When he started to lift Karigan, her eyes fluttered open. She squinted at him, unfocused. “Cade?”
“Yes?”
“You have . . .” she began.
“Yes?” he asked, gently shaking her when her eyes started closing again.
She blinked hard. “You have a nose.” And just like that, she was out again.
“Glad to hear it,” he muttered, and he hoisted her once more over his shoulder. Fortunately she was not heavy. Juggling the staff, the taper, the satchel, and one Green Rider altogether, however, proved more of a challenge, but he managed, moving swiftly down the tunnel. His footsteps echoed loudly around him, and he was pursued by his own shadow. This dank tunnel felt more like a tomb to him than what he had seen beyond the Heroes Portal.
Thinking of the tombs and of the Weapons gave him fresh strength, and he hurried onward. He was one of them now, a Black Shield, and his responsibilities ranged beyond the workings of opposition groups, and even beyond protecting Arhys. While he had been with the Weapons, he’d learned how distorted the world he lived in had become under the emperor. Instead of progressing into a bright future, the descendents of Sacoridia, and all the other nations that now comprised the empire, lived in a repressed gloom. Except for a privileged few. Including the professor.
Cade did not know if it was possible for Karigan to return to her own time and set things right, but he aimed to help her try. This, he believed, was his mandate as a Weapon, above and beyond all others. He did not see himself as abandoning his duty to Arhys by doing so. Not at all. Conversely, he believed helping Karigan would be the ultimate way to protect Arhys. He would help alter his time for the better, to restore Sacoridia to its rightful rule by kings and queens. In this way, he reasoned, he would protect Arhys, give her a world in which she could fulfill her destiny as a princess, out in the open as was proper, not as an exile hidden away lest she be hunted down like an animal should the empire learn of her existence. Nor did he intend to simply abandon Arhys in the here and now to some unknown fate but do whatever was in his power to keep her safe.
As for Karigan, he would personally deliver her to her king if he could. He wanted to see the old realm in all its glory, to see what Sacor City and the castle had really looked like before their destruction—not just some artist’s fanciful renderings. He wanted to meet figures out of history—King Zachary and Queen Estora. Would the Weapons of that time accept him? Maybe or maybe not, but if he were there, he too could help prevent the rise of the emperor, fight in the past for Arhys and for the people of his present.
And he’d be with Karigan.
The subject of his thoughts shifted on his shoulder.
“Cade?” she said.
He halted. “Karigan? Are you awake?”
“Cade, why is the floor down there?”
He eased her off his shoulder and helped her stand when her knees buckled. Her eyes were open, but again unfocused.
“Where in the hells am I?” she asked in a dazed voice, her gaze wandering.
“Somewhere beneath the old Josston Mills complex.”
She squinted at him and reached as though to tweak his nose, but almost put his eye out instead. He grabbed her hand before it could do any damage.
“I think you have six, maybe seven noses.”
He patted her cheek to get her attention. “Do you think you can stay upright?”
“I feel all tippy.” As if to illustrate, she started to keel over. Cade caught her, and again she was totally out. He hoisted her back over his shoulder and set off once more.
Who would have ever guessed that one day he’d be carrying around an unconscious legend of almost two hundred years ago, in the bowels of an old mill complex? Certainly not he. But he’d come a long way from not believing who she said she was, even when the professor had insisted she spoke the truth. His professor, his mentor who was likely sacrificing himself this night.
Cade could not afford to think about the professor or the life he had left behind. He surged through the tunnel, which sloped gently downward on its way to the river. Nothing would ever be the same again. He could not return to the university to resume his studies. If Inspectors were knocking down the doors of the old mill, they would inevitably go in search of the professor’s students for questioning. Cade could not get himself caught—he knew too much.
He slowed when he came to the foundation of the mill across the courtyard. Its turbine must have been salvaged, and the penstock, too, for there was only a gaping hole into the basement above. The scent of old, wet soot mixed with a current of freshening air that circulated from the outlet at the river. Odd light flickered above, and he knew this mill to be a ruin open to the sky. He’d explored the remains of the complex some during daytime hours. The roof and floors had collapsed and only one jagged wall of brick still stood. During his explorations, he’d found soot-blackened manacles still chained to a loom buried beneath a pile of rubble.
The professor should have knocked down the last of the ruins and filled in the foundations. He should have sold off the land, a prime mill location with water rights. But the professor had held on to this one complex, the one that had been ravaged by fire, not so much because of the single remaining building where he could store his collection of artifacts, but because this, all of this, was a monument to his guilt. It forced him to remember. The professor had never said as much, but Cade had been around him enough to know, to pick up on comments and moods. The memory of the fire had driven the professor’s support of the opposition.
Cade stepped over debris that had fallen down the penstock hole—blackened bricks, moldering wood, dead leaves. The floor here was damp, weather had found its way through the ruins to this place. He slipped as he hurried on, but was surefooted enough not to tumble and drop Karigan.
At long last he reached the end of the tunnel, the damp air of the river flowing full on through the arched opening of the outlet. Wavelets slurped at the retaining wall that girded the river bank. Crickets chirped in the distance.
The professor’s boat was actually stored in the tunnel, covered with a tarp. Cade carefully set Karigan and his other burdens down, and pulled the tarp off the boat. It was a very small row boat. He worked quickly, tossing Karigan’s satchel and the staff into it, and pushed it toward the opening. If the river were higher, more level with the tunnel’s outlet, he might have put Karigan in the boat, too, but it was not and he did not wish to risk injuring her from too much jostling.
He worked the boat over the edge, bow first into the water. He held onto a line connected to the bow and watched the boat bob on the surface, relieved it did not sink. He turned to gather up Karigan, but she was sitting and staring back up the tunnel, her hand outstretched.
“Karigan?” Cade asked, keeping his voice low. There was no telling how sound would travel on the river.
“He is saying good-bye,” she said.
Cade flashed the taper into the darkness thinking perhaps the professor had followed them after all. No one was there. She must be experiencing strange visions from the morphia, like when she’d seen his six—or was it seven?—noses. He’d heard morphia could be like that.
“We are going to get into the boat, very carefully,” Cade told her, and he helped her to her feet, draped her arm around his neck, and held her steady.
“Good-bye,” Karigan said, glancing once more down the tunnel.
“Who are you saying good-bye to?”
“My uncle.”
Waves of foreboding coursed through Cade. They stood now on the very edge of the tailrace tunnel’s outlet, and he had to figure out how to get her into the boat without getting them both wet. Karigan started to sag against him and rested her head on his shoulder as she dropped out of consciousness again.
He sighed. “Oh, professor, what have you done?”
The sky lit up reflecting a fiery glow on the river
, followed by a thunderous explosion that sent a gust of air and a throaty roar rumbling down the length of the tunnel.
“What in damnation?”
He stood rooted in shock trying to make sense of it, but the roar grew, the wind from the tunnel pushing at his back. He turned, peering down the tunnel with his light, at first uncomprehending. When he registered the wall of water rushing down the tunnel at him, it was already too late to get out of the way.
SWIMMING IN FLAMES
Cade tossed Karigan into the river ahead of him, jumping just as the water slammed into his back.
The cold black river swallowed him. The flow that rushed from the tailrace hammered him beneath the surface. He fought upward in a panic, limbs thrashing against the pounding, lungs aching for air. He hadn’t the strength to break the surface beneath the weight and force of all that water pouring down on top of him.
Something pulled steadily at his wrist and started to draw him free of the falling water, and he realized it was the line to the rowboat. He allowed it to pull on him, and he kicked clear of the turbulence, surfacing in calmer water. He gasped and sputtered for air. He’d been so lucky that in the onrush of water he had not been pummeled with loose debris carried down the tailrace. A brick could have ended everything. He could only guess that the explosion he’d heard had broken the sluice gate that damned the intake at the canal, thus loosing the water and sending it cascading down the tunnel.
Karigan! he thought, remembering he was not alone.
The boat was drifting downstream, and he with it. He tread water looking frantically around.
“Karigan?” he called out. No answer. She’d been so drugged. She could have drowned already. He whirled around, searching, searching. Had she, too, got caught in the outflow from the tailrace? Was she still down there, churning in the pounding water? He swam against the current back toward the tailrace, towing the boat behind him.
The fire plumed, brightening the sky and river, and there, floating just yards away on her back, with arms splayed out, was Karigan, bathed in the reflected firelight as though she drifted in liquid flame.
Cade changed course, keeping an eye on her even as the glow of the fire dimmed. When he reached her, he saw her eyes were open, also glistening with the fire’s light.
“Karigan?”
“Fergal?”
“No, no, it’s me, Cade.”
She blinked, and in a weary voice said, “Why do I always end up in rivers?”
Cade was too relieved to care about her odd comment or wonder who Fergal was. “Can you swim?”
“Of course I can swim.”
“Then let’s make our way to the far bank.” On the far bank, there was no sheer stone retaining wall supporting the tailraces of mills, just the boggy edge of the river. He started to swim away, but she just floated there staring at the sky.
“Karigan?”
“I’m swimming,” she said. “Just swimming in flames.”
With the reflection, the image was apt. Cade sighed and secured the line of the rowboat around his waist, then he grabbed Karigan by the collar and stroked for the river bank.
“I am swimming faster,” Karigan observed. “Swimming in the pretty light.”
Cade started to curse the professor for the morphia, but stopped. The professor was gone. He knew it. Like a captain going down with his ship, the professor would have gone up in flames with the mill, sacrificing himself alongside his beloved artifacts, atoning for the slaves who had perished there, sacrificing himself for the good of the opposition. A dead man could not be interrogated.
When finally Cade crawled onto the river bank, he pulled Karigan up beside him and, exhausted, just held her. It was too painful to watch the roiling flames across the river that were the professor’s pyre, so he nestled his face in the nape of her neck, where he would not have to see.
* * *
• • •
Cade rowed down the river, the current helping to carry the small boat along. It had taken him awhile to decide what to do next, to consider the few options available to him. Widow Hettle’s house was out—the Inspectors would search for him there, plus, her house was too far from the river. He also thought about the old slave market, but it too, was logistically difficult to get to while carrying an unconscious woman over his shoulder. The Inspectors would be out in force, and he’d be sure to get caught. He needed someplace near the river, someplace where he and Karigan could get dry and warm. One place did come to mind.
The rowing kept his blood flowing, and while the night was not cold, it was cool enough that a person in wet clothes could get chilled. He worried about Karigan, curled in the bottom of the boat, as bouts of chills racked her body even as she lay unconscious.
“Oh, professor,” he murmured for the hundredth time, as he hastily blinked away tears and dragged on the oars with more urgency.
He could still see the mill fire up river, lighting the sky, but farther down, the river banks were serene. Silent, dark mills loomed on his left, and the waterfront warehouses, shops, and hovels shouldered together to his right. He tried not to watch the fire glow, but searched instead for a certain dock he wanted, the one that catered to fishermen. Fishing was not a true industry in Mill City, and was illegal without an imperial license, but those who fished surreptitiously were able to supplement their meager larder. Cade did not think there was much caught other than carp—the dams and locks had killed off most everything else.
He was past the dock before he realized he was anywhere near it and plowed the oars in the water to slow his momentum. The dock canted at a precarious angle on its pilings. There was a bait shop directly on shore. Cade worked the bow around, oars groaning, and headed in.
When the hull bumped alongside the dock, Cade nosed the boat in as close to shore as possible. Well past curfew, the shorefront was quiet. He saw no sign of Inspectors, so he tied the boat’s line to a cleat and placed the staff and satchel on the dock. Fortunately they had stayed safe in the bottom of the boat where he’d stowed them, even after he and Karigan had ended up in the river. He then tended to transferring her to the dock without tipping the boat over and giving them both another soaking.
She murmured something as he shifted her, but she did not wake up. With a deep breath, he hoisted her onto the dock. His body was beginning to feel the strain of having carried her through the tailrace tunnel, then fighting the outflow in the river that had almost drowned him. He decided to look upon his travails as strength training. Karigan was the perfect weight to challenge him, to help increase his stamina. This was what he told himself, anyway.
He lifted his burdens and hurried ashore.
• • •
Cade had never been to Jax’s house before, but he knew exactly where it was, one block from the river. It was not the seedy part of town, but it was not one of the better neighborhoods, either. Cade also knew where Thadd and Jonny lived. He’d made a point of learning as much about the rebel leaders as he could.
He strode up to the small cottage with its shutters closed, but he detected light in the cracks. He’d have been surprised if Jax had not been up. The news of the professor’s mill fire would have spread quickly among the rebels.
Cade knocked on the door. A moment later, a small panel slid open, and Jax peered out at him.
“Cade? What in damnation are you doing here?”
“Can you let us in?”
“Whose hind end is that sticking out on your shoulder?”
“You met her last night.”
Jax grumbled, then opened the door just enough to allow Cade to dash in, then swiftly closed it and drove the bolt home. Cade did not hesitate, but crossed the room to Jax’s cot and lay Karigan down on it.
“Is she dead?” Jax demanded.
“No. Just . . . drugged. Morphia. Do you think you could stoke up the heat? We’re both wet.”
&
nbsp; “What did you do, swim here?”
“Something like that.”
Jax moved to the small coal stove and opened the grate. Orange flames flickered inside. Cade closed his eyes, not wishing to see flames.
“So, you know your professor’s mill is burning,” Jax said matter-of-factly, shoveling coal into the stove.
“Yes, and the professor with it.”
“You know that for sure?” Jax slammed the grate shut.
“We . . . we were there with him and almost got caught in it ourselves.” Jax would have no idea what the professor had stored in the mill. Cade had kept that secret.
Jax squinted hard at him. “The girl is his mad niece, isn’t she.”
Cade nodded.
“Sounds like you’ve got some story to tell, but I hope you aren’t bringing a load of Inspectors down on me.”
“No. No Inspectors. My guess is that they are concentrated at the mill and the professor’s house. Look, Jax, I need your help. Everything has unraveled.”
“Why should I stick my neck out? I don’t need Inspectors looking my way.”
“You are a leader of our group,” Cade said. “What is our primary goal?”
“To oust the emperor to make life better for everyone. To get rid of slavery at all levels.”
“Yes, and the key to all that may be the young woman lying on your bed.”
“How could—”
“No time for explanations,” Cade said. “I’ll tell you what I need you to do. But first, do you have a change of clothes? I’m freezing. Something for Miss Goodgrave, too.”
Karigan floated through a strange series of visions with long stretches of darkness between. Her memory was hazy, unreliable. She remembered being at the old mill, the professor hugging her. After that, she had blurred images of Cade staring into her face, saying things to her she could not recall. There were nightmarish tunnels and water. And now she was on a bed. Not her nice bed back at the professor’s but more comfortable than . . . than what? How had she got here? Where was here? She was clammy cold and shivering.
Mirror Sight Page 49
