Mirror Sight

by Kristen Britain

  The General watched as some sort of decision registered on the foreman’s face. He strode forward and pressed his hand on the bench beside The General. When he removed it, a key remained. So, he wanted to go forward with or without the bells. The General did not protest, and took the key. Meanwhile, the foreman caught the attention of the overseers so they would not observe The General unlocking his leg irons and passing on the key. The building murmur of the slaves, however, as the key was passed round, was enough to catch their attention. When they advanced with their whips poised, a dozen slaves sprang on them, beating them as only those would who have been held in chains and were mistreated and worked unto death. The overseers fell beneath the pummeling and did not rise again.

  The slaves were quiet. They were not accustomed to being allowed to raise their voices, not even at the triumph of having their leg irons off. Not even when avenging themselves by beating the overseers. But The General saw the expressions on their faces, the young and the old, the light and the dark. It was an expression they had rarely known: hope.

  The sudden booting open of the door and its rebounding smash into the wall, however, quickly smothered their hope and shocked them all into stillness. Inspectors poured into the building, guns drawn. They’d been so close, The General thought, but the plan had indeed failed. He guessed that the other slave quarters involved had been raided as well.

  He stood, faced the Inspectors. He had this one moment of freedom, a moment of freedom to attack his enemy as he had once done on the battlefield. He picked up his leg irons, but he would never be chained again. Other slaves, sensing what he was about, did the same.

  When he and the others rushed the Inspectors swinging their chains, it was into the fire and blue smoke of the guns.

  THE BUTTON THIEF

  Before Luke returned from the tavern and they set off again, Cade explained to Karigan in low tones how he’d hoped to create a diversion for them by causing trouble in Mill City. The crux of his plan was the freeing of as many slaves as possible. Without an orderly work force, not only would industry come to a halt, but so would Silk’s drilling project in the Old City. The Inspectors would scramble to round up escaped slaves while being harried by armed rebels.

  “If the rebels take the Inspector stations, armory, gates, and city master’s office, they will have control of the city,” he told her. Of course, it would mean troops would have to be sent out from the Capital to regain control, leaving the Capital, he hoped, less secure.

  Karigan rubbed her eyes. Even with her thought processes so muddy, she could see this was not going to end well. “You expect your rebels to hold the city?”

  “No. That is not their purpose. They are to hold it as long as they can. Long enough to divert troops from the Capital to make our entrance into Gossham easier.”

  She stared at him. “All of this so we can . . . ? You’re putting all those people at risk for us?”

  Cade nodded.

  “Oh, Cade.” She closed her eyes and slid back into her straw nest in the wagon.

  “Arhys is the last heir,” he said tersely, leaning over the tailgate, “and if you can find your way home, you can change everything.”

  Such a great burden, she thought. “What if we fail?”

  “Perhaps Mill City’s efforts won’t have been in vain. Perhaps the uprising there will foment others throughout the empire. No matter how the Adherents try to suppress the news of the rebellion, it will get out one way or another.”

  And the empire would make an example of Mill City, Karigan thought. She had wanted to find a way home so she could be home, with the side benefit of being able to inform the king of Amberhill’s treachery, and thus avert this future. It had all been very personal. But now, all those people relying on so slim a hope added a weight she was not sure she could bear.

  • • •

  The rest of the afternoon went by in a fog for Karigan. Luke riding ahead, Cade driving the wagon, and she in the very back bouncing along in the straw. Every now and then Raven would poke his nose over the tailgate as if to reassure himself she was still alive.

  She’d gone from craving only sleep, to still being exhausted but too agitated to truly rest. If she could have more morphia, maybe she could be at peace again. She tried not to think about it. She faded in and out, waking in a cold sweat, head aching. Unbidden, there would be Raven looking at her. She raised a trembling hand to stroke his nose.

  She drifted in and out of awareness, glimpsing the tall, hard buildings of towns, inhaling air that tasted like dirt and rotten eggs. She came to once when the wagon abruptly stopped.

  “Papers,” an authoritative voice ordered up ahead, followed by Luke’s chipper tones. A checkpoint. Again, she tried not to cringe when an Inspector and Enforcer came back to look at her.

  “What is wrong with you?” the Inspector demanded.

  She wiped sweat from her forehead. She did not have to answer for Luke reined Gallant around and said, “Don’t get too close. Tam there has a fever.”

  The Inspector stepped back. “You should not be transporting sick people around the empire.”

  “He came down with it along the way. I’ve been keeping him away from people.” There was a pause before Luke continued, “Say, Inspector, I don’t suppose you and your men get to taste very much good wine here. I wonder if you might care for a sample?”

  Luke drew off the Inspector with that, but the Enforcer paused, its eye focusing an intense moment on her face until the mechanical belched a puff of steam from its stack and click-clacked away.

  After they were cleared and underway once again, the haze moved back into Karigan’s mind until Cade paused in the shade of trees in a stretch of countryside to rest the mules, the sun glancing off the silent canal beside them.

  “—too easy,” Cade was telling Luke.

  “Too easy? You want them to search the wagon?” Luke countered. “Interrogate us?”

  “Of course not. I just can’t get over the feeling it should be harder for us to get through those checkpoints.”

  “Neither of us have done much traveling,” Luke said. “Maybe the empire just wants us to think it’s hard so everyone will stay put. Not to mention I am a very convincing wine merchant, if I say so myself.” The last was said with a certain dash of pride.

  “It is a sheer tragedy the scouts for the Imperial Players overlooked you.”

  “Gah! And waste my talent in propaganda pageants? No, this is much more the thing—the theater of life!”

  “Yes, and it is well done,” Cade admitted.

  “Applause. Where is my applause?”

  Luke’s question was followed by Cade’s desultory clapping. Karigan peered ahead just in time to see Luke bow with a flourish.

  That evening they stopped at another inn, and in an arrangement like the previous night’s, Karigan and Cade had an entire bunkhouse to themselves. Karigan dove for one of the beds and wrapped herself in a blanket, still shaking.

  “You need to try to eat,” Cade said. “Luke had some soup sent over.” He lifted the lid on a tureen and sniffed. “Chicken. Again.”

  It appeared that Luke’s solution to Karigan’s affliction was soup at almost every meal. She had to admit that while her stomach wasn’t interested in anything at all, chicken soup was the least offensive offering she could think of. She forced herself to rise and join Cade at the table. He ladled them both bowls of soup, a good thing, too, with her hands so shaky. As it was, it mostly splashed out of her spoon before she could bring it to her lips. She all but tossed the spoon down in frustration.

  Cade watched her. “It will pass,” he assured her. “The shakes and so forth. It means the morphia is wearing off.” To his credit, he did not offer to feed her like a baby.

  “Keep trying,” he said quietly. “You need to keep your strength up.”

  “Right,” she said, “because
all the people in Mill City are depending on me.”

  “Not just you. The decision was mine, and they actually agreed to go along with it.”

  “Mirriam, Jax, and the others.”

  “Yes. Many others. If it . . . if we fail, then the responsibility is mine.” He stared into his bowl of soup as if trying to scry some secret message. He chuckled.

  Karigan gazed at him, startled. “What’s so funny?”

  “Who knew this would be my fate?” he replied. “I started out among the Dregs, stealing to get by. I never expected . . . I never expected to come by such responsibility. I never expected the professor to die, leaving me to make the decisions.”

  “Cade,” she said, “the professor wasn’t making decisions. Not the difficult ones, anyway. He was just maintaining the opposition’s usual state of affairs. Keeping safe.”

  She was intrigued by the tiny glimpse into Cade’s past. So, he’d been a street thief when he was a boy. She wanted to ask more, but a heavy oppression seemed to have settled on him.

  In the course of eating her supper, she ended up with more soup on herself than in her belly, so she did her best to clean up and get ready for bed. Cade remained at the table, chin on his fist as he stared into space. That was her last vision as she drifted into an uneasy sleep: he sitting there in the golden lamp glow.

  She dreamed she was on a message errand, but could not find her way. Too many trails cut through the woods, and she could not remember which way to go. Sometimes she rode Condor, sometimes it was Raven, and once it was a great black stallion with rippling muscles and the universe shining in his eyes.

  She awoke with a gasp, only to find the lamp at a very low glow, and Cade staring out a window into the night. She rose on her elbow, wiped perspiration from her forehead.

  “You’re still up.”

  He stiffened at the sound of her voice and turned around. “Can’t sleep.”

  The window was open and she heard the chirps of crickets. Sultry air rolled in, and she was racked by chills despite the warmth of the night.

  “Are you thinking about Mill City?”

  The floor creaked as Cade crossed it to sit on the bed next to hers. “Mill City, and other things. But those are for me to worry about. You should get back to sleep so you can get better.”

  “What is the hour?”

  He shrugged. “I’ve lost track.”

  She leaned back into her pillow and closed her eyes. She did not think it would be so easy to fall back asleep. “Were you really a thief when you were young?”

  “It’s true.”

  “How did you become a student then?”

  Cade laughed quietly. “I tried stealing from the professor.”

  Karigan rolled over onto her side to face him, quite awake now. “You did?”

  He nodded.

  “I take it he caught you.”

  Cade laughed again. “He did, indeed.”

  “Well?” she said.

  “Well what?”

  “How did it happen? You can’t expect me to fall asleep now with just that little morsel of information.”

  He stared at her, looked poised to say something, then shook his head as if he changed his mind.

  “Please?” she said in a wheedling tone. “I won’t sleep till you tell me.” She could not guess what he was thinking, but his gaze became particularly intense. Then he relaxed.

  “All right,” he said. “You must promise me you’ll try to sleep after.”

  “I will.”

  “All right.” He cleared his throat, then, “Yes, I tried to steal from the professor. He was doing an excavation in the Old City, and I thought he must have been digging up great treasure. As a boy living off trash in the street, I loved to imagine the idea of buried treasure. I saw enough Dregs earn some coins on the black market for pieces of junk they scrounged in the Old City, so I imagined I could be rich. I didn’t understand back then that you couldn’t be rich unless the empire allowed it.”

  Karigan wondered what her father would make of that. In this Sacoridia, he’d never be allowed to become the successful merchant he was and would have been relegated to a life of fishing until the end of his days.

  “So, I saw the professor set up his excavation, letting others do the digging, and I thought, why do all the work myself? I’d let them dig up the treasure, and then I’d just steal it.”

  “Clever,” Karigan said.

  “Lazy,” he replied.

  “So what happened? How’d he catch you?”

  “I thought I was being real careful and hid out among the ruins in a place where I could watch the excavation. When they all seemed focused on what was in the hole and were paying their tent of artifacts no heed at all, I snuck into it to find treasure.”

  “Did you?”

  “The professor considered it treasure—ceramic shards, pieces of rusted metal, broken glass—heaps of stuff that looked like the rubbish I saw on the streets every day, yet these were carefully arranged and labeled. I did see some shiny objects that looked like gold coins to me, and I scooped them up. I was about to put them in my pocket when the professor walked in. ‘Dear boy,’ he said, ‘what do you want with those old buttons?’”

  “Old buttons? Is this when you got your nickname?”

  Cade nodded. “Yes. I’d tried to steal old buttons. Old brass buttons not worth much of anything to anyone but the professor, not even on the black market.”

  “What happened then?”

  “He offered me some of his midday meal. I remember it well—cold fried chicken, an apple, and fresh bread that was not moldy or hard. It was ordinary fare to the professor, but to me, it was a feast of dreams. After that, he said that if I was interested in old buttons, he would pay me if I helped with the digging, and he’d also bring food. I went every day, of course, and our relationship developed from there, I becoming his student, and he my mentor.”

  Cade stretched out on his bed, lying on his back with his hands beneath his head. “The professor became the father I’d never had.”

  Karigan watched him, waiting for more, but soon his chest rose and fell in a slow and steady rhythm, the tension in his body relaxing. He’d fallen asleep, finally, an expression of peace on his face. She hoped his good memories of the professor lingered into his dreams.

  As her own eyes started to close, it occurred to her she’d been born around two hundred years ahead of Cade. She smiled to herself thinking she didn’t feel that old. Did Cade, she wondered, like “older” women?

  THE MEMORY OF HOOFBEATS

  When she drifted to sleep once more, she dreamed she gazed down at Cade from atop a stone horse. He wore Weapon black, sword and pistol girded at his side. She tried to speak to him, to reach for him, but she, too, was made of stone.

  Despite this and other disturbing dreams, she felt noticeably better the next day, much more herself. As she rode in the back of the wagon, she did not drift in a haze, and the shakes had ceased.

  Cade informed her they were traveling along the Capital Way, but she saw little that reminded her of the old Corsa Road, as it had once been named. The farm fields and woods she had known were transformed into towns both small and large. They were all gray granite and brick red, the people as somber as those in Mill City.

  Raven, in contrast, seeming to have noticed her improvement, pranced and cavorted behind the wagon. He looked like he wanted a good long run, but she wasn’t ready to sit a saddle, nor did she think Luke or Cade would allow her to take Raven for a ride in this unknown region. She was, however, tiring of being an invalid and, like Raven, craved a good cross-country gallop.

  The canal never strayed far from the road, and the farther south they traveled, the busier it became with the odd wheel-sided boats pulling others laden with everything from passengers to livestock. At midday they pulled up at a roadside tavern
next to a set of locks. As usual, Cade and Karigan were left outside to wait while Luke swaggered his way into the tavern to dine.

  “I hope he brings me something different than soup,” Karigan said.

  “You’re hungry?”

  “Yes,” she said, surprised to realize it was true.

  “Good, you’re getting better.” The relief in his voice was palpable.

  While they waited, they watched a pair of young men tend the locks, raising the water level between the gates so boats could continue from one elevation of the canal to the next. Cade tensed as two of the paddle boats, positioned side by side and each towing two packets filled with armed men in gray uniforms, came into view on the rising water.

  “Who are they?” Karigan asked.

  “Infantry of the imperial army.”

  “Heading to Mill City?”

  “That would be my guess.”

  They watched as the boats, once at the proper level, chugged up the canal. Cade paced, keeping an eye on the locks, but when the lock keepers returned to their little gatehouse to take their ease, he appeared even more anxious.

  “What is it?” Karigan asked.

  “There should have been more.”

  “More?” She tried to keep her voice low. “There were a lot of soldiers on those boats.”

  “Not enough for a siege,” he replied.

  She understood. If Mill City was not to be held under siege, it must mean his people had failed to take the city.

  “They didn’t have an equipment barge or anything,” Cade said. “I’m thinking those troops are just for show, to help keep order in the city—to supplement the Inspector force, not to battle to regain control of it.”

  Cade fell into a pensive silence, but even with his dire conclusions, Karigan could think only of her growling stomach. When Luke finally returned bearing their midday meals, she could have kissed him—instead of soup, he’d brought her a meat pie. She was so hungry she dug right in and missed Cade’s and Luke’s low but emphatic discussion, until she heard Luke say, “You spent too much time around the professor. His paranoia has rubbed off on you. You don’t even know if those soldiers were headed to Mill City.”