Mirror Sight (29 page)

“Exactly!” The professor pointed the letter opener at him. “They will underestimate you. Yes, they will know you are my protégé, but because of your lower status, they will dismiss you at the same time. You will use that to listen and observe in a way that I cannot. They will treat you like a servant, forget that you’ve eyes and ears, and you will bring your observations back to me. You will also keep a sharp eye on Miss Goodgrave here and ensure she isn’t beguiled into any missteps by Silk’s charm.”

Cade did not protest. He said nothing at all, his gaze projected straight ahead. Karigan did not think he’d make a very good spy—he was much too transparent in his thoughts, but she believed the professor had it right about the upper class guests regarding him as no more than a servant. They’d ignore him.

“I haven’t got a good enough suit,” Cade said finally. “No evening wear.”

“All the better,” the professor replied. “It will just reinforce your low status.”

Now Cade stared at the ceiling as if trying to suppress further argument.

“I haven’t got the full list of guests,” the professor said, “but I know the city master and his wife are invited, along with some of the elite of this city and the Capital.”

“The Capital?” Cade’s voice was tight.

“Yes, my boy. They’ll be even less informed about the lower class, since they are not exposed to it in the same way they would be if they lived in Mill City. They’ll find you quaint. Perhaps mildly exotic.”

Cade swallowed, said nothing. Karigan almost laughed at the idea of him as mildly exotic. And she had kissed him!

I
t was not the distant clamor of the bells that roused Lhean from the deep meditations that left him adrift in memories of verdant Eletia. No, many bells had come and gone without his notice, but this time there was something underlying the metallic clamor, like thunder in the earth. The minutest tremor reverberated through his body, so subtle that, besides himself, perhaps only burrowing creatures could feel it. Fine dust stirred in the air. A thread of unrest rattled through the rubble of the old castle.

Lhean sharpened his awareness, and when the second tolling came, he heard beneath it the subdued thunder, three separate blasts of it, that broke apart earth and rock, a power like the great magicks of old, which he was too young to have witnessed.

But etherea was gone from here. He climbed out of his crevice and in the night saw nothing amiss, but on the air drifted a hint of burning powder like that which he’d smelled after the firing of the shooting devices. In time, the scent became more pronounced.

He must not slip into his dream-memories again. They’d sustained him for now, but something new was afoot, and he must keep watch.

“I
don’t care if we have to empty all the mills of slaves to find enough labor,” Silk told the construction boss. “I will have the road repaired by this afternoon, at three hour at the latest.”

“B-but—”

“If you cannot see that it is done,” Silk said, leaning down from his saddle and pointing his riding crop at the man, “I shall appoint someone else, and you can join the slave gang in their work.”

“Yes, sir. Three hour.”

Silk nodded, and after a swift bow, the man ran off to make his arrangements. Silk sat erect once again in his saddle. Even now his household slaves were raising a canopy for his comfort while he waited.

Down the slope of the Old City’s mount, the morning light shone on his caravan where it waited at a standstill on the winding road. It consisted of Moody and his assistants from the machine shop, guards, laborers, and a long, specially constructed wagon hauled by a team of mules. It was laden with his precious drill, all covered in canvas. Even so, a steely glow permeated the cloth. Silk wondered if others saw it or if it was just an effect of his own peculiar sight.

He wrenched his stallion around and gazed up the road where a swarm of slaves were already at work repairing the first crater that had been blasted by the opposition. It had been a nasty surprise to find the first one, and even nastier to learn there’d been five others. He’d posted guards up at the drillhouse on the summit, but he hadn’t thought to cover the road. After all, the drillhouse and steam engine would be the more obvious targets, wouldn’t they? But they hadn’t been touched.

The guards had been killed stealthily, with knives driven into their backs. Silk tapped his crop on the toe of his boot. Why hadn’t the insurgents blasted the steam engine or the drillhouse? If they’d really wanted to slow him down, that’s what they should have done. Perhaps they feared his reaction?

It was true that if the steam engine were harmed, he would have butchered every inhabitant of this sorry city if he had to in order to find the culprits. So the opposition had moderated its crime hoping to escape the worst of his wrath.
Spineless.
A wasted opportunity on their part.

Still, there was some logic in their choice, if their desire was to preserve lives. Yes, undoubtedly some would die as a result of his inquiry into the blasting of his road, but there would be no bloodbath. Not today, anyway. He’d immediately tasked the chief of the Inspector force here in the city with the investigation. Clearly, the perpetrators knew how to use black powder and had some access to it. That gave the Inspectors a starting point.

In contrast, Silk reflected, the emperor would have commanded his troops to haul people out of their houses and stores and slaughter them, heedless of their guilt or innocence, to send a message to his enemies. In theory, it would turn the populace against the opposition for giving the emperor cause to shed the blood of so many. Sometimes such demonstrations worked to bring the insurgents out of hiding, to sacrifice themselves to prevent further killing, but more often than not, Silk thought, it just caused them to go to ground. And for all the emperor’s demonstrations over the decades, there was still an opposition that refused to learn his lessons.

They struck in such a way to expect a more moderate response,
Silk thought.
So fine, I will give them that. I will take a more surgical route. They will drop their guard, and if we can catch even just one of the scoundrels, we can extract useful information from him. Maybe get him to give up his fellows. Then we exterminate the opposition once and for all.

He absently watched the dim shapes of slaves moving rocks and debris. His horse stamped its hoof as a fly tried to settle on its wither.

If, Silk thought, his approach proved successful and led to the fall of the opposition, it could only bring him closer to the emperor’s inner circle, and immortality.

 • • • 

An hour later found Silk properly situated in a comfortable reclining armchair beneath a canopy, his feet propped on a cushioned footstool. Even with his dark specs, the light made his head ache. One of his servants refilled his crystal glass with lemonade. Another wielded a large fan to keep him cool and prevent insects from alighting on him. Farther up the slope, slaves toiled to repair the road, their numbers supplemented by workers pulled from one of the Churlyn Mills. He’d no doubt Churlyn himself was furious, but he was barely of Preferred status and had no recourse against the likes of Silk. Churlyn would not make his day’s production quota. Silk shrugged, unconcerned, and sipped his drink.

The fringe of the canopy flapped listlessly in the breeze. There was the clatter of slaves pounding on rocks, the shouts of overseers, and the snorts and neighs of beasts.

Every thirty minutes, one of the Inspectors offered an update on their investigation. Little, of course, had been achieved in so short a time, but the Inspectors were diligently rounding up men in the city known to work with black powder or who otherwise dealt in it, for questioning. As Adherent Minister of the Interior, Silk’s father was in charge of the Inspector force, so it was only natural that the members of the force would defer to the powerful minister’s son. As the current thirty minutes lapsed, an Inspector came forward with a filthy man whose wrists were manacled and attached with chains to an Enforcer. The Enforcer dragged him along until he stumbled to a stop in front of Silk.

Delicate blue-white bolts of energy arced and danced around the central sphere of the Enforcer, and up and down its spindly, metallic legs, intensifying with the movement of each limb. It amazed Silk that no one else saw it, or at least not anyone he’d ever asked. It was, he thought, like being able to see the soul of the machine.

The Inspector bowed.

“What have you brought me?” Silk asked.

“This
Dreg,”
the Inspector replied, with obvious distaste, “who has confessed to being here in the Old City last night around two hour.”

“Out for an evening stroll, were you?” Silk asked the man.

When he didn’t supply an immediate answer, the Inspector snapped, “Answer!” A pulse of energy arced down the manacles from the Enforcer, emphasizing the Inspector’s orders.

The Dreg cried out in pain, his knees wobbling. “Y-yes, sir. A walk. I was out for a walk.”

Silk chuckled. “Out looking for a little treasure, I expect.”

“No, sir! Never!”

“Do you have papers sanctioning the seeking of artifacts, Mr . . . ?”

“Calls himself Biggs,” the Inspector supplied.

“Mr. Biggs?”

“No. I mean, I’d never look for treasure, sir, not without the emperor’s permission.”

Silk set his glass aside on a table. A puff of air from the fan wafted through his hair. “I do not suppose that while you were on your evening walk, Mr. Biggs, that you saw anything out of the ordinary?”

Biggs, it turned out, was eager to talk, no doubt hoping his captors would overlook the fact he’d been prowling around the Old City. He’d seen silhouettes up against the summit doing he didn’t-know-what, but figuring they were Silk’s own men, he kept his distance.

“Then the bell rang for two hour, sir,” Biggs continued, “and I heard the blasts and felt the ground shake a little, and those men, they scattered quick as could be.”

“Did you see their faces? Hear names or anything?”

“No, sir. It was dark, and I was too far off.”

“Beyond learning the hour of the attack,” Silk told the Inspector, “this is not useful.”

Biggs glanced nervously at the Inspector.

“He is the only witness we’ve found so far, Dr. Silk.”

“Can you at least tell us how many of the men you saw?” Silk asked Biggs.

Biggs raised his hands as if to scratch his scalp, but the manacles held them down. “Five, six, or so,” he replied.

“You are sure?”

Biggs nodded eagerly, as if encouraging his captors to believe he’d been helpful.

“Enforcer,” Silk said.

The mechanical chirped and seemed to straighten to attention. It was an oddly human response.

“Enforcer,” Silk said once more, “this man in your custody, Biggs, is guilty of unsanctioned artifact hunting and possibly grave robbing.”

Biggs’ eyes widened, and his mouth dropped open. “But—but I’m no Ghoul, sir! I’d never—I’d never dig up the dead. I’d—”

“Then just the artifact hunting. That’s stealing from the emperor, Mr. Biggs.”

The man fell to his knees. “Please, sir, mercy! I’ll pay the emperor back. I’ll give him the things.”

Silk did not listen. Instead, he said, “Enforcer, this man admits his guilt. Render justice.”

The mechanical trundled off, dragging the crying Biggs away to a polite distance, the Inspector trailing behind. Biggs babbled and begged for mercy all the way, but Silk was as indifferent as the mechanical to the pleas of a useless, statusless Dreg.

The Enforcer halted with a puff of steam from its stack. It lifted one of its spidery legs and retracted it. Silk watched in fascination as the arcing energies concentrated around the leg. Then, without warning, the Enforcer punched its leg through Biggs’s chest, penetrating his back.

It was not out of perversity that Silk watched the Dreg’s death. No, he watched to observe the life energy that surrounded Biggs’s form, in this case, the color of rusted iron or old blood. It flickered, then faded out. He saw no separation of body and spirit, no lifting of the soul to the heavens as in the old theology the emperor had outlawed. No, he simply saw life extinguished.

Some of his more philosophical friends debated what came after death. It was difficult to conceive of a life, of a consciousness full of experience and learning, not continuing on, but Silk knew the depressing truth, courtesy of his peculiar vision. He’d watched his mother slowly expire on her deathbed, as well as the results of countless executions. Just as the gods of old were a complete fiction, so was the idea of something beyond death. There was nothing. The life energy went out like a phosphorene lamp permanently switched off. A waste.

Silk did not avert his gaze from the hapless Biggs as the Enforcer yanked its blood-smeared leg from the corpse’s torso. There was nothing to suggest Biggs’s life energy had moved on.

The Inspector gathered a couple of slaves to carry the body to a nearby cart. It would be donated to the university’s College of Mending, as were all executed criminals, no matter the wishes of the family.
Let the menders figure out how to prolong life
, Silk thought,
since it is all we have. This one life
.

It made him all the more determined to become a favorite of the emperor, to enter his inner circle and be rewarded with that rare gift of an endless life. Destroying the opposition, and finding the dragonfly device, and any other treasures the royal tombs might contain, were keys to his success.

He clasped his glass of lemonade once more in his gloved, mechanical hand and sipped. His gaze strayed to the ridge of the mount with its toothy ruins, toward the summit where the ancient castle had once stood. He would have liked to see it in all its grandeur, but if the castle and its king had not fallen, the emperor would not have arisen to greatness. Would that have been so bad? The empire’s teaching would have it that the people would have suffered privation under the rule of the despot king. They’d all be his slaves.

Perhaps not so different from the empire, after all
. The important thing was his family’s position within the empire. Who knew what it would have been had the old king prevailed?

A flame of color amidst the ruins near the summit caught his eye, a flame like a figure burning in blues and greens. Silk sat up and almost spilled from his chair in excitement. The glass crushed in his hand.

“Howser!” he cried.

His manservant was at his side in an instant. “Sir?”

Silk pointed. “Do you see . . . anything up there? There’s an outcrop surrounded by scrub.”

Howser remained silent, and Silk could almost feel the big man trying to see.

“Use your spyglass, idiot!” he snapped.

Howser turned away, fumbled about, and returned with the telescoping device. He aimed it where Silk pointed.

“Well?” he demanded.

“Sorry, sir, I can’t seem to find it.”

The colorful figure of fire had died in Silk’s vision. He sighed. “It is gone.” Had he truly seen it? Something so magnificent and—and magical? In this day and age?

“Howser,” he said, “you and your men are to go hunting up there. But you will not kill, no matter what it is you find. Do you understand? Capture only.”

“Yes, sir.”

Silk sat back in his chair as Howser hurried off. Already his servants had swept away the broken shards of crystal and were pouring him a fresh glass of lemonade.

His day had just gotten very interesting, and if Howser successfully captured his quarry, it would more than make up for any damage caused by the opposition.