Mirror Sight (10 page)

“Who was Lady Amalya Whitewren?” Cade asked.

“I have no idea,” Karigan replied.

“She was only one of the most popular poets of your time.”

Karigan shrugged. She’d never heard of this person, but it wasn’t surprising since she did not follow what was happening in poetry.

The professor cleared his throat. “Cade, if I’m not mistaken, Lady Amalya came into prominence after Karigan G’ladheon left for Blackveil.”

“That could be,” Cade said, nodding thoughtfully. “Then tell me—”

And so the questioning went on. At times the two men seemed to forget they were testing her, more interested in confirming or debunking theories about customs, dress, architecture, arts, and politics. Karigan had to sip her cooling tea to moisten her throat.

“Enough,” the professor finally said. “For now, anyway.” He smiled. “Are you satisfied, Cade?”

“Either she is unusually well-tutored and a good actress, or she is speaking truth.” He sighed heavily. “I concede that by some miracle, whether by this magical mask or other means, she has come to us through time. The evidence supports her.”

“But you still doubt?” the professor persisted.

“You know me, Professor, I always question.”

“That’s a fine attribute in an archeologist.” The professor turned back to Karigan. “My dear, despite my own doubts, I began to believe you rather early on, after our initial chat. I had come across the name of ‘Karigan G’ladheon’ in some of my books. One mentions how you saved King Zachary’s throne from his usurper brother.”

Karigan squirmed in her chair, thinking it very odd to be mentioned in any book.

“I’d also seen your name listed in various roll calls that have survived to this day, and the one in which you suddenly became Rider Sir Karigan G’ladheon rather than just Rider G’ladheon. There is an account of how a Rider G’ladheon had rescued King Zachary’s betrothed, though the telling of it is maddeningly lacking in details. In any case, if I am correct, it is after this rescue that you were anointed to knighthood.”

Karigan nodded, squirming some more.

“I hope you will tell me that story sometime, yourself, but not tonight as we’ve already asked much of you.”

She sighed in relief and relaxed.

“There is another G’ladheon mentioned in passing in some of the histories, a prominent merchant.”

“Yes,” Karigan said, “my father.”

The professor brightened. “Ah, I had hoped so. It’s just so very exciting to make connections. I mention all this because after your arrival, I sought to confirm your identity, or at least that of whom you claimed to be, so I took to doing research on the G’ladheon name. I once again came across those references I mentioned before, and found new ones, including a roster of those Sacoridians going on the expedition to Blackveil. It included details about how the expedition was provisioned and outfitted, which I found very interesting. You see, one little detail had nagged me about the garb you were wearing when you arrived here. Everything was right but the boots. You were not wearing riding boots as a Green Rider ought.”

“No,” Karigan agreed. “We were issued infantry boots because we’d be on foot in Blackveil, not riding.”

“Exactly! And it was the detail of those infantry boots that clinched it, that made me believe absolutely that you are who you say you are. They matched the roster. How could you have known such a fine detail if you hadn’t been there, or read the reference only I own, which is stored here in my secret library?”

“You did not tell me any of this,” Cade said, and now he looked at Karigan with perhaps more belief in his eyes.

“I am telling you now. I’ve kept you busy watching the students while I researched.” He gestured with an expression of pride at his shelves of books. “I did find something intriguing, my dear,” he said, turning back to Karigan, “and about Blackveil. It seems you entered the forest and never returned. And if I may leap to a conclusion, you never returned because you ended up here.”

Karigan now found herself gripping her armrests. “You mean I never returned home? Not even from here?”

“The records, scant as they are, reveal nothing.”

A scream of despair welled up in Karigan’s chest.

“I
t does not mean you never returned,” the professor said, his expression kindly. “It just means I never found a record of it.” He stood and started scouring the bookshelves, muttering to himself.

For Karigan, it was as if a trapdoor had flung open beneath her, revealing a yawning chasm. She did not want to be stuck here—she wanted to go home to her friends and family, the world she knew. His pronouncement had defeated any hope that she would find a way back. She squeezed her eyes shut trying to recall the words the Berry sisters once told her about the future . . .
It is not set in stone.
That’s what they had said. Even the looking mask had shown her the infinite possibilities, the variations of the world’s time threads. But if she were already
in the future,
could her past now be set in stone?

When she opened her eyes again, the professor was rolling the ladder along the bookshelves until he found whatever section he wanted and climbed. He reached for a volume on the top shelf. “Ah, yes,” he said muttering to himself. “This one.”

Cade Harlowe simply stared at her, immovable. She stared back, refusing to be intimidated.

“Here we are,” the professor said. He clambered back down and handed Karigan the book before retreating to his chair. “The last evidence.”

She examined it. It was ledger size, bound in plain leather, so like the many others she had handled; but the leather was worn and damaged by moisture, and the pages within as delicate as fallen autumn leaves. She carefully flipped through a few of the pages, gazed at the precise handwriting within, set in columns listing payroll by the week. Some of the ink was smeared, some pages torn or too stained to read, but she knew this ledger, had handled it in a different age. And she knew the handwriting well, for it was her own.

She caressed the familiar names listed in the columns: Mara Brennyn, Ty Newland, Alton D’Yer, Osric M’Grew . . . A few more pages in, and she saw where she had written,
Deceased
next to Osric’s name, and the time-in-service pay he had not lived to collect. A notation showed that the pay, and a death benefit, had been forwarded to his mother. She wiped a tear from her cheek before it could besmirch the ledger.

She had not been happy to take on the duty of keeping the Rider accounts, but with her merchant background, Captain Mapstone had thought her the best one to handle them, and rightly so. Maintaining the ledgers for the business ventures of Clan G’ladheon had been her least favorite duty when she worked with her father, but she’d been good at it. She’d thought it a terrible irony when she ended up having to do it for the Green Riders.

Now as she looked upon those names, no few marked
Deceased
as Osric’s had been, she realized it had been an honor to keep the ledgers. And what a marvel to have such a connection to her own time, something as mundane as this. It was almost like, she thought, peering out of one’s own grave. No, better to think of it as a window to her own time.

She continued looking, oblivious to the two men who watched her intently. Of course she saw her own name listed and rate of pay. There was that snarl she’d made of Rider accounts at the end of winter. Well, the end of winter back in her own time. She smiled, remembering the mess, spending such long hours trying to untangle it that she’d forgotten the payroll. Here her handwriting grew less tidy, as though she’d been frantic to fill in names and numbers in record time. Unpaid Riders were unhappy Riders.

Pages rustled as she turned them. Abruptly her own handwriting ended, and the equally neat but distinctive hand of Daro Cooper began. The captain had thought it wise that another Rider be trained to handle the accounts during Karigan’s absences, and Daro assumed that duty when Karigan left for Blackveil.

“How did you ever . . . ?” Karigan began. She glanced up at the professor. “How did you ever find this ledger?” She was surprised something so mundane had survived the years as well as the presumed purging of such records by the empire.

“It was not easy. Occasionally one in my work stumbles upon such relics from the time before the emperor. I am duty bound to hand over anything of particular interest to the emperor. Not all of it, of course, comes into his hands. And there are others who . . . scavenge . . . beneath the emperor’s notice. There is quite a healthy black market for relics. I purchased the ledger from one such dealer. Indirectly, of course. Wouldn’t do to leave a trail for the Inspectors to follow.”

“Black market . . .” Karigan murmured, her gaze drawn once more to the book. She turned the pages, everything looking right and orderly, until abruptly she came to Yates Cardell’s name and the word,
Deceased.
A sob caught in her throat, and her eyes blurred the matter-of-fact statement that his accrued pay and benefits were to go to a cousin in D’Ivary Province. Had Daro cried when she made the entry, as Karigan had when she recorded the deaths of Osric M’Grew and others?

With another glance she saw that Lynx’s name remained with no additional statement. Lynx must have made it—made it home—and reported Yates’ death.

Oh, Yates . . .
She had feared it was so, that he’d died in the nexus of Castle Argenthyne, deep in the heart of Blackveil. How could he have survived the presence of Mornhavon in his body, burning him from the inside out? And when she had smashed the looking mask at his feet, she thought she might have destroyed
all
her companions, including the Eletians. Their names threaded through her mind in a subconscious whisper:
Ealdaen, Telagioth, Lhean.

Despite her fears, she’d held out hope; hope for dear, funny Yates. Yates, who’d had so much of a future ahead of him. Yates, her friend. He’d kept her going when the two of them had become separated from the others in Blackveil, had helped each other survive.

She did not notice when the professor stood and crossed over to her chair, but there he was at her elbow proffering a handkerchief. She took it gratefully, dried her eyes and blew her nose.

He must have seen how her fingers rested on Yates’ name because he said, “One of your companions who went into Blackveil with you. A good friend?”

“Yes,” she replied. “They all were.”

She found her own name several lines beneath Yates’. She was listed as
Missing.

Missing, not deceased.

“Is this what you wanted me to see?” she asked the professor, pointing at the entry.

“Er, keep looking.”

She did. Over the weeks of entries that followed, Daro continued to list her as
Missing.
Pay was set aside for her. Weeks turned into months when finally she came to the entry,
G’ladheon, Sir Karigan, presumed dead. Accrued pay and benefits to father in Corsa, L’Petrie Province.

She glanced through the last few pages of the ledger, but did not see her name again. “They thought I died in Blackveil.”

“It is the only evidence of your fate we possess,” the professor said, “other than your sitting here at this moment in this very chair.”

“I never returned.”

“Who is to say? They presumed you dead, but you are not. You got here somehow so who is to say it’s impossible for you to return? But that said, I’m afraid we’ve never found anything to suggest that you made it back.”

Karigan reread the simple words in Daro’s neat script, so toneless and without emotion. How had her father taken the news? Her aunts? How long did it take her friends to forget about her and move on with their lives? Not very long, she figured. Green Riders were always kept busy with duties to fulfill, more dangers to face. They could not afford to dwell on the death of any single Rider.

Her beloved Condor would have been partnered with another Rider. They’d been in need of many more horses. Who was chosen? Karigan had not been his first Rider. He, too, would move on.

And King Zachary? What would he feel? He was to be married on the summer solstice—Day of Aeryon—of that year. He, too, would have his attention drawn elsewhere.

As it should be.

She closed the ledger with a thump, this familiar, yet at the same time strange, book, this artifact that tied her to her home. She handed it back to the professor, who reverently laid it on his desk.

“I can’t imagine how odd it must be to see that.” He shook his head. “No, I cannot. Makes me shiver to think of it. Makes me shiver to see you sitting here before me, a living artifact.”

Karigan bristled with anger. “Should I place myself on one of your shelves then?”

The professor winced. “Sorry, my dear. Forgive me. It was my archeological bent speaking. Here you are, torn from your own time and home, and I spoke without thinking.”

“Don’t mind the professor.” Cade Harlowe’s voice was so unexpected that it startled Karigan. His expression had lost its intensity and had softened into compassion. “The professor,” Cade continued with a bit of a drawl, “sometimes forgets we’re not all artifacts.”

“I’m not that bad, Old Button,” the professor said.

Old Button?
she wondered. The two men laughed as at a familiar joke, and Karigan’s anger bled away.

“Do I have your forgiveness?” the professor asked.

Karigan nodded and he responded with a courtly bow.

“Good, because I have more to show you and the night grows short.”