Mirror Sight

by Kristen Britain

  Karigan swallowed, not wanting to reveal just how ignorant she truly was, but she had little choice. “How do you extinguish the light?”

  Mirriam muttered something to herself in a tone of disbelief and then added, not without pity, “I am shocked the Goodgraves put you in such an institution lacking modern amenities. Why, it’s barbaric! No wonder the professor brought you here. Now watch.” Mirriam simply turned the key in the opposite direction and the room darkened.

  It was amazing, so simple, Karigan thought. No fires that needed to be started and kept burning. No flint and steel, just the turn of that key.

  Mirriam twisted the key once more and light filled the room. Despite the lack of magic, this world was filled with wonders. What else Karigan might discover, she could scarcely imagine.

  “In the morning,” Mirriam announced, “there shall be bathing and a change of bandages. Mender Samuels will stop by to see how you are doing.” With that, the housekeeper left her.

  Karigan sighed. Whatever discoveries she made about this world, they would have to be made at night, as the household slept. Did Mirriam sleep? Maybe she’d ask Lorine. In any case, she’d learn the rhythms of the house’s occupants and discover what she could.

  She yawned and reached for one of the novels. She’d bide her time as evening wore on and begin her investigations once the house fell into somnolence. But before she was four pages into the book, her head nestled in the pillow, and she drifted away once again into the healing sleep her body so desperately needed, unaware of when Lorine came in later and removed the book from her hands, pulled the covers up, and turned off the light.

  APPARITIONS

  A scritching sound irritated Karigan to wakefulness, an incessant noise that scraped at her nerves. She blinked in the predawn gray, once more having to orient herself to where she was and when. She rubbed her eyes and yawned, wondering what caused the noise that had awakened her.

  Scritch-scritch-scritch, like a pen rapidly stroking across paper.

  She raised herself to her elbows. “Hello?” she queried, searching into the shadows spilling across her room.

  She discerned nothing, but she pinpointed the noise emanating from a particularly dark corner. She stared hard, perceived movement. A trick of her eyes?

  “Hello?” she said again, a slight quaver in her voice, and again there was no response. The scritching did not sound mousey, and it had a sort of rhythm to it.

  I’m becoming just as mad as they think I am.

  She tossed aside her covers and stood on the rug beside her bed. She took tentative steps toward the dark corner. The scritching grew a little louder as she approached. She made out the frame of the one chair in her room. She thought to turn back and ignite her lamp when she caught a faint flutter of movement around the chair, like pale moth wings in the night. Transfixed, she drew closer. Spectral smoke wafted and drifted above the chair until it resolved into a vaguely human figure.

  A wave of cold rippled through Karigan’s flesh lifting the hairs on her arms. She licked her lips. She dared not step any closer to the apparition lest it vanish. Its features were so blurred she could not even tell whether it was male or female. It sat bent over a flat object on its lap.

  “Who are you?” she whispered. Perhaps, she thought, Who were you? was the more appropriate question. In any case, she received no reply.

  The gray of her room began to lighten, the puddles of black retreating. The faint apparition faded even more.

  “Can you see me?” Karigan whispered, but the hunched figure remained intent on whatever was on its lap, even as it faded to a wisp of smoke.

  Scritch-scratch.

  Was it writing?

  The city bell clanged and, startled, Karigan glanced at the window, which had brightened with the dawn. The bell to call the mill slaves to work. Between tollings, she heard no scritching, and when she glanced at the chair, the apparition had vanished.

  Either she had indeed gone mad, or apparitions could appear even in a world deprived of magic. Not that spirits of the dead should have to rely on magic to exist, but it still surprised her.

  Why had it appeared to her? She’d enough experience with the supernatural to know such meetings did not usually occur by chance.

  She stood there staring at the empty chair for several moments, then shook her head. She gave some thought to using the early hour to sneak around the house, but she heard footsteps in the hallway and other sounds of life elsewhere in the house, bringing to an end any such notion. At least now she knew the household began to awaken with the first bell, which was more than she’d known before.

  She sighed and limped back to bed to await the day.

  • • •

  After breakfast Karigan suffered through the humiliation of the sponge bath, protesting all the while there must be a way to take a regular bath without getting her cast wet, and couldn’t she do this herself, please. Mirriam was as immovable as a granite pillar and informed Karigan this was not her first sponge bath. Karigan had known someone cleaned her up upon her arrival to the professor’s house, though she’d not been conscious. Being awake and aware of it was a whole different level of embarrassment.

  “Stop your fussing,” Mirriam ordered as she scrubbed Karigan’s back. “You’re just making it take longer.”

  After the sponge bath, Karigan had to admit she felt better, especially when Mirriam and Lorine set to work washing her hair in the bathing room sink, which was shaped like a giant clam shell. Mirriam deftly shifted the various levers to make the water temperature just right while Lorine’s nimble fingers massaged Karigan’s scalp. Afterward, Lorine put much care into detangling and brushing Karigan’s hair. The strokes of the brush felt marvelous.

  “I wish my hair was half so lovely as yours,” Lorine murmured. “Long and thick.”

  Karigan had not yet seen Lorine’s hair for it was always wrapped beneath her scarf.

  Lorine expertly braided Karigan’s hair, then helped her back to her room, where Mirriam and Mender Samuels awaited with fresh bandages. Karigan withheld cries of pain as crusty scabs were yanked off with the old bandages, the one around her leg hurting the worst by far. The mender bent over her leg and took a long whiff of the wound.

  “I smell no putrefaction, and the flesh appears to be healing,” he pronounced. “If all continues this way, I shall remove the sutures very soon.” He listened to Karigan’s heart through a conical tube apparatus, the wide end placed on her chest, his ear listening at the narrow end. Like a small speaking trumpet, Karigan decided. The mender inquired of Mirriam about Karigan’s diet. After a favorable response, he asked, “No ill humors, fever, or the like?”

  “None that I’ve detected,” Mirriam replied. “Seems eager to get into mischief. But beyond that, only the illness of her mind.”

  Karigan glowered.

  “You say she will take no morphia?”

  “I am right here and able to answer for myself,” Karigan said. “I will take no morphia.”

  “My dear,” the mender said in a condescending tone, “you’ve nothing to prove. The morphia is only to benefit you by subduing your pain.”

  And me, she thought. “I do not need morphia.”

  The mender gave her a testy frown as though he preferred his patients drowsy and malleable. “Very well, but I shall bring it up with your uncle. Most young ladies would desire relief.”

  Karigan held her tongue, but it was not easy.

  “Her mental frailties,” the mender told Mirriam, “do not make her fit to speak for herself.”

  The housekeeper escorted him to the door. She paused and gave Karigan an enigmatic look and then was gone. What was in that look? Approval? Disapproval? Something more complex? Karigan could not tell.

  “I just want to go home,” she murmured. Now that she was once again alone in her room, it hit her. She wanted away from t
hese strange people and their ways. She profoundly missed her Condor, her fellow Riders, and the way the world worked in her own time. She missed Ghost Kitty curling up beside her on her pillow and purring her to sleep.

  She would find a way home; she would learn how Mornhavon had defeated Sacoridia, and she would take that information with her. Until she figured out these matters, she must remain patient and accept the professor’s protection so she could rebuild her strength.

  If she couldn’t get past Mirriam, she would use the window. She’d enough bed sheets to tie together . . . Karigan considered plans and counter plans until the midday bell rang, and Lorine appeared with a meal. Karigan steeled herself for more boiled dinner, when Lorine lifted the lid off the main dish and there was only barley soup. Karigan did not think her sigh of relief went unnoticed.

  She thought to question Lorine about Mirriam’s habits and schedule but dismissed the idea as too obvious. She’d have to observe on her own. The maid curtsied and departed, leaving Karigan to thoughtfully spoon soup—carefully blowing on it first—into her mouth. Perhaps if she made herself sleep all day, then she’d stay awake long enough in the night to commence her prowling. It was ridiculous, really, that she, a Green Rider, was cooped up like this. She—

  Karigan paused with a spoon of steaming soup halfway to her lips, when she felt someone’s gaze on her. Had her ghost returned, here in the brightness of day? Slowly she turned her head, seeking any sign of that filmy presence. She did not see it, but when her gaze fell across the window, and she discovered a pair of golden eyes staring unblinkingly in at her, she screamed, and barley soup cascaded across the room, the bowl smashing on the floor.

  Mirriam burst in almost immediately, with Lorine on her heels. “Miss Goodgrave! What on Earth? How dare you fling the professor’s porcelain!”

  Karigan hissed as the burning hot soup soaked through her nightgown, and she plucked the fabric away from her skin. “I saw a pair of eyes! In the window.” Now for certain, she’d utterly convinced them of her insanity.

  Mirriam stomped over to the window, gazed up, gazed down, and gazed all around. “I see nothing,” she replied, whirling around to stare at Karigan, her hands on her hips.

  Karigan was not surprised, and as her wits settled back into their proper place, she belatedly realized that whiskers, and white and pale gray fur had accompanied the eyes before her scream had scared the poor cat off her window ledge. She laughed at herself.

  “Miss Goodgrave, stop this instant.” Mirriam raised her hand as if to slap her.

  Just as quickly Karigan raised her arm to block it. “I am not hysterical,” she said, no laughter in her voice now. “I was laughing because I’m just realizing I was startled by a cat. A cat at my window.” Karigan did not add that her sighting of an apparition in the early morning hours had put her on edge.

  Mirriam’s posture relaxed, and her upraised hand fell to her side. Her expression, however, revealed she was not entirely convinced.

  “There has been a cat hanging about the back garden lately,” Lorine said.

  “White with gray?” Karigan asked.

  Lorine nodded.

  “No one had better be feeding it,” Mirriam replied. “Filthy creatures.”

  Lorine clasped her hands in front of her and glanced down at the floor, but Mirriam did not observe it for she was gazing intently at Karigan.

  “Just after we’ve cleaned and put fresh bedding on,” Mirriam said. “Now we’ll have to do it all over again.”

  “I’m sorry,” Karigan said with a grimace. “I was just really startled.”

  “See that it does not happen again.”

  A clean nightgown and bedding were brought in, and after Karigan changed, she was ordered to sit in the chair while the bed was made anew, soup was sopped up from the floor, and broken porcelain swept away. In addition, the butler arrived with a little table, Mirriam directing where it should be placed. Not next to the window, she ordered the butler.

  “From now on,” she informed Karigan, “you shall dine at this table. You are obviously well enough to sit up, and I won’t have you flinging the professor’s porcelain.”

  “I did not—”

  “And slippers!” Mirriam threw her hands into the air. “Why do I see no slippers? That girl never remembers anything I tell her, and I must do it myself.” She turned on Lorine who had a rag bunched in her hand from wiping up stray droplets of soup. “I am off to Copley’s for slippers and perhaps a few other shops while I’m out.”

  With that, Mirriam marched out of the room, and both Karigan and Lorine sighed simultaneously. Lorine smiled shyly at Karigan.

  “Is there . . . is there really a cat in the back garden?” Karigan asked.

  “Oh, yes, miss. We do give him leavings now and then, but please don’t tell Mirriam—he does no harm.”

  “I certainly will not tell Mirriam,” Karigan said with more feeling than she intended.

  “Thank you, miss. Like I said, we just give him leavings. He’d like to come in, but, well, as you saw, Mirriam wouldn’t have it. He lets us near enough to pet him sometimes. Well, I must be off to begin laundry now.”

  “I’m sorry,” Karigan said again as Lorine loaded her arms with sheets, cleaning rags, and Karigan’s soup-stained nightgown.

  “No trouble, miss,” Lorine replied, voice muffled by linens as she headed out the door.

  Karigan sat back in her chair wondering if she’d made enough trouble for one day. Not by far, she decided. Mirriam had left the house to go shopping, which meant she could poke around without her watchdog pouncing on her the moment she stepped out of her room.

  MOTIVES

  Karigan snuck out into the empty hallway. She had no illusions about getting very far before someone caught her, since it was full day and everyone was up and about, but her chances of success were better with Mirriam absent.

  She was deciding how to proceed when she heard voices once again coming from the foyer, so she crept down the hallway to the top of the staircase and crouched, hiding behind the newel post and balusters. A man in a red uniform stood just inside the doorway, peaked cap on his head and, girded around his waist, a black belt that held stubby tools or weapons of some sort. Behind him, through the open door, an object like a large metallic ball, glinted in the sun, but she could not discern it clearly. It made her inexplicably nervous. She sensed a roving eye watching, judging, seeking. Seeking what? Or who?

  The professor strode into the foyer. “Inspector Gant,” he said with great ebullience. “How kind of you to stop by. What a surprise to see you! May I offer you a brandy?”

  “No thank you, Professor Josston.” The Inspector had the squared shoulders and crisp demeanor of a soldier. “I’m on duty and here on official business. There has been word you’re sheltering an undocumented person in your house.”

  “Undocumented? That’s not very likely now, is it? The emperor knows I respect his laws to the utmost.”

  The Inspector proffered a slight bow of acknowledgment. “Even so, I am required to check. You did take in a young woman recently, did you not?”

  Karigan stiffened, but the professor laughed. “My dear Gant, I’ve made no secret of it. Indeed I have taken in a young woman—my poor niece—so she may live in better circumstances than she left.”

  “I understand,” the Inspector said, clearly unmoved, “but all the same, I must see her documents.”

  “Documents. Of course.” The professor cast about himself as if they’d appear out of thin air. “One moment, please, Inspector, while I return to my office to retrieve them.” And he strode out of view.

  The Inspector remained where he stood with hands clasped behind his back. There was a querying chirp from behind him, and he glanced over his shoulder. “Yes,” he said.

  This was followed by several more chirps and hoots. They did not sound like anything K
arigan had heard before—not at all like birds. Sharper, more tinny. Not at all like any living creature she knew of.

  “Of course,” the Inspector replied to the chirps. “He is highly favored and has a habit of taking in strays.”

  There was a soft whistle and Karigan had an impression of the whatever-it-was expressing doubt.

  “He bought that slave’s freedom, legal and documented. He does not have a history of harboring runaways. Now, silence.”

  There was a rude blatt from behind, and the Inspector raised an eyebrow.

  The professor emerged into the foyer with a sheaf of papers in his hand, which he passed immediately to the Inspector. The Inspector scrutinized the papers, taking time with each page.

  “So you say she is your niece,” the Inspector murmured. “Several Goodgraves have married into your family as I recall.”

  “Indeed,” the professor replied. “Historically and currently. A bit too much intermarrying with that branch if you know what I mean. Some ill-conceived notions of pure bloodlines and the like, leading, shall we say, to unfortunate frailties in the offspring.” He tapped his temple in emphasis.

  “Yes, I see you had your niece released from an asylum in the northeast.”

  “They left her to rot in terrible conditions,” the professor said full of indignation, “and it’s not her fault she’s a bit touched. They are very uncivilized in that region. Mender Samuels can attest to her condition, mental and physical.”

  “I’ve heard that asylum has an unsavory reputation,” the Inspector said. “There has been some agitation to close it down.”

  “And so it should be closed down and the administrators condemned by the Imperial Council.” The professor’s righteous zeal was very convincing. Karigan thought he put to shame any actor of The Royal Magnificent Theater with his performance. “My poor niece. She is a pretty thing, and I’d a thought to marrying her off to some nice young man not concerned about the disarranged state of her mental faculties, but after such trauma? I doubt anyone would have her.”