Mirror Sight (52 page)

“I had every right. I could have given her to the Inspectors long ago.”

“But you did not because she is an artifact of the old realm.”

“I did not because, yes, her presence here is fascinating. I thought perhaps she’d have some knowledge the opposition could use, as well.”

“She is a human being,” Cade said.

“And so are we all. By not giving her to the Inspectors, I’ve kept her from harm at great personal risk. And you should know more than most that I’ve grown very fond of her.”

Cade’s expression of disgust rocked the professor. No, not just disgust, but something far worse: disappointment. He saw it in Cade’s eyes, how he had failed him, his student, his protégé, his young friend. Cade had thought better of him. Thought his professor better than one who would stoop to such a tactic to silence Karigan. The professor saw it now, how he’d acted as thuggishly as one of the emperor’s minions. He saw it reflected in Cade’s eyes.

Not only have I wronged Karigan,
he thought,
but I’ve betrayed the values I was teaching Cade, that we could be better than the empire.
Now he’d lost Cade’s respect, the last person he’d ever wanted to hurt. Something withered inside him with the shame.

Cade pointed at him, ready to make another accusation, when he was interrupted by pounding. Pounding that rang all the way up the nearest stairwell. Someone was hammering on the boarded up door that was one of the original entrances to the old mill.

Both men froze, then the professor said, “We’ve been found.”

“I
nspectors?” Cade asked anxiously.

The professor did not answer, but ran to the stairwell. In the light that leaked out of the room onto the landing, he spotted the discreet cabinet mounted on the wall. He opened it, and within gleamed the brass eyepiece and hand-crank wheel of a periscope. He’d installed one in each stairwell. He’d had to purchase the parts and build them himself. Buying a finished device would have drawn unwanted imperial scrutiny.

He retracted the eyepiece from the cabinet, and rotated the wheel to extend the scope out of the stairwell tower. The periscopes were placed so he could look right down at the mill entrances. When he peered through the eyepiece, he saw the intruders carried enough light with them to verify his worst fears.

“Professor?” Cade had followed him. “Are they Inspectors?”

The professor nodded. “A fair mob of them.” He shook his head. “How could this happen? Everything I’ve done, everything I’ve worked for . . .”

“We have to get out of here,” Cade said.

“The underground—”

“No,” Cade said sharply. “If they know about the mill, they’ll be at your house, too. The underground may be compromised, and we’d be trapped.”

“Yes, yes, of course. You are right.” The professor swept a shaking hand through his hair. He thanked goodness for Cade’s calm thinking, for all he could think of was his world coming to complete and utter ruin, that Silk and the empire had won. He had lost everything. Secrets were such fragile things. He led the way back into the artifact room, striding toward the aisle where they’d left Karigan.

“Professor, we need a way out,” Cade said, his voice louder.

As if to augment his urgency, the pounding now echoed up the stairwells at both ends of the room. The Inspectors were attacking both entrances. Long ago, the professor had reinforced the doors from inside with steel, but they would not hold up forever under a determined battering from Inspectors.

“Yes,” the professor said, approaching the spot where Karigan lay. “All else may be lost, but you will have to protect Arhys.”

“I will, but we need a way out. And we’re not leaving without Karigan.”

“Of course not.” Maybe, the professor thought, here was his chance to redeem himself, to regain Cade’s respect. “There is a way out, my boy. If there was one lesson I learned years ago from the fire that destroyed the rest of this complex, it was to always ensure there was an extra route of escape. Collect my niece . . .” He sighed. “Collect the
young lady
and follow me. Don’t forget her bonewood—she may have need of it when she wakes up.”

Cade did so, strapping Karigan’s satchel across his shoulder and gathering the bonewood staff. He made lifting Karigan on his shoulder look effortless. The Old Button was strong, very strong.

They hastened to the stairwell and the professor grabbed a taper. They clattered down the stairs as fast as they could go, though Cade followed more carefully with his burdens. The professor paused, holding the light so Cade could see better, and what the professor saw in turn was determination and concentration on Cade’s face. His student would need both not only to escape the mill, but also to evade capture once he was on the outside. Poor Karigan hung limply, draped over Cade’s shoulder as though dead. The professor was sorry, so sorry for what he had done to her. Cade had awakened him to his terrible error in judgment, but now he would make it up to them both.

When Cade caught up, the professor continued down the spiraling stairs, the battering on the doors growing louder and louder. He kept going past the second floor, and the first, heading down into the low-vaulted brick basement. There the banging on the doors grew muffled.

“I thought we weren’t going underground,” Cade said.

“Not to
that
underground,” the professor replied.

He led Cade past the one trap door that led to their secret passage, and hurried by the flyball governor that had once controlled the volume of water flowing into the mill’s turbines. They passed by the first two penstocks and stopped at the third—a huge metal pipe bent like an inverted elbow, fabricated in riveted sections. The penstock had once funneled water from the canal to beneath the floor and into the turbine. The force and pressure of the water carried in by the penstocks forced the turbines to spin-spin-spin, which set the complex network of gears, drive shafts, and pulleys into motion, in turn powering the machines. But alas, this mill had not seen the power of water in many a year. Not since the fire.

Cade looked at him questioningly.

“After the fire,” the professor explained, “the penstocks were closed off. The canal authorities did not wish to waste water power on a defunct mill.” He pulled a section of the penstock away like a hatch, metal screeching. “Therefore, not only is the penstock dry, but the tailrace tunnel as well. Mostly anyway. Fortunately there have been no floods this spring. The tunnel will take you to the river, where I’ve hidden a small boat. It may be hard and a little cramped with the young lady slung over your shoulder, but you will manage.”

“Aren’t you coming?” Cade asked.

“I’ll follow you shortly. I have some matters to take care of first. You get Karigan out. Take care of her. When she wakes, tell her how sorry I am, and that I hope she finds her way home.”

A furrowed line formed between Cade’s eyebrows. “You sound like you aren’t coming.”

“I’ll do my best, Old Button, but we’re running out of time.”

Inside the rusty walls of the penstock was a step ladder instead of the turbine shaft that should have been in there. Cade dropped Karigan’s satchel and the staff down and they thudded to the bottom. Cade then stepped through the opening into the penstock, balancing himself on the ladder, only his head and shoulders clearing the hatch. Meanwhile, the professor held Karigan. She was rather like an oversized ragdoll, but he was relieved to note she was still breathing normally, if slowly. Briefly her eyes fluttered open—he caught a glint of them in his light, but all too soon they closed again.

“It was an honor getting to know you, my dear,” he murmured into her ear. Then he helped Cade maneuver her through the hatch and into the penstock. The professor watched her vanish into the darkness below.

Cade reappeared at the hatch. “I could use a light.”

“Yes, of course.” The professor passed him the taper. “Know that you were always my best student, Cade.”

A smile flickered on the young man’s face. “Do what you need to do, then follow after us. We’ll wait in the boat.”

The professor nodded. “Hurry now!” and he replaced the cover on the hatch to forestall anymore painful leave-taking.

The basement was dark, but he knew his way well. At the base of the stairwell he found and lit another taper and examined the door. It appeared to be buckling, even with the steel reinforcement. The hinges were giving way. He hastened up the stairs to the second floor and threw the lever to illuminate the room. There were barrels he kept near the entryway in which he stored phosphorene to keep the lights functioning, but also it was there in case of an emergency. An emergency like the one he now faced.

He rolled the barrels to the center of the floor and unplugged them. The clear viscous fluid that was phosphorene flowed onto the floor, rather like the molasses he sometimes liked on cornbread. The dry mill floor soaked the phosphorene right up. The fumes drove the professor back.

The barrels of phosphorene were not the only precautions the professor had taken. He had feared this day might come to pass, and so he had planned. He could not allow his precious artifacts to fall into the hands of Ezra Stirling Silk, much less the emperor, so among the shelves on the third floor he had stocked smaller barrels of black powder. Silk may have rounded up most of the blastmen in Mill City, but what he hadn’t known was that Bryce Lowell Josston, imperially licensed professor of archeology, was also versed in the art of blasting.

He shook his head sadly and made his way to his big desk. He sat down, and from the drawer removed his pistol and his grandfather’s chronosphere. He opened the sphere and watched the little mechanical man inside pick out the time with his walking stick. Half past the morning’s first hour. In all the excitement, he had not heard the city bell toll. He snapped the sphere shut and waited.

 • • • 

When the doors finally crashed open—first on one end, followed shortly by the door on the other end—the professor consulted the chronosphere once more. It had taken them approximately ten minutes to break in since he had last checked. That meant his doors had held up remarkably well under the onslaught, and he congratulated himself on their design, which, he hoped, had also provided Cade time to make progress down the tailrace.

Voices and stomping feet echoed up the stairwells, and he simply waited. He listened as they cleared the basement—apparently not finding the hatch in the penstock or the trapdoor to the underground—and moved on to the first floor. There, he knew, they found little more than discarded scraps of machinery.

When they all clambered up to the second floor and swarmed through the doors with arms drawn, the professor stood, picked up his taper which he’d kept burning, but left his pistol on his desk. Each movement was followed by the muzzles of firearms and the lensed eyes of Enforcers.

“Gentlemen,” he said as he strode to the center of the room so they could all get a good look at him. “To what do I owe this intrusion of my property?”

“You are under arrest,” one of the Inspectors announced. The local commander.

“Whatever for?”

“For suspicion of anti-empire activities.”

“That does not sound very specific.”

“It does not have to be,” the commander replied. “As we all can see, you have been keeping secrets. I’m sure we’ll find all the evidence we need in this building.” Already there were Inspectors looking over Cade’s collection of practice weapons. Enforcers scanned the walls and his bookcases.

One Enforcer tip-tapped toward him and stepped in the phosphorene. It lifted its foot gingerly, like a cat that has stepped in a puddle. It issued a warning
bleep.
Meanwhile, two Inspectors conferred with the commander.

“. . . smell of phosphorene,” one was saying.

“Gentlemen,” the professor announced, and they all looked his way. “I do not think you are going to find anything. Not a thing. Your masters are going to be woefully disappointed.” He let the taper tumble from his hand onto the phosphorene soaked floor. Its bulb broke baring the flame. “Oh dear,” he said with false contrition. “I seem to have dropped my light.”

Flames
whooshed
up from the floor. The professor leaped away from the sudden heat. Men and machines bolted into action, calling for water, to retreat, shouting,
Fire!
as they ran.

The professor backed away from the flames and returned to his desk. He warred with every fiber of his being not to run, to escape to safety, but by sheer will forced himself to sit. Sit at his desk in his precious library of forgotten books. His people would lose all these bridges to the past, all the objects which he, and others before him, had found and lovingly preserved. Better this than what the emperor would do with it all.

The professor coughed on the hot smoke that was quickly filling the room, obscuring the panicked Inspectors and Enforcers from sight. The fire would spread fast, fed not only by old, dry wood soaked in phosphorene, but by the machine oil that had dripped and been absorbed into floorboards over the many decades the mill had been active.

Then there were the barrels of black powder on the third floor.

There was a circularity to it all, he thought. All those slave workers who had perished when the rest of his complex had burned. They had not been able to escape. They’d been chained to their machines. Their deaths were on him, and now they’d have some measure of justice. He hoped they would, at least, forgive him for taking the easy way out, a choice they had not had.

He picked up his pistol and pressed the muzzle to his head.

It was time for others to lead and carry on the opposition. Cade would protect Arhys, he knew. Perhaps Karigan G’ladheon would even reach her own time and change the course of history. A pity he would never find out.

He pulled the trigger.