Mirror Sight

by Kristen Britain

  “There is an inscription on the lid,” Dr. Silk said. “Here sleeps the greatest merchant of all Corsa . . .”

  DR. SILK’S EXHIBITION OF BONES AND BLOOD

  Karigan closed her eyes, waiting.

  “He is,” Dr. Silk said, “Orhald Fallows, gold merchant.”

  A breath of relief gusted from Karigan’s lungs, her veil fluttered in front of her lips. Not her father, but yes, she’d heard of Orhald Fallows, who, it was rumored, had had Breyan’s touch for gold. From his shop came all sorts of fabulous objects, including a gold and bejeweled bathtub for the last Sealender king. That put him at two hundred years earlier than her father’s time. She was surprised his entire coffin was not made of gold, but perhaps he was humbler than legend made him out to be.

  Dr. Silk also seemed to know Orhald Fallows’ history, and Karigan felt the excitement build in the audience as he tantalized them with whatever incredible artifacts might have been buried with the gold merchant. He gestured again, and his servants lifted the lid off the coffin. She was not close enough to smell the immediate fetid air that would have risen from it, but she could imagine the stink of old rot, of bones that had lain undisturbed for about four centuries. The servants paused before reaching into the coffin.

  “Careful now,” Dr. Silk instructed them.

  While everyone’s attention was riveted on the coffin, additional servants placed a table on the daïs next to Dr. Silk. The shrouded form of Orhald Fallows was then lifted out and carried up to the table.

  Dr. Silk explored the winding sheets, cutting them away with a knife layer by layer, seeking burial items and tokens as he went. He found a stoppered gold flask that would have been filled with wine or brandy that served as a common ritual offering to the gods. There were unformed gold nuggets scattered throughout and a scale bundled at Orhald’s feet. Sheaves of parchment were found between the wrappings, prayers for the departed written by the family. Dr. Silk ignored such mundane items, digging for gold. At last he cut away the final sheet, and there lay Orhald Fallows’s skeletal form, exposed, with a full head of white hair and garbed in faded red velvet robes.

  “Well this is curious,” Dr. Silk said, peering closely at the skull. “One would expect gold coins to close his eyes, but I see copper.”

  He searched Orhald further and found a purse, but it was empty. He frowned. The only other piece of gold he found was Orhald’s wedding ring. Dr. Silk looked dismayed, but Karigan understood. The merchant had been fabulously wealthy, but he’d tried to appease the gods with his humility. Yes, there had been offerings of gold, but if he’d offered too much, he would have appeared not virtuous but arrogant. While his coffin was fine enough to impress those left behind, it wasn’t garish. He’d played both sides—enough gifts to please the gods, but not enough to anger them by flaunting his excess. It was well known that entrance to the heavens could not be bought by wealth alone. Moral character counted as well.

  And, Karigan thought, if Orhald Fallows was anything like her father, he’d been too practical to allow too much gold to be buried away where it could not be useful to his heirs.

  Dr. Silk was plainly unimpressed, and he laughed. “Well, old Orhald has played a joke on us. He took little of his gold to the grave.”

  “He ignores all the artifacts,” Cade murmured to Karigan in disgust. “The merchant’s clothing, the coffin itself, the parchments. Those are more valuable than gold.”

  And that, Karigan thought, was what made the professor and Cade different from Dr. Silk. The former were actually interested in the past, and the latter was simply a gold miner. A tomb thief.

  “Take this away,” Dr. Silk told his servants.

  They bundled the remains of Orhald Fallows into his windings, carelessly dropped him into the coffin with a clatter, and carried him away.

  “Let us not be dismayed by the scarcity of Orhald Fallows,” Dr. Silk said. “I’ve more diverting entertainments for you than a bundle of old bones.”

  At his command, the draped, domed cage Karigan and Cade had seen earlier was wheeled forth. A slave, marked by a brand on his cheek, herded a large sow into the big top. The audience laughed, but Dr. Silk smiled enigmatically.

  “This show has gone to the pigs,” a man joked, and the audience laughed again.

  “Come, gather around so you can see,” Dr. Silk said.

  The guests left their chairs to stand around the domed cage, leaving ample passage for the sow and herder to approach.

  “I have brought some of my pets all the way from Gossham for you to see,” Dr. Silk said.

  “You’re keeping pigs now?” the wag called out.

  Dr. Silk chuckled and signaled with his hand. The covering was pulled off the cage revealing gilt bars. A filament of fine mesh netting, almost invisible depending on the angle of light, filled the spaces between the bars.

  “I don’t see anything inside,” Cade said. “Just some plants.”

  Karigan didn’t see anything either, but trees and shrubs in planters, and a mini-fountain in the center spouting water. It was a little like an oversized terrarium with bars instead of glass. It looked pleasant enough, but a sense of foreboding came over her, and after all the various surprises she’d already endured this evening, she wasn’t sure she could take much more.

  The slave led the sow up a ramp right to the door of the cage. He opened the door and chivvied her inside into a small antechamber and slammed it behind her. He then hoisted the inner gate with a rope and pulley system. The sow ambled into the main chamber, attracted to a trough of feed, and the gate was lowered behind her.

  A loud buzz emanated from the cage, the buzzing sound of furious tiny wings Karigan remembered all too well. With a sickening, sinking feeling, she realized that the cage was an aviary.

  The sow, who until this point had behaved complacently enough snuffling at the trough, squealed and cowered against the bars of the cage.

  “Oh, gods, no,” Karigan murmured.

  A cloud of tiny, iridescent hummingbirds, heretofore unseen among leaves and branches, rose from the vegetation and hovered in the air, wings flickering too fast to see.

  “Oh, how beautiful,” a woman nearby said. “They are so quick and dainty. Look how their feathers shine.”

  The few bits of food Karigan had nibbled burned in her chest. The sow squealed again and dug at the door, seeking escape. Hummingbirds darted and hovered, darted and hovered, the thrum of their wings rising in a crescendo.

  “I love hummingbirds,” another woman said, “but they are so rare.”

  One flashed downward, skimming across the sow’s back, chased closely by a second. They whizzed around the aviary, fighting over the sow, defending her as territory and chasing off interlopers. This went on for several minutes until some unknown, invisible signal released the entire furious cloud of birds, and they dove as one, their beaks plunging into the sow.

  Members of the audience gasped. Karigan closed her eyes, knowing how it would play out, the sharp beaks, a hundred times over, stabbing into the sow’s flesh, frantic wings driving them deeper and deeper so they could get at the blood. Karigan knew how the scarlet patches on the birds’ throats would glow as they consumed the blood, how they’d become engorged with it. Murmurs of fear and fascination rippled through the audience. A couple of ladies fainted and had to be carried out.

  “Interesting pets you keep, Silk,” a man said, no humor in his voice.

  “From the Imperial Preserve,” Dr. Silk replied over the cries of the sow.

  Karigan’s hands clenched at the sounds of the sow’s distress. She had seen such hummingbirds suck the life out of a man.

  Eventually the sow’s cries and the sounds of her struggles weakened, and the collective wingbeats of the hummingbirds subsided to a drone. Even then, when Karigan finally opened her eyes again, she did not look in the aviary, but stared at the shoulders of the
man in front of her. The show over, the guests applauded. They actually applauded! This was entertainment, this exhibition of slaughter, Dr. Silk’s show of bones and blood. She shuddered.

  Dr. Silk ordered the cage to be covered and taken away, much to Karigan’s relief. After all she had seen tonight, the p’ehdrose, her sword, the eagle, Orhald Fallows, and now this, she wished to take action, to tear down the empire. But what could she do? She was only one person. She would not get far, although giving Silk a good whack with the bonewood would provide her with a strong sense of satisfaction. She was not helpless, but she felt it, immobilized by not knowing what to do, not knowing how to reach her own time where she could, perhaps, do the most good.

  “How can I top that, eh?” Dr. Silk asked his guests. “The best of the night is yet to come, even more exotic than feral hummingbirds from the Imperial Preserve, something not even the emperor has seen since his rise to power almost two hundred years ago. A sight so rare you will not believe your eyes!”

  Oh gods, what now?

  A pair of white horses, red plumes rising from their headstalls, trotted into the big top drawing a garish circus wagon behind them. The wooden sides were painted with fierce lions and bears, and concealed whatever might lie within. The lights of the big top lowered dramatically, except for a pair that shone directly on the wagon as the horses came to a halt.

  “Here is something you will likely never see again,” Dr. Silk told his guests.

  Dramatic notes thundered out of the pipes of the music steamer causing more than a few people to jump and laugh nervously. They watched the spotlighted wagon with rapt gazes.

  “Are you ready?” Dr. Silk asked.

  His guests shouted, “Yes!” back at him and clapped.

  He nodded to the circus men at the wagon, and they dropped a painted side down to reveal a cage. The wagon was probably used to transport and exhibit large, dangerous animals, but Karigan did not see an animal. What she did see so shocked her that she could only whisper: “Lhean.”

  “An Eletian, ladies and gentlemen!” Dr. Silk announced to more applause and oohs and aahs. “A genuine living, breathing Eletian.”

  Lhean’s face was turned away from the glare of lights, his hands clenched around the bars of his cage. Segments of his armor had gone missing, revealing black cloth underneath, glistening as though wet and oozing. His remaining armor was dull, not at all the almost glowing pearlescence Karigan remembered. He looked weak, the vibrancy that was him dimmed like his armor. And yet . . .

  And yet, he shone, and it was not just the lights on him, but the innate power of what he was: an Eletian, a being of etherea. The crowd, gawking at him in awe, could see it, too.

  Cade, however, was watching her. She turned to him when he placed his hand on her shoulder.

  “It’s Lhean,” she said, stricken.

  He raised his finger to his lips. “Shhh . . .”

  “He needs—we need to—”

  “Shhh . . .”

  Her every nerve prickled with energy, with urgency. Cade stared at her calmly, sternly, steadying her.

  She turned back to Lhean, who looked lost and alone. Slowly he peered into the light, his gaze sweeping across the audience, and then it alighted on her. She felt it, knew it, that he had picked her out from all the assembled. He thrust his arm between the bars, reaching out to her. The startled guests exclaimed and laughed. Karigan could not hear him speak, but she saw his lips form the word: Galad-heon.

  “It is time to leave,” Cade said. He took her arm and began to lead her through the crowd.

  “But I’ve got to help him,” she said, stumbling alongside.

  “Not here, not now,” Cade replied tersely.

  “I can’t leave him here!”

  Cade drew her up close. “You must. You cannot help him now. We must leave before people realize he’s reaching for you.”

  Fortunately the music steamer had started up again, drowning out their voices.

  Cade was right. People were glancing about to see who or what the Eletian wanted, and it would be dangerous for Silk, in particular, to connect the two of them. Cade was also right that trying to save Lhean at this moment would fail, and she’d end up in even less of a position to help him. So she followed Cade, but could not stop looking at Lhean, his forehead now pressed against the bars.

  Oh, Lhean.

  It took what felt like an eternity to make it to the big top’s entrance, and it was a relief to step out into the open night air. There were no performers to greet them, just a couple of watchful guards. The torches still hissed along the pathway as Karigan and Cade hastened on.

  A carriage drew up. It wasn’t a Hastings, but the professor’s. Luke must have spied them right off. He hopped down from the bench to open the door and assist Karigan inside the cab.

  “Take us home at a good clip,” Cade instructed Luke, “but not so fast as to be too obvious.”

  “As you wish, Mr. Harlowe.”

  After the carriage lurched forward and the big top fell behind, Cade said, “That was an Eletian? An actual Eletian?”

  Karigan nodded. Cade had not seemed unsettled in the big top, but he was now.

  “You know him?”

  Karigan nodded again. “Yes, Lhean. He was one of my companions in Blackveil.” She felt an impulse to leap out of the carriage and run back to the big top—she couldn’t abandon him! She had a terrible image of Dr. Silk taking him to a taxidermist to be stuffed and exhibited with the p’ehdrose and eagle.

  “So he must have come with you somehow.” Cade shook his head as if disbelieving his own words.

  “Yes,” she replied. “Somehow.” Or, had he been here all along through time? He was, after all, eternally lived, and Eletians did not appear to age. But she did not think so. The scarcity of etherea in this mechanical world was antithetical to the existence of Eletians. She’d assumed they’d vanished, died out for good thanks to Amberhill. Besides, Lhean looked like he was suffering. Could he have sustained his life for almost two hundred years in this condition? There was much she did not know about Eletians, but instinct told her he had arrived in the future when she did.

  Why was she only seeing him now? Why had they not arrived together? The breaking of the looking mask had sent her cascading through the universe, and Westrion had brought her here. That was what she now believed. But why Lhean? Were any of her other companions at large in this time, or another? Were they, too, held captive by Dr. Silk? What was Westrion’s intent? Was there an intent? She had many questions but no answers.

  Cade tapped his fingers on the seat beside him to the rhythm of the trotting carriage horses, his expression pensive. “I hope the professor is home. He will want to hear about this right away.”

  “We need to rescue Lhean.”

  “I do not doubt that, but I need to talk to the professor. Any rescue requires planning.”

  He was right, but would the professor actually help?

  “There is one thing I hope,” Cade said.

  Karigan waited. “Well?”

  “I hope that Silk did not see that the Eletian sought you.”

  SILK

  Silk bade good-bye to the last of his guests as they funneled out of the big top entrance. Already workers swept the floor and removed his exhibits. The operator of the music steamer had played his final note and was now lowering the lids over the keyboards.

  It had been, on the whole, a successful evening. His guests had been impressed by his offerings. The Eletian, especially, caused a sensation, and all of Mill City and beyond would talk about it for weeks to come. Hadley had approached him about using the Eletian as part of his sideshow, which would no doubt fill circus coffers, but Silk needed to get the Eletian to Gossham to be examined by his father and other members of the emperor’s inner circle. He would deliver the creature himself to ensure he received proper cred
it for its capture. One day, he hoped to personally present the Eletian to the emperor as a gift.

  Silk gazed at the diminishing crowd searching for Miss Goodgrave and her escort, but in vain. They must have slipped out early, which annoyed him. He’d ask Howser if he’d seen them leave, and if not, tell him to ask around. Discreetly, of course. There was something about that young lady, something much more than was hidden behind the veil. He’d known this since the first time he’d looked upon her. The vibrancy of life energy that pulsed around her—favoring green hues—had intrigued him, had roused his interest enough that he needed to know more. Tonight it had been much the same, but . . . At one point as they sat at dinner, a wavering of her aura caught the edge of his vision, like the downsweep of vast, dark wings. He fought to conceal his surprise, and soon wondered if he’d actually imagined it all, for it did not happen again. An enigma was Miss Goodgrave.

  He had noted, of course, how careful she’d been answering his questions, almost shrewd in her responses. She did not seem insane to him, but she mystified him with contradictions. In many ways she carried herself in a confident manner, and in others, less so, such as when confronted by the taxidermy specimens from the Imperial Museum. Clearly she was intelligent but appeared naïve, as if she did not know the customs of society. The latter, he thought, could be due to her confinement to the asylum and life in the country. And insanity did not necessarily negate intelligence. It disappointed him she’d shown little interest in the artifacts he’d so carefully displayed. She did not fit easily into a puzzle.

  And then, he could not swear to it, because he’d been more focused on the reaction of his guests to the Eletian, but he thought he’d seen the Eletian reach out to her, speak to her . . . He’d ask Howser about that, too, and also question the creature later. Not that the creature would cooperate—it refused to respond to the common tongue and spoke only in Eltish gibberish when it spoke at all.