Mirror Sight (8 page)

I
t still took Karigan by surprise how the need for sleep dropped her so unexpectedly and with such immediacy. After her excursion down the stairs to spy on the professor, she’d been overcome as soon as she returned to her room. One minute she was alert and wide awake, and the next Lorine was rousing her for supper. Her healing body continued to demand its due.

It interfered with her plans to learn the schedules and habits of the household, and no matter how much she slept during the day, she couldn’t stay awake at night to prowl.

When she was awake, she restlessly paced, scuffing the soles of her new fur-lined slippers along the floorboards, wishing for some way to vent her energy. Instead of reading the novels Mirriam had brought her, she lifted them to keep her good arm limber, now and then adding a book to the pile to increase the weight. She practiced the various forms she’d learned in arms training, only without a practice sword, and while trying to remain silent so no one would come scold her and discover what she was up to—which was an exercise in itself. She came to know exactly which floorboards creaked, and which did not.

She eventually convinced Lorine to provide her with a broom by saying she wanted to keep her already immaculate room tidy. Lorine looked at her like she was mad, then probably remembered that Karigan was supposed to be, and relented, hoping it would keep her happy.

Working with a broom handle was not nearly as good as using a properly balanced practice sword, or a real blade for that matter. She of course had to use her left hand because of her broken wrist, but it was not as hard as it might have been since she was trained to use her non-dominant side after a previous elbow injury. Grateful as she was just to have the broom, she wished she at least had her bonewood, and planned to request it of the professor citing her bad leg, but she never saw him, which was hugely irritating. When she asked Mirriam where he was, the housekeeper informed her it was none of her concern, but let it slip later he was out at the “dig site” with his students.

The only people she continued to see were Lorine and Mirriam. If she had her way, that would soon change if only she could stay awake. There weren’t even any visitations from the ghost—none that she was aware of at any rate.

To make matters worse, beneath her cast the flesh itched so much it drove her wild. She had nothing to slide beneath the cast to probe the itches, and she was sorely tempted to go to the bathing room and soak it in water to dissolve it off. Instead, she furiously scratched at the cast itself as if she could somehow transcend the plaster and reach her skin to find release.

When next Mender Samuels appeared to check on her and remove the sutures from various wounds, she demanded, “When is this cast coming off?”

“Three or four more weeks, I should think.”

Karigan perceived the hint of a malignant smile as he said it, like he enjoyed telling her bad news. She wanted to scream her frustration but would not give him the satisfaction.

“You do want it to heal correctly, don’t you?” he asked, while tugging out another stitch.

Karigan grunted and said no more.

Finally a day came when she felt more herself. The combination of good food and sleep infused her with most of her old energy. Her wrist still ached and itched in its cast, and she still limped, but on the whole, she was ready to take on the world, or at least the part of it that contained the household of Professor Bryce Lowell Josston.

She’d made her plans, so now it was a matter of waiting for the night. She took her mind off the coming excursion by sneaking into the bathing room to attend to her own ablutions. She filled the tub with hot water, and just as she sank into it, settling her broken wrist safely on the rim, Mirriam barged right in.

“You get out this instant!” she ordered.

“I will not,” Karigan replied. “You will have to lift me if you want me out.”

Mirriam paced in agitation, perhaps considering her options. “I could ask the gardeners to help . . .”

Karigan did not reply, guessing she was bluffing.

After some moments, Mirriam jabbed her finger in Karigan’s direction. “You will not get your cast wet, and we shall speak when you are done.”

When the housekeeper left, the tension eased out of Karigan’s body, and she took a glorious, long hot soak and a thorough scrub, not getting her cast wet in the process, thank you very much. Afterward, while she dried off in her room, she endured Mirriam’s scolding with equanimity.

“As you can see,” Karigan said, brandishing her cast before Mirriam’s face, “no harm has been done. It’s obvious I’m capable of bathing myself, though Lorine will still need to help me with my hair.” Karigan thought she heard giggles from the hallway in response to Mirriam’s being bested. Arhys, perhaps?

Mirriam pursed her lips. A muscle twitched in her cheek, but she nodded curtly and left. When the door shut behind her, Karigan spun around in a little dance of victory.

And then she saw the cat watching her through the window, that same pair of golden eyes, the white and light gray fur. He appeared neither scrawny nor scruffy, so perhaps he was a well-fed neighborhood cat. Since she’d already defied Mirriam once today, it did not seem a great leap to do so again. She went to the window and started to lift the sash, but at the first hint of a squeal, the cat jumped. She looked down, but could not see where he went. She shrugged and decided she would have to find some grease with which to ease the window.

Karigan busied herself the rest of the day practicing sword forms and was pleased by the increasing strength and precision of her left arm. When she finished, she gazed out the window. The sky was heavy, deepening with rain clouds. By late afternoon showers fell, accompanied by rumbles of thunder, and kept falling as the household settled into night and eventually into sleep, until only one soul remained awake, or so Karigan hoped. The constant patter of rain on the roof would help cover up the sound of her movements.

Wrapping the shawl around her shoulders, her feet clad in slippers, she tiptoed to her door, opened it, and peered out into the hallway. At night time, she discovered, the hallways were kept dimly illumined by phosphorene lamps at low glow. Some were made to look like tapers in candle holders, the glass flame bright, but false in that it did not flicker like a real candle. These, unlike the larger lamps, could be carried with ease. She picked one up from its place on a small marble-top table and moved down the hall toward the stairs, followed by her own monstrous shadow.

She hadn’t the nerve to open the doors along the hallway, figuring they could very well be inhabited. She suspected Mirriam slept only a couple doors away from her. No, her goal was to look around on the lower level, where the professor’s business took place. If she were to find out anything of interest, it would be downstairs.

She carefully descended, her shadow exaggerating her steps. When she reached the bottom landing, she ignored the parlor—one glance the other day had shown her an impersonal room of overstuffed furniture and the requisite portraits of important ancestors. It was enough to tell her the room was rarely used and that she would find nothing of interest there. It seemed to her parlors had not changed much since her own time.

She went straight for the room across the hallway, the one with the double doors. She pushed one door open and stepped inside. Her taper revealed walls of books, gold gilt titles on the bindings winking in the light. A library, then. A long heavy table gleamed in the middle of the room, stacked with a few volumes, and a fireplace yawned black and sooty on the far wall. Rain pelted at heavily draped windows.

She glanced at a few titles:
The Complete Compendium of Archeological Implements,
Pride of Empire,
and
The Wonderful Realm of Abstract Mathematical Intangibilities.
She supposed if she looked further, she’d find history books on the empire, but they’d probably be propaganda from all she’d heard about the “true history” so far. They might be interesting, but probably would not illuminate what had really happened to
her
Sacoridia and the free lands.

As tempting as it was to linger and look through books, she thought her time would be better spent prowling. She backed out of the library, softly closing the door. Back in the foyer, she paused, listening. Except for the distant sound of falling rain, the house remained sepulchral in demeanor.

She forged ahead, trying to shake off comparisons with tombs, and almost immediately found a privy just as extravagant as the one upstairs, but this one had a bird’s nest theme. The bowl looked like a nest, supported by branches of brass. Tempted though she was, she did not pull the lever to learn what came out from the trap door above to fill the bowl with water.

She hastened on and found a dining room that attached to the parlor through a doorway. A crystal chandelier glinted in her light above the immense, polished table. She found a pantry and stuck her head into the kitchen but did not investigate.

Down an austere side passage, she found storage rooms full of draped furniture, chests, and lamps missing shades. She hoped not to accidentally open a door to the servants quarters. Mirriam, who was exalted above all as head housekeeper, got a room in the plush upstairs. The rest of the servants would be housed in more utilitarian quarters. Still, she did not have a sense of anyone sleeping or otherwise inhabiting this corridor.

The next door she opened proved more interesting, for she found a very messy and cluttered office. She stepped inside and marveled at the piles of paper and stacks of books rising like columns almost to the ceiling. There was something of a path to a chair and desk, likewise buried in paper and books. The black eye sockets of a horse’s skull peeked out from a shelf crowded with books and rolled documents. A rusted dagger sat on a pile like a paperweight. Here and there shovels and pick axes leaned against a bookstack. Some were buried up to their handles. She saw no sign of her own belongings, but there was no way to tell if they were buried anywhere in this clutter.

Karigan thought that if the professor wished to conduct archeological excavations, he should begin with his own office. She dared not touch anything for fear it would all come crashing down on her. Across his desk a map lay unrolled, but she could not make sense of it with its gridwork of numbers, transects, and layers.

She froze when she heard a door open and close somewhere else in the house. She wondered what to do—hide, or stay where she was? What if it was the professor coming to work late in his office?

She hastily lowered the light of the taper to a dim glow. She headed for the door, brushed against a stack of books, and watched in horror as they listed precariously. She gritted her teeth and tried to steady them so they would not topple, but the stack was over-balanced and fell, taking out the stack behind it, and another.

The noise was like thunder, and she flung herself out of the room, across the hall, and into one of the storage rooms. So much for her stealthy sojourn. If they discovered her, she’d be banned from leaving her room
ever.
Not that she’d let them stop her.

Hurried footsteps came down the corridor. She extinguished the taper entirely so no hint of light leaked through the crack at the bottom of the door. There was a second set of footsteps, and she opened the door just the tiniest bit. She saw the professor’s back, and Mirriam’s, each of them holding a taper.

“What in the world?” Mirriam demanded. She wore a plaid housecoat over her nightgown and a bonnet over her hair. The professor was attired in what looked like formal evening wear, as if he’d just returned from a party.

“It appears,” he said, “one of my bookstacks gave way, leading to a chain reaction.”

“I’ve warned you many times, Professor, that it is dangerous in there—a death trap! A whisper could’ve knocked those books over. What if you’d been in there? We’d be sending for Mender Samuels is what.”

“Then a good thing I was not.”

“I guess we’ll have to set it right in the morning, then,” Mirriam said with a mournful note in her voice.

“No, no,” the professor said. “I’ll let the boys handle it. What are first year students for anyway? You go back to bed and don’t worry one iota about it.”

“If you’re sure . . .”

“I’m sure. Go back to bed.”

Dismissed, Mirriam retreated down the hall. The professor continued gazing at the mess in his office, tugging at his bushy side whiskers.

“And my night’s just beginning,” he grumbled, and he shook his head.

Karigan expected him to make some attempt at straightening his office, but he turned and walked away. She did not hesitate but slipped out of the storage room to follow him, keeping to the darkness, away from the halo of light emitted by his taper.

He swept past the kitchen and pantry area, past the dining room, and veered into the library, leaving one of the double doors ajar. By the time Karigan reached the doors and peered inside, she discovered he’d left his taper at dim glow on the main table, but he was gone. Vanished.