Mirror Sight (6 page)

A
fter Lorine removed the almost untouched meal, the scents of fresh paper and ink replaced the stench of boiled cabbage as Karigan flipped through the books Mirriam had brought. The pages were crisp and the bindings unbent—clearly new-bought. She marveled at the clean print; very little bleeding of ink, the type neat and precise. Though her own time boasted printing presses, none produced such a fine product.

For all that, the illustrations inside were black and white etchings, not nearly as beautiful as the hand-colored renderings she was accustomed to.
Something gained, something lost,
she thought. The illustrations were generally of young men and young women strolling with arms linked, or a man kneeling before his lady. The title of the first she looked at was,
Clara May’s Day to Remember.
Another was
A Pretty Proposal.
The books were, quite plainly, stories of courtship and romance, of girls seemingly beset by hardship only to be rescued by gentlemen of means. All stories Mirriam must have deemed suitable for a young lady.

Karigan sighed. Not that she didn’t enjoy a good romance, but the idea it was the only sort of book she’d be interested in annoyed her. She supposed, however, she might actually learn something about the mores and expectations of this world, so she picked one at random,
Saucy Sera and Mister Chaunce.

Saucy Sera, apparently, had a wild streak, rebelling against what was normally expected of girls. She ran and played and climbed trees, and when she was punished for doing what girls should not, she dressed up as a boy and ran away so she could do as she wished, including ride horses. Karigan’s heart was with spirited Sera as she strove for freedom, but naturally her plan fell to pieces when Mister Chaunce rescued her from a dire situation in which her true gender was about to be exposed in a humiliating and public manner. Her character underwent complete metamorphosis as she fell immediately in love with Mister Chaunce. Her wild ways quickly faded, and she became a proper young lady interested only in fashion and pleasing Mister Chaunce. Sera’s reward? A grand wedding day in which she married the gentleman who had saved her from herself.

Karigan thought a happier ending would have been Sera finding a way to stay free and independent, but, she surmised, this was not what the girls were taught here and probably not what they fantasized about. Who wouldn’t want some hero to rescue them and shoulder all responsibilities? And, she wondered wistfully, who wouldn’t desire falling in true love? It was all very seductive.

By the time she finished Sera’s story, the light in the room had dimmed, and the bells clanged again. As if on cue, Lorine arrived with supper. Much to Karigan’s relief, there was no cabbage or corned beef in sight, boiled or otherwise.

“Mirriam says you must eat up,” Lorine said in her soft voice. “You must regain your strength and put some flesh on your bones.”

Karigan didn’t think eating up would be a problem when she poked her fork through the pastry of a meat pie oozing with savory juices.

“Lorine,” Karigan said, causing the maid to halt on her way out. She wanted to know for sure what the bells represented. “Why do the bells ring? Is it to tell the time?”

Lorine gazed at Karigan as if puzzled, then smiled. “I keep forgetting you were not raised in the city. Yes. The bells tell us the time. But most importantly for the mill managers, it tells the slaves when they must work, when they may stop for meals, and when they are done for the day.”

“Was this their last bell? Have they been dismissed for the day?”

“No, miss. It was the supper bell. After supper, they will work while there is still daylight. From sunrise to sunset they labor.”

“Like farmers,” Karigan murmured.

“I think farming might be . . .” Lorine broke off, staring toward the window, lost in thought.

“Might be what?” Karigan prompted.

“More bearable.” Lorine shook her head as if dazed. “Nothing to trouble yourself about, miss. Is there anything else?”

“No,” Karigan replied. Lorine curtsied and was gone, leaving Karigan to reflect on Lorine’s words and wonder about what her experiences as a mill slave had been like.

After she ate her fill, she needed to be up and out of bed again, so she crept out into the hallway and again heard male voices from somewhere downstairs. She picked out the professor’s tones, as well as two or three others. Unlike the visit from Mr. Hadley, the circus boss, this gathering sounded more sociable with occasional laughter. She was thinking about sneaking down the hall to at least take a peek when a throat was cleared behind her.

“Is there something you need?” Mirriam asked.

Karigan slowly turned round. Of course Mirriam would discover her in the hall. Where else would she possibly be? “No,” she replied. “On my way to the privy.”

“I trust you remember where it is?”

Karigan nodded.

“Good. I shall await you here.”

“Damnation,” Karigan muttered to herself when she entered the privy and shut the door. This was much worse than her days as a schoolgirl in Selium, where it seemed every adult had been peering over her shoulder. She couldn’t even enjoy the emergence of the fish spout from the wall when she pulled the lever, knowing Mirriam awaited her outside. When she finished, she was duly escorted back to her room.

Once more ensconced in bed, she picked through the books again. This time a piece of paper that appeared to be torn from a larger sheet slipped out of one of the books. It was filled with type and a couple of pictures. It was entitled, “Excavations of the Old City,” and in the top etching appeared the profile of “Professor Bryce Lowell Josston, Licensed Practitioner of Archeology.”

Professor Josston of Mill City, Known for His Studies of Ancient Sea King Relics, Has Turned His Erudite Attentions to His Own Neighborhood.

“The ruins of the Old City have always captivated my imagination as I grew up beneath their brooding visage,” the professor said. “And now I have been given permission to excavate in the ruins to seek further links to the legacy of the first Sea Kings.”

The professor is a scion of a Preferred Family that made its fortune in the manufacture of cotton textiles. It is said he has eschewed industry in favor of scholarly pursuits and sold his majority interest in the Josston Mills. The Imperial Grant to Excavate, the professor believes, will endow him with a lifetime of potential discoveries.

“There is nothing better to me than learning about how those of the past lived,” he said.

Professor Josston joins several others in pursuit of artifacts on the Emperor’s behalf, including the notable Doctor Ezra Stirling Silk, Special Consul to the Emperor on Antiquities and True History, who has conducted remarkable excavations along the east coast and in the Northern Sea Archipelago.

 • • • 

The second etching illustrated a broad knife with an entwined pair of dragons forming the hilt. The caption read,
Bronze knife believed to be Sea King relic, unearthed by Professor Josston in the Bealing Harbor dig.

Bealing Harbor was in Hillander Province, or what used to be Hillander. To Karigan, the sea kings were but a curiosity of far ancient times, lost in the shadows preceding the Black Ages. She knew little of them except that they’d been violent marauders, pillaging and battling the tribal people who had roamed the region that she knew as Sacoridia. They had subdued the people and ruled for scores of years, especially along the coast. Likely their blood still ran through the veins of many Sacoridians. The sea kings had left abruptly, just simply got up and left, sailing their fleets of ships east. If there was any reason for their sudden departure, it was lost to time.

In any case, it appeared the sea kings were an approved topic of history, perhaps because it was so distant as to be deemed harmless. She wondered if the clipping had been slipped to her purposely, and if so, by whom? Why not just hand it to her? She shook out all of the books, but no other loose papers fell out.

Probably just as well. She’d had enough mysteries and revelations for one day. As the light in her room waned, the bells clanged a final time, and Karigan imagined workers filing out of the mills, weary and relieved another day had finished. Where did they go? If they were slaves, she could not expect they’d be returning to very comfortable accommodations.

My father managed to make his fortune in textiles,
she thought,
even though his suppliers did not rely on slave labor.

If Professor Josston’s family had made its fortune with cotton mills, she had to assume slaves were involved. The professor’s apparent removal from the business, and his rescue of Lorine, softened her harsh assessment of him. But he was obviously very well off and had profited from slave labor. She wondered what life was like for other people who were not the scions of Preferred families.

The door creaked open and Mirriam strode in, the last of day’s light glancing on the monocle hanging from her neck.

“You aren’t going to read in the dark, are you?” she demanded. She bustled over to Karigan’s bedside table where a globe sat on a bronze pedestal. She twisted a key in its base and at once the globe filled with a bright, steady light.

“Like magic,” Karigan murmured.

“There is no magic in this world, young lady,” Mirriam said, “but modern wonders gleaned from the ingenuity of men.”

To Karigan’s chagrin, there was truth in the housekeeper’s words about the magic. “Is it whale oil?” she asked.

Mirriam laughed. “Now where are we going to find a whale to make oil? Not enough of them left to supply the needs of the city, much less the empire. It’s phosphorene that gives off the light. Surely they weren’t still using candles in the asylum . . . ?”

Karigan swallowed, not wanting to reveal just how ignorant she truly was, but she had little choice. “How do you extinguish the light?”

Mirriam muttered something to herself in a tone of disbelief and then added, not without pity, “I am shocked the Goodgraves put you in such an institution lacking modern amenities. Why, it’s barbaric! No wonder the professor brought you here. Now watch.” Mirriam simply turned the key in the opposite direction and the room darkened.

It was amazing, so simple, Karigan thought. No fires that needed to be started and kept burning. No flint and steel, just the turn of that key.

Mirriam twisted the key once more and light filled the room. Despite the lack of magic, this world was filled with wonders. What else Karigan might discover, she could scarcely imagine.

“In the morning,” Mirriam announced, “there shall be bathing and a change of bandages. Mender Samuels will stop by to see how you are doing.” With that, the housekeeper left her.

Karigan sighed. Whatever discoveries she made about this world, they would have to be made at night, as the household slept. Did Mirriam sleep? Maybe she’d ask Lorine. In any case, she’d learn the rhythms of the house’s occupants and discover what she could.

She yawned and reached for one of the novels. She’d bide her time as evening wore on and begin her investigations once the house fell into somnolence. But before she was four pages into the book, her head nestled in the pillow, and she drifted away once again into the healing sleep her body so desperately needed, unaware of when Lorine came in later and removed the book from her hands, pulled the covers up, and turned off the light.

A
scritching
sound irritated Karigan to wakefulness, an incessant noise that scraped at her nerves. She blinked in the predawn gray, once more having to orient herself to where she was and
when.
She rubbed her eyes and yawned, wondering what caused the noise that had awakened her.

Scritch-scritch-scritch,
like a pen rapidly stroking across paper.

She raised herself to her elbows. “Hello?” she queried, searching into the shadows spilling across her room.

She discerned nothing, but she pinpointed the noise emanating from a particularly dark corner. She stared hard, perceived movement. A trick of her eyes?

“Hello?” she said again, a slight quaver in her voice, and again there was no response. The scritching did not sound mousey, and it had a sort of rhythm to it.

I’m becoming just as mad as they think I am.

She tossed aside her covers and stood on the rug beside her bed. She took tentative steps toward the dark corner. The scritching grew a little louder as she approached. She made out the frame of the one chair in her room. She thought to turn back and ignite her lamp when she caught a faint flutter of movement around the chair, like pale moth wings in the night. Transfixed, she drew closer. Spectral smoke wafted and drifted above the chair until it resolved into a vaguely human figure.

A wave of cold rippled through Karigan’s flesh lifting the hairs on her arms. She licked her lips. She dared not step any closer to the apparition lest it vanish. Its features were so blurred she could not even tell whether it was male or female. It sat bent over a flat object on its lap.

“Who are you?” she whispered. Perhaps, she thought, Who
were
you? was the more appropriate question. In any case, she received no reply.

The gray of her room began to lighten, the puddles of black retreating. The faint apparition faded even more.

“Can you see me?” Karigan whispered, but the hunched figure remained intent on whatever was on its lap, even as it faded to a wisp of smoke.

Scritch-scratch.

Was it writing?

The city bell clanged and, startled, Karigan glanced at the window, which had brightened with the dawn. The bell to call the mill slaves to work. Between tollings, she heard no scritching, and when she glanced at the chair, the apparition had vanished.

Either she had indeed gone mad, or apparitions could appear even in a world deprived of magic. Not that spirits of the dead should have to rely on magic to exist, but it still surprised her.

Why had it appeared to her? She’d enough experience with the supernatural to know such meetings did not usually occur by chance.

She stood there staring at the empty chair for several moments, then shook her head. She gave some thought to using the early hour to sneak around the house, but she heard footsteps in the hallway and other sounds of life elsewhere in the house, bringing to an end any such notion. At least now she knew the household began to awaken with the first bell, which was more than she’d known before.

She sighed and limped back to bed to await the day.

 • • • 

After breakfast Karigan suffered through the humiliation of the sponge bath, protesting all the while there must be a way to take a regular bath without getting her cast wet, and couldn’t she do this herself, please. Mirriam was as immovable as a granite pillar and informed Karigan this was not her first sponge bath. Karigan had known someone cleaned her up upon her arrival to the professor’s house, though she’d not been conscious. Being awake and aware of it was a whole different level of embarrassment.

“Stop your fussing,” Mirriam ordered as she scrubbed Karigan’s back. “You’re just making it take longer.”

After the sponge bath, Karigan had to admit she felt better, especially when Mirriam and Lorine set to work washing her hair in the bathing room sink, which was shaped like a giant clam shell. Mirriam deftly shifted the various levers to make the water temperature just right while Lorine’s nimble fingers massaged Karigan’s scalp. Afterward, Lorine put much care into detangling and brushing Karigan’s hair. The strokes of the brush felt marvelous.

“I wish my hair was half so lovely as yours,” Lorine murmured. “Long and thick.”

Karigan had not yet seen Lorine’s hair for it was always wrapped beneath her scarf.

Lorine expertly braided Karigan’s hair, then helped her back to her room, where Mirriam and Mender Samuels awaited with fresh bandages. Karigan withheld cries of pain as crusty scabs were yanked off with the old bandages, the one around her leg hurting the worst by far. The mender bent over her leg and took a long whiff of the wound.

“I smell no putrefaction, and the flesh appears to be healing,” he pronounced. “If all continues this way, I shall remove the sutures very soon.” He listened to Karigan’s heart through a conical tube apparatus, the wide end placed on her chest, his ear listening at the narrow end. Like a small speaking trumpet, Karigan decided. The mender inquired of Mirriam about Karigan’s diet. After a favorable response, he asked, “No ill humors, fever, or the like?”

“None that I’ve detected,” Mirriam replied. “Seems eager to get into mischief. But beyond that, only the illness of her mind.”

Karigan glowered.

“You say she will take no morphia?”

“I am right here and able to answer for myself,” Karigan said. “I will take no morphia.”

“My dear,” the mender said in a condescending tone, “you’ve nothing to prove. The morphia is only to benefit you by subduing your pain.”

And
me,
she thought. “I do not need morphia.”

The mender gave her a testy frown as though he preferred his patients drowsy and malleable. “Very well, but I shall bring it up with your uncle. Most young ladies would desire relief.”

Karigan held her tongue, but it was not easy.

“Her mental frailties,” the mender told Mirriam, “do not make her fit to speak for herself.”

The housekeeper escorted him to the door. She paused and gave Karigan an enigmatic look and then was gone. What was in that look? Approval? Disapproval? Something more complex? Karigan could not tell.

“I just want to go home,” she murmured. Now that she was once again alone in her room, it hit her. She wanted away from these strange people and their ways. She profoundly missed her Condor, her fellow Riders, and the way the world worked in her own time. She missed Ghost Kitty curling up beside her on her pillow and purring her to sleep.

She would find a way home; she would learn how Mornhavon had defeated Sacoridia, and she would take that information with her. Until she figured out these matters, she must remain patient and accept the professor’s protection so she could rebuild her strength.

If she couldn’t get past Mirriam, she would use the window. She’d enough bed sheets to tie together . . . Karigan considered plans and counter plans until the midday bell rang, and Lorine appeared with a meal. Karigan steeled herself for more boiled dinner, when Lorine lifted the lid off the main dish and there was only barley soup. Karigan did not think her sigh of relief went unnoticed.

She thought to question Lorine about Mirriam’s habits and schedule but dismissed the idea as too obvious. She’d have to observe on her own. The maid curtsied and departed, leaving Karigan to thoughtfully spoon soup—carefully blowing on it first—into her mouth. Perhaps if she made herself sleep all day, then she’d stay awake long enough in the night to commence her prowling. It was ridiculous, really, that she, a Green Rider, was cooped up like this. She—

Karigan paused with a spoon of steaming soup halfway to her lips, when she felt someone’s gaze on her. Had her ghost returned, here in the brightness of day? Slowly she turned her head, seeking any sign of that filmy presence. She did not see it, but when her gaze fell across the window, and she discovered a pair of golden eyes staring unblinkingly in at her, she screamed, and barley soup cascaded across the room, the bowl smashing on the floor.

Mirriam burst in almost immediately, with Lorine on her heels. “Miss Goodgrave! What on Earth? How dare you fling the professor’s porcelain!”

Karigan hissed as the burning hot soup soaked through her nightgown, and she plucked the fabric away from her skin. “I saw a pair of eyes! In the window.” Now for certain, she’d utterly convinced them of her insanity.

Mirriam stomped over to the window, gazed up, gazed down, and gazed all around. “I see nothing,” she replied, whirling around to stare at Karigan, her hands on her hips.

Karigan was not surprised, and as her wits settled back into their proper place, she belatedly realized that whiskers, and white and pale gray fur had accompanied the eyes before her scream had scared the poor cat off her window ledge. She laughed at herself.

“Miss Goodgrave, stop this instant.” Mirriam raised her hand as if to slap her.

Just as quickly Karigan raised her arm to block it. “I am not hysterical,” she said, no laughter in her voice now. “I was laughing because I’m just realizing I was startled by a cat. A cat at my window.” Karigan did not add that her sighting of an apparition in the early morning hours had put her on edge.

Mirriam’s posture relaxed, and her upraised hand fell to her side. Her expression, however, revealed she was not entirely convinced.

“There has been a cat hanging about the back garden lately,” Lorine said.

“White with gray?” Karigan asked.

Lorine nodded.

“No one had better be feeding it,” Mirriam replied. “Filthy creatures.”

Lorine clasped her hands in front of her and glanced down at the floor, but Mirriam did not observe it for she was gazing intently at Karigan.

“Just after we’ve cleaned and put fresh bedding on,” Mirriam said. “Now we’ll have to do it all over again.”

“I’m sorry,” Karigan said with a grimace. “I was just really startled.”

“See that it does not happen again.”

A clean nightgown and bedding were brought in, and after Karigan changed, she was ordered to sit in the chair while the bed was made anew, soup was sopped up from the floor, and broken porcelain swept away. In addition, the butler arrived with a little table, Mirriam directing where it should be placed.
Not
next to the window, she ordered the butler.

“From now on,” she informed Karigan, “you shall dine at this table. You are obviously well enough to sit up, and I won’t have you flinging the professor’s porcelain.”

“I did not—”

“And slippers!” Mirriam threw her hands into the air. “Why do I see no slippers? That girl never remembers anything I tell her, and I must do it myself.” She turned on Lorine who had a rag bunched in her hand from wiping up stray droplets of soup. “I am off to Copley’s for slippers and perhaps a few other shops while I’m out.”

With that, Mirriam marched out of the room, and both Karigan and Lorine sighed simultaneously. Lorine smiled shyly at Karigan.

“Is there . . . is there really a cat in the back garden?” Karigan asked.

“Oh, yes, miss. We do give him leavings now and then, but please don’t tell Mirriam—he does no harm.”

“I certainly will not tell Mirriam,” Karigan said with more feeling than she intended.

“Thank you, miss. Like I said, we just give him leavings. He’d like to come in, but, well, as you saw, Mirriam wouldn’t have it. He lets us near enough to pet him sometimes. Well, I must be off to begin laundry now.”

“I’m sorry,” Karigan said again as Lorine loaded her arms with sheets, cleaning rags, and Karigan’s soup-stained nightgown.

“No trouble, miss,” Lorine replied, voice muffled by linens as she headed out the door.

Karigan sat back in her chair wondering if she’d made enough trouble for one day.
Not by far,
she decided. Mirriam had left the house to go shopping, which meant she could poke around without her watchdog pouncing on her the moment she stepped out of her room.