Mirror Sight (57 page)

“Not to worry. Once I informed the manager of Tam’s fever, he booked the bunkhouse for just you two. He’d rather avoid allowing the contagion to spread to the servants of other guests. I gather it does not make for good advertising for guests to come down sick at one’s inn. Also, he accepted an additional fee, of course, for the inconvenience.”

“Additional fee? How much?”

“Not to worry, dear fellow.” Luke patted Cade’s shoulder. Then whispered, “We are well off. The professor kept an emergency stash of funds behind a wall board in the stable. I snuck back for it.”

Cade shook his head in disbelief—not at the idea of the hidden funds, but at the fact that, to retrieve them, Luke had managed to sneak behind the backs of the Inspectors keeping watch on the house.

“Bunkhouse three,” Luke reminded him. “There’ll be food waiting for you. I shall see you in the morning.”

Still incredulous, Cade watched after Luke, fully immersed in his role, casually strolling between wagons back toward the inn. He sighed and then turned back to the problem at hand.

“Tam, Tam Ryder.” He shook Karigan once more.

She stared at him through squinted eyes. “You’ve only got one face and a half this time,” she said.

“Is that an improvement?”

“Yes.”

“Good. We are stopped for the night, and if you don’t want me to carry you to our lodging, you need to—”

“No, no carrying.” She pushed herself up and paused for a moment with eyes closed. She did allow him to help her off the wagon. She swayed and leaned against it.

“Your cap,” Cade said. “You need to fix it.”

She patted her head, turned the cap around, and stuffed her braid back beneath it. Cade grabbed a duffle and slung it over his shoulder.

“Can you walk?”

It turned out she needed assistance, so he held on to her arm as she staggered beside him. Others on the inn’s grounds gave them a wide berth—Luke’s story about his fevered servant must have circulated to the other guests. It was a clever ploy, really. No one would want to get too close to them and ask questions.

When they reached the bunkhouse, a pair of lamps were already lit for them, and a couple bowls of soup and a hard-crusted loaf of bread sat atop the long table. There were six bunks in the little rough-hewn building. Not luxurious by any means, but adequate.

“Are you hungry?” Cade asked.

Karigan frowned. “Are you kidding? Where’s the privy?”

He steered her toward the door that led to the closetlike room, and she gained momentum as she went, as though the floor were tilted toward it.

“Do you need—?” Cade began, but she was through the door in an instant, and he heard the sound of retching.

He waited anxiously until the door opened and she stood there wiping her mouth with her sleeve. He stepped forward to help her.

“I don’t need help,” she said, but she was sliding to the floor.

“Don’t worry. I won’t carry you.” And he proceeded to do just that, placing her on the closest bunk. She seemed too tired to argue.

“Why did the professor do this to me?” she asked plaintively.

Cade poured water into a cup from a pitcher that sat on a nightstand next to the bunk. He sat beside her and tried to get her to drink. When she pushed it away, he said, “The professor drugged you because you are trouble. Now try some water before you get more sick from the lack of it. It’ll help dilute the morphia.” He did not know if it was true, but his reasoning persuaded her. When she finished that cup, she asked for another.

He could see in her eyes how much she disliked being in a state that required the help of others. He remembered having overheard Mirriam tell the professor what a difficult patient “Miss Goodgrave” was after Karigan had first arrived. He also remembered his first meeting with Karigan on the dark streets of Mill City when he’d helped her fight off the assailants in the alley and then brought her to the professor’s house. He’d been astonished by the amount of fight in her then, and even more so after he’d learned the extent of her injuries.

Even so, it had still taken him a long time to accept what she, a mere female, was capable of. If he’d known at their first meeting, he would have been far more careful. As it was, he’d only gotten the better of her because of the chloroform he’d used to knock her out. Likewise the professor must have realized that the only way to control her was to dose her with morphia. Unfortunately, he’d used a rather large dose.

“More water?” Cade asked when she drained her second cup.

“A little.”

This time he handed her the pitcher. If it was difficult for her to accept help, he’d let her try to help herself. He grimaced at how her hands shook, the water slopping over the cup. When she thrust the pitcher back at him, he was almost splashed, too. When he looked at her, though, there was some of that old fire in her eyes and less despair.

The cup clunked on the nightstand as she set it aside. Then she flung herself at him, throwing her arms around him.

“Thank you,” she said. “Thank you for helping.”

With her embrace clamping his arms to his sides, and her cheek pressed against his chest, he didn’t quite know what to do or what to say. Here he had just decided that she was averse to help, and now she was thanking him for it? Maybe it was the morphia confusing her.

“For helping?” he asked.

She pushed away back into her pillow. “For—for not being like the professor. For helping me go after Lhean.”

Then Cade understood, and he nodded to himself. That was the sort of problem for which she could accept help, because it was coming to the aid of someone else. The rest, he thought, was the same. She would not thank him for helping
her.
He wondered if the people who knew her in her own time had to often grapple with her stubborn nature.

He smiled at the thought that he might be able to ask them himself.

E
zra Stirling Silk turned up the light of the lamp beside his armchair and enlarged the image he was gazing at with a magnifying glass. Was it his imagination, or were Miss Goodgrave’s features beginning to define themselves? With his poor sight, it was difficult to say, but her head looked less transparent, and he could almost make out her features. Had something happened with the image trapping process that her face was only now quickening?

The rest of the picture remained as before, her body well defined in its dress, the backdrop, too. He gazed hard at her shoulder, but the ghostly hand resting on it seemed to have faded into almost nothing.

He turned the lamp down to lowest glow which left his sitting room dark. He removed his specs and rubbed his eyes. Night time was so much easier on them. Day time and intense light left them aching.

It was relatively quiet in the cabin of this, his private packet boat, on the Imperial Canal. He heard the chug up ahead with its pulsing steam engines and the rhythmic plash of its paddle wheels. Attached directly behind the chug was a packet boat for servants and personnel. Next in line was his packet, which housed a couple of his body servants, with a cabin set aside for the child and her governess in the forward section. In the middle, between his quarters and those of the servants, lay the kitchen and dining room.

It was an extraordinary luxury having his own private packet boat. Public boats squeezed up to a hundred ordinary citizens per load, and they were nowhere as graciously outfitted with mahogany and teak and gleaming brass embellishments. Velvet drapes crumpled from ceiling to floor over portholes, rich carpeting underfoot. The furnishings, art, and details were as fine as any room in his house in Gossham, just on a smaller scale.

The chug did not pull just two packets, however, but a third, as well, a freight barge coupled to the stern of his own boat. The barge carried his horses and carriage, luggage, the exhibits he’d displayed at his dinner party, various pieces of equipment, and most importantly, a circus wagon garishly painted with lions. It contained the Eletian.

Canal travel was very easy going, and Silk did not even feel the motion of his boat gliding through the mirror-still water. Much more soothing than by carriage, even on the empire’s well-maintained roads. That was not to say he felt nothing, did not sense the water beneath the boat’s hull, not so very far from his feet. Only some layers of wood and carpet separated them. The closer they drew to Gossham, the stronger the sensation would grow, like a tingling beneath his feet. A feather touch on his flesh. Before the accident that had injured his eyes, he had never sensed the etherea, even in the heart of Gossham, but ever since, he could. Even this far out. Most of the etherea remained locked up in Gossham, less so in the outer regions of the Capital. A small amount leaked out so he felt it even here. He wondered if the Eletian could, too.

They had gotten nothing out of the Eletian, nothing about how he’d come to be here, or why. He ate little of the food they gave him and looked unwell. Silk hoped the creature stayed alive long enough to be presented to the emperor. He’d hated to leave his drilling project in the Old City when it was making such good progress, but he didn’t want the Eletian to die on him before he reached Gossham. He hoped the emperor would be fully awake by the time they arrived at the palace, but Silk had not had any updates from his father stating what stage the emperor was in.

In an effort to preserve the Eletian, he’d chosen not to use more forceful means to make the creature speak. He needed his gift to be as whole as possible. Plus, the most skilled torturers were in Gossham, his father among them. Except for one. After the opposition blasted the road to the drill site, the elder Silk had assigned Mr. Starling to Mill City to interrogate suspects, and it turned out to have been a wise decision, for he was on hand to contend with the city’s latest excitement.

The shrill steam whistle broke into the meditative silence. They were heading under a bridge. Silk gazed at the gently arched ceiling until he heard the tell-tale thunk on the roof. Good, a messenger from Mill City. It was an easy jump from any canal bridge to a packet boat’s roof. He put his specs back on and waited.

Shortly, Mr. Howser escorted the messenger down, an Inspector with his red uniform made dusty by the road. Silk did not
see
the dust, rather he smelled it, along with the stench of sweat and horse.

“Report,” Silk said. He did not turn up the light.

The man recounted the casualties of the mill fire. Six Inspectors dead, four Enforcers destroyed, and of course Bryce Lowell Josston. Once Silk’s very close friend and his adversary.

“You found no other remains?”

“Not so far,” the Inspector replied. “It will take time to sift through the ruins. They’re still smoldering.”

“And you are taking care to look for . . . evidence?”

“Yes, sir. But if I may say so, the fire and explosions did a very thorough job in destroying anything useful.”

Silk did not doubt it. If the professor had been storing illegally obtained artifacts and secrets, he’d find a way to destroy them totally if need be.

“So,” he continued, “no sign of additional bodies so far, which means Mr. Harlowe and Miss Goodgrave may still be alive.”

“I have more news on that front, sir.”

Silk raised an eyebrow. “Indeed?”

As the Inspector told his tale, Silk was pleased to note Mr. Starling had been doing his job and doing it well. When the Inspector finished, Silk mulled over everything for a moment, issued instructions to both the Inspector and Mr. Howser. “Do we come to a bridge soon?” he asked.

“Gracy Bridge,” Mr. Howser replied. “It’s one of the ones where we’ve posted relays.”

“Good.” Silk consulted his chronosphere, its display glowing with ethereal light. “If you disembark at Gracy Bridge, Inspector, you’ll be able to send my instructions back to Mill City to your commander and Mr. Starling. Remind the messengers to ride hard. They must reach the city as soon as possible.”

He dismissed the men and was left once again with his ruminations. He steepled his fingers before him thinking that Cade Harlowe had made a grave error if he thought he could pick up where Bryce Lowell Josston had left off and lead Mill City in an uprising. With its network of informants and spies, the empire could not be duped so easily. It would soon be in hand.

And, oh yes, he would let Cade Harlowe and his companions come directly to him. Directly, and without hindrance. With that comforting thought, he once again picked up the odd portrait of Miss Kari Goodgrave and turned up the light. Was she one of Harlowe’s companions, perhaps disguised? Or had she perished in the mill fire? He possessed no evidence either way, but his gut feeling was that she had not died.

Who was she, really? he wondered. He’d sent a request to the asylum in her home town for information on her, but even in this modern age, it still took much time to traverse the land with messages. The emperor’s artificers were working on devices that would permit rapid communication that did not require the physical travel of a human being. That day could not come soon enough.

Odd how these captured images made the subjects look less alive, deadened, Silk thought. So still, trapped in a moment of time. No wonder there was such good business in death portraiture. If well staged, you could barely tell the difference between the living and a cadaver.

He tilted the portrait trying to divine new details, but none were forthcoming. He rather suspected Kari Goodgrave had never been in that asylum, and it was unlikely she was even related to Josston. This much he had suspected from the very beginning, knowing Josston’s proclivities.

On impulse, he stood and took the portrait with him through the dining room, forward to the much smaller sitting room near the bow and the cabins of his servants and “guests.” The child and her governess were reading to each other from one of the books borrowed from the boat’s library. They looked up at his entrance.

The governess hastily veiled her face and stood. Even through the veil she could not look at him, and she nervously pressed her skirts smooth, gazing at the floor. What was her name? Morine? Lorine? He had learned she’d been a slave the professor had rescued and freed. Admirable, Silk thought, but pointless. There were always more slaves to take this one’s place.

In contrast, the child, Arhys, stared openly at him. Bold, that one, a street brat the professor had also taken in, and spoiled. Silk learned quickly that it only took promises and bribes to make her behave.

“Lorine,” Silk said, using a gentle tone. He knew doing so would be more effective with this nervous woman than bullying her. “Do you happen to know the person in this portrait?”

He showed it to her, and she looked hard at it, but she shook her head. “I’m sorry, but the lady’s face is too faded out.”

The child looked too, and her reaction was almost immediate. “I know her! That’s Miss Goodgrave. I hate her.” Lorine placed her hand on the child’s shoulder as if to quell her outburst.

“Lorine?” Silk said. “Your young charge appears to recognize the person in this image. Are you sure you can’t tell?”

“It could be Miss Goodgrave, sir, but it’s just not clear enough to say.”

Silk nodded. Most likely the truth. While he knew who had sat for the portrait, the child, at least, confirmed that the image was becoming more visible and it wasn’t just his imagination. He had questioned the two about Miss Goodgrave, but they’d only told him what he’d already heard.

“I want a portrait of me!” Arhys declared.

“And you shall have it.”
And much more,
Silk thought.

Arhys twirled and clapped. “You are much nicer than the professor!”

“Then you shall not be dismayed to hear that your professor is dead.”

Lorine stumbled back raising her hand to her mouth. Arhys watched her uncertainly. Silk turned on his heel, not interested in witnessing the wailing of females that was likely to begin as soon as his words sank in.

Now that he knew the portrait was becoming more identifiable, another impulse led him to leave the comfort of the cabin for the outside world. He stepped out on deck and paused to take in the air, which was moist and heavy. A mist drifted up from the smooth water of the canal, hazing the running lights of the boats. The thrum and splish-splash of the chug were louder outside. The still water carried snippets of conversation back to him. Frogs chorused along the banks. Others on duty outside cursed as they were bitten by insects, but the biters never seemed to bother Silk.

He made his way back to the stern. The freight barge floated quietly behind, though the coupling that joined it to his packet squeaked intermittently. The circus wagon, a rectangular shadow in the night, was tied down to the barge’s deck. Guards and boatmen moved about in the light of deck lamps, the mist swirling around them. Mostly he saw just pinpoints of light and silhouettes. Unlike boatmen who agilely leaped from the stern of one boat to the bow of the next, Silk required a more cautious course.

“Boatman,” he called to the nearest man on watch.

“Yessir?” The fellow was little more than a boy.

“I require the bridge and a light.”

The boy sprang into action, lifting the wooden arch bridge and securely setting it from the stern of the packet to the bow of the freighter. Another boatman on the freighter helped place it. Bridges were generally for the use of ladies and the elderly, but Silk felt no shame in using one himself. After all, he was a gentleman, and an important one. He did not have to prove his manliness.

He accepted a lantern as he stepped up onto the bridge. It was wide enough to make the crossing comfortable. Once on the other side, he went straight for the circus trailer and slid open a viewing panel on the near end. He focused the light of the lantern so it shone into the depths of the wagon.

The Eletian sat cross-legged on straw in the middle of the wagon, his eyes open and unblinking, his stillness uncanny. Silk did not know if it was simply a trancelike state the creature went into, or more like a torpor. He had shed most of his armor, which Silk had carefully packed away for later study. The underlayer of black cloth was stiff with the dried membrane that had clung between the armor and the Eletian’s flesh. The cloth itself was tattered, looked moth-eaten. The Eletian appeared to be deteriorating day by day, his aura diminishing.

Still, he was beautiful, the aural light still radiating from him. Perhaps it was dimmer, less vibrant, but it was still ethereal, the embodiment of magic.

“Eletian,” Silk said. The creature did not stir.

“Eletian!”
Still nothing.

“Allow me to give it a try, sir,” said one of the boatmen. Without awaiting permission, he walked down the length of the wagon and battered its wooden side with a club. The drubbing echoed up and down the canal. It was enough to rouse the dead.

“Stop,” Silk ordered. He’d punish the boatman for his insubordination, but the tactic appeared to work. The Eletian’s eyes focused. His aura became . . . more contained.