Mirror Sight (14 page)

A
t that moment, Arhys darted into the room, throwing herself at the professor’s chair.

“An outing?” she cried. “I may go, mayn’t I? And we can stop at the sweets shop! I could wear my new coat!”

The students appeared unfazed by Arhys’ abrupt appearance and outburst, though Cade frowned.

The professor tousled Arhys’ hair. “But you’ve already had several outings this week, dear child, and I know Mr. Harlowe has your lessons all ready for you.”

“I don’t want to do my lessons! I want to go out—”

“Another time, perhaps.”

“But I want to go NOW.”

“Arhys, child, I need to spend some time with Miss Goodgrave and introduce her to the city. You’ve your lessons with Mr. Harlowe to attend to, and when Mirriam returns from her errands, she’ll have a list of tasks for you.”

“No, I want—”

“Arhys!” The professor’s voice, which had been mild, turned sharp. “I have spoken. That is enough.”

The girl pouted, then pointed at Karigan. “I never get to do anything nice since you got here. I hate you.” And she stomped from the room.

The professor looked bemused as he watched the girl.

Cade stood. “I’ll see to her, sir,” he said. He dropped his napkin on the table and left.

“Don’t envy that,” Mr. Stockwell said in a low voice.

“My pardon,” the professor said gazing at Karigan. “Usually the girl is cheerful and biddable—I’ve never had to raise my voice with her. I guess I shall have to give her a talking to about her behavior.”

Karigan nodded, but he struck her as the sort of man who’d rather avoid such a confrontation and would likely forget about it.

The rest of breakfast proceeded quietly enough, with the students discussing their day’s work or joking among themselves. They did not seem to know what to say to Karigan and so did not address her. She, herself, had no idea of what to say, so it was a relief.

Eventually the students finished and one by one stood and bowed to her with a polite, “Miss,” and departed. Grott, the butler, appeared, bearing a thick roll of papers on a silver tray, along with a steaming mug. Karigan caught a whiff of the rich aroma of kauv.

“Ah, very good, Grott. The morning rag.” The professor removed both mug and papers from the tray and sipped at the kauv appreciatively. “Dark and brisk, just the way I like it.” He unrolled the papers—they were densely printed with type and pictures.

“What is that?” Karigan asked after the butler left the dining room.

“Kauv. Would you care for some?”

“Er, no. I mean the papers.”

“Oh. The daily news, such as it is. Mainly the emperor’s propaganda, I daresay. What new laws have been enacted that we must follow, the latest fire in town, and the emperor’s patronage to various ceremonies and events. That sort of thing. Now my dear, when you are finished with your meal, Lorine will help you prepare for our excursion into the city.”

“I—I’m not prepared?” Karigan glanced down at herself as if to once more find herself in her nightgown.

“Women’s dress is beyond me,” he said with an absent wave of his hand, “but I understand there are certain protocols to follow if a woman is to be considered properly stylish. Lorine will know what to do.” He rolled his eyes and attended to his papers.

Karigan stood, and Lorine came to her at once. Upstairs, she helped Karigan change out of the green dress into the sapphire. Evidently the green was her morning dress and the sapphire was an outing dress. Her shoes were changed to a stiffer and more polished black pair, and this time she was equipped with matching gloves, cloak, and brimmed hat adorned with a silk ribbon and a fine veil of netting that fell over her face. Karigan tried to blow it away, causing Lorine to laugh.

“You must wear the veil,” she said.

“Why? It’s ridiculous, and it tickles my nose.”

“It is proper. And it may protect you from the ill humors in the air. Now this color suits you, doesn’t it.” She straightened Karigan’s cloak with a satisfied expression on her face.

Ill humors,
Karigan thought acerbically. The veil itself was giving her ill humors. She did not understand the reasoning behind how hiding her face was supposed to be more proper.

Once more downstairs, she said as much to the professor while they waited in the foyer for the carriage to be brought around. He replied, “The emperor came up with the guidelines for what is acceptable. He has certain notions of how a true woman should behave and appear.” He shrugged. “It is all we’ve ever known and are accustomed to it. Best you pretend to be, as well.” He leaned down and whispered, “I’ve always thought the women have a certain advantage with their veils, because the rest of us can never tell what they are thinking.”

“Are the women here even allowed to think?” She assumed he’d have no trouble in detecting the sarcasm in her voice.

The professor gave her a startled glance, then said, his voice very low, “The emperor would prefer none of us to think very much.”

With that pronouncement, a carriage drawn by a smart pair of white horses pulled up front, and the professor escorted her out into the open air of spring. It was damp and cool, and as she inhaled deeply, she tasted the now familiar acrid tang that permeated the city. The professor handed her up into the cab, and as she settled onto a cushioned leather seat, he paused outside to give the driver instructions before joining her, taking the seat across from her. When the carriage rolled forward, she observed that the sleek vehicle rode much more smoothly than those she was accustomed to.

“Almost like home, but not quite,” she murmured, before gazing out the window to take in the sameness of rows of brick houses.

The professor sighed, leaning back in his seat. “I’m afraid the horse and carriage have not changed very much in the last two hundred years. You would think with all the ingenuity of the machine men and engineers they’d have invented some other form of less tedious conveyance.”

“Why haven’t they?”

“The emperor likes horses. Machine replacements are not permitted.”

Karigan didn’t know what to say to that. She didn’t recall Mornhavon the Black having any special affinity for horses. In fact, she didn’t think he’d had an affinity for anything but cruelty and violence.

The veil clouded her vision, so she pulled it aside to continue watching out the window, noting that other women along the street also wore hats with veils of one kind or another, whether or not they appeared by their dress to be of an upper or lower class. Then she saw a young woman with neither hat nor veil, her gaze cast down and her garb very plain, burdened by several parcels and following behind another woman.

“Professor,” Karigan said, touching his sleeve and pointing.
“She
hasn’t a veil.”

“Probably a slave,” he said, as if that explained everything. “Household slave, I’d hazard.”

“Slaves don’t wear veils?”

The professor shook his head. “No, they are beneath consideration by society, not people.”

Appalled, Karigan watched the young woman disappear from view, the irony that slaves were free to bare their faces, while non-slaves were not, was not lost on her.

As happy as Karigan had been to be allowed out of the house, the yellow, gray haze in the sky, the cheerless brick facades of the buildings, and seeing her first slave, weighed down her spirits. She asked the professor what his students knew about her.

“Not much,” he replied. “That you were confined to an institution, and I brought you here to regain your health. They’ll draw their own conclusions from that.”

The carriage turned down another street before resuming its rhythmic sway. The clip-clop of the horse’s hooves was familiar and soothing.

“We’ve left my neighborhood,” the professor said, “which is, if I may say so, the best you will find in the city. Dregs by the standards of those who live in the Capital, but extremely nice by Mill City standards. Now we are heading toward the commercial district.”

Brick houses changed into brick storefronts, the main variation the signs that hung out front and big windows to display wares. They passed a grocery, a lens maker, a barber, a baker . . . The sidewalks were crowded with men and women intent on reaching their destinations. A couple of brawny men, with brands on their cheeks and ankles shackled, loaded heavy-looking crates into the back of a wagon. They were overseen by a stern-looking man holding a whip.

“More slaves?” Karigan asked quietly.

The professor nodded. “Some masters are crueler than others and brand their slaves as boldly as they would livestock. There are those who protest such treatment, but the majority believe, as they’ve been taught, that slaves are indeed the equivalent of livestock. Of course, few raise their voices in protest, as it draws unwanted attention from the Capital, and dissenters have a way of disappearing.”

They drew past the pedestal of a statue, but from Karigan’s vantage, she could see only the statue’s boots.

“Our emperor,” the professor said in a flat voice. “Statues of him are in every city, town, and village.”

The carriage slowed down and eventually came to a standstill, the street growing more congested with people and vehicles and horses. The professor swung open the door and leaned out. “What’s going on, Luke?”

Karigan could not hear the driver’s response.

“Well, then circle round, man,” the professor called, and he pulled himself back inside.

“What is it?” Karigan asked.

“Horse market,” he replied. “I’d seen it announced in the news, but forgot entirely. So Luke will take us by another route.”

“Where are we going?”

“I thought you’d like to see what remains of the Old City, and get a feel for the new along the way.”

Karigan thought she already had a pretty good feel for the new city: hard, gloomy, heartless.

The carriage barely moved.

“We’d get farther along on foot,” the professor grumbled.

“Then why don’t we? Go on foot, I mean.”

The professor looked at her in surprise. “I—well—usually ladies don’t . . .”

“I’m not a lady,” she said.

“I know, I know,” he replied and then whispered, “you’re a Green Rider.”

“Is it improper for us to walk?”

“Er, not necessarily. It’s just most ladies of a certain status would not, is all.”

Karigan was darkly amused. She’d never been overly fond of the aristocracy, and here she was pretending to be part of the elite class that must pass for the aristocracy in this time.

The professor helped her out of the carriage, and she leaned on the bonewood cane while he gave instructions to the driver where to meet them. She took in the pigeons fluttering to rooftops, folk trying to make way through the crowds. Most fixed their gazes ahead, intent on where they were going. Many carriages, carts, and wagons stood immobile like the professor’s. Somewhere up ahead a horse screamed a challenge, sending a shiver through Karigan.

“Shall we?” the professor asked, and he extended his arm. Karigan smiled beneath her veil and slipped her arm through his.

“The horse market is ahead. Usually it does not cause such a back up.”

As they proceeded, men bowed their heads to them, and a few of the better dressed gentlemen greeted the professor, flicking curious glances at Karigan.

The professor leaned close. “Some word of your condition may have gotten around.”

“My madness, you mean.”

“Precisely, and usually those with such a condition are locked out of sight. I am flaunting what is generally considered unacceptable, but then, my eccentricities are well known.”

In Karigan’s own time, it was the same. The insane were either locked away or cast out to wander the streets dressed in rags and gabbling to themselves, left to survive as they could. No one wanted to be near them, as if their madness was catching, though some moon priests did try to help them.

As they continued, the crush grew worse, though some gave way to the professor and his niece. They were getting close to the source of the problem, when a horse reared up above the heads and hats of onlookers. A whip lashed out and the horse screamed again. The scream resonated all the way through Karigan’s body, to her very nerve endings, shaking her where she stood. The stallion called to her, drew her forth. She tore out of the professor’s grasp and rushed ahead, compelled to answer an urgent summons.

K
arigan pushed and squeezed past bystanders, fighting her way through the crowd to reach the horse.

“What is going on?” she heard the professor ask from behind.

A man laughed and replied, “Handler can’t control his horse and get it inside the market. He’s a wild one.”

Karigan stumbled free of the press and into a cleared space where horse and handler struggled with one another. The horse, a huge bay stallion, was so dark he was almost black with subtle ebon dappling on his hindquarters. He’d a star on his forehead and a chip of white on his nose, his mane long and full. He quivered in terror, or maybe defiance, showing the whites of his eyes. He tossed his head, the lather of sweat, mixed with blood, flying off his strong arched neck onto the cobbled street.

The handler’s assistant held a twitch, which he could have used to restrain the stallion, but he seemed afraid to draw near enough to the horse’s head and flailing hooves to make use of the device.

He should have employed it
before
the horse went berserk, Karigan thought.

A red-uniformed Inspector also stood nearby, his hands on his hips. She almost forgot the horse when she spotted the bizarre mechanical crouched beside the Inspector, a metal orb about the diameter of a large barrel, with brass fittings and six spiderlike legs, an oily ichor oozing around its joints and staining the metal like blood. A spyglass eye lengthened and retracted as though to focus on the scene before it. Karigan staggered back into the professor.

“What is that thing?” she asked him.

“An Enforcer. Most Inspectors work with one.”

Karigan’s knees weakened, and she was glad to have the bonewood cane to support her.

“They are some of the most advanced machines in the empire,” the professor explained with a shudder. “Avoid them at all costs.”

Karigan did not have to be told. Her shudder echoed the professor’s as the Enforcer lifted one of its long, jointed legs and stretched it forward as if to sense something in the air. Steam puffed from a short pipe that protruded from the top of the orb. It was a nightmare, she thought, such as only Mornhavon the Black could devise.

The horse reared, and the assistant with the twitch retreated again, eliciting laughter from the audience.

“If you cannot control that horse,” the Inspector shouted, “I will shoot it. You are disrupting traffic.” He settled his hand on what Karigan took to be a tool sheathed on his belt.

“What does it mean he’ll shoot the horse?” Karigan asked the professor desperately.

“He will fire his gun at the horse to kill it.”

Fire? Gun?
But Karigan did not ask for an explanation. Knowing it meant the horse would be killed was enough. The poor beast was simply enraged by, and fearful of, the whip, and the commotion of the crowd was not helping.

The bay scraped his hoof on the cobbled street. The Inspector grasped the handle of his tool—gun—whatever to pull it from its sheath.

“No!” she cried.

The professor gripped her arm hard as if to silence her, but it was too late. The Inspector darted his gaze at her, and so did many others, including the horse whose ears went to point. The dark molasses brown of his eye caught hers. She was fixed by his gaze to the exclusion of all else. She became oblivious to the shouting of the handler and the Inspector drawing his weapon, the murmur of the crowd, the Enforcer riveting its telescoping eye on her.

The bay lifted his nose to the sky to scent the air, still watching her. Something passed between them, a warmth, an understanding.

Suddenly the horse half-reared and surged toward her, dragging his handler behind him. In her peripheral vision, she saw the Inspector raise his odd weapon and aim it at the horse.

“Nooo!” she screamed.

The professor tried to pull her away, but she’d the strength to resist.

“Don’t shoot!” cried an authoritative voice. “The horse is mine, and I’ll deal with it.”

The Inspector paused, then lowered his weapon. After that, Karigan heard no more, for the bay had reached her, halted, and placed his velvety nose in her hands. He blew gentle breaths into her palms, and she saw herself mirrored in his eye. The handler jerked on the lead rope.

“Give that to me!” Karigan snatched it right out of his grasp. He waggled his whip. “If you raise that whip again,” she told him, “I shall take it from you as well and break it.”

The man paused, seeming to debate the level of threat she posed. The professor stepped between them. Karigan concentrated on stroking the bay’s sweat-slicked neck.

“Good boy,” she said in soothing tones. “Good, good boy.” The horse’s eyelids drooped, and his ears flickered as he listened to her. Then everything stilled for her and the image of immense black wings brushed through her mind, the echo of distant hoofbeats. “Raven,” she murmured. “Your name is Raven.” She did not know how she knew this, but she did with a firm certainty.

“Actually,” said the owner of the authoritative voice who’d stopped the Inspector from using his weapon, “his name is Samson, and he belongs to me.”

The professor groaned beside her and whispered to her, “Now you’ve done it. Let me do all the talking.”

Karigan looked up. The crowd had begun to disperse, the Inspector shooing people along, his Enforcer prodding them with the tip of one sleek leg. Again she couldn’t help a shudder of revulsion. Traffic began to move around them, and Samson’s owner stood before them, his arms folded across his chest.

He wore a finely tailored gray suit and the tall style of hat that seemed so popular here. His cravat was a matching silk, and diamond cufflinks winked in the sun. He wore a gold brooch shaped in the emblem of the empire on his lapel—the dragon with tail wrapped around its neck. Tucked beneath his elbow he carried a slim and elegant walking cane topped by a golden knob. Even as she took in these details, one above all others caught her attention: his specs. The lenses were a smoky dark that hid his eyes.

The three of them and the bay became an island in the traffic, the Inspector directing carriages, wagons, carts, and pedestrians to flow around them. They were not asked to relocate, all else was required to move around them. It spoke to the man’s importance.

The bay remained calm beside Karigan despite the activity on all sides However, if any of his handlers attempted to approach, he laid his ears back and stomped.

“Samson likes you, young lady,” the man with the dark specs said, “and I did not think him capable of liking anyone.”

Before Karigan could reply, the professor intervened. “Kari, this is Dr. Silk, a
colleague
of mine in the field of archeology.” The way he said the word “colleague” made it sound like an epithet.

“And I trust this is your niece, Miss Goodgrave, who has so recently joined your household.”

“It is.”

Dr. Silk extended a black-gloved hand to her. It rotated unnaturally on his wrist, emitting a low whirring sound, then came to a stop with a distinct
snick.
The stallion tossed his head, and it took all Karigan had not to recoil from the man. Instead, she turned to the horse to quiet him, but still, Dr. Silk’s hand remained extended. He raised a silver gray eyebrow over the rim of one of his lenses, the darkness of the glass seeming to billow like storm clouds or a swirling void.

The professor passed her an imploring look. Reluctantly she placed her hand in Dr. Silk’s. Although his grasp was firm, it did not feel unlike any other hand she’d ever held. Perhaps she’d only imagined the unnatural motion, the noise.

Dr. Silk bowed over their clasped hands. “It is a pleasure to meet you.” He smiled and released her, and the moment passed.

The two men stared at one another like cats, though the professor was probably at a disadvantage, unable to see Dr. Silk’s eyes. Karigan absently stroked the bay’s neck, his flesh quivering beneath her touch.

“Kari,” the professor said, without averting his gaze, “give the lead rope to Dr. Silk.”

Karigan felt her hackles rise. The bay snorted. She could not let this horse back into the possession of those who would abuse him. Karigan was about to argue, when Dr. Silk spoke.

“Perhaps we can come to some accord. I have brought Samson to market because he’s unmanageable. He’s already killed one of my hostlers. I thought perhaps if no one else would buy him today, maybe the meat men would. A pity, for he is a fine specimen of a horse.”

“Knackers?” Karigan demanded, her hand tightening on the lead rope.

“Precisely.” A faint smile fluttered on his lips. “A terrible shame.”

Karigan found herself staring at her own reflection in his specs, though the cloudy darkness of the glass seemed to swallow it.

He returned his gaze to the professor, and Karigan exhaled in relief. “Seeing as your niece and Samson have taken to one another, perhaps he need not face slaughter after all.”

“What are you saying?” the professor demanded. “That I buy this beast from you?”

“For a very reasonable price.”

“I don’t need—”

“Uncle,” she said hastily. She grabbed his arm, squeezing it to make sure she had his full attention. “Please, this horse, he’s
special.”

“Kari, he’s killed a man.”

“You wouldn’t know by looking at him now,” Dr. Silk said. “Harmless as a kitten in your niece’s hands.”

The bay watched the exchange with ears perked, head lowered beside Karigan so she could pet him. Nothing about him indicated danger.

“In fact,” Dr. Silk continued, “your niece appears to have a calming effect on him. It’d be a waste to send him to slaughter, but if that is what I must do, that’s what I’ll do. You are the one who will have to contend with your niece’s broken heart.”

Karigan would use the bonewood on anyone who tried to take the horse away from her, even if it meant ending the whole charade and losing the professor’s protection. This horse, he was not ordinary, in fact . . . Well, she couldn’t swear on it, but . . . “He’s
special,”
she said again to the professor, trying to impress it upon him with all her will.

“See? She’s already attached,” Dr. Silk said. “And my price is reasonable.”

The professor stared hard at Karigan. She tried to gaze meaningfully at him through her veil. He frowned, made a noise of exasperation, then nodded to himself as if coming to some conclusion and began negotiating.

She sighed in relief. The connection she felt with this horse was so like the one she shared with her own Condor, the quiet intelligence that went beyond an ordinary horse. She could only conclude that the big bay stallion was of the same lineage as all Green Rider horses, and that maybe magic was not completely dead in the world after all.