Broken Mirrors

by A. F. Dery

  He sat up slowly, somehow sensing that even the slightest noise would wake the slumbering servant. She looked so young and peaceful at rest and not like a nefarious witch at all, he tried to tell his stinging conscience.

  But his conscience would not hear of it, and he knew he would have to get some answers out of the woman sleeping in his chair without further delay. He had to know what her intentions were and why she had helped him that first time. He could only speculate so much and the observation he’d placed on her had been useless.

  Thane managed to rise from his bed, dismiss the soldier standing watch in his hallway with a quick hand gesture, and wrap himself in a robe that had seen better years and far fewer females than it was seeing now before the female in question jerked awake and threw herself to her feet as though slapped.

  The woman stared at him silently, shockingly blue eyes wide with alarm. Thane was struck momentarily by their bright color. He had not even noticed them the last time he’d seen her. All Eladrian eyes were brown, some lighter, some darker, but all and always brown.

  “Good morning,” he said finally, being careful to enunciate. In a further effort to be pleasant, he opted not to smile.

  “Good morning, my lord.” Again she wrung long, slim hands. He tried very hard not to look at them, keeping his eyes fixed to her face.

  Thane thought for a moment about the most diplomatic way to proceed and settled on, “We need to talk.”

  “Yes, my lord,” the woman murmured on a sigh.

  He quirked a brow, not sure how he felt about being sighed at by one of his servants, but given the giddy absence of pain he was in, he decided to let it pass.

  “Would you have breakfast with me?” he asked politely.

  She gave him an odd little half-smile. “I would as you would, my lord.”

  He gestured to the door. “Have a seat at the table in the outer room, then.”

  The woman curtsied and obeyed. Dear me, thought Thane, if she keeps up this level of cooperation, this should go very well indeed.

  After his usual morning ablutions and getting dressed, he walked to the outer room of his tower to find one Ytaren servant seated stiffly at the table by one wall.

  It was dark, very dark. His servants knew better than to allow the curtains to be opened when his Lordship had one of his headaches. The guard who had brought her up the night before no doubt had had a light, but he was gone. He felt a little guilty about sending her out into an unlit room, remembering with unusual vividness the sound her shin had made against a chair the last time she’d been here. It had driven through his brain with a vicious stab.

  Without a word, he pulled the cord on the set of curtains closed to the table. Sunlight flooded in, warm and golden. The woman blinked rapidly against it then looked at him in surprise, moving to rise to her feet.

  Thane shook his head. “Don’t bother,” he said, taking the chair opposite her.

  “How could you even find the cord?” she blurted out.

  He shrugged one shoulder. “It’s always in the same place.”

  The woman pressed her lips together, obviously wishing to question him further but trying to forestall herself.

  Thane heard the door open and watched as the tea tray was brought in. The servant bearing it looked in confusion at the little woman seated across the table from him, then at him, her mouth hanging slightly open.

  “Another cup, if you please,” Thane prompted. The servant all but fell backwards in her haste to comply. Or to gossip about her fellow servant being found at Lord Eladria’s table. It was often difficult for Thane to distinguish those sorts of things. He turned what he hoped was a rueful look to his companion.

  “She was not expecting to see you here,” he commented mildly, “even though I am sure it is no secret that I sent for you last night.”

  “There are few secrets hereabouts, my lord,” the woman replied equally mildly. “No doubt she was not surprised by my presence, but rather that I appear intact rather than as a grease spot under my lord’s boot.”

  “Have you done something I ought to know about to earn such treatment?” he asked lightly. Like evil, vile sorcery for instance?

  “If I had, I’m sure you would know, my lord,” the woman answered solemnly. He knew then that she had realized she was being watched. He inclined his head in mute acknowledgment. “But the other servants have been eagerly awaiting the end of your patience with an alien in your Keep for quite some time, if I’m not mistaken. Perhaps they thought me being squished underfoot would be a better balm for your headache than any other medicine.”

  Thane barked out a brief laugh, making her jump a little. “Surely we are not so transparent as that!”

  “Well, I’ll admit, being greeted each morning with ‘I hate you’ and tucked to bed each night with ‘hopefully you won’t wake’ does tend to leave a certain impression,” she said dryly. The half-smile was now a little more than half. Thane eyed it warily, unaccustomed to smiles that were not bought at his expense, and under his narrow eyed scrutiny, it quickly faded back to one-quarter.

  “I hope we have not been as rude to you as that,” he said. “You must understand that we have certain...reservations...about those not of our land.”

  “I must and I am!” she assured him. “But why?”

  “Why?” Thane tried not to frown. “Because that is the way it is. Outsiders cannot be relied upon.”

  “What makes you say so?” the woman pressed.

  Thane rolled his eyes. “There is historical precedent for what I’m referring to, but try to look at it from our point of view. All these other countries, peoples, cultures, and none of them embrace the same values we do. None of them seem to understand duty as we do. They work for their own profit alone while their own kinsmen starve in the streets. They leave the fighting to a bare few men, whether those men be qualified or not, while their women are raped and their children murdered. Incidentally, I could probably count on one hand the number of those women who could defend themselves even with a rack of knives within reach, or hell, a flaming torch! I’ve been to some of these countries, seen them with my own eyes, and I know what they are about. I have yet to see one where this is not so, where justice is not second to some other thing, to some whim of the ruler or of the time, where the laws may as well be writ in candle wax, so often do they change in shape according to the heat they are being put under! Where the weak are encouraged to stay weak so the strong may protect them, while the strong think only of growing stronger still. And that is only the beginning of the foolishness these outsiders own as their way of life.

  “Then they come across my borders into my country, and what changes? Nothing! They would impose their rubbish on people who know what strength and duty and honor are. They would belittle us and call us barbarians because we know how to fight and we know what is worth fighting for, and our way of life is one of those things.”

  The woman was quiet for a long moment, staring off at some unseen point just over his shoulder, and at last said, “So any interpretation of ‘duty,’ for instance, is wrong, except yours? No cause worth fighting for but Eladria’s?”

  “If a cause was worth fighting for, Eladria would fight for it. We seldom involve ourselves in the business of outsiders, but the High Lord has called upon us to do so before,” Thane said levelly, “and we will no doubt do so again.”

  “The High Lord?” the woman’s blue eyes flicked back to his, startled. “I heard something of him, once. He is a long way from here, I thought? This is one of his fiefdoms?”

  “Fiefdom?” Thane was aghast. “Eladria is no fiefdom. We are our own country. I am her only ruler. I defer to the High Lord because it is for our mutual benefit. Our fealty is voluntary and could be revoked, if it were in Eladria’s best interest.”

  “I don’t understand,” the woman said bluntly. Thane barely bit back a remark about what servants need to understand, recognizing at once that his pique was springing from her previous remark. Fiefdom,
indeed. As much as he respected the High Lord, he would be carrion for the vultures before such a ridiculous thing came to pass! Fiefdom. She’s a foreigner, clearly, and must know nothing of life here if she could say anything so utterly idiotic, Thane fumed silently, studying his still empty mug.

  “I’m very sorry, my lord,” she said suddenly. “I truly don’t understand the politics of this place, and I suppose it doesn’t matter for one in my position. I did not mean to offend.” Thane glanced up at her sharply, suspicions of foul sorcery renewed, but this must have been written clearly on his face for she added quickly, “I’d not have you sacrifice any more cutlery to my clumsiness.”

  Now he did frown, confused, then glanced down at the table. One of his hands had crumpled a butter knife like a scrap of paper. Suddenly embarrassed, he dropped the mangled thing and thrust his hand under the table to rest on his knee.

  “Why would you even come to work in a country where you know nothing of the place?” Thane asked, a little more harshly than he intended.

  He watched thoughtfully as the woman suddenly paled and looked away. Ah, so she is hiding something, he mused.

  And that was, of course, the very moment when the servant from earlier reappeared with the additional teacup, saucer, plate and butter knife. She hesitated visibly with this last, her eyes darting over to him as if for approval. Thane could have laughed. He never would have been one to underestimate even an opponent as slight as this one would be, but he was hardly a man to be taken down by a butter knife even were it an ogre wielding it! He gave a slight nod and felt the corners of his mouth quivering with the effort not to smile at the mental image these thoughts were inspiring.

  Once the table was set, the servant scurried away at a second nod from him. The woman across from him eyed the teapot, which was about the size of her head, but making note of this, Thane set about pouring for both of them without demur.

  She murmured her thanks and watched him with a certain wariness until he’d finished.

  “I was asking you,” he reminded in a gentler tone of voice, “about why you came to Eladria, knowing so little of us as you do.”

  “I was running away,” she admitted in a small voice. She stared at her teacup but offered nothing else.

  “You’re a criminal?” He wasn’t sure why this surprised him when it would have taken no convincing at all for him to believe her to be a sorceress. Granted, that was a crime in Eladria, but he knew that this was one area where Eladrian law diverged from the norm in the rest of the world.

  “No, of course not!” she said, actually looking a little offended. “I just...well...I didn’t want to do what they wanted me to.” She bit her lip.

  Thane raised an eyebrow and made a “go on” gesture with one hand for emphasis. The woman sighed.

  “I lived at a school of sorts back in Ytar,” she said. “I grew up there, in fact. I was being trained for a certain...job. Though it’s more than a job, really. It’s not one of those things you can just leave behind at the end of the day. And I wished to make my own way.” The smile she gave him now looked forced, as if stretched a little too thin.

  “Is that where you learned to cure headaches?” Thane asked earnestly. The woman blinked a few times, appearing startled.

  “Not exactly,” she said slowly. “But rather close. I don’t cure headaches, I merely take away the pain. The underlying cause- whatever it is- is still there. I know very little about real healing.”

  “How?” he asked, leaning forward a little. This was what he was truly interested in. “How do you relieve the pain, then?”

  Her blue eyes met his steadily. “I’m not entirely sure how it works. I don’t think anyone does. As I told you before, there are theories, but no one knows for certain.”

  Thane shook his head a little. That was not the explanation he wanted. “Can anyone do it?”

  “No. Some people are born with the ability and those who aren’t, can’t. Not even all those that can, can do so equally well.” This point, at least, the Ytaren sounded absolutely confident on, he noted. At least on the surface, it didn’t sound like any sorcery he had ever heard of. Of course, she could be lying.

  “If you do not want to do this...relieve people’s pain...then why did you help me?” Thane asked bluntly. The woman actually blushed bright red and looked back down at her untouched tea.

  “I’m not sure,” she admitted, her voice scarcely above a whisper. “I shouldn’t have.”

  “And I shouldn’t have sent for you last night, without knowing what you are or how you can do this thing, so it seems we both should not have, but did,” he observed mildly. She raised her eyes again. “Now what do we do?”

  “I don’t know.” She tapped her fingertips idly on the rim of her saucer. “I have to stay near you as long as the headache lasts if you don’t want to feel it. There’s no helping that.”

  “But do you want to? You just said you shouldn’t have helped me in the first place,” Thane pointed out. He was becoming very curious as to her reasons, but he knew a lost cause when he saw one. She was tip-toeing around something, but he didn’t get the impression that she was lying. He didn’t want her to start now.

  She tilted her head in a vaguely puzzled way that reminded him of a bird. “What difference does what I want make? I want to be treated like a person, but I hardly see anyone caring about that.”

  Thane stiffened, feeling a sudden heat rush up his neck. “I would never force you into a service you do not wish to offer,” he said tightly. “You were hired as a kitchen worker. If that is all you wish to do, it is all you owe so long as you work here and I would not think of holding that against you. I ought not to have sent for you, but you were free to refuse once you came. My apologies if you were under a different impression. You can return to the kitchen whenever you choose.” He drained the rest of his mug in one swallow and set it down a little too loudly. It was above enough, the very implication that he would force her into any sort of involuntary servitude. The very idea of it was un-Eladrian and chilled him to the bone. He was ready to be done with her, whatever she could do and whatever the cost to his head. She was certainly welcome to find work in someone else’s Keep if she thought so little of his!

  “I’m sorry,” she said uncertainly into his fuming silence. “It seems I misspoke again. You are right that I know little of your ways. And perhaps for that reason alone, I ought not to have come here. But I have no references outside of the school I mentioned, and I certainly did not want them to know where I’d gone, or I feared they would come after me. I’m considered...talented. It is a fight I did not wish for myself. I helped you the first time because I wanted to, it was simply...imprudent. Now that I have done so again, I would see the job through until it is done, if you can tolerate me for that long.”

  Thane said nothing, still running through various ways of damning her to perdition in his mind and cutting each short as being in some way lacking with regard to the ardor of his present sentiments.

  “You see, I am afraid if I begin to help you, that I will lose my freedom, as I would have if I’d remained where I was.”

  “Is that the custom where you come from? Slavery?” Thane asked unpleasantly.

  “Well, in a manner of speaking,” she frowned. “They do not call it that, but it often amounts to the same thing, really. Otherwise, I should have been able to leave of my own accord without having to...well, flee.”

  “Well, you will have no need to flee from me. You may help me in this way or not, as you choose. I have lived with these headaches all my life long, and I have always expected to do so until my death. Whenever that is.”

  The Ytaren woman appeared to study him thoughtfully. “I believe you,” she said finally. “And...I do want to help you. It is...part of me, to do this for you.” She sighed and added in a barely audible murmur, “I can’t seem to run away from it.”

  He looked at her for a long moment, calming a bit. Everything about her seemed so sincere. He still wa
s not satisfied with her explanation of her abilities, but if she was willing to offer them...it was hard to know what the right thing to do was. It troubled him that she thought he would take her freedom in exchange for her unique assistance. The more reasonable thing would be to reward her for it, not make her miserable over it. He could not help but feel that whatever he was missing, whatever thing she was skirting around, it was rather important to understanding what was going on. As it was, the situation made little sense to him. If anything, she ought to be pleased at his interest in her abilities, not fretful, since it would mean a promotion from her point of view. Of course, it could be the exposure to him personally that she found distasteful and she was merely too polite to say so. For that matter, he could not help but think this school she spoke of must be some fine place, for she seemed very well spoken and mannered for one of such low station as she now was.

  In the midst of these thoughts, he knew he needed help. With the memory of his own torment still fresh, he knew his objectivity could be lacking. He could be missing something even if she’d left out nothing. He needed to consult someone whose judgment he could trust, whose quality of life was not at stake in the deciding.

  “If you would help me, we must first speak with Graunt,” he announced.

  Kesara had not seen the outside of the Keep since her arrival several months previous. She had, in fact, been one of the last into the Keep before the snow and ice prohibited any entry until the first spring thaw mere weeks ago. All she had seen of the outside of the Keep was the gray stone towers sprouting from great drifts of slushy white snow, like the horns of some enormous, slumbering, pale-furred beast.

  Now she saw that the Keep was indeed a castle, a simple but majestic structure that seemed somehow melded with the mountain it was built on, as though the rock itself had lovingly wrapped immense arms around it. She knew from her own experience that outside the imposing gates of stone and wrought-iron that dripped from these solid “arms” like billowing sleeves the entire world seemed to fall away dizzily but for the steep path that wound up from more level ground. Her stomach still turned at the memory of that terrifying ascent, slickly paved as it had been with frost.