Mirror Sight (58 page)

“Eletian,” Silk said, “look at this picture. Do you know the person in it?” He held the portrait up for the Eletian to see.

The Eletian gave no hint he understood, but his gaze shifted subtly, narrowing in on the picture. Outwardly he showed no sign of recognition, but in Silk’s vision, his aura pulsed, almost urgently.

“You do know her,” Silk murmured. The Eletian’s sight had to be extraordinarily sharp to see the image from that distance. “Who is she?”

The Eletian, of course, did not answer.

“You may be interested to know she died in a fire last night.” Whether or not it was true, it had been worth saying for the effect on the Eletian was startling. His gaze dropped and his aura either faded out or turned to some dark shade that Silk could not discern. Otherwise, there was once again no real outward sign the creature had heard a word Silk said.

Silk nodded to himself and closed the panel. That would give the Eletian something to mull over. So, the Eletian knew Miss Goodgrave. Could it be that she, like the Eletian, was out of step with time? He’d known there was something special, different about her from the beginning—the uncanny glimpse he’d had of dark wings about her. When they found her, and he still felt strongly she had not perished in the fire, he would have many questions for her. Many, indeed. No wonder the professor had laid claim to her.

As the banks of the canal slipped by, it also occurred to Silk that she would make an excellent additional gift to the emperor. Silk’s immortality was all but assured.

K
arigan snarled and batted away the dark hands of the shadow beast that reached for her. She kicked and heard a very human grunt.

“Stop!” The shadow beast sounded like Cade. Was it a deception, or . . . ?

“Wake up,” he told her.

She opened crusty eyes, shivering as a layer of sweat cooled on her skin. Cade stood nearby, only a little blurry.

“You’ve been having nightmares,” he said.

Yes, nightmares.

Wan daylight pooled in from unshuttered windows. Karigan’s head pounded dully, and she felt as unrested as though she’d been fighting monsters all night.

“Too much morphia can do that,” Cade said. “Give you bad dreams.” She noticed he kept his distance.

“How are you doing otherwise?” he asked. “We’ll be meeting Luke soon to head out.”

“Don’t know yet.”

“Well, uh, Luke brought you an extra set of clothes from his son if you want a change.”

Karigan got up and staggered around the bunkhouse, bumping into beds and chairs as she readied herself for the day. Her head felt full of a pea soup fog, and she trembled from weakness. Cade looked like he wanted to offer his help, but to his credit he did not. Still, he watched her with an uncomfortable vigilance, and it was a relief when she made it into the privy and slammed the door behind her.

Afterward, Cade convinced her to eat some porridge and drink water before they left, but she managed only a little. When they met Luke by the wagon, he said to her, “You look terrible.” Then he added in a whisper, “All the better for our ruse, eh?”

Karigan ignored him and patted Raven, then climbed up into her place on the wagon. Already her fresh change of clothes was sodden with sweat. She could not stop shaking. She closed her eyes and napped fitfully as the wagon rumbled along the road. Sometimes she awakened to see the jagged rooflines of some town, its chimneys reaching for the heavens and soiling the sky with black smoke. Now and then they passed beneath a tall statue of the emperor, Amberhill in some heroic posture gazing into the distance.

After a time, their road paralleled a canal wide enough for odd, tubby boats to travel two abreast. They were propelled by what looked like mill wheels, starboard and port, and she wondered what everyone back home would make of it all. When she told them of her adventures and all she’d seen, would they believe any of it?

Now and then she became aware of the wagon stopping and of Luke being questioned. He always answered with cheerful aplomb and a level of charm she had never known he possessed. Papers were demanded, bribes given and received. Karigan once opened her eyes to find a man in Inspector red peering down at her, the eye lens of his Enforcer whirring at her. She had to clamp down a scream. Maybe it was all a nightmare. Maybe this whole future world was some sort of dream. She must still be in Blackveil. Surely she must, but the dream kept going on and on.

Cade woke her at midday, and she was sorry because she’d finally fallen into a more restful, dreamless sleep.

“It is time for a break,” Cade said, leaning against the tailgate of the wagon. Raven stood next to him and both watched her.

“Where are we?”

“Roadside tavern in Appleton.”

The name meant nothing to her. They were pulled to the side of the road with a couple of other wagons, next to a clapboard house with a sign that simply said, “Tavern.” Across the road, beyond a copse of trees, a canal gleamed. No boats passed by at the moment.

“Luke said he’d send out some food,” Cade continued. “I think he is enjoying his role a little too well.”

And no wonder, Karigan thought. His “servants” must wait outside for him while he took his time and dined in the comfort of the tavern. In the meantime, Karigan drank some water and stumbled her way to the privy, this time a simple shack that almost made her ill with the stench and flies.

The short walk back exhausted her. How was she to be of any help to Lhean, or herself for that matter, in this condition? She managed to climb up into the wagon without help, but just barely. She rubbed perspiration off her forehead.

Cade took little heed of her. He gazed toward the canal, but more into space than at anything in particular. When a bell rang a little ways back down the road toward the village, he tilted his head. The bell rang only once—the first hour of the afternoon. Cade then paced, not seeming to know what to do with himself. His agitation caused Raven to paw and side-step. Karigan spoke softly to the stallion to comfort him.

She asked Cade, “What’s wrong? Raven can tell something is bothering you, and it’s upsetting him.”

He paused and looked at her, his face ashen. “Whatever happens in Mill City from this hour forth is my responsibility.”

She stared at him. “What do you mean?”

“The rebellion has begun.”

M
irriam and Jax sat in silence at the table in Jax’s small cottage, taking tea. The sand in the hourglass trickled out, and Jax turned it over, starting the countdown of another hour.

They waited anxiously, straining to hear, but the city bells did not ring.

They stared at the hourglass transfixed as if willing the bells to ring, but they did not. Jax’s tea cooled untouched.

Finally, Mirriam could no longer help herself. “Is your hourglass accurate?”

“Very,” was Jax’s gruff response.

If the bell did not ring, the slaves would not be let out of quarters to return to the mills. If the slaves were not let out, then they could not do their part. Carefully selected members of the rebel group, mill workers who had access to both slaves and keys, were to unlock the manacles. The slaves would then make a bid for freedom as they wished.

Slaves running free would force the Inspectors to run after them and meanwhile the rebels were supposed to take over key imperial holdings—Inspector stations, the city gates, the office of the city master, and the armory. The rebels would hold and defend Mill City in the face of whatever the emperor sent their way. All to buy Cade and Karigan time, all their hopes pinned on what a Green Rider out of the past could do.

A Green Rider addled by morphia, Mirriam reminded herself.

As the top half of the hourglass drained itself of sand, the two of them stared at it. Still, no bells rang. Jax did not bother to flip the glass. He slowly moved his gaze to Mirriam, eyes full of fear.

“If the bells are not ringing,” he began.

“Then they have learned of our plan,” Mirriam finished.

She had hardly finished speaking when the door crashed in. Inspectors swarmed the cottage, muzzles of weapons leveled at her and Jax.

They had failed.

I
n the dark, stifling slave quarters that belonged to the Greeling Textile Mill, the restlessness of the slaves indicated knowledge that something was amiss. They sat on rough benches, their meager midday rations long gone. It was far past time for the bell to ring that was supposed to send them back to work.

The General watched the foreman from the corner of his eye. The man paced in nervous circles near the entrance to the long, squat building. Once or twice he paused to stare at The General, then continued his pacing. The General sat hunched on his bench as if nothing unusual was going on. If the bells were being withheld, then the Inspectors had to know something was afoot. A clever tactic, that, preventing a rebellion by withholding time.

The General watched as some sort of decision registered on the foreman’s face. He strode forward and pressed his hand on the bench beside The General. When he removed it, a key remained. So, he wanted to go forward with or without the bells. The General did not protest, and took the key. Meanwhile, the foreman caught the attention of the overseers so they would not observe The General unlocking his leg irons and passing on the key. The building murmur of the slaves, however, as the key was passed round, was enough to catch their attention. When they advanced with their whips poised, a dozen slaves sprang on them, beating them as only those would who have been held in chains and were mistreated and worked unto death. The overseers fell beneath the pummeling and did not rise again.

The slaves were quiet. They were not accustomed to being allowed to raise their voices, not even at the triumph of having their leg irons off. Not even when avenging themselves by beating the overseers. But The General saw the expressions on their faces, the young and the old, the light and the dark. It was an expression they had rarely known: hope.

The sudden booting open of the door and its rebounding smash into the wall, however, quickly smothered their hope and shocked them all into stillness. Inspectors poured into the building, guns drawn. They’d been so close, The General thought, but the plan had indeed failed. He guessed that the other slave quarters involved had been raided as well.

He stood, faced the Inspectors. He had this one moment of freedom, a moment of freedom to attack his enemy as he had once done on the battlefield. He picked up his leg irons, but he would never be chained again. Other slaves, sensing what he was about, did the same.

When he and the others rushed the Inspectors swinging their chains, it was into the fire and blue smoke of the guns.

B
efore Luke returned from the tavern and they set off again, Cade explained to Karigan in low tones how he’d hoped to create a diversion for them by causing trouble in Mill City. The crux of his plan was the freeing of as many slaves as possible. Without an orderly work force, not only would industry come to a halt, but so would Silk’s drilling project in the Old City. The Inspectors would scramble to round up escaped slaves while being harried by armed rebels.

“If the rebels take the Inspector stations, armory, gates, and city master’s office, they will have control of the city,” he told her. Of course, it would mean troops would have to be sent out from the Capital to regain control, leaving the Capital, he hoped, less secure.

Karigan rubbed her eyes. Even with her thought processes so muddy, she could see this was not going to end well. “You expect your rebels to hold the city?”

“No. That is not their purpose. They are to hold it as long as they can. Long enough to divert troops from the Capital to make our entrance into Gossham easier.”

She stared at him. “All of this so we can . . . ? You’re putting all those people at risk for us?”

Cade nodded.

“Oh, Cade.” She closed her eyes and slid back into her straw nest in the wagon.

“Arhys is the last heir,” he said tersely, leaning over the tailgate, “and if you can find your way home, you can change everything.”

Such a great burden, she thought. “What if we fail?”

“Perhaps Mill City’s efforts won’t have been in vain. Perhaps the uprising there will foment others throughout the empire. No matter how the Adherents try to suppress the news of the rebellion, it will get out one way or another.”

And the empire would make an example of Mill City, Karigan thought. She had wanted to find a way home so she could
be home,
with the side benefit of being able to inform the king of Amberhill’s treachery, and thus avert this future. It had all been very personal. But now, all those people relying on so slim a hope added a weight she was not sure she could bear.

 • • • 

The rest of the afternoon went by in a fog for Karigan. Luke riding ahead, Cade driving the wagon, and she in the very back bouncing along in the straw. Every now and then Raven would poke his nose over the tailgate as if to reassure himself she was still alive.

She’d gone from craving only sleep, to still being exhausted but too agitated to truly rest. If she could have more morphia, maybe she could be at peace again. She tried not to think about it. She faded in and out, waking in a cold sweat, head aching. Unbidden, there would be Raven looking at her. She raised a trembling hand to stroke his nose.

She drifted in and out of awareness, glimpsing the tall, hard buildings of towns, inhaling air that tasted like dirt and rotten eggs. She came to once when the wagon abruptly stopped.

“Papers,” an authoritative voice ordered up ahead, followed by Luke’s chipper tones. A checkpoint. Again, she tried not to cringe when an Inspector and Enforcer came back to look at her.

“What is wrong with you?” the Inspector demanded.

She wiped sweat from her forehead. She did not have to answer for Luke reined Gallant around and said, “Don’t get too close. Tam there has a fever.”

The Inspector stepped back. “You should not be transporting sick people around the empire.”

“He came down with it along the way. I’ve been keeping him away from people.” There was a pause before Luke continued, “Say, Inspector, I don’t suppose you and your men get to taste very much good wine here. I wonder if you might care for a sample?”

Luke drew off the Inspector with that, but the Enforcer paused, its eye focusing an intense moment on her face until the mechanical belched a puff of steam from its stack and click-clacked away.

After they were cleared and underway once again, the haze moved back into Karigan’s mind until Cade paused in the shade of trees in a stretch of countryside to rest the mules, the sun glancing off the silent canal beside them.

“—too easy,” Cade was telling Luke.

“Too easy? You want them to search the wagon?” Luke countered. “Interrogate us?”

“Of course not. I just can’t get over the feeling it should be harder for us to get through those checkpoints.”

“Neither of us have done much traveling,” Luke said. “Maybe the empire just wants us to think it’s hard so everyone will stay put. Not to mention I am a very convincing wine merchant, if I say so myself.” The last was said with a certain dash of pride.

“It is a sheer tragedy the scouts for the Imperial Players overlooked you.”

“Gah! And waste my talent in propaganda pageants? No, this is much more the thing—the theater of life!”

“Yes, and it is well done,” Cade admitted.

“Applause. Where is my applause?”

Luke’s question was followed by Cade’s desultory clapping. Karigan peered ahead just in time to see Luke bow with a flourish.

That evening they stopped at another inn, and in an arrangement like the previous night’s, Karigan and Cade had an entire bunkhouse to themselves. Karigan dove for one of the beds and wrapped herself in a blanket, still shaking.

“You need to try to eat,” Cade said. “Luke had some soup sent over.” He lifted the lid on a tureen and sniffed. “Chicken. Again.”

It appeared that Luke’s solution to Karigan’s affliction was soup at almost every meal. She had to admit that while her stomach wasn’t interested in anything at all, chicken soup was the least offensive offering she could think of. She forced herself to rise and join Cade at the table. He ladled them both bowls of soup, a good thing, too, with her hands so shaky. As it was, it mostly splashed out of her spoon before she could bring it to her lips. She all but tossed the spoon down in frustration.

Cade watched her. “It will pass,” he assured her. “The shakes and so forth. It means the morphia is wearing off.” To his credit, he did not offer to feed her like a baby.

“Keep trying,” he said quietly. “You need to keep your strength up.”

“Right,” she said, “because all the people in Mill City are depending on me.”

“Not just you. The decision was mine, and they actually agreed to go along with it.”

“Mirriam, Jax, and the others.”

“Yes. Many others. If it . . . if we fail, then the responsibility is mine.” He stared into his bowl of soup as if trying to scry some secret message. He chuckled.

Karigan gazed at him, startled. “What’s so funny?”

“Who knew this would be my fate?” he replied. “I started out among the Dregs, stealing to get by. I never expected . . . I never expected to come by such responsibility. I never expected the professor to die, leaving me to make the decisions.”

“Cade,” she said, “the professor wasn’t making decisions. Not the difficult ones, anyway. He was just maintaining the opposition’s usual state of affairs. Keeping safe.”

She was intrigued by the tiny glimpse into Cade’s past. So, he’d been a street thief when he was a boy. She wanted to ask more, but a heavy oppression seemed to have settled on him.

In the course of eating her supper, she ended up with more soup on herself than in her belly, so she did her best to clean up and get ready for bed. Cade remained at the table, chin on his fist as he stared into space. That was her last vision as she drifted into an uneasy sleep: he sitting there in the golden lamp glow.

She dreamed she was on a message errand, but could not find her way. Too many trails cut through the woods, and she could not remember which way to go. Sometimes she rode Condor, sometimes it was Raven, and once it was a great black stallion with rippling muscles and the universe shining in his eyes.

She awoke with a gasp, only to find the lamp at a very low glow, and Cade staring out a window into the night. She rose on her elbow, wiped perspiration from her forehead.

“You’re still up.”

He stiffened at the sound of her voice and turned around. “Can’t sleep.”

The window was open and she heard the chirps of crickets. Sultry air rolled in, and she was racked by chills despite the warmth of the night.

“Are you thinking about Mill City?”

The floor creaked as Cade crossed it to sit on the bed next to hers. “Mill City, and other things. But those are for me to worry about. You should get back to sleep so you can get better.”

“What is the hour?”

He shrugged. “I’ve lost track.”

She leaned back into her pillow and closed her eyes. She did not think it would be so easy to fall back asleep. “Were you really a thief when you were young?”

“It’s true.”

“How did you become a student then?”

Cade laughed quietly. “I tried stealing from the professor.”

Karigan rolled over onto her side to face him, quite awake now. “You did?”

He nodded.

“I take it he caught you.”

Cade laughed again. “He did, indeed.”

“Well?” she said.

“Well what?”

“How did it happen? You can’t expect me to fall asleep now with just that little morsel of information.”

He stared at her, looked poised to say something, then shook his head as if he changed his mind.

“Please?” she said in a wheedling tone. “I won’t sleep till you tell me.” She could not guess what he was thinking, but his gaze became particularly intense. Then he relaxed.

“All right,” he said. “You must promise me you’ll try to sleep after.”

“I will.”

“All right.” He cleared his throat, then, “Yes, I tried to steal from the professor. He was doing an excavation in the Old City, and I thought he must have been digging up great treasure. As a boy living off trash in the street, I loved to imagine the idea of buried treasure. I saw enough Dregs earn some coins on the black market for pieces of junk they scrounged in the Old City, so I imagined I could be rich. I didn’t understand back then that you couldn’t be rich unless the empire allowed it.”

Karigan wondered what her father would make of that. In this Sacoridia, he’d never be allowed to become the successful merchant he was and would have been relegated to a life of fishing until the end of his days.

“So, I saw the professor set up his excavation, letting others do the digging, and I thought, why do all the work myself? I’d let them dig up the treasure, and then I’d just steal it.”

“Clever,” Karigan said.

“Lazy,” he replied.

“So what happened? How’d he catch you?”

“I thought I was being real careful and hid out among the ruins in a place where I could watch the excavation. When they all seemed focused on what was in the hole and were paying their tent of artifacts no heed at all, I snuck into it to find treasure.”

“Did you?”

“The professor considered it treasure—ceramic shards, pieces of rusted metal, broken glass—heaps of stuff that looked like the rubbish I saw on the streets every day, yet these were carefully arranged and labeled. I did see some shiny objects that looked like gold coins to me, and I scooped them up. I was about to put them in my pocket when the professor walked in. ‘Dear boy,’ he said, ‘what do you want with those old buttons?’”

“Old buttons? Is this when you got your nickname?”

Cade nodded. “Yes. I’d tried to steal old buttons. Old brass buttons not worth much of anything to anyone but the professor, not even on the black market.”

“What happened then?”

“He offered me some of his midday meal. I remember it well—cold fried chicken, an apple, and fresh bread that was not moldy or hard. It was ordinary fare to the professor, but to me, it was a feast of dreams. After that, he said that if I was interested in old buttons, he would pay me if I helped with the digging, and he’d also bring food. I went every day, of course, and our relationship developed from there, I becoming his student, and he my mentor.”

Cade stretched out on his bed, lying on his back with his hands beneath his head. “The professor became the father I’d never had.”

Karigan watched him, waiting for more, but soon his chest rose and fell in a slow and steady rhythm, the tension in his body relaxing. He’d fallen asleep, finally, an expression of peace on his face. She hoped his good memories of the professor lingered into his dreams.

As her own eyes started to close, it occurred to her she’d been born around two hundred years ahead of Cade. She smiled to herself thinking she didn’t feel that old. Did Cade, she wondered, like “older” women?