Mirror Sight (11 page)

“I
would like to have my things back,” Karigan said. “The things I had with me, on me, when I arrived.”

“I shall show them to you,” the professor said, “and you will see that I’ve kept them safe.”

Cade excused himself to resume his training. The professor led Karigan toward the nearest end of the room, where another stairway corkscrewed up its shaft into the dark. By the time the professor found and lit a taper, Karigan saw with a glance over her shoulder that Cade had picked up a practice sword and was moving through a series of forms.

He does all right,
she thought, but found herself critical of how he seemed to focus more on correct posture than execution. His posture did look good, very good—picturesque, even, but picturesque would not help him dispatch an opponent. His balance, though, was solid and would hold him in good stead. Though she studied Cade from a professional point of view, all her seasons of sparring with swordmaster trainees in various states of undress and at the peak of their physical form did not leave her immune from appreciating the aesthetic charms of a pleasing figure of manhood in action.

“This way,” the professor said.

Karigan tore her gaze away from Cade with some regret and followed the professor into the stairwell, keeping close to his light.

“The upper floors were once the weave rooms,” the professor was saying, their feet ringing on wrought iron stairs as they climbed. “They were filled with looms and workers and the clatter of machinery, but no more.”

When they reached the landing, the professor stepped into the dark room and fumbled around a bit, muttering to himself, while Karigan peered into the vast, black space, discerning nothing. Just the rough, scraped floor in their immediate halo of light, pocked with small holes where very heavy objects must once have been bolted down. It was so quiet, she could not imagine the noise the professor spoke of.

“Ah, here it is,” he said. “Usually I enter from the other end.” He pushed up a lever embedded in a box in the wall, and the room exploded with light.

Karigan blinked until her eyes adjusted. Many plain phosphorene globes hung from the ceiling rafters, revealing row upon row of crates stacked high, shelves with articles covered by sheets, numerous freestanding statues and urns and pieces of decorative scrollwork; gargoyles, and columns. A portion of one wall was lined with imposing cabinets.

The professor set his taper aside and gestured grandly. “Behold my treasure trove. All artifacts that have passed into my care, and many that I, myself, have found or otherwise acquired.” He beamed proudly like a father looking upon his offspring.

“All of this? And you’ve kept it hidden from the emperor?” Karigan looked doubtfully at some of the larger statues, trying to imagine how one of those could have been concealed and brought here.

“I’ve been tireless in preserving our rightful heritage. If the emperor caught wind of my collection, well, I and everyone I know would be in very serious trouble. You do understand, do you not, that you are to speak to no one, absolutely no one, about this building or its contents? Not even Mirriam or Lorine. Not even Cade or me outside of this mill building unless I raise the subject first. I am placing great trust in you that you will not expose the secret. I’ve gone to great pains to keep
you
secret, as well, for your safety.”

Karigan studied him long and hard, his expression almost beseeching. “Why is the emperor so afraid? He’s in charge isn’t he?”

Professor Josston nodded, setting off toward the shelves, his hands clasped behind his back. Karigan limped behind him. “Yes, he runs his empire like a machine. Unfeeling, relentless, productive, and people believe it’s the way it has always been. Always the emperor, always the empire. That’s what makes our real history so dangerous—it would inspire hope in the populace, and he can’t allow that to happen.” He paused beside a shelf that held bottles of all sizes and colors, many cracked and broken, placed next to pieces of gold jewelry. He fingered a brooch of the crescent moon, tilting it so that it flared in the light.

“These objects,” he continued, “are not just old things, but symbols of what could have been, what should be. What we were before the emperor said we were nothing without him.” He set the brooch aside and faced Karigan, his expression intense. “My artifacts are the spark of a fire, a fire that will burn down the empire. Rebellion, my dear. This mill building and its contents are an act of war.”

In that moment, he reminded Karigan of the Anti-Monarchy Society and its leader. What was her name? Lorilie. Lorilie Dorran. She’d been eager, full of the fervor of her beliefs. She had plans to change the world, or at least how Sacoridia was governed, but nothing had ever come of them.

“Why keep it secret?” Karigan asked. “Why not reveal all this to the people and let them rebel?”

“Oh, we will, but not all the pieces are in place yet. If we act prematurely, we will be crushed.” He abruptly turned and continued to walk alongside the shelving. As Karigan followed, she glimpsed an ivory comb set with rubies. It had been placed next to the ruin of leather boots. Rotting chunks of wood that once could have been tools sat next to fine porcelain dishes. The mundane and the exquisite, all lined up one next to the other, a wagon wheel as prized as a pair of golden goblets.

“Truthfully,” the professor said, “the rebellion has been going on for some time, an unspoken war brewing beneath the polite workings of society. Our battlefields have been charity balls and banquets and evenings at the opera.”

Karigan considered the formal attire he currently wore and wondered if he’d been engaged in battle this evening.

“The opposition has been in play for as long as there has been the emperor,” the professor said. “The kings and queens of the past had a pact, a trust, to protect their people, not abuse them as chattel. The emperor keeps no such pact, only keeps his machine well oiled and productive, wearing out the spirit of the people.” He halted beside the worm-eaten figurehead of a swan propped against the shelving, pausing to allow her to weigh his words, before finally asking, “So, will you keep our secret?”

She regarded him carefully, his earnest expression, for she knew Mornhavon’s evil first hand. She had no argument with Professor Josston regarding the emperor. and, the professor, in turn, must have known how the Green Riders had opposed Mornhavon from the very beginning, which, she assumed, prompted him to take her into his confidence. She had no illusions, however, that if she ever posed a threat to his secrets, he would make her disappear as easily and quickly as she’d come into his life, no matter to what lengths he’d already gone to keep her safe. His secret was much more powerful, much more important to him than her life, intrigued though he might be by her passage through time and the part of her that was a living artifact. If the conditions in the empire were as bad as they seemed to be, she could not blame him.

Her silence must have made him nervous. “If I cannot convince you with my words,” he said, “perhaps over the coming days I can show you what the empire has turned my land—
our land
—into.”

By offering her another chance to keep his secret, it was clear he preferred not to harm her if he didn’t have to. “I do not need to be convinced of the emperor’s evil,” she said. “I’m quite familiar with it. Your secret will not be exposed by me.”

The professor relaxed perceptibly and smiled. “I had hoped you would see our common purpose.”

Common purpose? She wasn’t too sure about that. Her goal was to get home, to take back any information to King Zachary about how the empire overcame Sacoridia—not to become involved in this time’s problems, its intrigues. Besides, with the information she obtained here, she might actually improve the situation in
this
time, from the past. Meanwhile, she needed the professor’s protection and knowledge, and in this regard they were allies.

He had already moved off, once again strolling down the aisle between shelves. “I thought you could tell me what some of the objects are that have been a mystery to me,” he said over his shoulder. “If they’re from your time, maybe you know their purpose.” He lifted a moldering wooden rod with rectangular slots along its length. “Do you know what this is?”

“I have no idea,” Karigan replied.

Undeterred, he picked up a rusted iron hook dangling from chains. He raised a querying brow.

“Looks like a pot hook,” Karigan told him.

“For over a hearth?”

She nodded.

“But of course! I thought maybe it was something more nefarious, a tool of torture, perhaps.” He chuckled as he set it back down. “Cooking tools always throw me. I’m not even allowed in my own kitchen.”

He showed her a few more items she could not identify, except for a coin balance, which any merchant would know—at least, any merchant of her own time. She demonstrated its use by stabbing its spiked end into a wooden shelf to make it stand erect, then pivoted open the weighing appendage.

“Have you a coin?” she asked.

He reached into his pocket and produced a silver piece. Karigan placed it into the slot of the weighing appendage, which dipped down. It was difficult to determine its value because the measures inscribed on the device were nearly worn away.

“Ah,” the professor said, smiling. “Not that the emperor’s coin requires weighing, as it’s very precisely minted.”

“Currency is—was—fairly precise in my time, too,” Karigan said, “but there were still some very old coins in circulation, not to mention less accurate coinage from other realms.” She removed the coin, gazing at the image of a man’s profile on it, struck in relief. It was more clear, more perfect than the imprint on any coin from her own time. There was something familiar about the man’s profile, too, the high forehead and strong chin.

“This would be our dear emperor,” the professor said, piquing Karigan’s interest. So this was how Mornhavon looked now. He’d long been capable of using the bodies of others. To whom had this one belonged?

The professor turned the coin over on her palm. “And this would be the emperor’s dragon sigil.”

The dragon was curled round on itself, with its tail wrapped around its neck. She didn’t recall Mornhavon using a dragon sigil, but a dead tree. Perhaps with his victory over Sacoridia, he’d chosen a new emblem for his empire. Now that she thought about it, she remembered the professor referring to the empire as the “Serpentine Empire.”

“Why a dragon?” she asked.

The professor shrugged. “Some say it has to do with some great weapon the emperor used against his enemies.” He paused, taking a reflective stance. “I did some research and have determined it came into use about two and a half years after you went into Blackveil. In fact,” and now he lowered his voice as if it was not just the two of them there, “it’s something we’ve been investigating for years, this weapon, but whatever it is or was, it is well concealed.”

“Hmm.” Karigan rolled the coin onto the professor’s palm, then unstuck the coin balance from the shelf and folded it before handing it to him. Only two and a half years after she had gone into Blackveil? “What did this weapon do?”

“It’s said it wiped out all the realm’s important defenses, that it was devastating. We see evidence of it at many of our dig sites.”

She had been hoping for an easy answer to take back to the king, but it appeared there wasn’t one, at least concerning this weapon, although now she had a timeframe to work with.

The professor deposited the coin in his pocket and set the coin balance in its place. Without explaining further, he set off down the aisle once again, continuing along at some length before pausing. He drew another object off one of the shelves that Karigan recognized immediately.

“My—my walking cane!” she cried.

The professor did not hand it over to her. “No, actually it’s
my
walking cane.” He pressed the trigger, shook the cane, and it extended into a staff.

“But—”

“Look closely,” he said. “It is the same as yours, and it is not.”

Karigan took it into her hands, feeling the familiar weight and the smooth black lacquer on the bonewood. But the professor was right—this one had acquired scars—scrapes and dints that hers never had. The handle was not leather-wrapped iron, but silver. Silver concealed its iron core. And there was a piece missing on the shaft. She ran her finger over the slight depression. Someone had painted it with lacquer, but it did not quite match the perfect midnight hue of the rest of the staff.

“The shield is missing,” Karigan said. It would have been a small, plain black shield representing the Order of the Black Shields, the Weapons.

“One of my predecessors decided he could not take a chance of the symbol being recognized,” the professor said, “so he carved it off. Alas, he did not save the piece. Not that I know of, at any rate.”

“So they made more than one.”

The professor nodded, seeming to know who “they” were. “I was quite astonished to see yours. I had assumed there’d been others, but I believed them destroyed or lost.”

Karigan returned the cane to the professor, wondering where and how his “predecessor” had found it, but before she could ask him, he set it back on its shelf and moved down the aisle for several strides, stopping when he came upon a work table situated between two shelving units. She hurried to catch up, and there she saw her uniform laid out on a length of linen with utmost care, no matter it was ragged and dirty and blood-splattered by her travails in Blackveil. Her winged horse brooch gleamed golden in the phosphorene glow and she reached out to caress it. It felt as it always had—oily smooth and cool. There were her muddy boots, too, and belt, and the white feather of the winter owl, and of course her own bonewood cane.