The Mirror Prince (5 page)
Authors: Violette Malan
“You did that on purpose,” Max accused her, “made it think you’d slipped in the blood.”
“They like to kill, it makes them too eager.”
“How about you? Do you like it?” Now that the adrenaline was seeping out of him, it was all Max could do to control the shaking of his hands. How could she stand there, smiling?
She took a deep breath and looked at him, the light fading from her face, the smile gone.
“You’re bleeding, where did it get you?”
“What? Nowhere . . .” Max’s stomach clenched, and even as he spoke, his knees gave way for the second time that evening, but this time Cassandra caught him before he could hit the ground. He clutched at her arm, getting a handful of strangely warm metal gauntlet. A tremor began in his hand, moved up his arm, and claimed the rest of his body. Dimly he heard the knife “chink” as it fell from his other hand to the pavement. A spot on his left side, down near the hipbone, felt very cold, and the coldness spread, and a shhhhhhhhhh of static in his head grew louder and louder as his body floated farther and farther away.
Cassandra hissed, and Max felt her hand, warmer than the metal glove should allow, press firmly on the icy wound in his side. He could feel her arms cradling him, feel her shift on the cold concrete until his head fell back on her shoulder. She put her mouth on his lips and breathed. And breathed. And
BREATHED.
And his body soaked up her breath like a dry wick soaks up oil, filling itself with her warmth and air and sweetness, and still Cassandra breathed. Until Max began to fear that he would empty her, until the cold place in his side finally became warm and Max took a deep, shuddering breath.
BREATHED.
And his body soaked up her breath like a dry wick soaks up oil, filling itself with her warmth and air and sweetness, and still Cassandra breathed. Until Max began to fear that he would empty her, until the cold place in his side finally became warm and Max took a deep, shuddering breath.
“What the hell was that?” He’d been dying, he was sure of it, and somehow Cassandra had stopped it, had made it simply . . . go away. His side, under the torn and bloody cotton shirt, wasn’t even sore. He cleared his throat. His voice sounded as though he hadn’t used it in weeks, and he could feel the exhilaration of being alive already beginning to fade. Cassandra picked up the short-bladed knife from where it had fallen and tossed it into her bag as she walked stiffly over to where her coat lay next to the loading dock. She kept her face turned away from him as she crouched down on her heels, wiping her perfectly clean blades on the skirt of the coat. She glanced back at him as he got to his feet, but otherwise acted as if nothing had happened. As if she hadn’t just saved his life. Twice.
“Do you know what I mean when I say the Hunt?”
Max blinked as he mentally changed gears. If that was what she wanted to talk about, he was willing to play along. But soon she’d have to explain what it was she’d done . . . and how.
“Well, folklore’s not my field, but I believe there are several schools of thought—” Max broke off as Cassandra raised her eyebrows. “Okay, I take it you mean the Wild Hunt? So there’s huntsmen, horses, hounds— some say human spirits—but most agree it’s something to do with the Sidhe.” Max leaned back on the edge of the loading dock as if it was the chalk ledge of a blackboard and crossed his arms.
“Specifically the Trouping Faerie, yes? They hunted some kind of supernatural prey, didn’t they?” Max shook his head slowly. It was crazy, it was impossible, but he had seen what he had seen. “That’s what
that
was? One of the Sidhe?”
that
was? One of the Sidhe?”
Cassandra put her coat back on and slipped the long thin dagger back into her boot, her hand trembling ever so slightly. “It’s the same with all the stories, a little bit right, and a little bit wrong. The Hunt is not made up of what you call the Sidhe, it
hunts
the Sidhe.”
hunts
the Sidhe.”
Max handed Cassandra her bag, but took a step back instead of helping her as she slung it over her head and adjusted it until it hung along her back. Of all the crazy—“I don’t get it. You mean that thing was after
you?
”
you?
”
Cassandra gave a final shrug to her bag and turned until she was looking him in the face.
“No, my lord. It was after you.”
Chapter Two
“I’M GOING HOME,” Max said, relieved to find his voice steady, if not his hands. He moved his head slowly from side to side, lips pressed tight. None of this was happening, and he’d stop thinking about it as soon as he could. “I appreciate your help, but you’ve got the wrong guy.”
“If they’re not there already,” Cassandra said, “home’s the first place they’ll look.”
Max looked down at the blood on his clothes, his own already drying, tacky and chill, the Hound’s blood still wet and gleaming where it had splashed on him. He raised his head. The sidewalk at the end of the alley looked so ordinary. Any minute now his legs would move and he’d walk down there, turn right and go on down to King Street, catch the streetcar, go home, and put on the hockey game.
“You doubt they’re after you?” she said, her voice brittle. “Maybe I should have left you in the car a little longer.”
“All of you people are making a mistake,” he said, eyes fixed on the world he’d always known. “Whoever it is you’re looking for, I’m not him.” He looked back at Cassandra to find her nodding at him, as if they were sitting over coffee, discussing the Peloponnesian conflict and she was considering his point, finding a polite way to tell him he was full of it.
“We can talk about that when you’re safe,” she said. “You didn’t seem inclined to argue with the Hound,” she added, when Max opened his mouth.
Once again Max felt the Hound’s misshapen hands, pulling him into the car, saw the look of feral recognition in the beast’s eyes as it approached him, felt the coldness in his wound before Cassandra had healed him, and he shivered, whatever argument he was about to offer dying in the cold. She was right, he wasn’t inclined to argue with the Hound.
“And, frankly,” Cassandra added, ignoring his trembling as if she hadn’t seen it, her voice neutral again, matter-of-fact, “I would prefer not to argue with whoever sent the Hound either.”
“Oh, I don’t know,” Max said, forcing a lightness he didn’t feel into his tone. “Maybe we could get all this straightened out.” Cassandra hitched up her shoulder bag and looked away. “Okay, then, you seem to have all the answers.” His voice was harsher than he intended. “Where to?”
Cassandra turned back to him and took his hands, standing so close that Max thought she was going to kiss him. He parted his lips and inclined his head.
A SLAP! of air sucked the breath from his lungs and a loud CRACK! like a thunderclap deafened him.
“What the—” The darkness was so complete Max couldn’t tell if his eyes were open or closed. Suddenly there was a great rumbling overhead, and a rush of movement filled the darkness around him, followed by a subdued moaning howl. Disoriented by the dark, it took him a minute to place the sound as metal wheels hugging metal tracks around a curve.
Streetcar?
he thought.
No, not a streetcar, the subway.
Streetcar?
he thought.
No, not a streetcar, the subway.
“We’re safer
here?
” From the hollow echo, the space they were in was quite large, and quite empty. It also seemed at least ten degrees cooler and much damper than the alley.
here?
” From the hollow echo, the space they were in was quite large, and quite empty. It also seemed at least ten degrees cooler and much damper than the alley.
Max heard Cassandra sigh in the darkness as she let go of his hands. He clenched his fists against the urge to grab at her and took a slow, careful breath.
“So where are we?” he persisted.
“If you’re going to be distracted by unrelated matters, this is going to take much longer than it needs to.”
Max reached toward her voice and grabbed a handful of sleeve.
“Remember me?” he said around the tightness in his throat. “I’m the one who doesn’t know what’s going on. How do I know what’s related and what’s not?” he asked the darkness around them.
“We’re in the abandoned Queen Street Station.” Once again her voice was drowned out by a roar, and a rush of air as somewhere nearby an empty station was suddenly filled by a hundred and eighty tons of subway train.
“Can I ask why?”
“We need a crossroads,” she said, taking hold of his wrist and freeing her sleeve from his hand. She spoke like a teacher, as if she were repeating the same lesson for the hundredth time but still found it interesting. The tone was familiar, soothing, and Max was surprised to find the muscles in his neck and shoulders loosening. He felt more than heard her move away from him in the darkness. “In this world, the land’s
dra’aj
—its magical essence, for want of a better term—concentrates in Lines, so to Move any real distance quickly, we need a crossroads. And to be safe, we’ll need to put some real distance between us and the Hunt.”
dra’aj
—its magical essence, for want of a better term—concentrates in Lines, so to Move any real distance quickly, we need a crossroads. And to be safe, we’ll need to put some real distance between us and the Hunt.”
Max gestured in the darkness. “This is a crossroads?”
“Union Station is the crossroads. Using it is tricky. We can’t just Move straight to it because there’s a Portal to our Lands there as well, and we don’t want to trigger it by accident, so we’ll have to walk from here.”
Max shook his head. Some of that made a kind of sense. What were train stations but huge crossroads, and Union was the largest and busiest of Canada’s train stations. He wanted to get somewhere safe as badly as Cassandra did, maybe more so. He just wasn’t sure they had the same idea of safety. He needed time to think, to find out what they wanted with him, and—most of all—time to figure out the flaw that made them think he was one of them, the flaw that would free him. But how were they going to get anywhere in this darkness?
“Couldn’t we have come straight here? How come you didn’t Move—” he tried to give the word the same emphasis she had, “us away from the Hound?”
“What, you think I should have stood still in the middle of Queen Street? Tried to Move us from there?” Judging from the tone of her voice Cassandra was rolling her eyes to the heavens. “Besides,” she added more evenly, “once the Hunt is on a trail, it can follow you through a Move. You can’t leave it alive behind you.”
Max nodded in the darkness. That figured. He blinked rapidly, realizing that he could now make out a soft glow, just beyond arm’s length. As his eyes adjusted, he saw that Cassandra had taken off her coat and pulled off her T-shirt. She was on her knees beside her leather shoulder bag, taking the sword out and placing it to one side so she could rummage through the bag. Max saw that the glow came from the mail shirt he’d caught a glimpse of through the tear in her T-shirt while they were in the alley. Soft as it was, the light was clear enough that he could see the skin on her arms forming into goose bumps. He shivered again.
Lit from below, Cassandra’s features were sterner, the color washed out, the hollows of her cheeks and eyes darkened into angles until her face resembled an old bronze mask of the Athene Nike that Max had once seen at the Royal Ontario Museum. Then the mask moved, and Cassandra’s human face returned. Max pushed himself back from her, finding himself unexpectedly close.
Except she isn’t human,
he thought.
Except she isn’t human,
he thought.
“You’re a faerie,” he said, not sure until she looked up that he’d spoken aloud.
“We don’t call ourselves that,” she said, starting to take cloth-wrapped bundles out of her shoulder bag, one of them another, shorter sword, and laying them next to the long sword already on the dirty pavement.
“So what
do
you call yourselves?” Max said, when it became apparent she had nothing further to say.
do
you call yourselves?” Max said, when it became apparent she had nothing further to say.
“The People, of course, same as any other sentient race.”
Max stepped closer to her. “You know other sentient races?”
She sat back on her heels and looked up again.
“Well, I have my doubts about humans, now that you mention it.” She frowned. “What humans call the Trouping Faerie—beings like you and me—we call ourselves Riders, because we . . .”
“Ride?”
“Yes, actually. We’re social, we live in groups and we Move. Solitaries . . . well, that’s self-explanatory, isn’t it? They’re the People who live alone, Trolls, Ogres, and Giants are the ones best known to humans. Then there are Naturals—they’re like Solitaries, but they live in one place, mostly Trees and Water People.”
“And would I be right in thinking that you all live together, in harmony?”
“You’re the professor of military history, you tell me.”
Max nodded, not really surprised that she knew so much about him. He would have liked it better, however, if she knew things about him because she was a normal human woman, interested in a normal human man, instead of a . . . a
Rider,
mistaking him for something he wasn’t. “How much like humans are you?”
Rider,
mistaking him for something he wasn’t. “How much like humans are you?”
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