“Yep.”
“Despite the fact that it could be very dangerous, and even your Talent might not save you?”
“Yep.” Kendra said again. “I know where we’re at, y’know. Couldn’t miss the bad voodoo in the air if I tried. Wizard all up in our grill, things looking pretty gnarly.. got to do something about it, or we’ll all be blown away.. I’ve been thinking about it quite a bit. Maybe a bit too much, because yeah, I’d been almost literally itching to get out there and do something, and now you’re actually offering the chance to so, so – I’m in. Totally, completely, all the other -illy words, in. Also,” she said solemnly, as if it were the most important thing in the world, “it should be a lot of fun.” She sat back in her seat, smiling, staring out over the pond, seeing things Eira could hardly even begin to imagine. “I do have a condition,” she added after a moment.
Eira, with no idea what to expect, braced herself accordingly. “What’s that?”
“Feed the ducks,” Kendra said simply, “because I’m pretty sure the gardener doesn’t. In fact,” she continued, conspiratorially, “I’m almost certain that he’s trying to ignore them to death, and I wouldn’t want to come back and discover that they’ve all starved as part of some passive-aggressive garden-cleansing stratagem while I wasn’t here to feed them. Maybe they’re not supposed to be here, but they are, and I like them. Keep them not dead, that’s all that I ask.”
“Done and done,” Eira said with a laugh, admiring of Kendra’s ability to care so strongly about such weird little bird animal things. If only everything could be so easy.
What was that about? Tec’s voice sounded in Marcus’s ear as he walked through the sky.
“Nothing,” Marcus said aloud, quickening the pace of his flight from memory.
Didn’t look like nothing, Tec said. The bird that held the man’s eyes hopped up onto Marcus’s shoulder. It was really heavy. It seemed pretty significant from here. Lot of feels happening.
“Feels?” Marcus asked irritably. “Well, maybe. Truth be told I thought I’d forgotten that one, and I know why. It was too bloody sad. I don’t even know why, but it was.”
Well I’m going to save it, Tec said decisively. Until we find something more tangible, a strong emotional reaction is something to work with.
“Tec..” Marcus sighed. “Please, can you not save that? I don’t want to revisit it.”
Okay, I won’t, Tec said. Marcus walked on a few more paces, only to note the world around him appear to jump back in time a second or two, the trajectory of his memories freezing briefly before hopping backwards. “Tec,” he said patiently. “You just saved that, didn’t you?”
Maybe, said the disembodied voice evasively. Okay, yeah, I did. We need to take something from this, Marcus, it continued, or the Master might hang us both from the rafters by our feet. Tell you what; you find me something better, and I’ll delete it. Pinkie promise.
The parrot held out a wing. Marcus ignored it, but he strolled on with more purpose now.
It was early evening now. Eira’s third target, as a consummate night owl, wouldn’t be awake for a few hours yet. She slid a note under his door, then grabbed her cloak and headed out into the city.
Marcus shuffled through his memories again, pulling stars from their natural orbits at random to circle instead around him. Each one, he caught briefly and glanced into, seeking anything that might be relevant to mirrors and wizards. There was one where he was actually dressed up as a wizard, checking his costume out in a mirror, and he recommended that to Tec. The parrot raised an eyebrow at him, and Marcus was so stunned by this unexpected feat of dexterity that he decided to let it be.
He couldn’t find anything more meaningful. Beyond that far, old memory there was a huge blank spot that only picked up again in his school days, and those were vague enough to be of little use. Past that came a deluge of failure and misery that had been most of the things that had happened to him since, and he had no desire to visit any of those again. He spared a thought for happier times with Alice, for the fleeting moments where he had felt most strongly attached to the world, but in the context of this search they were just distractions, and he let them go again with regret.
He found himself sitting around a table with himself and some friends, on the night when he’d first discovered his inability to acquire inebriation. Prior to this moment he’d had only a few sneaky sips of alcohol, and hadn’t seen quite what the fuss was about. This time around, he’d begun to seriously wonder if there wasn’t something wrong with him, and his friends began to spin out of control and fall about all over the place, descending into incoherent, squiggly laughter. He shared with himself the memory of the humour he’d felt at their expense, and found himself wondering once again what the deal was.
You never ever got drunk? Tec asked, surprised.
“Never,” Marcus admitted. “Stronger drugs didn’t work, either. Always got the hangover, but never the high. I got pretty good at pretending, if that counts.”
Neat, Tec said. Must be a damn good metabolism you’ve got there, Marcus.
“Yay,” Marcus said, and wandered away from the memory just as the first of his friends rediscovered the joy of vomiting.
Ron’s Bar was beginning to liven up again as the sun gently sank over the horizon; Ron was enterprising enough to not let a massive brawl the night before get in the way of his business interests. He only purchased cheap furniture, so that when a leg was torn off a chair and used to batter someone around the head, it would inevitably break, become fairly useless as a weapon and hopefully not contribute to the spillage of blood all over the carpet. It was easily replaced. If the red stuff did leak despite his efforts, it wasn’t the end of the world; the carpet was blood-red as well. The general effect was of sweeping the mess under the rug without having to go to the trouble of lifting the rug beforehand. The bar was refurbished, and the evening proper could get underway.
No-one ever asked Ron what he did with the bodies.
After someone had ripped the front door off the hinges the previous evening, Ron had spent several hours painstakingly attaching new doors; saloon doors. Through a particular quirk of his work, he’d managed to make it so that, once swung upon, they would carry on going back and forth, squeaking quietly, until forcibly stopped. The idea was that it would remind people to close the door when they came in. Sadly, Ron had not accounted for the tenaciously stubborn nature of the average drunk, and so the bar was filled with quiet squeaking as the evening wore on.
Ron stood quietly behind the bar, idly cleaning a glass as he observed his patrons. There was a Viaggiatori in tonight, which unnerved him slightly, as he was sure that the two Viaggiatori from the previous evening had somehow been responsible for what had eventually transpired. Tonight it was a different one, though, one of his regulars. A nasty little man who name was Lucian, or Lucy, something like that. The man came by a couple of nights a week, perched his horrible pet raven on the bar where it ate all the peanuts, and proceeded to win far too much money than seemed possible at the poker tables. It was tempting to bar the man, but for all their star was falling, the Viaggiatori still had influence in the city, and it wouldn’t do to make a fuss. Peanuts were cheap enough.
The quiet squeaking intensified slightly, and Ron glanced up in time to see someone new come in. The person stood still in the doorway, illuminated by the lamp that Ron had installed to make sure he could case new arrivals, and held the swinging doors in place.
There wasn’t silence, as silence was a natural enemy in Ron’s bar, but the cessation of the squeaking that had been punctuating the natural hubbub for the last hour or so made a notable difference. Eyes turned to the newcomer, and Ron stifled a groan. Another Viaggiatori! A female this time, her colours subdued but visible under a long, dark purple cloak. She met the stares of Ron and his regulars unabashed, surveying her surroundings with a casual, faintly reproachful interest. After a second or two she spotted the other Viaggi
atori, who had also seen her come in and ducked down in an effort not to be noticed, and went and sat down at the table he was playing at.
“Twenty dollar buy in, erm, miss,” said the hulking reprobate who was dealing at the table – a man who had probably never said ‘miss’ to anyone in his life aside of an ironic ‘I’ll miss you’ whilst dangling someone off a bridge. A sudden influx of femininity that was wearing more than a handkerchief’s worth of clothing was not a common occurrence in Ron’s bar.
“Sure,” she said, waving a small purse absently towards the man, who took it and pushed a pile of chips towards her. She ignored them, however; she was staring at the other Viaggiatori, whom she had sat directly opposite. “Good evening, Lucin,” she said to the man.
“Master,” the short man returned blankly. “What brings you here?”
“You do,” she shot back instantly. “You’re a hard man to find. One would almost suspect you didn’t want to be found.”
“I like to keep to myself,” Lucin said, a man sat in a room with over fifty people.
“Either that or you knew I’d been looking for you. Been inside anyone’s heads, lately?” She nodded, almost imperceptibly, towards the large pile of chips he had amassed over the last hour or so. By Ron’s judgement, he was close to winning this game, as he had outright won the last one he played. That was particularly daring play, for him; usually, the man’s method was to join fairly low-money games, win more than he lost, and not draw too much attention to himself. Ron had only noticed because he made it his business to find out the business of people who didn’t want to advertise their business.
“Lady, are you playing or what?” asked the man to Lucin’s left, a mercenary whose name Ron didn’t know. Unfortunately, he was unable to eavesdrop any longer, as someone had attempted to touch one of his girls on the other side of the bar, and been rewarded with a file-sharpened heel to the face for his trouble.
After dealing with the situation, Ron casually strolled over to the table where the Viaggiatori were, to collect glasses and eavesdrop unnoticed. The game was back in motion; aside from the two brightly coloured players, the mercenary was the only one still playing, and, as Ron quietly removed a pile of glasses from before him, he pushed all of his chips in.
“Aren’t you going to look at your cards?” Lucin asked, glaring at the woman.
“I’m playing blind,” she said casually, locking stares with the other man.
Ron retreated to his bar to watch from afar, aware that the situation was becoming heated. Lucin muttered a curse, and matched the mercenary’s worth. The woman did the same, which forced her to put all of her chips in as well. The cards were then revealed; Ron caught himself holding his breath, ignoring the man at the bar who was waving irritably, trying to catch his attention.
The mercenary had a straight. Lucin had a full house. And the woman.. had four of a kind.
After a quiet moment, the mercenary sighed, tipped his hat to the other players, and left the table. The others at the table, who had been quietly observing, also chose this moment to slip away, leaving the two Viaggiatori with their dealer, who made a complicated gesture to suggest that he had been overcome with temporary deafness.
“Alright, Eira,” Lucin growled, his face red and his fists clenched, “you’ve made your point. What do you want?”
“You know what I want,” the woman – Eira – countered. “Since you had your eyes in my head when I was planning it – which is why you hid yourself here in the hope that I wouldn’t find you.”
“I’m not doing it,” the man said bluntly.
“Believe me,” Eira said, “if I didn’t need you, I’d leave you to rot here. Reprehensible cheating bastard as you are, your Talent is useful, and I need to make use of it.” The dealer did his duty; again, Eira didn’t check her cards. “Do you think I don’t know how you win, Lucin? It’s pretty ingenious, really. But do you think the people of this fine establishment would appreciate being informed?”
“You wouldn’t dare,” the man growled. Eira’s response was a big, slow grin that spread over her face with the same lazy charm of a cat stretching. “You would, wouldn’t you?” She nodded.
“Fine,” the man said, “but you reimburse me double what you’ve just cost me. You say you need me, so I think I get to set my price.”
She raised an eyebrow, glancing at the pile of chips he referred to, which added up to a mighty sixty dollars. “You come with me right now, leave the winnings, and I’ll give you back double for that as well – when you’ve done what I ask of you.”
“Sold,” the man said, the ignition of undue greed in his eyes overcoming his better senses. He spat on his hand and offered it to her. She gave it a withering look, then rose, turned and was gone from the bar. Lucin spared a glance for his still reasonably large pile of winnings, alongside Eira’s own abandoned pile, met Ron’s eye, shrugged and followed her.
Unusually, there was a silent moment. Ron looked around; most of the rest of the bar were also looking at the mountains of chips. As one man, they pounced.
From a safe position ducked down behind the bar, Ron sighed, pulled out a pen and paper and started making a new shopping list for furniture, to the sounds of another good night’s brawl.
Marcus descended from his mind’s eye, trying to shake the haunting sensation of being watched that had crept up on him over the last few memories. It was hard to put his finger on; it felt like he had been part of a larger audience for his past than just himself and Tec. He’d mentioned it to Tec, who had shrugged his wings and manically theorised that due to the relative nature of time he was feeling a reverberation of himself doing this again at a different point, but Marcus was unsure.
He’d found nothing, nothing but rising anger at all the people he had been, for every wrong decision they’d made, for the sense of clarity that hindsight afforded far too late. Plenty of that, but nothing about a wizard named Keithus. That name, though.. it was like the lullaby. He was sure he’d never heard it before reaching the Mirrorworld, but the more he did hear it, the more it seemed like there was something in there, some barely remembered something that was just out of reach. He’d fumbled for it, tried to use the name as an impetus for the summoning of memories, but the only ones that had come to this command had been inconsequential, increasing Marcus’s feelings of anger and confusion until Tec had finally took pity on him and told him he could come down.
He paused on the hilltop to look back at the stars. He almost wished he could leave them there, but for some reason, despite the fact that they had never really left him, it still seemed important that he wait for them to arc gently downwards from their assumed positions, dissolve into smoke and seep back into his mind. Heavy once again with ill regret and a crick in his shoulder from where Tec’s parrot had been weighing him down, Marcus turned and walked down the hill to meet the man at his little lab, where he was seated far too close to a gigantic monitor.
“Welcome back,” the old technician said jovially. “Enjoy that jog around your mind?”
“No,” Marcus said heavily, glancing back again. “It was another waste of time, wasn’t it?”
“Come now Marcus,” Tec scolded lightly, “that’s a remarkably Helm-like point of view. Wouldn’t you rather think of it is as a necessary first step towards a desirable end result? Mm? Mm?”
“Probably,” Marcus said, with a note towards the wistful, “but I’m not going to. How many steps is this going to take, Tec? You must know I’m already pretty tired of it. Even aside of all the Mirrorline stuff and what happened last time, I’m pretty sure this is dangerous on a psychological level. And I swear, I wasn’t alone up there.”
“Of course you weren’t,” Tec said, turning back to his mighty databank and carefully tapping out a beat on his obnoxiously small keyboard. “I was there too. I was a parrot, remember?”
“That’s not what I meant,” Marcus retorted, as he watched lines of unfamiliar symbols shoot an
d burst across the screen as Tec hard-coded his memories. It was almost offensive, watching his past be so clinically preserved and manipulated for ease of access. “I’m sure the more I thought about Keithus, the more I felt like he was there with me. Is that a side-effect, or something important?”
Tec paused, frowning. “I don’t know,” he said, and the words felt like they’d been summoned from the deepest pit of black despair known to man. “I wish I did, because I don’t like not knowing things.” He brightened up. “Still, what we’ve got today is a start. I’ll throw it all in on through a spin cycle and see if I can’t make some sense of it, so that you can hopefully point yourself in the right direction next time, and have this all over and done with as soon as possible. How’s that sound?”
“I am temporarily appeased,” Marcus informed him wryly. “We’re done, then?”
“Aye. All that running around has burnt up most of our energy, and I’ll need the rest for this. Gotta do some optimisation experiments too, as soon as I can convince Niko to get me a kumquat.”
Marcus didn’t ask. He bade Tec a good night and stepped out through the shimmering mirror into the better-defined reality of the labs, where he found Niko waiting to grab him again if he made any sudden movements.
“Relax,” Marcus said, “we’re done. I can go.”
“Oh,” Niko said, summoning new depths of melancholia at the missed opportunity. “Well, see you then.” He stood aside.
“Which is the quickest way back to my room?” Marcus asked, picking up his staff.
“That would be the back exit. However, I should warn you,” the man added gravely, “there is a bucket of whitewash with your name on it awaiting you should you open that door.”
“I’ll take the lift,” Marcus decided.
As he stepped out of the lift into the main entrance hall, Marcus met Eira coming in, arguing with a short, greasy man who – Marcus checked this, just to be sure – had a raven on his shoulder.
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