Mirror Sight

by Kristen Britain

The bay lifted his nose to the sky to scent the air, still watching her. Something passed between them, a warmth, an understanding.

  Suddenly the horse half-reared and surged toward her, dragging his handler behind him. In her peripheral vision, she saw the Inspector raise his odd weapon and aim it at the horse.

  “Nooo!” she screamed.

  The professor tried to pull her away, but she’d the strength to resist.

  “Don’t shoot!” cried an authoritative voice. “The horse is mine, and I’ll deal with it.”

  The Inspector paused, then lowered his weapon. After that, Karigan heard no more, for the bay had reached her, halted, and placed his velvety nose in her hands. He blew gentle breaths into her palms, and she saw herself mirrored in his eye. The handler jerked on the lead rope.

  “Give that to me!” Karigan snatched it right out of his grasp. He waggled his whip. “If you raise that whip again,” she told him, “I shall take it from you as well and break it.”

  The man paused, seeming to debate the level of threat she posed. The professor stepped between them. Karigan concentrated on stroking the bay’s sweat-slicked neck.

  “Good boy,” she said in soothing tones. “Good, good boy.” The horse’s eyelids drooped, and his ears flickered as he listened to her. Then everything stilled for her and the image of immense black wings brushed through her mind, the echo of distant hoofbeats. “Raven,” she murmured. “Your name is Raven.” She did not know how she knew this, but she did with a firm certainty.

  “Actually,” said the owner of the authoritative voice who’d stopped the Inspector from using his weapon, “his name is Samson, and he belongs to me.”

  The professor groaned beside her and whispered to her, “Now you’ve done it. Let me do all the talking.”

  Karigan looked up. The crowd had begun to disperse, the Inspector shooing people along, his Enforcer prodding them with the tip of one sleek leg. Again she couldn’t help a shudder of revulsion. Traffic began to move around them, and Samson’s owner stood before them, his arms folded across his chest.

  He wore a finely tailored gray suit and the tall style of hat that seemed so popular here. His cravat was a matching silk, and diamond cufflinks winked in the sun. He wore a gold brooch shaped in the emblem of the empire on his lapel—the dragon with tail wrapped around its neck. Tucked beneath his elbow he carried a slim and elegant walking cane topped by a golden knob. Even as she took in these details, one above all others caught her attention: his specs. The lenses were a smoky dark that hid his eyes.

  The three of them and the bay became an island in the traffic, the Inspector directing carriages, wagons, carts, and pedestrians to flow around them. They were not asked to relocate, all else was required to move around them. It spoke to the man’s importance.

  The bay remained calm beside Karigan despite the activity on all sides However, if any of his handlers attempted to approach, he laid his ears back and stomped.

  “Samson likes you, young lady,” the man with the dark specs said, “and I did not think him capable of liking anyone.”

  Before Karigan could reply, the professor intervened. “Kari, this is Dr. Silk, a colleague of mine in the field of archeology.” The way he said the word “colleague” made it sound like an epithet.

  “And I trust this is your niece, Miss Goodgrave, who has so recently joined your household.”

  “It is.”

  Dr. Silk extended a black-gloved hand to her. It rotated unnaturally on his wrist, emitting a low whirring sound, then came to a stop with a distinct snick. The stallion tossed his head, and it took all Karigan had not to recoil from the man. Instead, she turned to the horse to quiet him, but still, Dr. Silk’s hand remained extended. He raised a silver gray eyebrow over the rim of one of his lenses, the darkness of the glass seeming to billow like storm clouds or a swirling void.

  The professor passed her an imploring look. Reluctantly she placed her hand in Dr. Silk’s. Although his grasp was firm, it did not feel unlike any other hand she’d ever held. Perhaps she’d only imagined the unnatural motion, the noise.

  Dr. Silk bowed over their clasped hands. “It is a pleasure to meet you.” He smiled and released her, and the moment passed.

  The two men stared at one another like cats, though the professor was probably at a disadvantage, unable to see Dr. Silk’s eyes. Karigan absently stroked the bay’s neck, his flesh quivering beneath her touch.

  “Kari,” the professor said, without averting his gaze, “give the lead rope to Dr. Silk.”

  Karigan felt her hackles rise. The bay snorted. She could not let this horse back into the possession of those who would abuse him. Karigan was about to argue, when Dr. Silk spoke.

  “Perhaps we can come to some accord. I have brought Samson to market because he’s unmanageable. He’s already killed one of my hostlers. I thought perhaps if no one else would buy him today, maybe the meat men would. A pity, for he is a fine specimen of a horse.”

  “Knackers?” Karigan demanded, her hand tightening on the lead rope.

  “Precisely.” A faint smile fluttered on his lips. “A terrible shame.”

  Karigan found herself staring at her own reflection in his specs, though the cloudy darkness of the glass seemed to swallow it.

  He returned his gaze to the professor, and Karigan exhaled in relief. “Seeing as your niece and Samson have taken to one another, perhaps he need not face slaughter after all.”

  “What are you saying?” the professor demanded. “That I buy this beast from you?”

  “For a very reasonable price.”

  “I don’t need—”

  “Uncle,” she said hastily. She grabbed his arm, squeezing it to make sure she had his full attention. “Please, this horse, he’s special.”

  “Kari, he’s killed a man.”

  “You wouldn’t know by looking at him now,” Dr. Silk said. “Harmless as a kitten in your niece’s hands.”

  The bay watched the exchange with ears perked, head lowered beside Karigan so she could pet him. Nothing about him indicated danger.

  “In fact,” Dr. Silk continued, “your niece appears to have a calming effect on him. It’d be a waste to send him to slaughter, but if that is what I must do, that’s what I’ll do. You are the one who will have to contend with your niece’s broken heart.”

  Karigan would use the bonewood on anyone who tried to take the horse away from her, even if it meant ending the whole charade and losing the professor’s protection. This horse, he was not ordinary, in fact . . . Well, she couldn’t swear on it, but . . . “He’s special,” she said again to the professor, trying to impress it upon him with all her will.

  “See? She’s already attached,” Dr. Silk said. “And my price is reasonable.”

  The professor stared hard at Karigan. She tried to gaze meaningfully at him through her veil. He frowned, made a noise of exasperation, then nodded to himself as if coming to some conclusion and began negotiating.

  She sighed in relief. The connection she felt with this horse was so like the one she shared with her own Condor, the quiet intelligence that went beyond an ordinary horse. She could only conclude that the big bay stallion was of the same lineage as all Green Rider horses, and that maybe magic was not completely dead in the world after all.

  WATER POWER

  It was clear to Karigan from the outset that the two men were enemies, or at the very least, rivals, as she watched them dicker over the price of Raven. If the professor had hackles, they’d be standing right up. Dr. Silk remained cool even as the professor smoldered. The image of a pair of predators came to mind, pacing around each other, snapping and growling in a dominance display, for all that they spoke in polite terms and behaved cordially.

  “I will accept four gold dragons,” Dr. Silk said suddenly.

  The tension eased in the professor’s shoulders.

&
nbsp; “I will accept four gold dragons and one other thing.”

  The professor instantly tensed again. “What? Four gold dragons is absolute thievery for a problem horse. What else could you possibly want?”

  Dr. Silk turned his gaze on Karigan, a tight smile on his lips, the sun flashing on the rims of his specs. “Why, a promise that you’ll bring your delightful niece around for a visit. That, or the horse goes to the meat men.”

  Karigan watched the professor struggle with himself. The restraints of this society likely did not permit an outright refusal, and she had a notion of him trying to find an adequately polite way out and to suffer defeat without losing face. He would let Raven go to the knackers after all, just to prevent her from calling on Dr. Silk. She tightened her grip on Raven’s lead rope. She could not allow that to happen.

  “I would be delighted,” she said before the professor could speak, “to pay you a visit, Doctor.”

  “Niece!” Now the professor attempted to mask his horror.

  “Uncle,” she said calmly, “surely it is but a trifle in exchange for this fine horse, and I should like to get to know the people of Mill City better.”

  “Dr. Silk is not of Mill City,” the professor replied in a flat voice.

  “I am for a time,” Dr. Silk said, his grin one of triumph. “I hail from Gossham, in the Capital,” he told Karigan, “but have lodgings here while I oversee my latest project.”

  The professor muttered under his breath.

  Dr. Silk once more took Karigan’s hand and bowed over it. “A pleasure to meet you, Miss Goodgrave. I hope Samson does not cause you harm. Do be wary of him.”

  “I shall send my man-of-business around with the payment,” the professor said.

  “Partial payment, you mean,” Dr. Silk replied with a lingering glance at Karigan, her tiny reflection looking back at her in each lens of his specs.

  Polite conduct continued as the two men shook hands, but even this seemed some sort of contest, the professor’s features rigid as he gazed directly into Dr. Silk’s specs.

  “Good day to you,” the doctor said, and in a moment released the professor’s hand and walked away. An Inspector parted the traffic for him.

  Professor Josston watched after him for some moments brushing his hands off on his coat as if to wipe away any residue of Dr. Silk’s touch, despite the fact both men wore gloves.

  “Come,” he told Karigan, taking her arm and glancing over his shoulder. “We must get off the street.”

  Karigan tugged on Raven’s lead and the stallion followed obediently behind. They found that during the negotiations, Luke had come around with the carriage.

  “Raven needs some attention,” Karigan said, looking at the lash marks on his hide.

  “Should’ve let him go to the knackers,” the professor muttered. Raven laid back his ears and snapped at him. “See what I mean? And you have no idea what a hornet’s nest you’ve walked into with—”

  “That’s a fine beast,” Luke said, jumping down from the driver’s seat of the carriage. He produced a jar from his coat pocket. “I’ve some salve that might do for those lashes. If you keep him quiet, miss, I’ll put some on.”

  Raven watched Luke with ears half down, but Karigan spoke softly to him and he relaxed, tolerating Luke’s touch as he smeared salve on the wounds. Meanwhile, the professor stood there beside her, fuming, his wolfish eyebrows drawn down low over his eyes.

  “Would’ve been a shame to see this one turned into meat and glue,” Luke muttered, patting Raven soundly on the neck, “but some see horses as no more than machines, easy to replace when they don’t work right.”

  He tied Raven’s lead to the back of the carriage and held the door open for Karigan and the professor to climb into the cab.

  “We shall continue our tour,” the professor instructed his driver, and he added to Karigan, “and there will be no more buying of horses.”

  Karigan smiled behind her veil. She was tempted to tell him she thought Raven to be of the stock once used to mount Green Riders, very special horses, more intelligent than ordinary ones, but she decided to hold onto that particular thought for now. She wished to get to know the stallion better to ensure she was not mistaken. And she feared the professor would see Raven as just another artifact. She did not know what that would mean for the poor horse who had already been so ill-used.

  “Of all the men you could come to the attention of,” the professor said, breaking into her thoughts and still glowering. “Dr. Ezra Stirling Silk. Have you any idea?”

  The carriage bumped along the street, and Karigan shook her head. “No. How would I?”

  Her response seemed to take the steam out of him, and his features eased. “You are correct. There is no way you could have known.” He reached over and patted her knee. “I’m sorry to have sounded so harsh, my dear, but I worry so.”

  “Why does Dr. Silk worry you so much?”

  “His father is one of the most important men in the whole of the empire, and Dr. Silk is just as entwined in the upper echelons of imperial authority. My dear, if ever you wanted the attention of the emperor brought down upon you, you just succeeded. The one thing you—we—do not want is the emperor’s attention.”

  “I thought Dr. Silk was an archeologist.”

  “He is. We trained together at the same school. We’re both of Preferred families and so also engaged socially. We became quite close, actually. But his father, as the Minister of the Interior, is responsible for repressing the truth of the empire and our heritage. You might say that Silk and I had a parting of philosophies, though I never openly expressed my true bent. He continues to pander to the empire, while I am more or less considered outcast for not actively seeking favor for myself. I’m considered odd, and it suits my purposes.”

  The carriage rumbled on, taking several turns, the clip clop of Raven’s hooves coming from behind like an echo. Karigan saw another Inspector strolling the street with a mechanical beside him, its legs propelling it in spiderlike fashion. It made Karigan shudder all over again.

  “What do they do?” she asked.

  “Hmmm?” the professor asked.

  “The mechanicals—what do they do?”

  “The Enforcers are so called because they enforce the empire’s laws.”

  “But what do they do?”

  “Well, as you can see here, they patrol with Inspectors, keep order, that sort of thing. They watch and report everything and anything deemed suspicious, looking for anti-empire agitators and the like.”

  “I do not like them.”

  “As you should not, my dear. You should know, and never forget, that they are armed and do not hesitate to use their weapons. They have no capacity for compassion or mercy and will shed blood based on suspicion alone, without regard to possible innocence. They are made to protect the empire, and not its citizens, no matter what the propaganda says.”

  Karigan liked this future she found herself in less and less.

  As the carriage moved along, they turned, leaving the business district behind, and entered a section walled by mill buildings with a narrow canal running in front of them, up against their foundations and . . . through them? There were arches in the foundations, of which she could only see the tops, the rest submerged in the canal. The water reflected in ripples in the tall windows of the mills.

  The professor followed her gaze. “Ah, yes. We’ve entered the heart of industry. This is Canal Street.”

  “Canals—” Karigan began.

  “They power the industry. They deliver water to turbines, which set the machines in motion. Water power, my dear. Certainly you had mills in your . . .” He hesitated, then whispered, “in your time.”

  Karigan nodded, though she didn’t know what a turbine was. She knew water wheels, knew them on the outsides of wooden barnlike structures situated along streams and
rivers. Not these imposing brick buildings.

  “The Amber River feeds the canal,” the professor continued. “You, er, would not know the river. The final battle that marked the ascension of the empire altered the topography around the Old City. It was the force of . . . the force of those unknown weapons I mentioned before. Anyway, the Amber River runs down from the north and splits north and west of the city. So the canal you see right here flows beneath the mills and empties out behind into the north branch of the Amber. Remarkable engineering, really.”

  Karigan didn’t care about the engineering. The professor had gripped her with the idea of the river and how the force of battle had changed the landscape, had caused a river to flow where there had not been one before. A stream, yes. But not a river, here, in Sacor City. It spoke of magic to her, of vast power. She shuddered. These weapons of Mornhavon’s had been magic, or something magical. No wonder the Sacoridians had been overcome.

  “Closer to the Capital,” the professor continued, oblivious to her disquiet, “they’ve other means of powering machines, but in a blighted backwater such as this, we rely on old technology. Water, I think, is elegant in its simplicity. Perfectly suitable. Men like Silk do not appreciate that line of thinking. For them, it is always what and who they can twist and destroy for their own benefit.”

  The professor seemed to forget Karigan as the identical brick facades rolled past the carriage’s window. Lost in some reverie, he brushed his long mustache with his forefinger. Karigan felt just plain lost, not liking the future her land and its people had found themselves in. Inside those impersonal brick walls, slaves labored over machines. She could not see them, but she knew they were in there. And, while she did not know what their labor was like or what the conditions inside the mills were, she could not imagine any of it was pleasant. As for the transformation of the countryside into this city? It was not an improvement. From all that she could tell, the empire was not about its people, but about the machines and what they produced. She sighed, feeling homesick and alien.

  A pall settled over the interior of the carriage, Karigan with her own grim thoughts, and the professor gazing out his window, chin resting on his hand. Karigan followed his gaze and saw that the scene had changed from orderly brick buildings to burned out mills, a grouping of them with a central courtyard scattered with debris and choked with weeds. Remnants of blackened brick walls looked like jagged teeth. Only one building in the grouping stood unburned, yet forlorn, its windows boarded up.