Mirror Sight

by Kristen Britain

  “There is someone else who needs help,” Cade said.

  “Arhys?”

  “No. I mean, yes. I need to help Arhys and Lorine, too, but there is a woman being held captive here. They call her a witch. We need to help her.”

  Fastion turned his head sharply to look at Cade, as if surprised.

  Starling laughed, but Silk looked horrified. Based on Silk’s reaction, Karigan thought Cade’s statement must have merit. However, it complicated an already complicated rescue and escape.

  “I cannot imagine what you will come up with next,” Starling said.

  “I wouldn’t laugh if I were you,” Cade said, “since Rider G’ladheon thinks she has a use for you, but I would just as soon the Guardian run you through with his sword. If you ever want to see your wife again, and eat her good cooking, you will shut your mouth and do anything we say.”

  “My wife, Mr. Harlowe? What wife?”

  Cade faltered beside Karigan. “But . . . she cooks for you. And your daughters.”

  Starling laughed mirthfully. “What makes you think it was true? My word, how naïve you are. I do have a very good cook—that much is true.”

  Cade’s eyebrows narrowed in consternation.

  “Cade?” Karigan asked.

  He shook his head. “He’s right,” Cade muttered. “I am naïve.”

  “You believe it is important to rescue this witch?” Karigan asked him.

  “She has been tortured. Horribly. I—I sense it would be best to free her. Not just humane, but there is something else. I don’t know how to explain it.”

  Karigan glanced at Silk who appeared to be struggling with himself as if gauging whether or not to protest. He actually looked frightened, and that in itself was telling.

  “Fastion?” she asked. “What do you think?”

  The other men looked confused. Apparently they’d never heard the Eternal Guardian’s name before.

  “Something of this witch is known to me, though I had thought her dead long ago. The emperor thinks her dead, too. Yes, she should be released, though I cannot say what the result will be.”

  Silk paled, and even Starling looked none too happy. So, they’d been keeping a secret from Amberhill. There wasn’t time to discover the reason behind the witch’s captivity, or why she was hidden from Amberhill in his very own palace, but it was enough to convince Karigan.

  She and Cade stepped out into the corridor to hammer out the details of their plan, the dead guard their only witness. Fastion stood in the doorway, where he could hear, but also keep watch on Silk and Starling.

  “All right,” she said in a low voice, “I think we need to split up and—”

  “No!” Cade protested.

  “It will be more efficient,” she said. “We’ll meet up in the museum.”

  Karigan quickly told them her plan. Cade, using Starling, would go for the witch. “Fastion should go with you.”

  “But—”

  “If there is any trouble, he will handle it.”

  “But—”

  “You said there were guards down there.”

  “Yes, special guards. Different than the palace guards.”

  “Fastion is a special guard, too. They can’t very well disregard the emperor’s own Eternal Guardian.”

  “It is true,” Fastion said. “They will answer to me.”

  “But what about you?”

  “Oh, I think I can manage Dr. Silk.” She purposely spoke loudly enough for her voice to carry into the room.

  “Is that so?” Silk asked. “And how will you manage me?”

  Karigan slipped past Fastion to re-enter the room. She smiled as she faced Silk. “Did you see me fight the Eternal Guardian in the throne room?”

  Silk nodded.

  “I am good with a staff if I say so myself.”

  “Why not a gun?”

  She would not admit that she couldn’t handle one. “Because,” she said, displaying the bonewood, “this is so much more personal, don’t you think?”

  “I must say, Silk,” said Mr. Starling, “I am rather liking your girl there. Yes, indeed, I like the way she thinks.”

  Karigan did not want to believe there could be anything about her he could like, but just now she had to be ruthless. If she wanted to go home, this was what she had to do.

  She took a few steps toward Silk. “I will be with you all the way, in the shadows, a ghost that haunts you, the constant whisper of footsteps behind you. If you do anything I do not like, I will strike. Do you understand?”

  “She is a swordmaster initiate in her own time,” Fastion said. “I think you know what that means.”

  There was a downturn of Silk’s mouth. “I know my history.”

  “Good,” Karigan said. “Then we will go to where Lhean is being held.”

  They all walked out into the corridor to the lift’s doors. Fastion worked the levers to bring the car to their current level. When it arrived, Karigan said, “Cade, Fastion, you take Starling and go first.”

  “Rider,” Fastion said, “I will show you how to operate the lift first. After we descend, I will send it back to you.”

  Fastion showed her the settings she needed. It did not look much more complicated than operating the plumbing mechanisms in the professor’s house. When she was sure she understood and memorized what Fastion showed her, she stepped out of the car. Cade looked like he wanted to speak with her but held back. She understood, for she felt the same.

  “Time,” Fastion reminded them, pushing Starling into the lift.

  “Karigan—” Cade began.

  “I will see you in the museum,” she told him firmly, and turned away. She would see him. She refused to believe otherwise.

  She felt Cade pause before he moved to enter the lift. Then she heard the doors close, and it was just her and Dr. Silk.

  “It is madness, you know,” he said, “to think you can get away with this.”

  “Then I am mad,” Karigan replied, smiling without humor. “Madder than the professor ever claimed when I was Kari Goodgrave.”

  The silence in the lift wore on Cade as they descended, the Eternal Guardian at the controls, and the Inquisitor, Starling, uncharacteristically sunk into himself.

  Cade had hated parting from Karigan after only just being reunited with her, but she was right: it was more efficient for them to split up. Still, he worried about her traveling the palace alone with Silk. He supposed he had learned enough about her that Silk was the one who ought to be concerned. It also occurred to him that if his part of the escape failed, she would not be caught in it and would still have a chance of getting home.

  He did not want to fail, however. He wanted to go back with her to see how the world had been, how it should be. And he could be with her.

  He patted the weight in his pocket. He’d recovered Silk’s pistol before leaving the room above. It was a gentleman’s piece, filigreed silver with an ivory handle, and only three chambers with two shots left. Cade had thought such pistols more ornamental than practical, but this one had proven deadly. Still, he missed his trusty, blue-handled Cobalt-Masters revolvers. They’d been confiscated with everything else when he was taken prisoner.

  When the lift came to a stop, Starling asked, “So, what is your plan?” When Cade just stared, Starling continued, “Surely you have a plan. You don’t just wander out onto this level and expect the Scarlet Guard to accept it, do you?”

  “It will be like when you brought me down here before,” Cade said. “I am your prisoner. You are going to show me the witch again.”

  “I suppose you could do worse but not much. They are not expecting us. No appointment has been made. It is irregular. And so is having the Guardian with us.”

  Cade recognized that Starling was trying to sow doubt, though his observations were likely correct.
There was nothing to be done about it.

  “They will not question my presence,” the Guardian said.

  “Not aloud,” Starling replied.

  “They will not question my presence,” the Guardian repeated, “and you will not give them reason.”

  Aside from Karigan, Cade did not think he could have better help than the Guardian. It was hard to remember at times he was a human being beneath the armor. He had a name. Karigan had called him “Fastion.”

  “I will open the doors, and we will step out,” the Guardian said. “Then I will return the lift to Rider G’ladheon.”

  The corridor was as gloomy and disheartening as Cade remembered, the turbines still churning away somewhere below them, the lighting dull. Four members of the Scarlet Guard awaited them.

  “What is your business here?” one of the guards demanded.

  When Starling did not reply immediately, the Guardian placed his armored hand on the Inquisitor’s shoulder.

  “I am bringing this prisoner to see the witch once again. He needs further convincing.”

  “You did not make an appointment,” the guard replied.

  “I will remind you,” Starling said, almost sounding indignant, “that mine is an art, and art rarely recognizes the constraint of appointments.”

  “Very well.” The guard did not sound happy, but he made no further protests. He and his compatriots glanced at the Eternal Guardian as he turned to send the lift back to Karigan, but as he said, they asked no questions.

  Instead, two of the guards roughly grabbed Cade and dragged him down the corridor, through the antechamber, and to the cell door. A third grabbed a taper so they could see in the cell, and the fourth started the complicated process of unlocking all the locks. Cade glanced over his shoulder. Starling watched the proceedings with an unreadable expression. The Eternal Guardian returned to Starling’s side, his hand resting lightly on the hilt of his sword. The Guardian did not carry firearms, Cade reminded himself, but the Scarlet Guard did, and the two shots he had left on Silk’s pistol were not going to be enough if they had to fight their way out.

  It then occurred to him they were not going to get the witch out without a fight.

  A stench seeping out into the corridor announced the opening of the cell door. The light of the taper revealed the painful sight of the witch chained just the same as Cade had seen her before, her flesh naked beneath layers of grime, old blood, and scars, and her lips sewn shut. Though he’d been expecting the sight, he still quailed from it. How could her guards be considered human?

  “Now what?” Starling asked him. “There she is, now what?”

  The four guards glanced at one another as if wondering if this was part of the Inquisitor’s technique. A smile strained against the stitches that held the witch’s lips closed.

  It was the Eternal Guardian who answered. “Unchain her.”

  Hands went to guns, but before the weapons could be drawn and fired, the Guardian’s sword hummed through the air in a blur. The guards were felled as wheat to a scythe, the Guardian’s blade shearing through flesh and bone as though they were nothing. His swordwork was spare and clean and astonishing. Cade looked down at the bodies in disbelief. The blood on the Guardian’s sword matched their uniforms.

  The tip of the Guardian’s sword went to Starling’s throat. “Unchain her.”

  Starling’s nose flared as if taking in the scent of blood. Without protest, he knelt beside one of the bodies to remove the key ring from a dead hand. Cade fetched a fresh taper to replace the one that had fallen with its guard, so they could once again see into the cell.

  As Starling tried different keys in different locks of the witch’s chains, Cade sensed something new in her demeanor—not gratitude, not hope, not even triumph or anger, but power.

  A DARKNESS IN HER MIND

  The lift returned and after Karigan opened the doors, she ordered, “Get in.”

  To her surprise, Silk obeyed without hesitation or argument. She followed in after him, closed the doors, and stepped up to the controls, recalling what Fastion had shown her. It was then she perceived, on the periphery of her vision, Dr. Silk’s mechanical hand striking down at her. She pivoted and blocked it with her staff. It clattered hard against the bonewood. For good measure, she brought the metal handle around and smashed his hand. His fingers jerked, spasmed, and curled. Tiny arcs of fire flared through his glove and sputtered across his knuckles. There was the smell of burning and melting.

  Silk did not cry out in pain, but stared in disbelief at the smoke wisping up from his hand. “You broke it,” he said. “It does not work anymore.” He launched himself at her again. She sidestepped and tripped him. His fall caused the lift to bounce and shudder on its cables, and his specs skittered across the floor. She scooped them up.

  “Not much of a fighter, are you?” she said. “Are you sorry you killed Mr. Howser now?”

  He squinted up at her, raised his dysfunctional, still smoking hand to shield his eyes from the lift’s light. “My specs!”

  She dangled them in front of his face, yanking them back when he tried to snatch them. “You get these back when we reach the palace floor. In the meantime, I suggest you behave. Otherwise, I will find a way to do this without you.”

  His mouth became a grim line as he took her meaning, and he climbed unsteadily to his feet. Karigan dropped his specs into the pocket of her greatcoat and started the lift. It jerked upward, numbers ticking by in a small panel indicating floors. This, she thought, was a vast improvement over stairs, which could become tiresome, particularly in the castle, but she would take all the stairs in the world over a lift any day just to be home.

  When the word “Main” rolled up into the panel, she applied the brake. The car screeched to a halt and shook so hard that she and Silk almost fell.

  “It would seem I need practice,” she muttered. Silk just glared at her. She glared back at him. “We are going to Lhean. If you deviate from our course, or try to alert others to your predicament, it will go badly for you.”

  “It could go badly for you, too.”

  “I can hide in the shadows.”

  He held his broken hand to him like an injured wing and seethed. The hand had finally stopped smoking, which was a good thing, as it would have provoked unwanted questions.

  “Now we will proceed calmly,” she told him. “You will act like there is nothing amiss.” She returned his specs to him, which he took with his left hand. As he put them back on, Karigan hoped it was the last time she had to see his nacreous eyes. “A false move, and they will think a ghost has killed you.”

  “The emperor was right to conquer the lands and put females in their rightful place,” he muttered.

  “You are welcome to your opinion,” Karigan replied. She had no interest in arguing just now.

  “It is not an opinion, it is the natural order of the world.”

  She ground her teeth. He was not making it easy to avoid an argument. She faded out and slid the doors open. When Silk did not move, she shoved him out of the lift into the marble and gilt surroundings of the palace. Karigan surveyed the corridor. Fortunately, the massive columns she had seen in almost every corridor, and other architectural embellishments, provided plenty of concealment and shadows.

  Silk paused just outside the lift, peering around, either looking for aid or searching for her.

  “I am right behind you,” she murmured. “Now go.” She jabbed the small of his back with the bonewood.

  Silk made some inarticulate noise and set off, but he’d not gone more than a few paces when a messenger hurried up to him. Karigan waited in the shadow of the nearest column.

  “Dr. Silk,” the messenger said. “I have been searching all over for you. This missive came in for you from Mill City.”

  The messenger handed a folded piece of paper over to Silk, and Karigan tensed, wa
tchful lest Silk attempt to betray her, but he simply took the letter and stared at the envelope. The messenger bowed and trotted off.

  By the time Karigan reached his side, Silk had opened the message and scanned the contents. He tilted his head back in laughter.

  “You think you are so clever,” he said, presumably to Karigan.

  She snatched the message from his hand. His gasp reassured her he hadn’t anticipated that. “I’ll remind you to keep quiet,” she warned him. Fortunately the corridor remained empty.

  The message was from a Heward Moody, Imperial Engineer. Among the various lines scrawled across the paper, one stood out: As you desired, the drill has breached what we believe to be the royal tombs.

  “No matter what you do here today,” Silk said, “I have succeeded.”

  The faces of Chelsa, chief caretaker of the tombs, and the tomb Weapons, flashed through Karigan’s mind as she reread Heward Moody’s message, that the drill had broken through to the tombs. What did this mean for them? How would they defend the tombs? Certainly Silk would not anticipate anyone living down there, much less a dedicated defense.

  She stuffed the message into her pocket. She would not enlighten him, but she could not help saying, “I would not be so pleased if I were you. The tombs are not so easily taken.”

  The truth was she had no doubt the Weapons would put up a fight, but they’d never withstand the full might of the empire. The tombs had been the last bastion of the home she knew, and now they, too, would fall.

  “Keep moving,” she said, prodding him firmly with her staff but not hard enough to hurt him—though it was tempting to injure one of his kidneys by shoving harder in just the right place. Injuring him would prove . . . satisfying. She returned to the shadows, darkness fringing her thoughts. For all the harm he had caused her and her friends, would anyone blame her for hurting him? Killing him?

  No, she thought, as she glided from the shadow of one column to the next. Insufficient. He deserves torture. Drawn out and excruciating torture.

  The darkness in her mind grew as she traveled abreast of Silk. Every so often someone would pass in the corridor. Some greeted Silk, others did not. Some actually seemed to go out of their way to keep their distance from him.