Mirror Sight (7 page)

K
arigan snuck out into the empty hallway. She had no illusions about getting very far before someone caught her, since it was full day and everyone was up and about, but her chances of success were better with Mirriam absent.

She was deciding how to proceed when she heard voices once again coming from the foyer, so she crept down the hallway to the top of the staircase and crouched, hiding behind the newel post and balusters. A man in a red uniform stood just inside the doorway, peaked cap on his head and, girded around his waist, a black belt that held stubby tools or weapons of some sort. Behind him, through the open door, an object like a large metallic ball, glinted in the sun, but she could not discern it clearly. It made her inexplicably nervous. She sensed a roving eye watching, judging, seeking. Seeking what? Or who?

The professor strode into the foyer. “Inspector Gant,” he said with great ebullience. “How kind of you to stop by. What a surprise to see you! May I offer you a brandy?”

“No thank you, Professor Josston.” The Inspector had the squared shoulders and crisp demeanor of a soldier. “I’m on duty and here on official business. There has been word you’re sheltering an undocumented person in your house.”

“Undocumented? That’s not very likely now, is it? The emperor knows I respect his laws to the utmost.”

The Inspector proffered a slight bow of acknowledgment. “Even so, I am required to check. You did take in a young woman recently, did you not?”

Karigan stiffened, but the professor laughed. “My dear Gant, I’ve made no secret of it. Indeed I have taken in a young woman—my poor niece—so she may live in better circumstances than she left.”

“I understand,” the Inspector said, clearly unmoved, “but all the same, I must see her documents.”

“Documents. Of course.” The professor cast about himself as if they’d appear out of thin air. “One moment, please, Inspector, while I return to my office to retrieve them.” And he strode out of view.

The Inspector remained where he stood with hands clasped behind his back. There was a querying chirp from behind him, and he glanced over his shoulder. “Yes,” he said.

This was followed by several more chirps and hoots. They did not sound like anything Karigan had heard before—not at all like birds. Sharper, more tinny. Not at all like any living creature she knew of.

“Of course,” the Inspector replied to the chirps. “He is highly favored and has a habit of taking in strays.”

There was a soft whistle and Karigan had an impression of the whatever-it-was expressing doubt.

“He bought that slave’s freedom, legal and documented. He does not have a history of harboring runaways. Now, silence.”

There was a rude
blatt
from behind, and the Inspector raised an eyebrow.

The professor emerged into the foyer with a sheaf of papers in his hand, which he passed immediately to the Inspector. The Inspector scrutinized the papers, taking time with each page.

“So you say she is your niece,” the Inspector murmured. “Several Goodgraves have married into your family as I recall.”

“Indeed,” the professor replied. “Historically and currently. A bit too much intermarrying with that branch if you know what I mean. Some ill-conceived notions of pure bloodlines and the like, leading, shall we say, to unfortunate frailties in the offspring.” He tapped his temple in emphasis.

“Yes, I see you had your niece released from an asylum in the northeast.”

“They left her to rot in terrible conditions,” the professor said full of indignation, “and it’s not her fault she’s a bit touched. They are very uncivilized in that region. Mender Samuels can attest to her condition, mental and physical.”

“I’ve heard that asylum has an unsavory reputation,” the Inspector said. “There has been some agitation to close it down.”

“And so it should be closed down and the administrators condemned by the Imperial Council.” The professor’s righteous zeal was very convincing. Karigan thought he put to shame any actor of The Royal Magnificent Theater with his performance. “My poor niece. She is a pretty thing, and I’d a thought to marrying her off to some nice young man not concerned about the disarranged state of her mental faculties, but after such trauma? I doubt anyone would have her.”

Not to mention his performance was making her feel pathetic.

The Inspector made sympathetic noises. “I must check the seal,” he said, and he stepped outside with the papers. Shortly an ominous whine emitted from without. Did she discern a tensing of the professor’s posture as he watched through the doorway?

The Inspector returned and handed the documents back to the professor. “Everything checks out,” he said. “It’s a fine thing you are doing, helping family.”

“Well, unlike you, Inspector, I’ve not been blessed with children of my own, so I guess I find a way to compensate. Speaking of which, how many do you have now? Last I heard, eight?”

The Inspector grinned. “We’ve a ninth coming along.”

“My word! Good man!” The professor clapped him on the shoulder. “Wait till I tell Mirriam.”

The two said their good-byes, the Inspector politely doffing his hat and saying, “Sorry to have troubled you, sir.” When the door closed behind him, the professor sagged against the wall, mopping his brow with a handkerchief.

“Everything all right, Professor?” a male voice asked from the room off the foyer. The voice sounded vaguely familiar, but the speaker did not reveal himself.

“A close one, that,” the professor replied. “I’d only received these documents yesterday.”

“Rasper does good work.”

“Yes. Good enough to fool an Inspector and his mechanical. Thankfully it was Gant this time—he’s more, shall we say, reasonable than some of the others. But don’t give Rasper any idea of how good he is or he’ll start demanding that I pay him more.”

The two laughed, and the professor moved into the room, drawing a pair of doors closed behind him. Karigan sat where she was, dumbfounded that her patron had gone to such lengths to protect her. Obviously he’d be in trouble if he was found out. How odd this world was that everything must be approved and documented.

The idea that the Inspector had a mechanical something-or-other to help him made her shiver. The concept of “mechanicals” was not unknown to her or to others of her time. Mornhavon the Black had brought them to these shores in his conquest of the New Lands. Her ancestor, Hadriax el Fex, had referenced them in his journal. But none of her contemporaries, not even the scholars, seemed to know what the mechanicals looked like or how they operated, except that some incorporated etherea in their workings. They were part machine and part magic, but if magic was absent from this time, perhaps the Inspector’s device was purely mechanical. The future, it appeared, held many marvels both useful and frightening.

Encouraged by having witnessed this much. Karigan decided to try and learn more. She crept down the stairs, her bare feet silent on the carpeted treads. At the bottom, she glanced all around her. There was, as she thought, a formal parlor to her right, and the closed doors of the room the professor and his companion had entered to her left. A grand hall went deeper into the house from the foyer. No one else was about. She limped over to the closed doors and pressed her ear against one of them. She heard voices within.

“It’s downright strange, I tell you,” she heard the professor proclaim.

His companion made a muffled response.

“Both Samuels and Mirriam observed the wounds on her body as unusual,” the professor said, “the old ones and the fresh ones. The old ones, Samuels said, are like stab wounds from . . . from edged weapons.” He sounded disturbed. If he had believed she were a Green Rider, then perhaps he wouldn’t be so surprised, but it appeared there were no Green Riders in this time and no memory of them. To think all their bravery and efforts came to this, unremembered and disbelieved.

“Mirriam thought her muscles unseemly for a girl, too, even one who might have labored in the mills,” the professor mused. “Maybe a field hand? No lash marks, though. Her wounds, combined with the artifacts lead me to only one conclusion.”

Karigan did not get to hear what it was because someone said,
“Psst,”
behind her. She jumped.

“Miss,” Lorine said, “you must go back to your room.”

“I’m tired of my room.” Oops, that sounded a tad more petulant than Karigan intended.

Lorine gently took her arm and turned her toward the staircase. “Please. Mirriam will be home soon, and if she or anyone else sees you down here . . .”

Karigan heard the implication that if mad Miss Goodgrave were discovered wandering around, the fault would fall on Lorine, who’d be in a great deal of trouble. Not wishing to cause Lorine problems, Karigan started up the stairway compliantly, but was vexed not to have heard the rest of the professor’s statement. Midway up, she stopped, thinking to go back down, fling those doors open, and confront the professor. But Lorine anxiously tugged on her sleeve. With a sigh, Karigan continued her upward climb.

When they reached the top landing, the double doors opened, and Karigan paused to look back down. A man strode out into the foyer with books beneath his arm.

“Don’t forget I need those papers tomorrow morning,” the professor called from the adjoining room.

The man halted and turned. “The Hudson Study?”

“That’s the one.”

When Karigan saw the man’s profile, it took only a moment for her to recognize him. He’d been standing next to the professor in that lecture hall the night of her arrival. His voice also matched that of the man who’d helped her fight off the assailants in the alley and brought her to the professor’s house.

She ignored Lorine’s pulling on her arm. “Who is he?” Karigan asked in a whisper.

Whether the man heard her or some other impulse caused him to glance up the stairs, she did not know, but he did, and he stared hard at her, his face unreadable, brows drawn together. He was in his mid-twenties, she thought, very trim in his plain longcoat, but beneath his scrutiny she felt naked, as if he could see past her nightgown, through her skin, and right into her being.

Then it was all over. He turned curtly on his heel. “I’ll have the Hudson Study for you first thing, Professor.”

“Good man!”

And he swept out the front door.

“Who was he?” Karigan asked Lorine again.

“One of the professor’s students. It’s not proper for you to be seen like this.” She fussed and pulled till Karigan followed her down the hallway.

Karigan assumed “not proper” meant the professor’s mad niece should not be seen by anyone from outside the household, especially when she was wearing nothing but a nightgown. “Does he have a name?” Karigan persisted.

“A name?” Lorine’s nervous disposition made her seem just about to quiver apart.

“Yes, a name.”

“Mr. Cade Harlowe.” Lorine spoke breathlessly, and when Karigan espied the pink in her cheeks, she thought she knew why.

“Does he come here often?”

Lorine nodded. “He assists the professor. To help pay his tuition, as I understand it.”

They were about halfway to Karigan’s room when another door at the far end of the hallway opened and a girl of about eight in servants garb stepped out. She stared openly at Karigan.

“Arhys!” Lorine said. “What are you doing? Mirriam is not pleased with you. She had to go to Copley’s after Miss Goodgrave’s slippers.”

The girl tossed her head. “Mirriam is never pleased about anything.”

That was for sure, Karigan thought.

“And mind your manners,” Lorine said. “This is the professor’s niece, Miss Goodgrave.”

“I know,” the girl said. She boldly walked up to Karigan and gave her a flippant curtsy as though she were above such things. Karigan almost snorted with laughter. This Arhys was no docile servant—she had cheek. Once she grew out of the round contours of childhood, Karigan predicted she’d be a great beauty with hair that varied in the light from deep amber to sunshine gold.

“I must dust the parlor,” Arhys announced as if she were bestowing a great favor upon the world. She skipped down the hallway toward the stairs.

“That girl,” Lorine grumbled. Then, “I apologize for her lack of manners. The professor dotes on her and has made her vain. I suspect she may be a little jealous.”

“Of me?”

Lorine nodded. “His attention has been diverted from her since your arrival. Though she has no call to be jealous. She is an orphan the professor took in as a servant, and he employs Mr. Harlowe to tutor her. Otherwise she’d have been taken to the orphanage.” Lorine shuddered. “Or she might have ended up living on the streets with the Dregs. She should show a little more gratitude, if you ask me.”

“The professor—my uncle—seems to help a lot of people,” Karigan said as they entered her room.

“Yes,” Lorine replied. “He helps when no one else will lift a finger. He’s a good man.”

A good man . . . Karigan wondered if he were simply altruistic, or if he had some other, hidden, agenda. The fact that he was willing to forge documents on her behalf and lie to an official suggested to her suspicious mind that perhaps he possessed motives beyond those that benefited her personal welfare.