Mirrorworld (21 page)

“Alright, Eira,” Lucin growled, his face red and his fists clenched, “you’ve made your point. What do you want?”

“You know what I want,” the woman – Eira – countered. “Since you had your eyes in my head when I was planning it – which is why you hid yourself here in the hope that I wouldn’t find you.”

“I’m not doing it,” the man said bluntly.

“Believe me,” Eira said, “if I didn’t need you, I’d leave you to rot here. Reprehensible cheating bastard as you are, your Talent is useful, and I need to make use of it.” The dealer did his duty; again, Eira didn’t check her cards. “Do you think I don’t know how you win, Lucin? It’s pretty ingenious, really. But do you think the people of this fine establishment would appreciate being informed?”

“You wouldn’t dare,” the man growled. Eira’s response was a big, slow grin that spread over her face with the same lazy charm of a cat stretching. “You would, wouldn’t you?” She nodded.

“Fine,” the man said, “but you reimburse me
double
what you’ve just cost me. You say you need me, so I think I get to set my price.”

She raised an eyebrow, glancing at the pile of chips he referred to, which added up to a mighty sixty dollars. “You come with me right now, leave the winnings, and I’ll give you back double for that as well – when you’ve done what I ask of you.”

“Sold,” the man said, the ignition of undue greed in his eyes overcoming his better senses. He spat on his hand and offered it to her. She gave it a withering look, then rose, turned and was gone from the bar. Lucin spared a glance for his still reasonably large pile of winnings, alongside Eira’s own abandoned pile, met Ron’s eye, shrugged and followed her.

Unusually, there was a silent moment. Ron looked around; most of the rest of the bar were also looking at the mountains of chips. As one man, they pounced.

From a safe position ducked down behind the bar, Ron sighed, pulled out a pen and paper and started making a new shopping list for furniture, to the sounds of another good night’s brawl.

Marcus descended from his mind’s eye, trying to shake the haunting sensation of being watched that had crept up on him over the last few memories. It was hard to put his finger on; it felt like he had been part of a larger audience for his past than just himself and Tec. He’d mentioned it to Tec, who had shrugged his wings and manically theorised that due to the relative nature of time he was feeling a reverberation of himself doing this again at a different point, but Marcus was unsure.

He’d found nothing, nothing but rising anger at all the people he had been, for every wrong decision they’d made, for the sense of clarity that hindsight afforded far too late. Plenty of that, but nothing about a wizard named Keithus. That name, though.. it was like the lullaby. He was sure he’d never heard it before reaching the Mirrorworld, but the more he did hear it, the more it seemed like there
was
something in there, some barely remembered
something
that was just out of reach. He’d fumbled for it, tried to use the name as an impetus for the summoning of memories, but the only ones that had come to this command had been inconsequential, increasing Marcus’s feelings of anger and confusion until Tec had finally took pity on him and told him he could come down.

He paused on the hilltop to look back at the stars. He almost wished he could leave them there, but for some reason, despite the fact that they had never
really
left him, it still seemed important that he wait for them to arc gently downwards from their assumed positions, dissolve into smoke and seep back into his mind. Heavy once again with ill regret and a crick in his shoulder from where Tec’s parrot had been weighing him down, Marcus turned and walked down the hill to meet the man at his little lab, where he was seated far too close to a gigantic monitor.

“Welcome back,” the old technician said jovially. “Enjoy that jog around your mind?”

“No,” Marcus said heavily, glancing back again. “It was another waste of time, wasn’t it?”

“Come now Marcus,” Tec scolded lightly, “that’s a remarkably Helm-like point of view. Wouldn’t you rather think of it is as a necessary first step towards a desirable end result? Mm? Mm?”

“Probably,” Marcus said, with a note towards the wistful, “but I’m not going to. How many steps is this going to take, Tec? You must know I’m already pretty tired of it. Even aside of all the Mirrorline stuff and what happened last time, I’m pretty sure this is dangerous on a psychological level. And I swear, I wasn’t alone up there.”

“Of course you weren’t,” Tec said, turning back to his mighty databank and carefully tapping out a beat on his obnoxiously small keyboard. “I was there too. I was a parrot, remember?”

“That’s not what I meant,” Marcus retorted, as he watched lines of unfamiliar symbols shoot and burst across the screen as Tec hard-coded his memories. It was almost offensive, watching his past be so clinically preserved and manipulated for ease of access. “I’m sure the more I thought about Keithus, the more I felt like he was there with me. Is that a side-effect, or something important?”

Tec paused, frowning. “I don’t know,” he said, and the words felt like they’d been summoned from the deepest pit of black despair known to man. “I wish I did, because I don’t like not knowing things.” He brightened up. “Still, what we’ve got today
is
a start. I’ll throw it all in on through a spin cycle and see if I can’t make some sense of it, so that you can hopefully point yourself in the right direction next time, and have this all over and done with as soon as possible. How’s that sound?”

“I am temporarily appeased,” Marcus informed him wryly. “We’re done, then?”

“Aye. All that running around has burnt up most of our energy, and I’ll need the rest for this. Gotta do some optimisation experiments too, as soon as I can convince Niko to get me a kumquat.”

Marcus didn’t ask. He bade Tec a good night and stepped out through the shimmering mirror into the better-defined reality of the labs, where he found Niko waiting to grab him again if he made any sudden movements.

“Relax,” Marcus said, “we’re done. I can go.”

“Oh,” Niko said, summoning new depths of melancholia at the missed opportunity. “Well, see you then.” He stood aside.

“Which is the quickest way back to my room?” Marcus asked, picking up his staff.

“That would be the back exit. However, I should warn you,” the man added gravely, “there is a bucket of whitewash with your name on it awaiting you should you open that door.”

“I’ll take the lift,” Marcus decided.

As he stepped out of the lift into the main entrance hall, Marcus met Eira coming in, arguing with a short, greasy man who – Marcus checked this, just to be sure – had a raven on his shoulder.

“What’s happening?” he asked. The short man gave him a baleful glare for his trouble, then carried on past him. Eira paused to watch him retreat, although her eyes were on the bird. It had turned around to watch them over the man’s shoulder, but span back around when it saw Eira staring at it. When the man had vanished down a corridor, she turned back to Marcus.

“I’ve been recruiting,” she said mysteriously.

“For what?”

She didn’t answer immediately, instead glancing after the short man again. “That man has an invaluable Talent,” she said. “He can transfer his own vision behind the eyes of anyone else, and see what they can see. It blinds his own eyes for the duration of time he spends doing it, but still. He could do so much with it, but he spends his time spying on his boss and cheating at poker games. A true missed opportunity, but maybe he could be bought back in line.”

“Did you actually hear me?” Marcus asked.

“Or maybe he’ll get killed,” Eira mused. “At least then I wouldn’t have to pay him.”

“What’s a Talent?”

Eira continued to look distant. “Best you go and get some sleep, Marcus. You’re going to have a busy day tomorrow.”

And then on that ominous note, she too was gone, leaving Marcus alone but for his Viaggiatori guard, still lurking in the corner by the lift, and his resurgent sense of befuddlement.

Marcus found out what Eira had meant very early the following morning, when he was almost literally tossed out of bed by the vigorous shaking of his guard, the man whose name was apparently Musk. The man’s strength was ridiculous; despite his only mildly bulky stature, he’d almost upended the bed before Marcus had managed to convince him that he was awake and getting up. A few minutes later, dressed once again in questionable Viaggiatori colours and leaning on his staff for support, he met the man in the main room, where he learnt he had been summoned to a very important but secretive meeting, and that if they didn’t hurry up, they were going to be late. Desperately blinking the sleep out of his eyes, he trudged after the man down the corridors of the House of Viaggiatori.

Eventually they came to the anteroom of Eira’s office, where her secretary already sat, despite the hour, sorting piles of paperwork into new, better piles. She glanced up at them as they strode past, seemingly more out of habit than any interest. She didn’t even bother to wave them in.

“Ah, Marcus,” Eira said, as he followed Musk into the office, “about time you turned up.”

She was sitting this morning at the desk by the window, illuminated from behind by the light of a pale, washed-out sun that appeared to have had a real struggle conquering the horizon that morning. Though Eira’s hair still hung about her face and shoulders without any particular style, it was looked less tangled, and her features seemed brighter. Perhaps she’d actually had a few hours of sleep.

There were other people in the office already. In the two chairs on the other side of the desk there sat two men; one of them was the short man from the night before, his eyes darting to and fro as if searching for escape routes. His bird sat on Eira’s desk pecking at one of her random devices.

The other man was significantly older, with a short, greying beard and hair. He was also, apparently, asleep. He lay slumped in the chair, his long limbs protruding at angles, closed eyelids pointed towards the ceiling. The general effect was that of a dead starfish. Since no-one else seemed to find this sight odd, however, Marcus didn’t comment on it.

Leaning against the other desk was a young woman, short and long-haired with a round face and big, dark eyes that matched her complexion. She gave Marcus a wan, quiet smile as he glanced at her, and he felt himself smile back before he realised what his facial muscles were doing.

“Marcus,” Eira said again, standing up and casting her eyes about her desk, before locating and powering up her kettle. “I’d like you to meet some people. This is Lucin,” - she indicated the short man - “..and his, erm, bird. Its name is Aura.”

The man barely glanced at Marcus before turning back to whatever internal thoughts were troubling him. The raven continued to peck at random things; it hit what appeared to be a series of balls hanging on strings around a cubic frame, which started them ricocheting off each other noisily. Apparently satisfied with this, it took off, flew up and landed on the ornate chandelier that hung dangerously above them, where it began to croak irritably.

“This is Fervesce,” Eira continued, indicating the sleeping man, who, surprisingly, waved. Marcus almost waved back out of sheer amazement before catching himself.

“And this is Kendra. Musk, you already know.” She indicated the woman opposite, who gave Marcus another smile that seemed to shine out on him like a sunbeam of genuine pleasure. This odd image bounced around Marcus’s head as he smiled back tentatively and alerted him to the fact that he wasn’t holding his poise very well, so he tried to dash it from his mind. He reminded himself that he didn’t have such foolish thoughts when Eira smiled at him, but that may have been because the idea of her doing so had somehow become intertwined with the expectation of terrible things happening to him shortly afterwards.

“Hello,” he said instead, addressing no-one in particular. This gained him a total blanking from Lucin, another wave from Fervesce, another smile from Kendra and a grunt from Musk that could have meant anything. He paused, not entirely sure what was going to happen next, but fairly sure he wouldn’t like it.

“I’m introducing you to these people for a reason,” Eira continued, pouring water. “Tomorrow, they’re heading off on a very important mission to the north.”

“That’s.. nice,” Marcus said blankly.

“Not really,” Eira shot back instantly. “The mission is a very dangerous one; they’re accompanying a trained assassin, a man with notable innate magical resilience, whom our organisation has hired to attempt to kill Keithus, thus solving all of our problems.”

“That actually sounds pretty good to me,” Marcus answered, feeling as he did an enormous weight lifting from his shoulders. They’d found someone else to deal with Keithus! No longer did he have to brood on the nature of his fate regarding the wizard; instead he could dedicate all of his time to brooding on the nature of his fate regarding Death instead.

“I should hope so,” Eira said, grinning her quick, mischievous grin, “since you’re going with them.”

“What?” Marcus asked, feeling the weight drop back on him again with aplomb.

“You’re going with them, Marcus. I spoke with Tec earlier, and though he put a hopeful gloss on it it seems pretty apparent that progress is slow downstairs, and I can’t afford slow. We need a better way to realise the nature of your connection to Keithus, and putting you in close proximity to him seems like a good way to do it.”

Marcus thought this sounded like a terrible way to do it, and said so. He looked around, casting for support. Lucin avoided his gaze, Kendra beamed at him, and Musk simply frowned, clearly not at home with the idea, but with nothing to say.

“Look,” Eira said, rotating her cup, “I know it’s not ideal. But it’s either this, or we leave you here moping around, and run the risk of not finding out what it is you mean to us until it’s too late to do anything with that knowledge. Ideally, I’d wait on this course of action until we knew more, so I could know for sure if it’s better to send you along or not. But Keithus could strike at any time, and for all that we’d surely learn he was coming far in advance of him actually rolling up and knocking on our door, by then it might already be too bloody late to act. I have to do something
now
, and given the possibilities and though I hate to admit it, this is probably the best course of action.”