Mirror Sight

by Kristen Britain

Karigan tried to imagine again all the industry that must take place in the mill that she could not see with the sun reflecting off the windows. And then the midday bell rang. Raven acted predictably by attempting to bolt. This time it took Luke’s help to hold him back.

  “Will you settle?” she demanded of Raven.

  Raven canted his head as if considering, then shook it. But he settled.

  Karigan sighed in relief. When the bells finished tolling and the last tone faded away, she had a moment or more to observe the doors of the nearest mill complex opening. Men with cudgels and whips exited, followed by workers in worn garments with ankles shackled. They shuffled out of the mills, chain links scraping the paving stones, jingling almost musically. The mill slaves were male and female. Many were children, few were old. Many looked Sacoridian, others had the skin tones and features of other nations: Hura-desh, the Under Kingdoms, the Cloud Islands, and even the desert folk of the Unclaimed Territories. Many peoples of many origins had come under the empire’s rule, and the empire had not discriminated over who it forced to serve.

  “Hurry up!” one of the guards yelled at the slaves. “If ya want yer midday rations, you’ll hurry up.”

  The slaves did not alter their pace. Most just watched their feet to avoid stumbling over the shackles. Some bent double with harsh coughing.

  “The brown lung,” Luke muttered, following her gaze. “From breathing all the cotton dust.”

  A guard prodded his group of slaves along none too gently with his cudgel. A boy fell to his knees, looked too tired to stand again. The guard grabbed him by the hair and hauled him to his feet, shouting worse obscenities at him than Karigan had ever heard on the docks of Corsa Harbor.

  Karigan touched the sleeve of the jacket she wore. It was used and faded, yes, but was well-made. She thought about how its cloth, and that of all the fine dresses she wore as Kari Goodgrave, were made by the labor of slaves. Slaves dressed in rags. As the line of workers made its way across the canal bridge to the street, one of the guards waved his whip threateningly, causing Raven to sidestep and snort.

  “Best that we move on,” Luke said. “They’re making Raven nervous, and you don’t need to see this.”

  Karigan thought she did. She did not want to see it, but she had to witness what the emperor, Xandis Pierce Amberhill, had wrought, what he’d done to his people, and those of other nations. She couldn’t look away from the gaunt faces, misery etched in their expressions, the children looking as defeated as the adults. No, they were not children. The youth had been worked and beaten out of them. They would not know joy or play. But Luke urged Gallant into a trot, and Raven was so eager to follow he burst into a canter. Karigan had no choice but to look away and contend with the stallion.

  They passed only one more mill complex, and it was the same scene, with hundreds of exhausted, shackled slaves shambling along the street like some parody of a parade. This was the future, Karigan thought, that she had to change.

  • • •

  The canal dog-legged to the south and the hooves of the horses thudded across a bridge that spanned the dark, quiet water. Only subtle ripples revealed that it flowed with any current. Karigan felt herself ease, breathe more freely, as they left the mills and slaves behind. Luke kept them at a trot, Gallant’s tail swishing as though they were finally getting down to business.

  The city extended well beyond the canal, breaking up into neighborhoods of small houses and tenements. It was a rather sorry looking area with smashed windows, overgrown gardens, and broken fences. Trash rotted in the street. It was not the tidy, well-kept neighborhood the professor lived in.

  “I don’t linger in this quarter,” Luke told her. “Most folk here aren’t bad, but the few who are won’t hesitate to murder you for a pair of boots.”

  And so they trotted on, crossing another bridge over the river, the water here glimmering with a swift current. Once they were across, space opened up between buildings, and eventually habitation became sparse enough that trees grew freely, and the people had small plots of land to farm.

  Eventually Luke slowed Gallant to a walk and Karigan did likewise with Raven. While still energetic and eager, the stallion had calmed down quite a bit.

  Karigan tried to place the location in the context of her own time, but the land was too changed. They were well east of the city now, that much she knew. “Where are we?” she asked.

  “Well, I like to take Gallant out to the Big Mounds where there is a lot of open space,” he said. “Good for riding, a breather from the city.”

  The Scangly Mounds, she thought with a thrill. At least this one familiar landmark remained.

  But when they reached the mounds, several had been flattened—mined for gravel—and others that Luke pointed out, had been mined for artifacts by archeologists who found only . . . gravel. Karigan used to ride Condor to the Scangly Mounds when she needed to get away from the castle. She was dismayed by the destruction. But even their remnants lent her some comfort, another link to the past, and several of the mounds still stood. She rode Raven up the biggest, which appeared to be more a granite outcrop than a mound. Scrub alder and grasses grew out of its crannies, and lichens studded the nubbly rock. She gazed at the panorama that surrounded her. While the landscape was familiar, something . . . something beyond its current condition was out of place. The mounds couldn’t have moved, could they? She scratched her head, puzzled. Maybe she wasn’t remembering correctly, or perhaps the forces that had created a river where Sacor City once stood had also changed the topography.

  From this vantage, she also had an excellent view of the Old City in the distance. In the past, she used to look back and see the castle rising high and proud over Sacor City. Now it looked like no more than a rocky mount. Only a good spyglass would allow her to see the details of the ruins, and perhaps that was for the best. Smoky plumes rose from beneath the mount, from Mill City, spreading a grayish-brown haze across the view. A dirty sky—she could never have imagined it. All was quiet here, except for crows that squawked and flew-hopped from brush and scrub.

  Luke reined Gallant up beside her. “Grand view, isn’t it? Sometimes I try to picture what it looked like in the past when there was a castle up there. A shame everything was destroyed. It must have been amazing.”

  “It was,” Karigan murmured. Then hastily added, “I mean, yes, it must have been.”

  Luke raised an eyebrow and gave her a sidelong glance. “It leaves a strong impression, those ruins. Growing up beneath them, I had nightmares. Thought the ghosts of the old ones, the people who lived up there, were going to come down and do terrible things to me. But I was just a boy then. Some will swear there are still ghosts, but I’ve never seen ’em.” They sat in silence for a while, then Luke stood in his stirrups and shielded his eyes from the sun as he gazed into the distance. “If I’m not mistaken, that’s Mr. Harlowe coming along. Professor said he might join us out here.”

  Cade? She looked where Luke pointed and saw a man driving a mule cart along a dirt track that bypassed the mounds. It could certainly be Cade, but she wasn’t sure. He turned off the track and guided the mule toward the mounds.

  “Shall we go down to meet him?” Luke asked. Without waiting for an answer, he reined Gallant down the slope of the outcrop. Karigan shrugged and followed.

  It turned out to be Cade Harlowe after all, and he took the cart into the mounds as far as was possible without losing a wheel. He hopped off the cart and greeted them, giving Karigan an odd look.

  “Afternoon, Miss Goodgrave,” he said, “or is it Tam?”

  “Kari—” She almost gave her full name, but recalling that Luke did not seem to know everything about her secrets, she stopped just in time. “Just call me Kari for now.”

  Cade gazed hard at her, and she guessed at what he was thinking—that it was not appropriate to call her by her first name and that her dressing like a boy was e
xtremely improper. He shook his head.

  “What are you doing out here?” she asked, thinking this could not be a coincidence.

  “Officially? I have an imperial permit to do some test digs. Not that the mounds have not been entirely sifted through by other archeologists.”

  “Unofficially?”

  “Unofficially I am here to show you how to use a gun.”

  This time it was Luke who frowned and shifted uncomfortably in his saddle. “The professor is allowing this?”

  “Yes,” Cade replied. “We come out here for target practice sometimes. Civilians aren’t supposed to own guns,” he told Karigan, “though Inspectors are more lenient with the Preferred families. In any case, we shouldn’t be heard out here.”

  “Heard?”

  “Yes. Guns are loud.”

  Karigan thought it silly that a weapon should be noisy. There was no stealth in noise as there was with an arrow or a dagger.

  “I’ll go graze the horses and keep watch then,” Luke said warily. “No point in inviting trouble.”

  Karigan dismounted Raven, who was behaving admirably, and handed the reins over to Luke. He rode away, Raven trotting alongside him.

  “How much does Luke know? About me?” she asked Cade.

  “He knows that the professor is a member of the opposition and holds you in high regard. Luke may have his own suspicions about whether or not you are really the niece of Bryce Lowell Josston. Though he is loyal, he has not been informed of your true background, that you were a Green Rider from long ago.”

  “Am.”

  Cade looked at her quizzically. “Am?”

  “I am a Green Rider. Not was.”

  Cade dismissed her words with a curt nod and began unloading some bales of hay from the mule cart, as well as a target printed on cloth, much like archers used for practice.

  She helped him place the bales in front of one of the mounds and drape the target over them. His deference from last night was replaced by his usual stoic and efficient self. They returned to his cart, where he lifted a wooden box out from a false bottom in the cart’s floor. Inside the box, nestled in red velvet, lay a gun and a variety of small tools. Karigan blinked hard trying to see it. The metal glared in her eyes, making them water and blur. It was just like when she tried to look at the professor’s gun last night. She turned her head so she could see it on the edge of her vision. This was better but not by much. The metal was blued steel, inscribed with some intricate image she could not make out. The wooden handle was stained in deep blue.

  “This is a Cobalt-Masters revolver,” Cade said, sounding very instructorial. “It’s the firearm of choice for mounted units and Inspectors, only theirs aren’t so fancy. This one was acquired from an Adherent.”

  Karigan wondered who “acquired” it and how, but Cade didn’t say and went on to describe, instead, the parts of the weapon. Trying to see it all was bringing on a headache, or maybe it was her lack of sleep getting to her. She tried to listen closely knowing this was important information to take back to her own time, but there was a buzzing, like a whole hive of hornets in her ears, that competed with Cade’s words. She could not concentrate, and only heard bits and pieces about caliber and percussion and powder.

  Then he broke the gun in half. She squinted. No, not broken. The device opened on hinges.

  “The cartridges breech load,” he explained.

  From a satchel at his waist, Cade withdrew brass cylinders and started pushing them into holes in the halved gun. Karigan closed her eyes to cut the glare and relieve the headache. It helped, but she still couldn’t hear Cade clearly until he asked. “Is something wrong?”

  She opened her eyes and made a point of looking at his face and not the gun. “Keep going. I’m fine.”

  He hesitated, then nodded. “I need to make sure you are listening. These weapons can be dangerous if misused.”

  “Weapons are supposed to be dangerous,” she said.

  “Which only accentuates my point.” He snapped the two halves of the gun back together. She heard it and saw his movement more than witnessed the two pieces joining. “I am going to demonstrate the firing of the Cobalt. Here is how you sight the target.”

  His words once again competed with the hive of hornets exploding in her ears. He raised the weapon, arm outstretched with elbow slightly bent. She watched his face and not the Cobalt, how his brow furrowed and eyes squinted at the target, his head slightly tilted. His intensity reminded her of an archer.

  “I’m exceptionally good at fifteen yards,” he said, “and proficient at twenty-five. Long-arms are more accurate at greater distances. Now I cock the hammer like this. The trigger will release it and the percussion will . . .”

  His words were drowned by the buzzing. His gaze never left the target. Karigan’s gaze never left his face. Thunder blasted beside her and nearly knocked her off her feet. She cried out, heart pounding wildly.

  Cade lowered the gun, blue smoke drifting from the tip of it. Slowly he turned his gaze to her. “Told you it was loud.”

  This time it wasn’t the buzzing that muffled her ears, but the shock of the blast. She shook her head trying to clear it.

  “What is the advantage of the noise?” she demanded. “To deafen your comrades?”

  “Can’t help the noise, but the reach and force of the weapon is its value. In your day, such a weapon would pierce the stoutest armor better than any arrow. Come see.”

  He strode toward the target, and she hurried after him. She saw a hole in the center circle.

  “Your gun did this?”

  “Haven’t you been listening?”

  Even though she’d had such a hard time hearing and observing his demonstration, she put it together that the gun had sent a small projectile through the target. She looked beneath the target and saw that the projectile had traveled through the bales of hay and into the mound behind. If only she could take knowledge of such weaponry home with her!

  It’s a concussive, she suddenly thought. Or something like. The Arcosian Empire had used weapons called concussives in its attempt to conquer the New Lands. Did the mechanicals and guns of this time represent a natural progression of invention over the generations, or had Amberhill somehow acquired the information to create such tools from some unknown documentation of Arcosian engineering?

  She kicked her heel at the dirt around the hole where the projectile had entered the mound, and found it not too deeply buried. She tried to pick it up, the small chunk of lead, but it scorched her fingers.

  “Ow!”

  “Bullet still warm, eh?” Cade asked, a bit of a smile on his lips. Karigan scowled. He started to walk away, and then paused. “Want to give it a try?”

  Karigan nodded, though she did not know how it would go with her unable to see the gun or hear Cade’s instructions.

  “We’ll start at ten yards,” he said.

  He paused some distance from the target and waited for her. She joined him, fingers still stinging. When he passed her the gun, she did not look at it. Just held her hand out to receive it. When the metal touched her palm, it seared, burning all the way up her arm, lightning flashing through her head. She screamed, the ground rushing toward her, the gun tumbling from her hand.

  THE WILL OF THE GODS

  Karigan curled into a fetal position when she hit the ground. She groaned. Her outstretched hand felt like it was on fire.

  “Miss Goodgrave?” Cade patted her cheek and alternately sprinkled water from a canteen on her face.

  “My hand!” she shouted. “Pour it on my hand!”

  “It’s burned red,” he murmured.

  She sighed as cool water flowed over burning flesh. The sensation eased, as did the throbbing in her head. When the canteen was emptied, Cade helped prop her into a sitting position.

  “What happened?” he asked anxiously.


  “Not sure. The gods. I don’t think they want me to know about guns.” She gazed at her hand to see the angry red color quickly fading, along with the pain, to a more normal shade.

  “What? What do you mean the gods?”

  “What else could it be?” It had been the shattering of the looking mask that had propelled her into the universe, but it was Westrion, god of death who had delivered her to this time. She could only conclude that the gods were blocking her and did not want her to bring the knowledge of such powerful weapons back home with her. In one way, it was a hopeful premise, because maybe they expected her to find a way home. In another, it was unfortunate they did not wish Sacoridia to obtain an advantage in weaponry over its enemies.

  “We were forced to give up the gods over a century ago,” Cade said. “It was a very bloody episode in our more recent history. We were forced to worship the emperor and his machines.”

  Perhaps that was the crux of it, the gods did not want their people on Earth rejecting them for machines. Yet, hadn’t she touched other marvels of this time, such as the plumbing and lighting? She’d seen machines, or at least pieces of them, in the professor’s mill, and the ominous mechanicals of the Inspectors. So far she’d experienced no ill effects from them. What was the difference?

  Cade settled down beside her with the Cobalt in his lap. She did not look directly at it as he emptied the unused cartridges and began to clean it. “Whatever it is that is causing your, uh, problem,” he said, “maybe it’s for the best. Guns, well, they can cause harm in the wrong hands. Even be turned against the user.” His head was bent down as he worked. “It is also said that guns and machines have hastened the loss of etherea from the world.”

  She glanced at her hand. It was now back to its natural color, no blistering, no sign of injury. If what Cade said was true, maybe it was for the best she did not take the knowledge of firearms home. She had the general gist of what they did but not the how. And come to think of it, she did not have the “how” of the plumbing or phosphorene lighting, either. What would happen if she tried to understand how they worked?