes.” She blinked away tears and remembered she had information to give her sister in return. “Lor, if you touch Cedryc when he starts to See, it might bring him back. Touch him as much as you can, skin to skin.”

  “You’re not supposed to touch a…” She couldn’t say it.

  “Because then what they See will be lost. Maybe they go so deep and fall so far because as soon as they start to See, people stop touching them. Maybe that’s why they find what focus they have when they get to touch people. It’s a stupid, selfish rule.”

  “Cedryc…” Lorela stopped, took another deep breath, and wiped her eyes. “All right. Thank you, Miri. Now then…” She squared her shoulders and frowned again. “…what do you mean you’re in Karis to rescue the Mage-pack? And who set up this link? This isn’t even a crafted mirror!”

  “Just what I said. I did. Love you.” She lifted her hands from the mirror, closed her eyes, and when she opened them again, she saw only the blurry image of her own reflection.

  “Who were you talking to?”

  Mirian turned to see Tomas sitting up in bed. “My sister.”

  “Through a mirror-link?” He sounded impressed, but she couldn’t make out his expression. “Danika has one set up with her mother—Ryder kept hanging his jackets over it, said the last thing he need was the abiding presence of his mother-in-law. I didn’t know you could link with an uncrafted mirror, though.”

  “Neither did I.” Teeth clenched, she lifted the first layer of the stupidly restrictive Imperial undergarments off the hook and pulled it over her head. By the time she tugged it down into place and brushed her hair back off her face, Tomas stood less than an arm’s length away.

  “Are you all right?” He sounded worried.

  She shrugged. “Busy day.”

  “Is it the captain?”

  “Is what the captain?”

  “I know you’re willing to work with him because he let you—let us—go on the road, but what if this is a trick? A trap? I mean, he’s already told us we’re expected. If we get grabbed, he’s still in the clear and he can play the sympathy angle with you.”

  “Why would he do that?”

  Tomas shrugged in turn. “I don’t know. He likes you.”

  “Funny way of showing it. Pass me the thing with the laces.” She wrapped it around her waist and began hooking the busk in the front. “If he plans to stop us, why didn’t he do it yesterday in the square.”

  “He didn’t have a net and he knows what you can do.”

  After the sound left her mouth, Mirian thought it might have been better had she not tried to laugh. “I don’t know what I can do.”

  “Anything.”

  “What?”

  Hands on her shoulders, he moved close enough she could finally see his face. Close enough one leg bumped against hers and she could smell the warm, musky, morning scent of him. “You can do anything,” he said.

  And he believed it.

  “Thank you.” Mirian let her head fall forward and rest on his shoulder for a moment. Then, as a cart rolled by outside on the street, she straightened and took a deep breath. “We have to trust him.”

  “But you don’t want to.”

  “What I want doesn’t matter, at least not until after we rescue the Mage-pack. And the others.”

  “Okay, then.”

  “Okay, then?”

  He grinned as she leaned back to look up at him. “Whatever you decide, you know I’m right beside you.”

  Beside. Not behind. “You’d better get dressed, then. They’re not going to let you into the palace in fur.”

  * * *

  There was no way he could do this and hide his involvement. This time, having Mirian knock him out as the emperor’s captives fled the palace would only make it easier for him to be caught. He could get the necessary artifact only because he’d been sent to get it before. Because he was known to the Lord Warder. “The emperor requests that I be given…”

  “It’s a festival day. I could tell from the bunting.” The Lord Warder sighed as he unlocked the cabinet. “The palace will be swarming with people.” The old man snorted, carefully opened the cabinet’s front, then slid a smaller key into the lock of one of the exposed drawers. “People. They’ll touch things with their dirty fingers. They always do. I plan on hiding down here until it’s over.”

  He always did, according to the pages Reiter’d overheard complaining. He went to the Archive early and stayed late, sometimes sleeping on a cot in the corner if he felt the palace wasn’t yet empty enough. The pages hated traveling all the way down to the Archive. The service halls didn’t extend that far and they had to run to get the food there still warm.

  Jiggling the key, the Lord Warder finally got the drawer open. He pulled out the fork and stared down at it for a moment before handing it to Reiter. “His Imperial Majesty will have no time for hobbies today.”

  Reiter slipped the small artifact into the inside pocket of his tunic. “I don’t know about that, Lord Warder,” he said, closing the frogging and trying to get the ridiculous amount of braid to lay flat. “I’m just following orders.”

  The old man snorted again. “Aren’t we all, Captain? Aren’t we all?”

  Back in his room, Reiter changed out of his court dress and into his regular dress uniform. With half the garrison pulled in on extra duty and the other half wandering through the halls gawking, it granted him even more invisibility than usual. He had no reason to sign his sidearm out of the armory and being mistaken for an officer on duty could cause problems without it, but he missed its weight by his side. Not as much as he missed the weight of his musket over his shoulder, but that was a whole other level of not going to happen.

  Ten past nine.

  Reiter snapped his watch closed and slid it into his pocket. Walking over to the window, he buttoned his tunic and stared at the golden arc of the emperor’s balloon, a hobby the emperor’d had no time for for a while. At least the aeronauts wouldn’t be bored today.

  * * *

  Just before nine, they joined the crowd already gathered in the square, staying well back from those who clearly intended to be first in. Mirian didn’t know if there were prizes or merely bragging rights, but the people nearest the gate were weirdly intent. She didn’t need to be able to see their expressions; the need to be first in rose off them like smoke.

  The food carts set up around the edges of the square were doing a brisk business among the more casual attendees. Although she hadn’t eaten the dumpling the guesthouse had provided, and she should be hungry, the smell of the food made her stomach churn.

  When she stepped back against Tomas, he jerked away.

  “What have you got under your skirt!”

  “The telescope. I left everything else in the room, but…” It wasn’t that she thought she’d forget the soldier she’d killed, it was just that it was the only memorial he had. She couldn’t carry it, so she’d tied it to her petticoat and figured it
would remain unseen with all the extra useless folds of fabric. “What did you think it was?”

  Before Tomas could answer, trumpets blared, loud enough the echo chased itself four or five times around the square.

  A few people shrieked, a few more laughed at them, but the crowd quickly quieted.

  “His Imperial Majesty Leopald, by the light of the Sun and the strength of his people, Exalted ruler of the Kresentian Empire, Commander in Truth of the Imperial army, Supreme Protector of the Holy Church of the One True Sun welcomes you, his people, to this public festival.”

  “Where’s it coming from?”

  “There’s brass…I don’t know, horns? Bells? Up on top of the gate.”

  Mirian could see the gate. She took Tomas’ word for the bells.

  “When the gate opens,” the voice continued, “the palace will be laid out for your enjoyment. Your emperor trusts you’ll behave in his home as he would behave in yours.”

  “Kidnapping, murder…”

  “Shhh.”

  “Do not open doors that have not been opened for you. Do not speak to the soldiers. May the Sun grant warmth and life to His Imperial Majesty!”

  A cheer went up, the gates opened, and the first few ranks surged forward.

  Mirian’s palms were damp as they followed, her mouth dry. She tightened her grip on Tomas’ arm, frowning at a familiar noise. “You’re growling.”

  “Sorry.”

  As they finally crossed the inner courtyard, heading toward the stairs leading up the open double doors, Tomas leaned in and murmured, “There’s guards on the roof with muskets watching the gate.” He didn’t sound surprised.

  “Just the gate?”

  “It’s a lot of roof.”

  It was a lot of palace. Mirian wondered how they’d find the first assembly room and Captain Reiter. Then she saw there were signs designed to look like theatrical scene cards by each open door and a soldier by each sign. The edges of the signs were soft and worn and they looked like they’d been used a number of times before. Most of the soldiers looked bored already. They’d be thrilled for the chance to chase escaped prisoners. More thrilled, no doubt to be able to shoot them in the back.