“One question at a time,” Mandoran suggested. He walked to where Kaylin was standing. Teela was by his side—literally. It looked as if her leg was broken or badly sprained, which was almost enough of a shock that she forgot to think. Annarion was carrying Tain. He was in worse shape.
But he was certainly well enough to open an eye and growl at Kaylin—in mewling Leontine.
“Fine. Suffer. It’s not like we actually need backup that’s useful and mobile.”
Teela snickered. Tain growled again.
Now that she looked at them, neither Mandoran or Annarion were looking all that great, either. They weren’t physically injured, but she had seen dead Barrani that had healthier color.
“He was trying to crack the house open,” Annarion said. It took Kaylin a moment to realize that he was answering the question she’d asked the disembodied eyes. “The house is where we have to go. Gilbert has—arranged things in a way that won’t destroy you.”
You. Not us.
“He can’t make it all safe. He’s—he’s placed us all in the same layer of time. But he requires power and he can’t make it stick for long—something is pushing against it.”
“In the house.”
Annarion nodded.
“When you say ‘you’ and not ‘us,’ does that mean—”
“We can see...more.” His smile was strained.
“I can hear your brother. He is very, very clear now.”
Annarion seemed to sag, as if something had been cut. “I don’t imagine he’s saying anything repeatable.”
“Not really—but some of it’s Barrani, so it might be useful later.”
Mandoran managed a weak grin. “What kind of Barrani? Ouch!”
Annarion hadn’t touched him.
“We need to enter the building. I guess the Arkon made it easier; it’s not like the walls are going to keep us out. The Arcanist was doing something with the three bodies. They were laid out as if they were part of a ritual. I’m guessing,” she added, staring up at the frozen shroud of darkness, “that ritual is almost complete, and that Gilbert is buying us time.” She picked her way over the few bodies that remained; there was no smell, here, which made it easier. Or rather, there was—but it was cinnamon. Evidently the familiar’s cloud was still protecting them.
Mandoran and Annarion hesitated.
“Stay here,” Kaylin told them. “I’ll go with the Arkon.”
Teela said, “They are not staying here.” Her eyes were a murderous blue, and her lower lip was swollen. “And I’m not, either.” She pulled herself away from Mandoran. Sprain, then.
“Teela, I don’t think it’s safe for them.”
“And you think it’s safe for you?”
“Chosen, remember?”
“You don’t even know what that means.”
She is not wrong, the familiar said.
Do not foolishly insult her, Nightshade said. An’Teela is known for both her cunning and her ability to nurse a long grudge.
Severn, on the other hand, said nothing. It was a comforting nothing; an acceptance of things he couldn’t change.
She looked at the floating eyes. “Can you keep them coherent? Can you keep them safe, here?”
Gilbert didn’t answer. The two of his eyes that had once been set into the water’s Avatar floated away, gaining speed as they approached the two Barrani. Mandoran raised his hands to swat them away. Annarion, on the other hand, had an armful of Tain to deal with.
Regardless, the eyes gained enough speed to ram into the foreheads of both Mandoran and Annarion.
Mandoran had developed very, very impressive Leontine. Annarion, Kaylin decided, was just one of those people to whom cursing would never come naturally. Which was a pity; Kaylin would be swearing herself blue in the face had one of those eyes attached themselves to her actual forehead.
Both the Barrani now had a third eye—an open third eye that was the wrong color—just above the bridge of their noses, between their brows. Their natural eyes blinked rapidly; the borrowed eyes did not.
When Annarion fell to one knee, Kaylin ran toward him. It surprised her—and his older brother—when he didn’t wave her off. Instead, he allowed her to slide an arm beneath his arms and take some of his weight while he regained his footing. “My brother can see all this, can’t he?”
“...Sorry.”
“Not as sorry as I’m going to be.” He inhaled deeply, exhaled and said, “Thank you, Gilbert.”
Gilbert didn’t respond.
“Does it help you to see?”
“Yes. It helps me to see only one thing. It helps Mandoran, too, but he’s more vain. He really dislikes the look of the extra eye.”
“Gentlemen,” the Arkon said, in the testiest of voices. “You are all incredibly unattractive to me; the extra eye makes no difference. Shall we?”
Both Barrani had the grace to redden, which added welcome color to their faces. Nightshade was not impressed.
“What should we do with Tain?” Annarion asked.
“Give him to me,” Teela demanded. “I’d wait outside, but I don’t think outside is going to be any safer.”
Chapter 28
“What do you see with the extra eye?” Kaylin asked. The Arkon’s breath had gotten rid of the stairs that led to the front door—which was fine, because they’d also done away with the door. At the moment, Kaylin’s primary concern was what remained of the first-story floor in the wake of Dragon breath.
The Arkon wasn’t worried about the flooring or the possible fall, but he was a Dragon, after all. Kaylin, however, couldn’t expect to fall through a crumbling floor and land without injury.
He pushed Kaylin out of the way and pretty much stomped in. “Where is the—” He froze.
This was not promising.
From her position directly behind the Arkon, Kaylin couldn’t see what had caused him to freeze. “Arkon?”
“I do not care what the Emperor says,” the Arkon said. “If we survive this, I am going to burn the Arcanum to the ground.”
“You’d have the full support of most of the Halls of Law,” Kaylin told his back. “What are you staring at?”
He moved to the side, and she entered the house—or tried. Standing in front of her, with a very dubious expression, was...herself. “Is this a mirror?” she asked the Arkon. “Can you see your own reflection?” She couldn’t see his reflection—only her own.
“It’s more complicated than that, but yes.” He snorted in disgust, and small flames lapped the edge of his beard. The Arkon drove his fist into the mirror; the mirror didn’t shatter.
To the familiar, Kaylin asked, “Can you do anything?”
Silence.
“Mandoran? Annarion?”
The answer was a resounding no. They saw exactly what the Arkon and Kaylin could see: images of themselves. Only Mandoran seemed to find this disturbing.
The Arkon chose to share his disgust in loud draconic. Kaylin lifted her hands to cover her ears, as his speech was not brief.
Bellusdeo replied. Her voice was thinner; it lacked its usual resonance. Kaylin told herself that this was because it lacked her usual anger, but couldn’t make herself believe it. And only an idiot wasted time trying to believe their own lies.
“Is Sanabalis with her?”
“Yes. He is...injured.”
“Maggaron?”
“He is—understand that this is Bellusdeo’s phrasing—‘stupid.’”
Which meant alive, but not in great shape. “Is she in the basement?”
The Arkon spoke again. This took longer. So did Bellusdeo’s reply. “Yes. She recognizes it from Records. She cannot hear you, by the way; she can hear me. I do not think she can hear Annarion or Mandoran, either.”
The two Barrani were conferring. They did so in silence, although Mandoran’s expression made it clear that it wasn’t an amusing conversation. “We think there’s a way in,” he finally said.
“Good,” the Arkon replied. “Find it.”
Mandoran approached the mirror. To Kaylin’s surprise, she could now see his reflection as well as her own; the Arkon’s was still absent. He reached out, placed his palm against the center of his own reflection and pushed. The reflective surface, which had showed no sign of reaction at all to a Dragon’s weight and momentum, bent. It didn’t break; it stretched.
Mandoran then moved a yard to the side and tried again; Annarion did the same in the opposite direction. Here, the lack of most of the front walls helped. But if the putative Barrani weren’t as confined to this existence as Kaylin or the Arkon, it didn’t matter. To their hands, the reflective barrier was not as solid, but it wasn’t permeable. Nothing they did could bring it down.
Bellusdeo roared. This time, the Arkon did not respond.
“What—what did she say?”
“She is tiring,” he replied.
“Does she say what she sees? Is there any clue at all?”
He didn’t answer, and she was never going to be desperate enough to grab him by the shoulders and shake him. Not the Arkon.
Not Mandoran or Annarion, either. She backed away from the house and turned toward Gilbert—or what remained of Gilbert. He was frozen now, like a wave in motion—but with tentacles and a million eyes. He might have been the nightmare version of a starry sky. Or the monster version, if monsters told stories to their offspring.
And Gilbert was not a monster. Gilbert had saved Kattea. Gilbert was willing to save them all.
“Mandoran. Annarion. Come here.”
“What have you found?”
She shook her head. “I think—I think I might have a way in.”
They stared at her. She fished around in the small satchel of things-that-must-not-be-lost-on-pain-of-quartermaster and withdrew the very expensive pocket mirror the Hawklord had insisted she requisition. She wanted to stay in the quartermaster’s good books. Or at least his mediocre books. Or even his minor-pest books—instead of his public-enemy-number-one books, which was where she often resided.
But in the close call between pissing off the quartermaster and pissing off the man responsible for her job, she’d chosen the quartermaster.
“That’s a portable mirror.”
Kaylin nodded.
“That you’re not supposed to use.”
She nodded again. The Arkon joined them. His eyes brightened visibly—which meant they became orange, rather than the bloodred they’d been stuck in—at the sight of it. “You mean to use the mirror network to get in.”
She hesitated. “Not exactly.”
“Not exactly?”
“I mean for Gilbert to use the mirror network to get in.”
“There’s a slight problem with that,” Mandoran said. “Gilbert’s not moving.”
“I know that. But he’s not dead, either. If he were, you wouldn’t have eyes. I mean, you wouldn’t each have a third one. And the third eye is moving, even if the rest of Gilbert isn’t. I think he’s—I think he’s stuck like that on purpose.”
“Because of the eyes.”
“Yes, because of the eyes.”
“She’s going to strangle you,” Teela told her friend. “And I might consider helping, even in my diminished state.”
“Fine. What exactly do you propose?”
Kaylin handed Mandoran the mirror. The third eye widened. It looked as if it were trying to expand, and that was more disturbing than its continued existence in Mandoran’s forehead. Annarion immediately came to join him, which had the same effect. Both of their eyes—their natural eyes—rounded.
“Or maybe I’ll strangle Kaylin instead,” Teela said.
Mandoran coughed and said, “You’re the Chosen.”
“Well, that’s just great.”
* * *
Kaylin rolled up her sleeves.
They don’t even give instructions, she said to her familiar.
No. But, Kaylin, having observed your life for some small time, they don’t give you instructions for living, either. Life happens.
Not everyone who is alive has marks like these.
No. And not everyone who has borne them hated or feared them.
Kaylin walked over to Gilbert, or to the part of him that she could actually reach, none of which involved his eyes. She touched the extended Shadow that was his body. It felt surprisingly like the mirror barrier that prevented entrance into the house, but it reflected nothing. This made sense. She didn’t expect to see a reflection of herself in Gilbert, because in the end, he wasn’t human. Or Barrani. Or Dragon. She could spend her entire life studying Gilbert, and she knew she would never understand most of him; she probably couldn’t conceive of what most of him was.
He looked monstrous, to the eye.
But people who looked dazzling could be monstrous. She had some experience with that. And whatever Gilbert was, he had saved Kattea’s life. He had not lied to Kattea about what he was. He had not promised anything.
He promised he would return to her.
Yes. But that wasn’t a lie. Not yet.
He understood loneliness. Or maybe he didn’t understand it. But he felt it. He was ancient, but in some ways, it was impossible not to think of him as young. It was the lack of practical experience. It was the open confusion. Gilbert had not learned to hide his weaknesses. On this plane, he didn’t appear to even understand many of them.
“Gilbert, can you hear me?” She glanced at Mandoran; Gilbert’s eye moved. “I—we—can’t use the mirror network the way you’ve used it. Or the way I think you’ve been using it. I’m not sure it’s even safe for us—”
The eye rounded.
“—without you. But we can’t get in. I understand that you’re buying us time—our time, our version of it—but the time won’t matter if we’re stuck outside.” As she spoke, the light of the words on her skin dimmed. “Can you use the mirror network to build us a passage?” And build yourself a mouth, she thought, trying not to let anxiety tumble into frustration.
The eye in Mandoran’s forehead narrowed.
“Can you hear anything?” she asked him.
“No, sorry. Don’t give me that look—I’m trying. This is nothing like the heart of the green.”
The words dimmed again. Kaylin held out a hand, and Mandoran dropped the portable mirror into her palm. “Records. Winding Path, basement.”
* * *
Portable mirrors were considered conveniences for relaying information to Records. The small glass surface was not considered useful for studying that information, except in a pinch—which this was. Kaylin wasn’t certain what the mirror would show and was almost disappointed to see a small, hand-sized version of the basement as she had first seen it, what felt like months ago.
“Records: bodies.”
The image in the mirror moved exactly the way it would have moved on a normal day. She felt disappointment deepen and panic grow.
“Do not drop the mirror,” the Arkon told her. His voice, however, had lost the sharpness of edge. “Put it down, Private. Put it down carefully.”
“But it’s not—”
“Put it down.”
She swallowed, nodded and bent at the knees, placing the mirror’s nonreflective back against uneven stone. That done, she stepped back.
Shadow fell like a silent tidal wave. She stood beneath it, raising her arms to cover her face—which was both instinctive and less than useless. But the Shadow didn’t hit her, didn’t crush her—and didn’t sweep anyone away. It didn’t break stone or fence or lamppost.
As if
the mirror were the very bottom of an impossibly large funnel, the Shadow condensed to a point, its height vanishing as the mirror absorbed it. The eyes that Kaylin always found so disturbing did not likewise fold themselves into the mirror; they remained arrayed around the group, encompassing Teela and Tain, as well.
Kaylin was knocked off her feet as she turned toward the two Hawks. She covered three yards, maybe four, as she tucked her shoulder and rolled, drawing daggers as she gained her feet. She turned.
The Arkon was in full draconic form.
He stood in front of something that looked vaguely like a mirror—if mirrors were made of polished obsidian. The street to either side of that obsidian surface was no longer visible.
“Next time, could you give me a bit of warning?”
“I did not think it wise for you to stand in the middle of the mirror as it transformed. I may have been mistaken. This is, I believe, Gilbert’s version of a mirror.” If it was, it was taller than the Arkon in his draconic form; it easily dwarfed Kaylin. “What do you see in it?”
“The...basement.”
“Good. Stand aside.”
Kaylin shook her head.
“Don’t argue with a Dragon, kitling.”
“Fine.” Kaylin didn’t waste her breath; she conserved it and sprinted. She leaped into the mirror, trusting Gilbert not to kill her, eat her or send her somewhere she couldn’t afford to be, trusting him to somehow preserve her, as he’d somehow preserved Kattea, a different orphan from a fief that would—if this worked—no longer exist.
She thought she could hear his voice, although she couldn’t understand his words. She definitely heard the Arkon’s, reminding her that he had been designated her commanding officer. She didn’t sit still in time to hear his command. Nor did she try to explain why she had to go through first, because she couldn’t. In theory, a Dragon was a better advance force than a mortal. Everyone in this group was a better advance force than a mortal.
But she could see the net of Gilbert’s eyes tightening around them; she could see the way their rounded surface reflected runes: her runes. She could see, as she moved through this passage, eyes that extended into the distance, and they seemed infinite. But they formed runes. Words. Hers.
Cast in Honor Page 41
