Mirror Sight (77 page)

It then occurred to him they were not going to get the witch out without a fight.

A stench seeping out into the corridor announced the opening of the cell door. The light of the taper revealed the painful sight of the witch chained just the same as Cade had seen her before, her flesh naked beneath layers of grime, old blood, and scars, and her lips sewn shut. Though he’d been expecting the sight, he still quailed from it. How could her guards be considered human?

“Now what?” Starling asked him. “There she is, now what?”

The four guards glanced at one another as if wondering if this was part of the Inquisitor’s technique. A smile strained against the stitches that held the witch’s lips closed.

It was the Eternal Guardian who answered. “Unchain her.”

Hands went to guns, but before the weapons could be drawn and fired, the Guardian’s sword hummed through the air in a blur. The guards were felled as wheat to a scythe, the Guardian’s blade shearing through flesh and bone as though they were nothing. His swordwork was spare and clean and astonishing. Cade looked down at the bodies in disbelief. The blood on the Guardian’s sword matched their uniforms.

The tip of the Guardian’s sword went to Starling’s throat. “Unchain her.”

Starling’s nose flared as if taking in the scent of blood. Without protest, he knelt beside one of the bodies to remove the key ring from a dead hand. Cade fetched a fresh taper to replace the one that had fallen with its guard, so they could once again see into the cell.

As Starling tried different keys in different locks of the witch’s chains, Cade sensed something new in her demeanor—not gratitude, not hope, not even triumph or anger, but
power.

T
he lift returned and after Karigan opened the doors, she ordered, “Get in.”

To her surprise, Silk obeyed without hesitation or argument. She followed in after him, closed the doors, and stepped up to the controls, recalling what Fastion had shown her. It was then she perceived, on the periphery of her vision, Dr. Silk’s mechanical hand striking down at her. She pivoted and blocked it with her staff. It clattered hard against the bonewood. For good measure, she brought the metal handle around and smashed his hand. His fingers jerked, spasmed, and curled. Tiny arcs of fire flared through his glove and sputtered across his knuckles. There was the smell of burning and melting.

Silk did not cry out in pain, but stared in disbelief at the smoke wisping up from his hand. “You broke it,” he said. “It does not work anymore.” He launched himself at her again. She sidestepped and tripped him. His fall caused the lift to bounce and shudder on its cables, and his specs skittered across the floor. She scooped them up.

“Not much of a fighter, are you?” she said. “Are you sorry you killed Mr. Howser now?”

He squinted up at her, raised his dysfunctional, still smoking hand to shield his eyes from the lift’s light. “My specs!”

She dangled them in front of his face, yanking them back when he tried to snatch them. “You get these back when we reach the palace floor. In the meantime, I suggest you behave. Otherwise, I will find a way to do this without you.”

His mouth became a grim line as he took her meaning, and he climbed unsteadily to his feet. Karigan dropped his specs into the pocket of her greatcoat and started the lift. It jerked upward, numbers ticking by in a small panel indicating floors. This, she thought, was a vast improvement over stairs, which could become tiresome, particularly in the castle, but she would take all the stairs in the world over a lift any day just to be home.

When the word “Main” rolled up into the panel, she applied the brake. The car screeched to a halt and shook so hard that she and Silk almost fell.

“It would seem I need practice,” she muttered. Silk just glared at her. She glared back at him. “We are going to Lhean. If you deviate from our course, or try to alert others to your predicament, it will go badly for you.”

“It could go badly for you, too.”

“I can hide in the shadows.”

He held his broken hand to him like an injured wing and seethed. The hand had finally stopped smoking, which was a good thing, as it would have provoked unwanted questions.

“Now we will proceed calmly,” she told him. “You will act like there is nothing amiss.” She returned his specs to him, which he took with his left hand. As he put them back on, Karigan hoped it was the last time she had to see his nacreous eyes. “A false move, and they will think a ghost has killed you.”

“The emperor was right to conquer the lands and put females in their rightful place,” he muttered.

“You are welcome to your opinion,” Karigan replied. She had no interest in arguing just now.

“It is not an opinion, it is the natural order of the world.”

She ground her teeth. He was not making it easy to avoid an argument. She faded out and slid the doors open. When Silk did not move, she shoved him out of the lift into the marble and gilt surroundings of the palace. Karigan surveyed the corridor. Fortunately, the massive columns she had seen in almost every corridor, and other architectural embellishments, provided plenty of concealment and shadows.

Silk paused just outside the lift, peering around, either looking for aid or searching for her.

“I am right behind you,” she murmured. “Now go.” She jabbed the small of his back with the bonewood.

Silk made some inarticulate noise and set off, but he’d not gone more than a few paces when a messenger hurried up to him. Karigan waited in the shadow of the nearest column.

“Dr. Silk,” the messenger said. “I have been searching all over for you. This missive came in for you from Mill City.”

The messenger handed a folded piece of paper over to Silk, and Karigan tensed, watchful lest Silk attempt to betray her, but he simply took the letter and stared at the envelope. The messenger bowed and trotted off.

By the time Karigan reached his side, Silk had opened the message and scanned the contents. He tilted his head back in laughter.

“You think you are so clever,” he said, presumably to Karigan.

She snatched the message from his hand. His gasp reassured her he hadn’t anticipated that. “I’ll remind you to keep quiet,” she warned him. Fortunately the corridor remained empty.

The message was from a Heward Moody, Imperial Engineer. Among the various lines scrawled across the paper, one stood out:
As you desired, the drill has breached what we believe to be the royal tombs.

“No matter what you do here today,” Silk said, “I have succeeded.”

The faces of Chelsa, chief caretaker of the tombs, and the tomb Weapons, flashed through Karigan’s mind as she reread Heward Moody’s message, that the drill had broken through to the tombs. What did this mean for them? How would they defend the tombs? Certainly Silk would not anticipate anyone living down there, much less a dedicated defense.

She stuffed the message into her pocket. She would not enlighten him, but she could not help saying, “I would not be so pleased if I were you. The tombs are not so easily taken.”

The truth was she had no doubt the Weapons would put up a fight, but they’d never withstand the full might of the empire. The tombs had been the last bastion of the home she knew, and now they, too, would fall.

“Keep moving,” she said, prodding him firmly with her staff but not hard enough to hurt him—though it was tempting to injure one of his kidneys by shoving harder in just the right place. Injuring him would prove . . . satisfying. She returned to the shadows, darkness fringing her thoughts. For all the harm he had caused her and her friends, would anyone blame her for hurting him? Killing him?

No,
she thought, as she glided from the shadow of one column to the next.
Insufficient. He deserves torture. Drawn out and excruciating torture.

The darkness in her mind grew as she traveled abreast of Silk. Every so often someone would pass in the corridor. Some greeted Silk, others did not. Some actually seemed to go out of their way to keep their distance from him.

Karigan tried to focus on remaining silent and faded. The use of her ability weighed on her, wearied her, steeped her mind in the darkness.

A man walking from the opposite direction actually stopped to speak to Silk. Silk engaged in the conversation. Karigan listened closely to them, but the topic appeared to be bureaucratic in nature.

“I am preparing form 2018A for acquisition of archival storage cabinets as you requested,” the man was saying.

Silk affected keen interest, eagerly asking about forms this and that, and debating the dimensions of cabinets. The other man, encouraged by Silk’s interest, eagerly supplied the dimensions and made recommendations for additional cabinets.

What if, Karigan wondered, Silk alerted the man to his predicament? She would kill both of them. A quick glance along the corridor showed only one or two other souls anywhere nearby. She would kill them all. It would be so easy to dart out of the shadows and take them by surprise. She was beginning to like this ruthless thing.

It was clear that Silk was stretching the conversation beyond its natural conclusion. He was trying to buy time, or possibly communicate to the man that he was in trouble. The man was so flattered by the attention of such an important personage that he seemed oblivious to Silk’s need for rescue and eagerly carried on the conversation.

Down the corridor a door opened, and another man poked his head out. “Tomkins! There you are, you laggard. Back to work now!”

Silk’s companion, Tomkins, grimaced. “I am sorry, sir, but duty calls.” He bowed and added, “It is an honor to know of your interest in the procurement of the cabinets.” He bowed again and left.

Silk watched after him with hunched shoulders, then continued forward at a reluctant pace on the course Karigan had set for him. He peered about as if looking for someone else to converse with.

It would not do.

When Karigan found an empty side corridor, she grabbed Silk and dragged him into it and snatched his specs off his face. He squinted and shielded his eyes even in the muted lighting.

“Give them back,” he said.

“You will not stop to talk to anyone,” she said. “If you do, I’ll break your specs.”

“I have other pairs, elsewhere,” he said.

She did not care. “Then I will break your eyes.” The idea grew on her as she stared into his eyes, of popping them, making them bleed . . .

“Your aura has browned,” he said.

“No more conversation,” she told him.

“I can’t help it if someone stops me.”

“You are Dr. Silk, son of the Adherent, Webster Silk. You are too important to talk to some low level bureaucrat. You are too busy. Dr. Silk would not pay the slightest attention to someone so lowly.”

“But—”

“You will do as any man of your rank would do.”

“Which is what, precisely?”

“Move on, dismiss them. Just act the way you normally would.”

“You are fortunate it is after hours,” he said, “or these corridors would be busier.” His broken mechanical hand twitched as if he were trying to make it work. No doubt he wished to strangle her.

She smiled.
Just try it. Just give me an excuse.

“If I don’t have my specs, people will notice.”

“And I won’t hesitate to break them if need be.”

“Oh, I believe you, Miss G’ladheon, but you must know this can’t end well for you.”

“No. I don’t know that,” she replied. “In any case, I’ve nothing to lose if I fail.”

Silk did not have an answer for that.

“And it is
Rider
G’ladheon,” she reminded him. “Do not forget it.”

She gave him his specs back, and they set off once again. Karigan flitted from column to column, relishing the dark that no longer hung on the fringes of her mind but ate inward. Using her ability became an ever increasing burden, her head hurting from its use, but she embraced the pain. It would get her through this, and it was balanced by the unburdening of her usual restraint against violence. She distracted herself from the pain by imagining how she’d rip Silk’s eyes out.

A small voice within her tried to shout,
This isn’t me!
But it was smothered by the darkness and the intoxication of being free to do anything she felt necessary.

The etherea is tainted,
her inner voice protested, but she dismissed it the way Silk would a petty bureaucrat.

A
s chains and manacles fell away from the witch, including the tiny spiked ones that ringed each finger, she stood taller, not slack, not weak. She did not check the injuries of her body as anyone else would. She did not weep or even cry out in relief. She did tug loose the threads that stitched her mouth shut. Tugged, and pulled them out.

Starling knelt at her feet, which were impaled with stakes bolted in the floor. He looked up at the Guardian. “Now what?”

“Pull the bolts.” It was not the Guardian who spoke, but the witch in her broken voice.

Starling had to pry beneath her feet to pull out the bolts that held the stakes in place. Though Cade had not eaten in who-knew-how-long, his gut churned as he took in the black crust of blood surrounding the stakes on her feet, and imagined the damage done to bone and tissue. This could have been Karigan’s lot if Starling was to be believed.

Starling, whose line of work would have accustomed him to all sorts of torture and gore, did not even flinch as he pried the bolts out. When he finished, he once more gazed at the Guardian.

And again, it was not the Guardian who spoke, but the witch. “Draw the spikes out.”

“Do you really want me to do this?” Starling asked the Guardian. “Do you know what might happen if she is released? Once she leaves this cell, there is no controlling her.”

Was Starling just trying to manipulate their doubts again? Cade glanced anxiously at the Guardian, but there was no way to read his expression through his visor.

“Draw the spikes out,” the Guardian said.

Starling shook his head but obeyed. He pulled the heavy metal stakes up, revealing how they tapered to a point and had pierced holes through the witch’s feet. They were crusted and flaked with blood and flesh. Cade pivoted around to dry heave, but he heard not a single cry from the witch. When he gathered himself and turned to look again, Starling had moved away, and the witch was taking her first tentative steps out of her cell. Cade extended his hand to help her, but she brushed him away. Her steps were small and mincing, shaky, but her expression showed no pain. With each step she grew steadier, and did Cade’s eyes deceive him, or did her wounds and mutilations look less . . . intense? She left footprints of blood behind her, but that was because she had stepped through the puddles of blood left by the dead guards.

She paused and pressed her hand to one of the damp walls, then withdrew it and touched her lips. Dabbed her palm with her tongue. Cade moved to her side. “Would you like water? I am sure we can find—”

“Oh,” she said, “there will be enough water.”

Cade did not know what to make of her response, but was it his imagination or had the turbines changed rhythm down below—quickened? He could no longer see any stitch marks around her mouth. The copious scarring of her body shimmered beneath the grime on her skin. Grime that sloughed away with each moment that passed.

Cade placed Silk’s pistol in his waistband and removed his jacket. He draped it over the witch’s shoulders. She nodded to him and drew it close.

Just then, the lift arrived at the other end of the corridor.

“Trouble,” the Guardian said, his sword held at the ready.

Starling laughed. “Your sword won’t help you this time, Guardian. They’ll come out shooting.”

Cade grasped his pistol and aimed it toward the lift. How accurate was it? How many would be in the lift? He had only the two shots. He licked his lips and watched as the doors opened.

Four members of the Scarlet Guard filed into the corridor. They did not come out shooting as Starling predicted. They were probably here just to change shift with their fellows. It did not take them long, however, to assess what lay before them and draw their guns. Cade perceived Starling diving to the floor to their rear, taking cover in the antechamber of the cell behind some bodies. The Guardian was already charging down the corridor, sword raised. The man was a maniac, if man he truly was beneath armor and leather. He did not slow down even as the guards pulled their first shots. Cade fired and missed. He had one more shot, had to make it good.

Before the Guardian could reach the enemy, before Cade could pull the trigger again, there was a change in the air. Cade’s ears plugged up from the pressure. A sharp wind whistled past him. At the other end of the corridor, it threw the guards backward. They slammed into the wall and floor and lost their guns.

The witch wove air with her hands, the bloody darkened wounds from the finger manacles now looking like simple ring bands.

The Guardian halted his charge to plaster himself against the wall while the wind roared past him. It ripped the weapons out of the hands of the guards, stripped them of their uniforms. They screamed. The wind began to strip them of something other than cloth. Their flesh.

Once again, Cade averted his gaze, and it was some time before the wind stopped and the screaming died. The witch just stood there, her arms limp at her sides, facing a scene at which Cade dared not look. Starling was right about what they had unleashed.

The Guardian returned and said. “We must go and meet Rider G’ladheon.”

“Yes,” Cade said faintly. For Karigan, he would brave the mess at the other end of the corridor.

Back in the antechamber, Starling climbed to his feet. Too late, Cade spotted the flash of metal, a gun he’d retrieved from one of the bodies. He fired. The Guardian’s body jerked backward, but he did not fall. Cade could not seem to raise his pistol fast enough, and Starling fired again. This time the Guardian staggered.

The witch whirled and wind ripped down the corridor. It lifted Starling off his feet and hurled him into her old cell. The door slammed shut after him, and locks clicked and closed seemingly of their own volition. A moment of silence was followed by muffled banging on the door.

Cade helped the Guardian sink to the floor. One bullet had penetrated plate armor over his chest, the second his gut.

“Lie quietly,” Cade said. “I will stop the bleeding.”

He cast about for something he could use as bandages when the Guardian gripped his wrist. As wounded as he was, he was still strong.

“No need,” he gasped.

“But—”

“Death is honor.”

Cade knew that phrase. “That is the motto of the Black Shields.”

The Guardian’s eyes flickered beyond the eye holes of his visor. “You . . . you know it?”

Cade nodded. “I was training. In secret. To be . . . I had hoped to become a—a Weapon.”

“I was King Zachary’s Weapon. And the queen’s.” The Guardian’s words grew faint. “Proud.”

Cade bowed his head, realizing there was little he could do to help him. A true Weapon, dying right in front of him.

“Tell . . . tell Rider G’ladheon. Tell her I died well.”

“I will,” Cade said, even as the Guardian’s grip slackened on his wrist. The sound of the pump apparatus that fed air to the Guardian from the cylinders on his back sputtered to silence.

“Unneeded,” the witch said.

Cade had almost forgotten her presence. “What?”

“Unneeded,” she repeated. “This dying.”

“Of course it’s unneeded!” Cade snapped.

But she disregarded him and knelt beside the Guardian. She laid her hands over his wounds. When she withdrew them, a bullet lay on each palm. Cade’s mouth dropped open. Blood no longer flowed from the wounds, and the Guardian’s grip strengthened on his wrist. The breathing apparatus wheezed back to life.

“Thank you, Yolandhe,” the Guardian said.

“You freed me.”

The Guardian refused help and rose under his own power, showing no sign he’d been dealt mortal wounds just minutes ago. Cade had been magically healed himself, but it still amazed him. Dead. The Guardian should have been dead . . .

The three of them made their way toward the lift and the gore splattered across it. Cade’s feet slapped in puddles that had not been there before. Water seeped between the stones of the wall and dripped from the ceiling. Back in the cell, Starling still banged on the door and yelled for them to release him.

By the time they reached the lift, there was no mistaking that the drubbing of the turbines had increased. Now they pounded like a rapid heartbeat, the shuddering floor sending ripples across the surface of the water that was now ankle deep.

“It’s flooding,” Cade murmured. That it was the witch’s doing, he had no doubt.

“Yes,” said the witch, Yolandhe.

Cade followed the Guardian into the lift, Yolandhe serenely stepping in after him. Before the Guardian slid the doors closed, the last thing Cade saw was the corridor rapidly filling with water. It now poured down the walls and out of the ceiling, sounding like a storm, the turbines the thunder. Even over the clamor, Cade could hear Starling still yelling and pounding on the steel door of his cell.

 • • • 

Yolandhe did not speak as the lift ascended. She tilted her face up as if gazing at the ceiling, though she had no eyes. To Cade, the farther the lift carried them from the prison level, the less gaunt she appeared, the more power she emanated. It made his skin prickle.

“I have to reach Arhys and Lorine,” he told the Guardian. “They are not safe here.”

“The little girl and her governess? I assume one of them is more important than she seems. Dr. Silk was very interested in the little girl, and you were training as a Weapon.”

Cade glanced anxiously at Yolandhe, but he sensed that to her, they might as well not exist. He wondered what went through her mind, or was she simply insane from all the years of abuse and captivity?

As for the Guardian? Karigan trusted him. He had helped them escape. He’d been a Black Shield, and his skill with a sword down below had been the stuff of legend, but it was not so easy for Cade to give up Arhys’ secret, a secret he had guarded for so long.

“Is there some way you can prove to me you are still a Black Shield?” he asked. “Some way to show me you are loyal to the kings and queens of the old realm?”

The Guardian undid a couple of buckles and moved a portion of his breast plate aside. He removed a brooch or badge from his leather undercoat and displayed it on his palm. It was a piece of bonewood like Karigan’s staff, and shaped into a plain black shield.

“I have worn this over my heart since before Sacoridia ever fell. I have worn it every day even as the Eternal Guardian.”

Cade knew of these badges. The professor had told him about them, and how all the Weapons from the period of the fall wore them. He’d actually seen them worn by the tomb Weapons. They represented unwavering loyalty and duty to their country and their order.

“You must have guessed who Arhys is,” Cade said.

“I have.”

“What does it mean to you?” Cade asked carefully.

“It means I would protect her as I would King Zachary, Queen Estora, and their son.” The Guardian pinned the badge back on and replaced the section of breastplate that concealed it. Then he turned his attention to the lift’s controls.

They arranged that Cade would once again play the prisoner, the Guardian his captor. The Guardian would escort Cade through the palace. As for Yolandhe, when they all exited the lift, she wandered off in her own direction.

When Cade made to go after her, the Guardian grabbed his arm. “No. Her fate is her own.”

“But . . .” he began, then watched her go. She walked without shame of her nudity beneath his jacket, and not at all disoriented by her lack of sight. She appeared to know exactly where she was headed. Her fingers danced as if she felt her way along the currents and eddies of air that streamed through the corridor. What would happen when she encountered others?

The memory of gore strewn across the prison level below gave him some idea.

The Guardian was right—they had freed her, and now her fate was her own. Whatever it was, Cade wished her well, and hoped that her release would distract the palace guards away from his own mission.

The Guardian steered Cade through the palace corridors. They were fairly quiet, so he guessed it was evening. The only unusual thing he noticed along the way was that the various fountains were spilling over and were erratic in their displays. Water trickled from a fish’s mouth one moment, then spurted with great force the next. Harried slaves worked to mop up the puddles forming around the fountains, but could not keep up.

“Which way to Arhys and Lorine?” Cade asked.

“Do not worry about them,” the Guardian replied. “I will help them. I will lead them out of the palace and protect them. You will help Rider G’ladheon.”

Cade did not argue. Could not, for now Arhys would have a true Weapon to protect her. They halted near the dragon fountain. Water was slopping over its sides as well, but the slaves had not gotten to it yet. They must have been overwhelmed elsewhere.

“I will leave you here,” the Guardian said, then told him how to reach the museum. “I will go to the princess and her governess now, before the whole palace is aroused.”

They clasped one another’s wrists in a warrior’s leave-taking. “My thanks,” Cade said.

“Just see that Rider G’ladheon succeeds.”

Cade nodded, but the Guardian was already away, trotting back down the way they had come. Cade moved quickly, too, choosing the corridor that would lead to the museum. Perhaps it was his exhaustion from captivity, but from the moment he had left Karigan to go to Yolandhe’s cell, it had seemed he moved in a dream. A dream of witches and blood and legendary warriors.