“Be watchful,” Cade said in a low voice.
He didn’t need to tell her.
They entered the poor neighborhood on the east side of the canal bridge. Few streetlamps worked well here, and Cade stayed away from those that did. There were few signs of life at this hour—a stray dog dug through rubbish alongside a ruined building, bats swirled around a sputtering streetlamp. The hooves of horse and mule clattered all too loudly on the street. The neighborhood reminded her of the empty ruins that surrounded Castle Argenthyne, the buildings but corpses of a long ago civilization. But this, this was not a long ago civilization—people lived in these buildings in the here and now.
All remained quiet until the bridge over the canal came into sight. The lamps at both ends of the bridge illuminated a pair of Inspectors chatting in the middle of the span, two Enforcers with them. Cade touched her sleeve and urgently gestured they should head down a side street. It was narrower, darker.
“We’ll not be able to cross till dawn,” he explained in a low voice.
“What about another bridge?” Karigan asked.
“Too risky to travel that far, and they may be keeping watch on all the bridges. They do that sometimes.”
“Well, you have all your weapons, and I bet I could take out both of those Inspectors myself.”
“And harming an Inspector or Enforcer would bring the city’s entire complement swarming into this section of the city and leave no one alive. Now, let us go and go carefully.”
He took her down a series of derelict streets. Twice they spotted Inspectors on patrol with their Enforcers trundling alongside them.
“The Enforcers don’t see as well at night,” Cade told her, “or at least as far as we can tell.”
Who was “we?” she wondered. She assumed Cade and the professor, but perhaps he meant the opposition as a whole.
When they heard a shout and running feet, they slipped behind the ruins of a tenement and into overgrowth. A young man pelted past their hiding place, breathing hard. An Enforcer shot after him stretching its long, spindly legs, moving more swiftly than Karigan could have believed of the mechanicals, the tips of its legs hammering the street cobbles in a menacing rat-a-tat-rat-a-tat.
Just as quickly, it skittered to a halt beneath a sputtering street lamp. A hatch on its central orb popped open and disgorged a long metallic tentacle, which lashed out and wound around the man’s torso. The Enforcer tugged, and the man fell. It then reeled him in.
Karigan started in her saddle—it had happened so quickly. Cade grabbed her wrist.
“We should—” she began in a whisper.
Cade’s grip on her wrist tightened. “Too risky.”
She was about to protest when an Inspector jogged up the street huffing and puffing and stopped when he reached the mechanical.
“Got the thief, have we?” he demanded.
“I’m no thief,” the man said, struggling in the coils of the tentacle.
“That so.”
“Lemme go! I din’ do nothing.”
The Enforcer made a series of clicking and whirring sounds, a sort of machine speech, maybe.
“He’s just trash,” the Inspector replied with a shrug.
The Enforcer loosened its tentacle and the man was able to clamber to his feet.
Karigan’s apprehension eased. It looked like they were merely going to arrest the man, or maybe even let him go, but before she could finish that thought, the tentacle coils constricted. The man screamed until the tentacles silenced him, followed by the snapping of bones.
She barely contained a scream of her own and looked away feeling like she could vomit. She’d seen horrible things before—gore, death, plenty of blood—but nothing like this.
A glance at Cade showed he’d gone pale and looked likely to be sick himself. His grip on her wrist would leave bruise marks.
Beneath the dimming light of the streetlamp, the Enforcer unraveled its tentacle, dropping the crushed body that flopped like a rag doll in the middle of the street. The Inspector and his mechanical left it behind, discarded, just like the trash the Inspector had proclaimed the man to be.
When they were well away, Karigan said, “Cade—”
“Shhh,” he said, and pointed.
Gray forms in rags crept out of the shadows and emerged from rotten doorways.
“Dregs?” Karigan whispered.
“Ghouls.”
The Ghouls surrounded the body, picked it up, and carried it away into the night.
“Someone at the university will pay them for that body,” Cade said with disgust.
Karigan shuddered. It had all happened so fast.
“I am sorry,” Cade said.
“For—for what?”
“We could’ve helped that man, but I feared the risk to us and the opposition. And I didn’t know . . .” He took a moment to collect himself. He licked his lips. “I didn’t know they would do that to him. I thought they were just going to arrest him.”
As they rode on, moving carefully from their concealment and onto the dark streets, Karigan remembered the professor saying that the Enforcers were incapable of compassion, of mercy. They were, after all, inhuman mechanicals. What was, she wondered, the Inspector’s excuse? Then she asked herself: Which was worse? The actions of an unthinking machine, or the inaction of a man devoid of mercy?
The latter, she thought. By far. She now appreciated, on a deeper level, why Cade and the professor dared oppose the empire.
They encountered no more Inspectors. Cade led her to a brick building that stood apart from the others. He looked around carefully, then dismounted and signaled for her to do the same. He opened a door on the front, large enough for him to lead the mule inside. She followed behind with Raven who blew through his nose and chewed on his bit.
Cade hastily drew the door closed behind her, and she heard chains rattling.
“You are locking us in?” The echoing of her voice startled her.
“Yes,” Cade replied. “It’ll keep out unwanted visitors.”
From what Karigan could tell, the building was cavernous and empty. Dim light from streetlamps filtered in through windows up high, silhouetting bars across them and lending a menacing atmosphere to the place. The mule’s hooves clopped on the stone floor as Cade led him down the center of the room toward the far end. Karigan followed, her boots crunching on broken glass. Between the barred shadows on the floor she saw other debris scattered about—papers, an old shoe, scraps of wood, bird droppings. When they reached the far end, she made out a railing that stood before a raised stage, and Cade tying the mule to the railing.
Karigan followed his example with Raven, wishing she’d brought some water to offer him. And herself. Cade, who was better prepared, shared some from his canteen. She took a swig for herself, then poured some into her cupped hand for Raven. It wasn’t much, but it was something.
“Here,” she said, returning the canteen to Cade.
“Shhh, I heard something.”
Karigan listened, but all she could hear was horse and mule shifting and settling. Then, in an interlude of silence, she heard the distinct crunching of someone stepping on broken glass just as she had done. It was followed by more silence.
She espied the gleam of a blade as Cade unsheathed a knife. He did not draw one of his guns, perhaps fearing its use would attract too much unwanted attention. She remembered all too well the noise they could make.
In one direction, she heard a stealthy noise, the rustling of cloth. In another, the pad of feet. Karigan and Cade had locked themselves in the building with at least two others. Not Inspectors, she thought. She neither heard nor saw evidence of Enforcers, and she did not think it was their way to skulk in the dark.
Ruffians or vagrants, then.
Raven whickered nervously and Karigan sensed someone creeping towa
rd her from the left. A flurry of movement came from the opposite direction and Cade grappled with an assailant, followed by a shout and grunts, then the thud of two bodies slamming to the hard floor.
Karigan extended her bonewood to staff length, and when the attack came, she was ready.
PENNED IN
Arms Master Drent had devoted some training time to sessions on the art of fighting with one’s senses dulled. He’d made his trainees stuff cotton in their ears to muffle their hearing. He’d made them wear helms that blocked their vision in different ways. Karigan had not fared well in those sessions, especially when her opponents were able to fight unhindered.
Here, in the dark building, she and her foes were on even footing. Each possessed all their senses and were submerged in the same murk. How keen was the night vision of her opponents? She couldn’t know, but hers had been attuned to a lack of light by a night of rambling about the countryside and keeping to the shadows.
The first attacker came at her wielding a long metallic weapon—not a blade, but something heavy, dull, a bar of some sort. Before he even had a chance to use it, an easy jab with the point of the bonewood to his gut made him double over. His weapon fell to the flagstone floor with a resounding clamor that battered the ears. It cloaked the sounds of her other adversary as he advanced on her, but she was ready for him nevertheless. She whirled, and as the staff cracked into his ribs, he cried out. Then he dropped a jagged piece of glass and fell to his knees hugging himself.
The first attacker barreled toward her. She leaped out of the way, and as he passed her, she whacked the back of his head with the silver handle of the bonewood. He thudded to the floor and did not move.
“Yield!” someone shouted.
Cade’s fight appeared to have paused. “Jax, is that you?”
“Cade? Get off me!”
“Hold on.”
So, Cade knew these men?
Karigan detected him rising and shuffling over to his mule. He groped through his saddlebag and in a moment he had the phosphorene lantern alight at low glow. When her eyes adjusted, she saw that the one man who had attacked her lay unconscious on the floor. The other remained on his knees, groaning. Cade’s opponent rose unsteadily to his feet, blood running from his nose.
All three men wore the work clothes of laborers—formless, dull, and patched, and in deep contrast to the fine wardrobe in which Professor Josston attired himself. It was even worse than Cade’s own garb, which had already seen a fight with the Weapons at the Heroes Portal.
The one called Jax wiped at the blood beneath his nose and steadied himself by placing a hand on the mule’s haunches. “What in the name of all mercy are you doing here tonight?” he demanded of Cade.
“Hiding from Inspectors.”
“And you brought . . . you brought a stranger?” Jax’s gaze bore into Karigan. She held her offensive position with the staff and would not hesitate to lash out if given cause, whether Cade knew these men or not.
“A trusted person,” Cade responded.
“A girl,” Jax said with distaste and pointed at her. “That’s right, I heard your voice. You are no lad.”
“A girl who easily took out your boys,” Cade said. “Why don’t we go down below and discuss this?”
“Aye, safer. Give me a hand with Thadd and Jonny.”
Cade hoisted the unconscious Jonny over his shoulder.
“Stop whining,” Jax told Thadd, helping the man to his feet.
“I think my ribs are broke.”
“So what if they are? Whining’s not gonna help.”
Karigan followed behind as they made their way past the stage, and then behind it. In the light of Cade’s lantern, she glimpsed a yellowed poster tacked to the wall: Auction! Adults and Youths fit for all needs and types of labor. Healthy breeding stock . . .
The place was an auction house, an auction house for slaves.
A door creaked open ahead, and Cade led them down a set of sagging, wooden steps. The scent of dank earth and rot flowed up and out, and something else that was less a scent than a psychic infusion of fear, agony, torment.
Karigan halted on the last step, wanting to turn back, to ride Raven away regardless of how many Inspectors patrolled the streets. Could the others not feel it? The oppression, ghost voices screaming and moaning, children crying . . .
Cade set Jonny down on the earthen floor, having to move in a stooped position because of the low ceiling. His light glanced off metal chains dangling from the support beams. Rusty and strung with cobwebs, the chains ended in manacles. A couple hundred pairs must hang there. The gorge rose in Karigan’s throat.
After Jax settled Thadd onto the floor, he brushed past Karigan to shut the door at the top of the stairs. She closed her eyes as the souls of the tortured wailed at being trapped, confined, enslaved, with no way out.
“Your girl got a problem?” Jax demanded of Cade as he trotted back down the stairs, bumping her out of the way.
“Mind your respect,” Cade replied.
“Mind whose respect? You came here unannounced.”
“It was not planned, and I’d no choice.”
“There are always choices.”
“I do not consider being arrested by Inspectors a choice.”
Jax sat down beside Thadd. Cade sat opposite him on the dirt floor. Karigan did not know how they could stand it, touching that earth, being down here. She could almost see the captives crowded together out of the light, out of the fresh air, stripped naked and their bodies pressed together, wrists shackled over their heads. She did not sit, she did not leave the wooden step.
“And what brought you out after curfew, eh?” Jax asked.
“My reasons are my own.”
Jax snorted and glanced at Karigan. “I’m sure they are.”
“I would ask what you are doing here,” Cade said. Karigan heard the edge of anger in his voice. “It is not a meeting night.”
“No, no it isn’t, but Thadd, Jonny, and I, we wanted to talk over some business before the next meeting, what with Silk and his machine in the Old City. Went house to house, his Inspectors did, hauling out blastmen for questioning after your professor tried to delay the drilling. Those men that were taken away, well, they haven’t been seen again. Their families are wondering when their husbands, poppas, and brothers will be coming home. I don’t think they will be. Ever.”
“I know,” Cade said.
“Your professor mucked it all up.”
“He was trying to—”
“Playing at an opposition is not the same as being one. Your professor goes to his parties, plays cards with his enemies. Their only opposition is to see who can be more polite than the other. Meanwhile, the rest of us suffer under the emperor’s rule.”
Who was this Jax, Karigan wondered, that he knew of the professor and his opposition?
“We have waited for your professor’s group to do something, but nothing ever comes of it.”
“I know,” Cade said again.
“Weeell,” drawled Thadd, tearing his attention from his sore ribs to attend to the conversation, “so you finally admit it. Your professor is not gonna change things.”
“I have been coming to this conclusion for a while.”
“Oh? And what decided you?”
“Various things,” Cade replied evasively. “The professor’s failed attempt to slow the drill is not least in my mind.”
Karigan wondered if his experiences in the tombs had sealed this change in him, given him a resolve that had not been there before. She was relieved that he did not mention the tombs, Weapons, or caretakers. He apparently trusted these men but honored his secrets.
“Then destroying the emperor,” Jax said, “comes down to us. As the hard work always does.”
So they were another opposition group? Did the professor know about the
m as they knew of him, or had Cade been going behind his back? Had he shared his knowledge of Arhys’ existence with Jax and his cohorts, or had he honored that secret as well? This furtive activity was fascinating, but very un-Cadelike. Or at least, unlike the Cade she thought she knew, who was utterly devoted to the professor. How much did she really know about this brooding student of archeology, anyway?
She mounted the steps and sat on the top one, trying to distance herself as much as possible from the haunting cellar. She rested her arms on her knees, then her head on her arms. It had been another very long night, and she’d already been short on sleep. She tried to listen as Cade argued with the other men about this plan and that, but her eyes sagged closed. This was not her world, after all, not her war. She had not wanted to get involved in its problems. If she could get home, she’d take care of Amberhill from there before he had a chance to make himself an emperor. Problem solved, just like that. She laughed tiredly to herself.
She drifted into an uneasy sleep filled with images of slaves beseeching her to unlock their manacles. They called out to her for help, and there, across the waves of people in bonds, stood Lord Amberhill. She saw him clearly, large in her vision, his gray eyes now dark, burning holes. He held a cruel looking whip, ready to lash it at the slaves, and the dragon-eye ruby on his ring winked at her.
• • •
Cade shook her shoulder. “Tam? Tam Ryder?”
“Tam Ryder who?” she mumbled.
“Tam Ryder you.”
Karigan gazed blearily at Cade. “Is it time to go?”
“Dawn is breaking, so we need to get you back.”
The murmuring of low voices down below indicated that Jax and his fellows were still there. The sound of a new voice indicated Jonny had regained consciousness.
Cade helped her rise. “I ask that you speak to no one of this. Not least of all the professor.”
So the professor did not know about this group. “What’s a few more secrets?” she replied.
“That is what I ask myself all the time.” He extinguished his lantern before opening the door to the main floor. He peered about before stepping through.
Mirror Sight Page 44
