Doubleborn (10 page)

“It means to make a false copy,” said Tamrin. “To try to cheat.”

“Clever girl,” he said. “It means exactly that. You would forge a signature on a contract, or forge a painting.”

“Or a coin,” said Tamrin.

Smith pulled open a heavy door, twice as high as himself and broad enough for a pair of horses pulling a wagon to pass through.

“This way,” he said. “Mind your step. Winny,” he called out. “Are you there? Tam wants to talk to you. She wants to say goodbye.”

His voice echoed round the room and back to them. No reply joined in.

“She’s not here,” said Tam.

“Oh, she’s in here,” he said. “She’s wandered off and she’s busy. We’ll look for her.”

He walked away from her and was gone, leaving his first question of the day rolling around in her head.

“Who are you?” he had asked. Reflecting on it, she thought it had been a strange question to ask.

It was her own question.

“Winny.”

He was still calling for her. Tamrin had the idea that it was just a game to him. He was teasing. He knew where Winny was.

She looked up and around. It wasn’t a storeroom at all. It was very like the other big barn they had been in on the way. Stone walls, high oak roof. And it was full of stuff. Piled up, heaped high, taller than she was. With paths between the stacks. It was a library of junk.

Tamrin walked in and turned left. A passageway unfolded ahead of her, with side alleys branching off. She walked a few paces, turned right and found the same. This was no good. She decided to go back to the door, readjust her directions and start again. She retraced her steps but didn’t find the door. It was a maze. She had made one false turn and now had no idea at all which way was out.

“Winny.”

Smith’s voice sounded impossibly far away and there was still no answer.

Tamrin made a tracker spell. She took off her shoe, tapped it on the ground six times, tossed it into the air. It span and tumbled, taking longer to fall than was quite normal. As it hit the floor a line of footprints glowed against the stone slabs. Tamrin smiled and put her shoe back on. Every step she had taken since entering the barn was illuminated and all she had to do was follow them and she would be back at the door.

She felt better now. She was in control again. She stuck her tongue out at Smith, wherever he was, and set off.

Now that she wasn’t worried about getting lost she took the time to look at the piles of junk as she passed.

Much of it was the sort of thing she had thrown on the cart with Winny. Household objects that had broken or worn out or were no longer loved. Some of it was not like that at all. Her eyes found a handle, not quite neatly tucked in. She stopped, grabbed it and pulled out a sword.

“You don’t want to mess with that.”

Tamrin dropped the sword and wheeled around. No one.

“Are you going to pick it up?”

She worked out where the voice was from and looked up.

Someone was lying on top of the pile of junk, looking down at her.

“You should put that back,” he said. ||

but she didn’t put it back.

She held it for protection.

The face disappeared. A leather object landed on the floor next to her with a thud. She stepped back. A pair of feet dangled over the edge and then, in a second, he dropped down and fell over, rolled into a ball like a woodlouse, came to a halt, unrolled and stood up, dusting himself down. He set the leather object on its end and sat on it.

“You should put that back,” he said.

Tamrin didn’t like roffles. The first one she had ever come across was Megatorine, who had betrayed Sam, and she didn’t trust them.

“I’ll keep it if I want to,” she said.

“Do you want to?”

Tamrin slid the sword back into the pile of junk. The handle still didn’t go right in so she left it.

“I don’t want to talk to you,” she said. “I’m leaving.”

The roffle nodded and she left, following her footprints.

After three turns she was back where she had left him. He was still sitting on his barrel.

“That was quick,” he said.

Tamrin walked away again. She must have made a mistake. She tried to remember something from each pile, to keep her sense of direction. A broken wheel from a mangle, a large kettle, a twisted gate. It was no use. The same sorts of things kept reappearing. Common items discarded. She turned the corner and the roffle was there again.

“You keep following me,” she said.

He pointed to the sword handle.

“I haven’t moved.”

It was time to try something different.

“Do you know where the door is?” she asked.

“Oh, yes. Of course.”

“Show me.”

“Please.”

Tamrin wanted to slap him.

“Please,” she said.

He didn’t move from his barrel.

“You’re not saying it as though you mean it,” he said. “But I suppose it’ll do.”

Tamrin waited for him to move.

“What’s your name?” he asked.

“I don’t want to tell you.”

“I can’t show a stranger the door, can I?”

“Tamrin.”

“Hello, Tamrin. I’m Solder.”

She nodded.

“You mean Megasolder,” she said. “All roffle names begin with Mega.”

She smiled to show she had won a point from him.

“Well,” he said, “my real name, in the Deep World, is Megapolitifricabilitihitti. You can call me that if you like. But most people call me Solder.”

Tamrin scowled at him.

“You have to say, “Hello, Solder,” he said. “It’s polite.”

He was cheerful. And that made him even more irritating. Tamrin forced herself.

“Hello, Solder.”

He hopped off his barrel and hauled it on to his back.

“This way.”

Tamrin didn’t follow him.

“Are you coming with me?”

“That’s not the way.”

He sighed.

“How do you know?”

Tamrin pointed to her glowing footprints.

“Oh, that,” he said. “You shouldn’t have followed those.”

“They’re the way I came in,” she said.

“If you follow me, I’ll tell you what’s wrong,” he offered, and set off.

Tamrin watched him disappear round the corner. She hesitated. There was no other way she could think of, so she ran after him.

“Wait.”

She caught him up.

“What’s wrong with the footprints?” she asked.

“You think they’re showing you the way you’ve walked, don’t you?”

“Yes.”

“They’re really showing you the way you will walk in the future.”

“That’s not the spell I made.”

“No, it’s the reflection of the spell you made. It bounced back at you, like a hammer—”

“Like a hammer from an anvil,” she finished his sentence.

He grinned at her.

“You’ve been talking to Smith,” he said.

“Yes. Yes, I have.”

“What do you think of him?”

The piles of scrap metal were different here. Household junk – the mangles, the oven doors, the lamp brackets, pots, pans and hinges – were less frequent. Broken swords, dented helmets, shields, breastplates, twisted armour took their place.

Tamrin stopped and ran her finger over the articulated iron of a knee-protector.

Solder waited.

“Is this stuff older?” she asked.

“Some of it.”

He found a spearhead and prodded the pile.

“We’ve been walking a long time.”

“It’s a big storeroom.”

She looked up at the roof, cruck-beamed, oak. The piles were so high she couldn’t see far enough along the gable to the end walls.

Solder pushed the spearhead back into the stack and trotted on.

“Are you sure you’re taking me to the door?” she asked.

“Look at this,” he called. “You’ll like it.”

He led her into a side room with high windows far above her head. A waterfall of light splashed down and bounced from a hundred mirrors leaning and hanging all around the walls.

Tamrin looked at herself looking at herself. She saw herself disappearing, endlessly repeated into the distance. She saw the top of her head, the side of her face, her back, her front. She raised her arm and a thousand Tamrins raised their arm. She stepped back and out of the room.

“Come on,” he said. He stood on his barrel and waved his arms, watching himself wave back.

Tamrin hesitated, stepped back in.

It was like being confronted by a poisonous snake or a wolf. She was fascinated and fearful.

“Never seen yourself before?” he asked.

Tamrin shook her head.

“What?”

“No. Not really.”

“Never?”

“In a window,” she said. “Reflected in water. In the bowl of a shiny spoon. There’s a small mirror, a glass one, in my friend’s kitchen. But you can only see your face, and not really all of it at once.”

She moved slowly as she spoke, watching herself bounce back, reflected into infinity. The question elbowed its way back into her mind.

“Who are you?” it whispered.

She looked at the endless Tamrins.

“Who are you?”

“Some of these are glass,” said Solder.

He jumped from his barrel and found a round looking glass, just within his reach if he stood on tiptoe and touched it with his fingertips. “Most of them are polished metal.”

“How do you get them so bright?”

“You’ll have to ask Smith about that.”

“Did he make them all?”

“You’ll have to ask him. I think he did. But there are other people who used to make them, before there was good glass and they learned how to silver the back of it.”

Tamrin stood in front of one that showed the whole of her from tip to toe. It was buckled about a third of the way down so that her face seemed to be disfigured. She reached out her hand and touched it.

“He collects them,” said Solder. “Or Winny does. With her cart.”

“Why?”

The light in the room was greater than the amount the windows let in. It was as though the mirrors caught it, kept it and threw it back to be caught and kept and thrown out again, over and over, getting brighter all the time. Like lighting a thousand candles from a single taper.

Tamrin stood quite still and waited and watched. She wanted one of the other Tamrins to move on her own, independently of the others. They all stood and waited with her.

“Yes, but why does he collect them?”

“You’ll have to ask Smith that.”

Tamrin was getting tired of this answer. Especially as Smith wasn’t there to ask.

She wondered what magic would be like here. She raised her arm and pointed straight up. She took a deep breath and her lips parted.

“Don’t say a word!”

Smith pushed into the room and nearly knocked her over.

“Don’t. Not a word.” ||

to avoid Smith’s rush at her.

“Why did you bring her in here?” he demanded.

“I thought you wanted her to see it.”

Solder didn’t seem to mind that he was being told off. He was as cheerful as ever.

“I’ll decide when she sees this,” said Smith.

“Too late, Smith. I’ve shown her.”

“Has she done any magic yet?”

“I think she was just about to.”

“And do you think you could have stopped her? And what would have happened then?”

“We’d have found out if you hadn’t come in,” said Solder. “Wouldn’t we?”

Smith glared at him.

“Roffles,” he said. “You’re all the same. You’ve no sense of danger. She could have killed herself. And you. You know that?”

Solder began to answer but Tamrin interrupted.

“Hey,” she said. “I am in here, you know. You’re talking about me as though I can’t hear you.”

Smith turned the full gaze of his anger on her. Tamrin glared back, not to be intimidated. He held her stare and she found herself growing afraid. He had more authority in his look, more danger, than any of the teachers in the college who had tried to overcome her with a stare. She turned away. He still stared at her, a thousand times reflected in the shining metal. She looked back at him, looked again at the reflections.

Face to face, Smith looked old enough to be Winny’s father. In the middle of life. In reflected light he was old. Older than it was possible to live. Not old as a person grows old, weak and enfeebled, prey to death. Old as a tree is old, worn, weathered and strong. Old as stone is old, shaped by the weather, moulded by time.

She looked from reality to reflection and lost track of which was which.

Smith spoke softly now.

“You see me?” he asked.

“Yes. Yes, I do.”

“He doesn’t,” said Smith, pointing to Solder.

Winny arrived and hesitated at the door. Tamrin caught just a glimpse of her in the mirror before she stepped back. Enough to see that she had been Smith’s daughter for longer than a lifetime.

“We should not stay in here,” Winny called in.

“No,” agreed Smith.

Tamrin was glad to be led out and back among the stacks of scrap.

“Will you come to look at the forge?” asked Smith. “Or do you have to be running after your tailor straight away?”

“I’d like to see the forge,” she said. “Please.”

He nodded.

“I’ll show you the way,” said Solder. He pushed in front of them, lifting his pack and trotting ahead. “Follow me.”

Smith went next, Tamrin following, and Winny last.

“You weren’t taking me to the door, were you?” asked Tamrin.

Solder turned left and stopped. He gestured with his left arm. It was a door. Low, narrow and closed. Not the wide door into the barn.

“Here it is,” he announced.

“I mean the door out,” said Tamrin.

“You didn’t say that. You said the door.”

Winny laid her hand on Tamrin’s shoulder, her delicate fingers cool on the girl’s neck.

“You can never trust a roffle,” she said.

Tamrin looked straight into her eyes.

“I don’t think I can trust anyone,” she said.

“Perhaps not. Perhaps it’s best you don’t, just now.”

This wasn’t the answer Tamrin had expected and she turned away. Smith took out a key and unlocked the door. He stepped through; Solder followed. Tamrin stayed where she was.