The Emperor's Mirror

by Emily Holloway

  “No,” she admitted, a bit reluctantly.

  “See, there,” Emory said. “If I am compelling them to do anything, it is to come to my temple and see me speak, which may be egotistical of me, but is not illegal.”

  The Warders exchanged a quick glance. “About that leave to look around,” Sienna said.

  “Certainly.” Emory inclined his head. “Owain, could you show them around? Let them in to wherever they would like. Try not to disturb the service. It will be starting shortly.”

  Owain nodded. “Yes, Emory,” he said.

  Emory stood up and arranged his vestments. “It was a pleasure,” he said, and left the room without another word.

  Owain waited until he was gone. Then he looked at the others expectantly. “Would you like to start here?” he asked amiably. “Nothing is locked.”

  “Here’s as good a place as any,” Tallis said, although he doubted he would find anything, and certainly not the item for which they were searching. If they had anything to hide, Emory would not have offered to let them look around. After they had done a thorough look around the room, Owain led them on a tour of the rest of the temple. There was not much to see, and nothing interesting. The upstairs held some richly appointed guest suites, although they didn’t compare to the splendor of Emory’s own chambers. The locked doors off the corridors lead mostly to storage units or unused rooms, many of which were empty and unfinished. Owain told them that Emory was hoping to convert them into classrooms at a later date.

  “Well, that was an exercise in futility,” Tallis said. He looked at Owain and asked curiously, “Why do you serve here?”

  “I don’t have anything better to do,” Owain said. “Now, if you will excuse me, I have things I need to attend to. Feel free to visit again.” He bowed deeply, showed them to the door, and turned and walked away.

  “Let’s go,” Sienna said. Once they were outside and a safe distance away, she said, “This place stinks. But I don’t think they have the chest, or at least if they do, they’ve hidden it very cleverly. For the moment, we should concentrate on the case we have.”

  “So we’re going to let him keep hypnotizing people?” Calessa asked, shuddering slightly as she thought of how easily she had been taken in.

  Sienna shrugged. “We can report it back to the Warder Council,” she said. “But let’s not do that yet. If they don’t have the chest, we’re up against a solid wall. We should investigate a little more. Calessa, why don’t you stay here, and we’ll go back to the monastery?”

  “Lovely idea,” Calessa muttered. “I’d rather dance on hot pokers.”

  “Uh,” Tallis said, “please?”

  “Fine,” Calessa said with a sigh. She didn’t bother to protest further. It was true that she might have been more vulnerable to Emory’s power of suggestion, but that was something that could work in their favor. If Emory believed her to be susceptible, he might not be as careful around her as he would around the other two Warders. “But only because you asked nicely. I’ll keep in touch. If you don’t hear from me for three days, you had best come rescue me. I have no interest in spending the rest of my life as a drooling acolyte.”

  “No drool,” Sienna said, “got it.” She glanced at Tallis. “Has it occurred to you that perhaps there is no chest, and no theft? That the monks faked this to get us to investigate Emory?”

  “The logic is sound,” Tallis said. “But the mysterious little boy said the chest was stolen.”

  “He might have been fed misinformation,” Sienna pointed out. “And until we know who he is, we have no reason to trust anything he says.”

  “I don’t think he was fed anything,” Tallis said. “But I’ll keep it in mind. It’s still a possibility.”

  * * *

  Tallis took down the Gate and they made their way back to the monastery without much conversation. As they approached, Sienna commented, “I’m going to argue with you at dinner, if you don’t mind.”

  “Uh,” Tallis said, blinking at her. “I prefer not to argue with people. Am I going to say something to offend you?”

  “Possibly,” she said. “But more likely it’ll be the Elder that provokes me. I just thought I would warn you. I’ll have more leeway to explore the tunnels if they’re not expecting to see me ‘investigating’, so I plan to huff off at some point. They might believe that I might walk off the job, but they wouldn’t believe I would leave a comrade. Thus, I’m going to argue with you where they can see me, and it won’t seem as strange when I leave.”

  “Only if they don’t know Warders very well,” Tallis mused.

  Sienna shrugged. “I could, at this juncture, reasonably claim that it doesn’t take three Warders to do this job. And just as reasonably, I could claim that the Elder isn’t giving us the information we need. Tell me, do you honestly think that Emory had anything to do with the chest being stolen? Or do you think we were merely set upon his trail by that jealous, over-compensating Elder?”

  “Can both be true?”

  “They can be,” Sienna said. “But your logic would be appreciated. What would a phony priest of a new religion want with a relic from the old gods?”

  “Honestly, I don’t know,” Tallis said. “Some of the relics are rumored to have magical powers that may or may not have anything to do with the gods themselves. Without knowing exactly what artifact was stolen, it’s impossible to guess what anyone might want with it, other than money. For all we know, it could be made of solid gold. But . . .” He hesitated, then said, “there’s something wrong with that man.”

  “The so-called Father Emory? Why do you say?”

  “Do I have to have a reason?” Tallis asked.

  “They’re usually nice,” Sienna said, “but with you, I’ll accept ‘instinct’ as a valid answer. I find his little sidekick there more interesting. He strikes me as being a perfectly normal individual. What’s he doing mixed up in something like this? And it’s doubly interesting that neither of them seemed afraid of us in the slightest, even though we have the power to shut that entire temple down on a mere suspicion, let alone actual evidence.”

  “They’re either very good at hiding whatever it is they’re doing,” Tallis said, “or the temple itself is not their real aim.”

  “Hm. I wish I knew what that aim might be.” Sienna shrugged. “Hopefully Calessa will be able to ferret out some secrets. You and I need to concentrate on that chest, and hopefully on browbeating the Elder into giving us some information – or sneaking it in other ways.”

  “I think our best bet is the boy,” Tallis said.

  “You’ve spoken with him for five minutes,” Sienna pointed out. “You don’t even know if he’ll be back to see you again.”

  “He will,” Tallis said.

  “If he got in trouble because you asked the Elder about him this morning, he very well may not even be there anymore.”

  “He’s still there,” Tallis said, “and he’ll be back to see me.”

  Sienna gave him a rather dour look as they came up on the gate of the monastery. She and Tallis rarely worked together, and whenever they did, Tallis’ reliance on his own instincts was a bone of contention between them. Sienna preferred solid, logical facts to the nebulous feelings that Tallis treated as such. They were let in and after a brief, uninformative meeting with the Elder, were led to the dining room for a quick meal. There were several other monks eating as they sat down with some unappealing rice and vegetable stew.

  “Warder Tallis,” one of the younger monks said, “we heard you had an encounter with the monastery ghost last night.”

  “That was a ghost?” Tallis said, feigning interest. Sienna gave him a sharp look. “You do mean the little boy, right?”

  The monk nodded and chuckled. “It’s an old rumor that a boy’s ghost haunts the monastery; supposedly some monks took him in some decades ago and shortly after he died of an illness. The Elder won’t hear of it; he says it’s nonsense.”

  “That’s because it is,” Sienna
muttered, but fortunately she did it quietly enough so that nobody heard.

  “Don’t you have any rituals to help his spirit move on?” Tallis asked.

  The monk shrugged. “The boy’s spirit doesn’t harm anyone. We rather think he likes it here.”

  “How often do you see him?” Tallis asked, fishing for information; even if it was false, it might give him some interesting clues.

  “Hardly any of us do,” the monk said. “One of the elders said you have to have a lot of spiritual, magical power before you can. He said that to people who are magically powerful, the boy would seem real.” He laughed again and said, “That’s probably why you thought he was.”

  “It’s as good an explanation as any, I guess,” Tallis said. He finished poking at his stew and decided this was an excellent time to leave these idiots and go find his rations, where he had some dried beef. Sienna seemed to agree with his opinion of the food, and joined him. “What about arguing with me?”

  “I couldn’t stay and listen to that drivel, and neither could you. Besides, I’m hungry. What do you think of the ghost story? Frightened?”

  Tallis arched an eyebrow at her. “Yes, of their terrible lying,” he said. “That boy’s no more a ghost than you or I.”

  Sienna sighed. “I think I’ll go to bed early. Good luck meeting your ghost.”

  “Thanks. I’ll need it. He’s very curious, and I’m going to run out of things to entertain him with. Are you going to go hunting through the tunnels tonight?”

  “Yes, although I doubt it’ll do much good. But I’ll see what I can find.”

  * * *

  Chapter Four

  When Calessa dropped in at the end of the second service, she worried briefly about being hypnotized again, but felt nothing out of the ordinary. She concluded with some relief that whatever had affected her must have been at the beginning of the service. She was not surprised when Owain approached her at the end, as she sat amidst the crowd of dazed followers. “Staying, are you?” he asked.

  “Well, of course,” she said, giving him a bright and utterly insincere smile. “I’m terribly interested. It seems like a lovely religion.”

  “I see,” Owain said, amused.

  “Yes, you probably do.”

  “Emory would like to offer accommodations,” Owain said. “He says that will probably make your snooping easier on you.”

  “How very kind of him,” Calessa said. “I’m afraid I’ll have to decline.”

  Owain studied her for a moment, then shrugged. “You may want to take him up on it. Nuan Huo is a good forty-five minutes by horse, and I noticed that you don’t seem to have one with you.”

  Calessa weighed her options. Getting to and from Nuan Huo would be tiring, and it would limit her options if she wanted to look around the temple when no one else was there. On the other hand, more exposure to Emory, particularly when the temple was empty, would increase the chances that she would be enchanted again. After a moment of consideration, she decided to accept the offer. She was fully capable of verifying that there were no spells on her room, and warding it so no one could disturb her. “Thank you,” she said. “I would be delighted.”

  “Follow me,” Owain said, and turned to walk down a corridor without another word.

  “So tell me,” Calessa said, letting her curiosity get the better of her manners. “Why do you put up with the charlatan?”

  “I care nothing for Emory’s religion or his status as a charlatan, as you put it,” Owain said. “So the fact that all this is fake matters little to me.”

  “I notice you avoided answering the actual question,” Calessa said.

  “Will you answer a question of mine?” Owain asked, leading her up a staircase.

  “Perhaps.”

  “Why did you stay behind? You must know that there’s nothing here. Whatever it is you came to find isn’t here, and you know that you won’t catch Emory doing anything illegal. So why stay?”

  Calessa considered the question. “I’m staying because I may yet learn something,” she said, “and you never know what may be useful in the end. For example, why all the sham of the religion? If he’s not even collecting donations, why bother? Does his ego really need that much stroking?”

  “Would you believe me if I said I didn’t know?” Owain asked.

  “Maybe.” Calessa smiled charmingly. “If so, then there really is something to learn, isn’t there.”

  Owain shrugged. “Here’s the room,” he said, pushing the door open. It was not luxurious, but compared to the guest quarters at the monastery, it was quite generous. It was well-furnished, carpeted, and had a fireplace. “Morning services start at four,” he added with a slight smile, “so you may want to put a silencing spell on the room.”

  Calessa’s hand went to her heart. “For a moment I thought you might request that I attend.”

  “Hardly,” Owain said with a chuckle. “Even Emory doesn’t go to the early services. He lets the worshippers have fun by themselves.”

  “Some people are just more devoted than I am,” Calessa said.

  “Most people are more devoted than I am,” Owain agreed.

  “I’m not sure that’s true,” Calessa said, smiling slightly. “It’s just a question of what – or who – they’re devoted to.”

  Owain shrugged. “Good night, Lady Calessa.”

  “Good night.”

  * * *

  Tallis had just drifted off to sleep when he was awoken by the sound of soft feet pattering against the floor of his room. His wards flickered like they had the previous night, less of a warning than an acknowledgment, and he found himself wondering for the first time why the boy didn’t really set them off. He looked up from his nest of blankets to see Brannon just inside his range of vision, a pale ray of moonlight hitting his face. Tallis was going to say hello, but before he could speak, Brannon made a face at him and plopped down on the floor, looking sulky. “What’s wrong?” Tallis asked, sitting up and trying to comb his gold hair into some semblance of order.

  “You got me in trouble,” Brannon said, pouting.

  “I didn’t mean to,” Tallis said, and saw that this would have no effect. Brannon was indulging in an impressive snit. Tallis enchanted a ball of light and let it slowly drift up towards the ceiling so they would be able to see each other. “I’m sorry.”

  “What’d you have to go tell Elder for?”

  “I wanted to know more about you,” Tallis said, then added ruefully, “he wasn’t very helpful.”

  “I’m a secret,” Brannon said, making another disgusted face.

  “Why?”

  “I don’t know. ‘Cause I am.” Brannon scowled at him. “He scolded me.”

  “I didn’t mean for him to do that,” Tallis said, hoping that Brannon believed him. He was uncomfortable with the boy’s glare, although offhand he could not have said why. “The other brothers tried to tell me you were a ghost.”

  “A ghost?” Brannon giggled suddenly.

  “Yep,” Tallis said, smiling at him. “You’re not a ghost, right?”

  “I don’t think so. Wouldn’t I be able to walk through walls?” Brannon gave this a moment of serious thought and then abruptly changed the subject. “How’d you make that light?”

  “Uh . . .” Tallis frowned, not sure of how to explain it. One of his biggest problems at the Warder Academy had been that the teachers would give him a job to do, and he would have it done before they had gotten through a quarter of their instructions. That would have been bad enough, but afterward he was unable to explain how he had done it. The teachers had gotten irritated with that, but magic came as naturally and fluidly to Tallis as breathing. “I just thought about my magic and what I wanted it to do, and it happened. That’s how I’ve always done magic.”

  “Okay. What are Warders?”

  This question startled Tallis. Warders were part of the basic education that all children – or almost all children, Tallis thought ruefully – received. He wondered w
hat sort of things the monks had been teaching Brannon. “Warders are a magical peacekeeping force,” he explained. “All magic is carefully watched and regulated, because it’s so easy to abuse. The job of the Warders is to teach, oversee, and to some extent, control. And when a crime is committed and magic is involved, the Warders are called on to solve it and bring the criminal to justice. They’ve been around since soon after the Empire broke apart, but there’s very little known about the actual origins of the organization.”

  Brannon thought about this for a few moments. “How do you get to be a Warder?”

  “All children with magic are taught how to use it, usually at local schools,” Tallis explained, “and your teachers can recommend you for a spot in the Warder Academy if they think you have enough magical talent.”

  “Is it really hard?”

  “You have to really want to help people and be willing to try very hard,” Tallis said.

  “Are there a lot of Warders?”

  Tallis thought back to the last Convocation he had been to and tried to sort it out. “I think that there’s currently about eight hundred,” he said, “which sounds like a lot, but it isn’t, actually, when you consider that we’re spread out over the entire world. Only about one child in fifty gets recommended to the Warder Academy, and out of them only about one in ten actually gets admitted. Almost all of the admissions do graduate, though.”

  “You’re a special type of Warder, right?” Brannon asked, perking up. “You and your friends?”

  “What makes you think that?” Tallis asked cautiously. He found this question somewhat discomfiting. The special class of Warders that he, Sienna, and Calessa belonged to was such a well-kept secret that even most other Warders didn’t know they existed. They were specially recruited from the regular Warders, and they took only the most difficult or most delicate criminal cases. Their only identification was the special tattoos on their wrists, each one unique and magically protected from either replication or destruction. Part of the job requirement was to memorize all those tattoos and to know to whom they belonged, so no one would be fooled by someone using a spell to alter their appearance.