Mirror Sight (33 page)

This world,
Karigan thought in despair. The professor was right to oppose the empire.

She was roused by the rush of skirts that announced the entrance of Mirriam into the dining room. “There you are!”

Karigan steeled herself against whatever she was going to be accused of this time.

“Lingering over breakfast, are we?”

Karigan glanced at her plate as though the leftover crumbs of her meal proved her guilt.

“Miss Goodgrave! Have you lost your tongue?”

“Um, no.”

“Well, it is time to get moving.”

“Get moving?” Karigan asked, bewildered. “Get moving to where?”

“Why, to your bed chamber. Mender Samuels is due here any moment.”

“Mender Samuels?”

“Honestly. Doesn’t your uncle tell you anything?”

“No,” Karigan said, with feeling.

Mirriam actually chuckled, unexpectedly easing the strain between the two that had been present ever since Karigan had stood up to Mirriam about Cloudy the cat and other matters. “Well,” the housekeeper conceded, “the professor can be rather forgetful. Come, child.”

Karigan rose and, grabbing the bonewood, followed Mirriam out of the dining room. “What does Mender Samuels want with me? I’m not sick.”

Mirriam glanced at her in surprise. “No, I daresay you are not. In fact, I’d even say you are . . . robust. It is unseemly in a refined young woman of your status. I can only guess it comes of your being reared in the countryside.”

Karigan tried to digest the housekeeper’s skewed logic. Should she try to be more sickly in order to fit in? Would being “robust” somehow reveal her true identity? “Then why is Mender Samuels coming to see me?”

“Miss Goodgrave,” Mirriam said as they began to mount the stairs to the second floor, “you did not expect to be wearing that cast on your wrist to the end of your days, did you?”

K
arigan gazed at Mender Samuels with trepidation and tightened her grip on the bonewood.

“Put that down, silly girl,” he admonished her as he polished what looked like the blade of a bone saw.

“You are not coming near me with that,” she informed him.

He paid her no heed and simply checked his blade gleaming in the sunlight that filtered through her window.

Mirriam heaved an exasperated sigh. “He isn’t going to saw your arm off, Miss Goodgrave, just the cast.”

Karigan raised a skeptical eyebrow.

“Put your stick down and come sit at the table so I may do my work,” the mender said.

She reluctantly set the bonewood aside, figuring it was just as well the mender did not know how lethal her “stick” could be. She sat at the little table as he directed and placed her forearm on top, pulling up her sleeve to reveal the cast.

The mender looked at it in dismay, wrinkling his nose. “Have you been dragging your arm through a pig sty, Miss Goodgrave?”

Mirriam loosed another great sigh. Karigan knew she had been Mirriam’s very trying responsibility, and perhaps she found some vindication in the mender’s recognition of her ward’s incorrigibility.

Karigan watched closely as the mender sawed through her cast, plaster dust collecting beneath her forearm on the table. When he removed the cast in sections, her relief that he hadn’t even nicked her skin, was replaced by repugnance at the odor that rose up reminding her of dead fish. She saw, for the first time in several weeks, the pale thin thing that had once been her forearm. A current of cool air rippled across flesh that hadn’t felt a breeze for a month or more, and she sighed then, to have it finally free and in the open.

And now she could satisfy her urge to scratch, which she did furiously, raising flakes of dead skin and plaster dust.

Mender Samuels slapped the back of her hand. “None of that,” he said. “I have a jar of cream to relieve the itch.”

He took her forearm into his hands, prodded it, and bent the wrist, while Mirriam at his side observed through her monocle. He then asked Karigan to bend it on her own, and rotate her hand, and wiggle her fingers. Her wrist felt dull and weak, but it worked. Mender Samuels grunted with satisfaction and turned to Mirriam.

“See that Miss Goodgrave does not do too much at first, that she uses it gently. It is still fragile. Gradually she may increase its use.”

“Yes, Master Samuels.”

Karigan held her tongue despite the fact that the mender did not address her directly.

“By the way, why is she using that cane?” he demanded. “I’ve heard no complaints of her leg injury worsening.”

Mirriam raised an eyebrow at Karigan. “Has your injury been bothering you, Miss Goodgrave?”

Karigan didn’t know what to say, fearing to be caught in a lie and not wanting the bonewood to be taken away from her.

“Let me see your leg,” the mender said.

Karigan’s heart sank, but she hitched up the hem of her dress and rolled down her stocking so he could see the well-healed injury.

“Hmm,” he said. “This looks good. I see no reason for the walking cane.”

To Karigan’s surprise, Mirriam came to her defense. “Her uncle gave it to her. I expect she’s attached to it.”

Karigan nodded eagerly. “It was a gift.”

The mender stopped his probing. “There is no medical purpose for it, but if her guardian approves?” He shrugged and told Mirriam he’d be back in a week to check on Miss Goodgrave’s wrist. Then he collected his satchel filled with tools and devices and departed, Mirriam escorting him out.

Karigan wasted no time in bathing her wrist and slathering it with the cream he had left behind, then she gazed at her forearm, acknowledging it would take some work and time to bring it back to its former condition. But she smiled and whirled across her floor in a little dance of pleasure at having it free of the unlamented cast that lay in pieces on her table.

 • • • 

Over the next couple of days, she was frustrated that neither the professor nor Cade invited her to the mill where she could fully work on strengthening her wrist. She thought to ask the professor if she could go on her own, but a safe, private moment to do so never presented itself, since she saw him so rarely. She supposed she could always sneak over to the mill on her own, but doing so felt like it would violate the professor’s trust, and that was one thing she could not afford to lose. She could not say for sure, but she did not believe Cade and the professor ventured to the mill either. Perhaps with all the unrest following the sabotage on Dr. Silk’s road in the Old City, the professor did not want to be caught engaging in perilous behavior should any suspicion be flung in his direction.

It was hard for her to know exactly what was going on outside the house, except for whatever Luke told her when she visited Raven. Close to a hundred men, he told her, had been rounded up for questioning, and rumor had it that an Inquisitor had arrived from Gossham to lead the interrogations. The number of Inspectors and their Enforcers patrolling the streets, he added, remained uncommonly high.

The professor told her nothing, let on nothing, but he was quieter than usual during the rare times she saw him at meals, indicating to her the level of his concern. Of Cade, she saw only glimpses.

There was nothing she could do about it, so in the privacy of her bed chamber she practiced with her bonewood and bided her time gazing into her mirror shard, but to no avail. She spent hours in the professor’s library poring over his atlas of the empire, this one free of Arhys’ scribbles. Viewing her own world redrawn and transformed once again exacerbated her feelings of loneliness and sorrow, but she resisted caving in to them, reminding herself she’d find a way home and change this future from the past.

She could not help but stare at the portrait of Amberhill at the front of the book, with his aristocratic face rendered in flattering detail. How did he come to be emperor? she wondered over and over. How could he betray his king? She had never cared for his haughty ways, and while every aristocrat she had ever met vied and schemed for power, she had never sensed in Amberhill the monster who would wreck so much of what was good in Sacoridia to create this empire of his.

When she got home, she’d destroy him if she had to, to prevent him from bringing about this future. If she didn’t make it back? Then she’d make him answer for it in the here and now. She’d avenge her family, her friends, and the realm. Yes, she would.

She glanced up from Amberhill’s portrait, startled to see Arhys one step into the library and staring at her.

“What are you doing?” the girl demanded.

Karigan considered telling her to go away and mind her own business, but she thought maybe this would be an opportunity to make peace. “I’m looking at the atlas of the empire,” she replied.

“You’re just looking at pictures. I bet you can’t even read.”

“You’d lose.” Karigan proved it to her by reading from the preface.

The girl sniffed and tossed her golden hair. “I can read very well. Mr. Harlowe says so. I can write, too.”

“I’m sure he’s correct.”

“Bet I can write better than you.”

“Perhaps you can.”

Frustrated that Karigan didn’t challenge her, the girl stomped and declared, “You’re ugly.”

Just then Lorine paused by the doorway and looked in. “There you are, Arhys. Cook needs you in the kitchen.”

Arhys gave Karigan one last contemptuous look that would have rivaled even one of Amberhill’s, and flounced out of the room.

Lorine rolled her eyes, then seemed to note what Karigan was looking at. “Ah, I used to spend much time gazing at the atlas, dreaming of far off lands,” she said with a smile. “I’ve never been outside the city.”

Karigan found it hard to believe, for she had traveled often, whether with one of her father’s merchant trains or as a Green Rider. She could not imagine being confined to one city.

“Then I figured out that all the lands, the whole continent, and lots of islands besides, belong to the emperor, and I stopped dreaming.”

“Really?” Karigan asked in surprise. “Why?”

“I figured that since it was all the empire it would be just like Mill City. I wouldn’t mind seeing the Capital, though. It is supposed to be wondrous.”

There was a knocking on the front door of the house, followed by the even footsteps of Grott the butler as he went to answer it.

“I came to tell you,” Lorine said, “that I saw Mistress dela Enfande’s carriage drawing up. She’s come for the final fitting of your gown for the party.”

The gown the seamstress had made for Karigan this time was midnight blue, with threaded silver stars on the front panel of the bodice and sleeves that glimmered in the light. Mistress dela Enfande had said that this would be her most daring design yet. Karigan wasn’t sure what made it more daring—it fit much the same as her other dresses—and she could not yet judge how stylish it was in regard to this time. Maybe the neckline was lower, her throat revealed, and that was what was considered “daring.” Regardless, the gown was exquisite and lent her, she thought, an air of maturity.

Mistress dela Enfande, however, was not satisfied, and she clucked her tongue over the right sleeve. It was sized, Karigan realized, to fit around her cast. The sleeves were made to be more snug around the forearms with lace spilling from the cuffs like foam.

“I shall have to refit the sleeve, and the right glove as well.”

Karigan stood patiently as the seamstress’ assistants took measurements, and tweaked and adjusted the fabric with pins.

“I shall have the dress and its accoutrements delivered in the morning,” Mistress dela Enfande told Karigan and Mirriam. Then her gaze turned on Karigan alone. “You, Miss Goodgrave, shall tell me how the design is received, especially by those from the Capital, and you will tell me what
they
are wearing, every detail. Yes?”

“Um, yes,” Karigan replied. She had a good eye for such things, having grown up a textile merchant’s daughter, but thought she might be focused on other matters at Dr. Silk’s party, such as portraying Professor Josston’s mad niece and not compromising her true identity.

Mistress dela Enfande and her young ladies took their leave, Mirriam hustling them out of Karigan’s room. Karigan closed the door after them and sprawled on her bed. She was of the decided opinion that these fittings were more exhausting than a sword training session with Arms Master Drent.

Her eyelids grew heavy, drooped, and finally closed. She drifted to sleep and dreamed of exquisitely attired cats dancing . . . or was it people dressed as exquisitely attired cats? They swept around a ballroom beneath a chandelier of shattered mirror shards that reflected fragmented light upon the dancers. A chronosphere appeared in her hand. It popped open, and the mechanical man inside, who resembled the professor, swiveled back and forth on his rotating disk tapping out random numbers with his cane.

Tap, tap, tap.

Karigan sensed time racing. Time, she was running out of it.

Tap, tap.

She sat up with a start, groggy and disoriented. She looked about, her gaze settling on the window where Cloudy the cat sat on the sill outside. He raised his paw and tapped the glass.

Oh,
Karigan thought with a chuckle,
the source of my dream.

She was going to let the cat in, but at that moment Mirriam entered her room, and Cloudy leaped out of sight.

“Miss Goodgrave,” Mirriam said, “you are late!”

Karigan raised her eyebrows.
Late?
Was she still dreaming?

“For what?” she asked with a yawn.

“Why, the midday meal. Didn’t you hear the bells?”

No, she had not. “I’ll be down in a moment.”

Mirriam nodded, giving Karigan an assessing look that said much without her having to actually say a word. Then she left.

Karigan shook her muddled head. What had she been dreaming about? Something about cats. And running out of time. She laughed.

It was too bad Mirriam had arrived when she had, Karigan would have liked to have invited Cloudy in for a scritch. Hopefully the housekeeper hadn’t permanently scared him off.

At last she rose, stretched, and left her room before Mirriam could return and scold her for being late.