The Universal Mirror (17 page)

“Don’t be cruel.  She’s getting older, that’s all.”  Catharine’s face shifted from chill to warmth as she glared at him.  “She’s been with me since I was a child.  Besides, if I left the running of the house to you, the servants would all be young and useless.”  He blinked, realizing with a sharp thought that all of their servants were much older than the two of them.

“Would that be a bad thing?  We could use a little life around here.”  He laughed, meaning the comment as a joke.  Something in her face shifted, however, and she turned away from him, her hand resting on the banister.

“I’ll handle the servants.”  It was apparent that the discussion was over.  “Don’t you have things to do this afternoon?”

“Not particularly,” Quentin said quickly.  He had been spending the past few weeks with Asahel.  After the receipt of the first body from Taggart, the experimentation had continued despite the fear of discovery.  What it had also resulted in, however, was further midnight sojourns—something that he now knew didn’t escape his wife’s eye.

“Of course.  It’s clearly too early for you,” she said.  He tried not to look hurt.  “Will you be home for dinner this evening?”

“Would you like me to be home?”  Quentin took a couple of steps, leaping in front of her and grinning as playfully as he could manage.  The smile looked grotesque, muddled as it was by the harsh lines of Catharine’s angry jaw.

“Not particularly,” she mimicked his earlier tone of voice.  “And don’t jump on the stairs.  You’ll break one of our necks.”  The sound of her words implied that it was her own that she was more concerned of.  “I wish you a… safe evening, Quentin.”  With that, Catharine shouldered past him, her movements too tense to be anything other than suspect. 

He began to walk after her, then stopped.  What can you tell her?  Certainly not the truth.  Quentin cast her one last, hopeful look.  When she didn’t turn, he made for the door, the weight of envelope and locket still heavy against his chest.

“Quentin.”  The voice cut through the hum that filled his ears, magical energy singing as he pulled it from the body lying on the table in front of them.  At first he barely heard it, then the sound grew louder.  “Quentin.  Quentin!”

He stumbled back, glaring up at the source of the noise.  Asahel was looking up at him, his dark eyes wide and concerned.  “You were… lost.”  His friend gestured at the body. 

A faint golden glow was ebbing from the man’s mouth, so pale that Quentin could barely see it.  It was a thin strand that, as he looked at it, appeared to stretch from his own fingers.  His entire being still felt charged with energy, suddenly alert.  His eyes focused on Asahel, noticing how nervous the other man still looked, how his hands shook.  As he narrowed his gaze further, he realized that he could see the tiny grains of dark sand underneath Asahel’s bitten fingernails.

Quentin could never see that well.  In fact, from where Asahel was, at the other end of the table, his face had been just slightly blurred.

“Quent, say something.”  Asahel leaned over the table, his hand clasping Quentin by the elbow.

“Everything looks clearer,” he heard himself say.  “My eyesight isn’t this sharp.”  And as he spoke, the last bit of magic spiraled away from him as the thread snapped.  His sight shifted suddenly and again, he could barely see the individual lines that crinkled Asahel’s eyes.  “Never mind, I see… better now.”  But it wasn’t better—it was simply the same as it had been before.

Asahel was still looking at him curiously as he stepped around the table.  He reached Quentin and pushed a chair next to the redhead’s legs.

“Sit down for a minute, aye?”  There was no ignoring the fear in his eyes and so Quentin did as Asahel asked.  The chair rocked unevenly as he sat down, his feet shifting from side to side as he fidgeted.  His quiet but constant movement didn’t soothe Asahel’s nerves, nor did the slow thumping of the chair leg.  “Has that ever happened before?”

“No, never,” Quentin said.  “You?”

Asahel shook his head.  “You’d know if it had.”

“I might have imagined it.  My mind’s been wandering today.”  He said this lamely, knowing that it wouldn’t calm the other man.  His hand rose to Catharine’s locket, now looped around his neck for safekeeping.  He’d yet to open it.  You’re afraid of what’s inside.  The thought distracted him from the present and his thumb continued to stroke the metal, thinking of her.  Asahel’s heavy sigh forced him to pay attention.

“I’ve—no.  You haven’t imagined it, not a bit.  The magic there—it was a thing you could see for a moment.”  Asahel’s lip disappeared below his upper teeth as he began gnawing on it.  “You to him.  There was a connection there.”  His lip reappeared, rubbed red and raw. 

“It certainly felt that way,” Quentin agreed.  “Do you think he had good eyesight, or was it just the magic?”

He looked again at the corpse, this time allowing himself to see it as no more than an empty bloodless shell.  The man lying on the table was younger than either of them—just barely out of adulthood.  Unlike many of their subjects, the clothes that he wore were neat and clean with no sign of patches or holes.  His face was tightly constricted, the jaw pulled back in a grimace, but Taggart had been able to tell them nothing of his death.  And all our magic won’t tell it, either.  In the end, Quentin had decided that such niceties weren’t important—it was Asahel who fretted over such things.

Asahel was fretting now as he took a sheet down from a nearby shelf, unfolding it before he neatly draped the fabric over the man’s face.

“I don’t know why you do that,” Quentin said, a wave of irritation flooding over him.  Why didn’t he answer me?  “He’s dead.  It doesn’t matter to him how he’s treated.  Certainly both of us have seen enough dead men to know what they’re about.”  He fingered the locket again, glancing at the corpse as Asahel continued speaking.

“You don’t know that,” was all Asahel said.  He tucked the sheet over the dead man’s toes, pinning it between his skin and the table.

“We all know that,” he replied in disgust.  “I don’t know what your parents taught you, but mine were forthcoming enough on the subject.”

“My father was dead.”  The sheet tightened, drawing taut against the corpse as Asahel yanked it firm across his face.

It was the abruptness of the gesture that gave Quentin pause.  Asahel was always gentle with the subjects that they chose—gentle in a way that made no sense, perhaps—but he had always been that, gentle.  Quentin had never thought it odd that he insisted on covering the bodies and reburying them in well-dug graves.  He had thought of it as a precaution.  Now, he saw that it was something more.  What, Quentin didn’t understand.

Asahel stepped away when he had finished, his skin still blotched with the flush of anger.

“Is Taggart going to bury him, or have we got to do it?”  The “we” had the sense of an “I” behind it.  Quentin tried to swallow his irritation at the comment, knowing that Asahel had been left to do the cleanup more than once.

“No, he said he’d come.  It’s easier for him to come to the warehouse.”  He almost added “you know that” but stopped himself.  There was no need to antagonize Asahel further.

“Fair enough.”  Asahel’s shoulders slumped.

“Asahel,” Quentin couldn’t help it.  “I’m sorry.  About being—”  Irreverent?  But we have no gods now.  That’s old mythology… children’s stories.  “Callous.  But what did you expect?”

“I don’t know,” he said.  “Something different.”

“Different?  Than what?”

Asahel ignored the question.  His feet dragged across the wooden planks of the warehouse, one heel after another.  They were in the heart of Sailors’ Row, a choice that had surprised Quentin when his friend had suggested it.  It had been a wise decision in spite of his misgivings—the sailors rarely made note of either of them as they passed through the streets.  When they did, it was simply to tip their heads to Asahel.  Quentin, they paid no mind.  He’d grown used to it eventually, just as he’d grown used to the scent of cassia in the breeze and the taste of brine in the back of his mouth.

“We never talked about the letter,” Asahel said.

“Have you gotten another?”

“No.”

“Then perhaps it wasn’t what you thought.”  It had been in Catharine’s hand, Quentin feared. There was no way to explain her actions to Asahel, not when he didn’t know their reason.

“You were the one with the thoughts.  I didn’t insist on turning it into an inquisition,” Asahel murmured.  “It wasn’t Felix.”  He lifted his head and Quentin saw nothing but trouble in those dark eyes.

“Carnicus,” he said, as if reducing Felix to a surname would lessen his influence.  “He’s smarter than either of us, you know.  He could fool us both and not even think twice of it.”

“Aye, he’s smarter.”  The sentence was almost a sigh.  “But he’d not send a letter to do what he could to your face.”  Asahel’s mouth quirked slightly upwards as he noted, “Yours in particular, Quent.”  Then he shook his head, dark curls wavering in the wind.  “No, he’s a want to know what we’re doing but he’s not shy in asking.  And he has been.”

Don’t I know that well.  It was a sour truth.

“Wasn’t the letter more of a threat?”  Quentin tried.  If Asahel knows it was Catharine, he’ll never trust me again.  And why should he?  She clearly must want my head, and I know he thinks I’d give it to her.  Without realizing, he’d again begun twisting the locket and chain around his fingers.

“It’s not him,” Asahel repeated.  He opened his mouth, then closed it.

“I didn’t know you were such good friends as that.”  The words were ugly, the tone uglier still. Asahel’s face crumpled under them, a brilliant swath of red making his embarrassment plain.

“No.  Don’t… don’t talk like that.”  He rubbed his nose with his knuckle.  The man didn’t take mockery at the best of times and this was not that.  Quentin saw that his mark had drawn blood and hesitated.

Like what? 

“Fine,” Quentin said instead.  “So you believe that Felix didn’t do it because he’s convinced you somehow.  And you haven’t gotten any other letters.  Perhaps we consider the matter dropped and leave it at that.”  He felt the light weight of the chain on his finger again.  It’s a locket.  She’ll have a picture or a lock of hair inside… who will it belong to?  Is it some other man that has her chasing us?  Heresy is punishable by death, and she knows that.  Everyone knows it.

“It’s important,” Asahel argued.  “It was so important to you not so long ago, and now you’ve decided it’s not?”  Every line of his body seemed to strain backwards as he remained where he was.  “What about Catharine?”

“What about her?”  Quentin knew he was a good liar but it never failed to surprise him how easily it came.  “Do you know so many women who could write a letter like that?  It isn’t as if they spend their hours in schooling.” 

Catharine had, however.  She was an heiress with parents who felt their fortune left best in the hands of a woman who could manage it and her husband alike.  Asahel could not have known that for certain, Quentin believed, but he’d spoken to her briefly.  It was hard to think of Catharine as a woman who didn’t control her own destiny.

“I only met your wife once,” was what Asahel said.  Is that doubt in his voice?  Quentin tried not to slip as he nodded. 

“And that was at a ball, which she hates.  She’s not normally that…”

“Aye, Quentin, she is.”  Now the tremble in Asahel’s voice was nothing more than sympathy.  “All of Pallo knows that.”  Quentin couldn’t stand the way that the other man looked at him then with knowledge gained from men he thought his enemies.  Catharine’s feelings towards him were the one thing that Quentin had never been able to lie about—not even to himself.

“She’s why you do this, isn’t it?”  Asahel asked the question so softly that Quentin could barely hear it.

He nodded, not trusting himself to speak.

Asahel swallowed, then opened the door.  Watery light flowed into the room, casting gray shadows on the table as his friend stepped out into the street.  He gestured to Quentin to follow but the redhead shook his head in return.  Behind the other man, he could hear the calls of fishmongers and seamen and the shrill cries of gulls as they swooped down upon the ocean.  He wasn’t ready for that world and its noisy blasts of color and he closed his eyes against it, listening for the shutting of the door.

When it came, Quentin stared out at the room, feeling how small it really was.  He moved away from the pale white sheet that draped across the table and the man who lay upon the battered wood.  His back fell against the wall, ignoring the splinters that poked through the thin fabric of his shirt as he grasped the locket, squeezing it so hard in his palm that it felt it might bruise.

You have to know, he told himself.  It could mean your deaths.

He pressed his lips together tightly, took one long breath, then opened the locket.

Spring was coming upon Cercia.  The days had grown longer, little by little, and it could be seen in the grateful eyes of the shipwrights as they looked up at the clouds.  The docks were filled with sound and action.  As the weather warmed, more men were needed to man the boats and begin the preparations for the summer’s journeys when the seas would calm.  Three of those ships were in port now, but it was only one that Asahel cared about.  The Serenissma.