The Water Mirror (12 page)

Merle looked away quickly to hide her smile. When she
looked at him again, the cat had vanished. Spots of red blood showed through the fabric
of Serafin's shirt where its claws had dug into his shoulder.

“That must hurt,” she said with concern.

“Which is more painful? Being scratched by an animal or by a
human?”

She chose not to answer that. Instead she walked on, and again Serafin was
right next to her.

“You were going to tell me something about the mirror
phantoms,” she said.

“Was I?”

“You ought not to have started about it otherwise.”

Serafin nodded. “You're right. It's only—”
He stopped speaking suddenly, stood still, and listened into the night.

“What is it?”

“Shh,” he said, and gently laid a finger on her lips.

She strained to hear in the darkness. In the narrow alleys and canals of
Venice you often heard the strangest noises. The close spacing between houses distorted
sounds beyond recognition. The twisting labyrinths of alleyways were empty after dark
because most people preferred to use busier main ways. Robbers and assassins made many
districts unsafe, and usually cries, whimpers, or rushing footsteps rebounded from the
old walls and were transmitted as echoes to places that lay far from the source of the
sound. If Serafin had in fact heard something to arouse
concern, it
might mean everything or nothing: The danger could be lurking around the next corner,
but it also might be many hundreds of yards away.

“Soldiers!” he hissed. He grabbed the surprised Merle by the
arm and pulled her into one of the narrow tunnels that ran between many houses in the
city, built-over alleyways in which utter darkness reigned at night.

“Are you sure?” she whispered very close to his cheek, and she
felt him nod.

“Two men on lions. Around the corner.”

At that moment they saw the two of them, in uniform, with sword and rifle,
riding on gray basalt lions. The lions bore their riders past the mouth of the
passageway with majestic steps. It was astonishing with what grace the lions moved.
Their bodies were of massive stone and nevertheless they glided like lithe house cats.
Their claws, sharp as daggers, scraped over the pavement and left deep furrows.

When the patrol was far enough away, Serafin whispered, “Some of
them know my face. So I'm not keen to meet them.”

“Anyone who was already a master thief at thirteen certainly has
reason for that.”

He smiled, flattered. “Could be.”

“Why did you leave the Guild?”

“The older masters couldn't stand it that I made bigger hauls
than they did. They spread lies about me and tried
to get me thrown
out of the Guild. So I chose to leave voluntarily.” He walked out of the
passageway into the pale shine of a gas lantern. “But come on—I promised to
tell you more about the mirror phantoms. To do that, I have to show you something
first.”

M
ERLE AND
S
ERAFIN WALKED FARTHER THROUGH THE
maze of narrow alleys and passages, here turning right, there left, crossing bridges over still canals, and going through gateways and along under clotheslines that stretched between the houses like a march of pale ghost sheets. They did not meet one single person along the way, another characteristic of this strangest of old cities: You could walk for miles without seeing a soul, only cats and rats on their hunt for prey in the garbage.

Before them the alley ended at the very edge of a canal. There was no sidewalk along its banks, the walls of the
houses reached right down into the water. There wasn't a bridge to be seen.

“A dead end,” Merle grumbled. “We have to go back again.”

Serafin shook his head. “We're exactly where I wanted to be.” He bent over the edge a bit and looked up at the sky. Then he looked across the water. “See that?”

Merle walked up next to him. Her eyes followed his index finger to the gently swelling surface. The brackish smell of the canal rose into her nose, but she hardly noticed it. Strands of algae were drifting about, far more than usual.

An illuminated window was reflected in the water, the only one far and wide. It was in the second floor of a house on the other side of the canal. The opposite bank was about fifty feet away.

“I don't know what you mean,” she said.

“See the light in that window?”

“Sure.”

Serafin pulled out a silver pocket watch, a valuable piece that probably came from his thieving days. He snapped open the lid. “Ten after twelve. We're on time.”

“So?”

He grinned. “I'll explain. You see the reflection on the water, don't you?”

She nodded.

“Good. Now look at the house over it and show me the window that's reflected there. The one that's lit.”

Merle looked up at the dark house front. All the windows were dark, not a single one lit. She looked down at the water again. The reflection remained unchanged: In one of the reflected windows a light was burning. When she looked up at the house again, that rectangle in the wall was dark.

“How can that be?” she asked, perplexed. “In the reflection the window is lit, but in reality it's pitch-black.”

Serafin's grin got even wider. “Well, well.”

“Magic?”

“Not entirely. Or maybe yes. Depending on how you look at it.”

Her face darkened. “Couldn't you express yourself a little more clearly?”

“It happens in the hour after midnight. Between twelve and one at night the same phenomenon appears at several places in the city. Very few know about them, and even I don't know many of these places, but it's true: During this hour, a few houses cast a reflection on the water that doesn't tally with the reality. There are only tiny differences—lighted windows, sometimes another door, or people walking along in front of the houses while in reality there's nobody there.”

“And what does it mean?”

“Nobody knows for sure. But there are rumors.” He lowered his voice and acted very mysterious. “Stories about a
second
Venice.”

“A second Venice?”

“One that only exists in the reflection in the water. Or at least lies so far away from us that it can't be reached, even with the fastest ship. Not even with the Empire's sunbarks. People say that it's in another world, which is so like ours and yet entirely different. And around midnight the border between the two cities becomes porous, perhaps just because it's so old and has gotten worn over the centuries, like a worn-out carpet.”

Merle stared at him, her eyes wide. “You mean, that window with the light . . . you mean, it actually exists—only not
here
?”

“It gets even better. There was an old beggar who sat at this spot for years and watched day and night. He told me that sometimes men and women from this other Venice managed to cross the wall between the worlds. What they don't know, though, is that they're no longer human beings when they arrive here. They're only phantoms then, and they're caught forever in the mirrors of the city. Some of them manage to jump from mirror to mirror, and so every now and then they also stray into your master's workshop and into his magic mirrors.”

Merle considered whether Serafin might perhaps be playing a joke on her. “You aren't just trying to put something over on me, are you?”

Serafin flashed a phony smile. “Do I really look as though I could swindle anyone?”

“Of course not, top-notch master thief.”

“Believe me, I've actually heard this story. How much of it's the truth, I can't really say.” He pointed to the illuminated window in the water. “However, some things support it.”

“But that would mean that I was catching human beings in that glass ball the other day!”

“Don't worry about it. I've seen Arcimboldo throw them into the canal. They get out again somehow there.”

“And now I understand what he meant when he said that the phantoms could settle into the reflections on the water.” Merle gasped. “Arcimboldo knows! He knows the truth!”

“What are you going to do now? Ask him about it?”

She shrugged her shoulders. “Why not?” She didn't have a chance to pursue the thought further, for suddenly there was a movement on the water. As they looked down more attentively, a silhouette slid over the surface of the canal toward them.

“Is that—” She broke off as it became clear to her that the reflection was no illusion.

“Back!” Serafin had seen it at the same time.

They whipped into the alleyway and pressed tight against the wall.

From the left, something large glided over the water without touching it. It was a lion with mighty wings of feathers; like the entire body, they were also of stone.
Their tips almost touched the walls of the houses on both sides of the canal. The lion flew almost soundlessly, only its unhurried wingbeats producing subtle whishing like the drawing of breath. Their draft blew icily into Merle's and Serafin's faces. The enormous mass and weight of that body were deceptive; in the air it held itself as featherlight as a bird. Its front and back legs were bent, its mouth nearly closed. Behind its eyes sparkled a disconcerting shrewdness, far sharper than the understanding of ordinary animals.

A soldier sat grimly on the lion's back. His uniform was of black leather and trimmed with steel rivets. A bodyguard of the City Council, assigned to protect one of the big bosses personally. You didn't encounter them very often, and when you did, it usually meant nothing good.

The lion bearing its master floated past the opening of their alleyway without noticing the two of them. Merle and Serafin didn't dare breathe until the flying predator had left them far behind. Carefully they leaned forward and watched the lion gain altitude, leave the narrow canyon of the canal, and make a wide loop over the roofs of the district. Then it was lost to sight.

“He's circling,” Serafin stated. “Whoever he's watching can't be far away.”

“A councillor?” Merle whispered. “At this hour? In this district? Never in your life. They only leave their palaces when it's absolutely necessary.”

“There aren't many lions that can fly. The few that are left never go any farther than necessary from their councillors.” Serafin took a deep breath. “One of the councillors must be very close by.”

As if to underline his words, the growl of a flying lion came out of the nighttime darkness. A second answered the call. Then a third.

“There are several.” Merle shook her head in bafflement. “What are they doing here?”

Serafin's eyes gleamed. “We could find out.”

“And the lions?”

“I've often run away from them before.”

Merle wasn't sure if he was boasting or telling the truth. Perhaps both. She simply didn't know him well enough. Her instinct told her that she could trust him.
Must
trust him, it looked at the moment—for Serafin had already made his way to the other end of the alleyway.

She hurried after him until she came even with him again. “I hate having to run after other people.”

“Sometimes it helps to get decisions made.”

She snorted. “I hate it even more when other people want to make my decisions for me.”

He stopped and held her back by the arm. “You're right. We both have to want this. It could get quite dangerous.”

Merle sighed. “I'm not one of those girls who gives up easily—so don't treat me like one. And I'm not afraid of
flying lions.”
Of course not,
she said silently to herself,
I've never been chased by one either—yet.

“No reason to be offended now.”

“I'm not at all.”

“You are so.”

“And you keep picking a fight.”

He grinned. “Occupational disease.”

“Boaster! But you aren't a thief anymore.” She left him standing and walked on. “Come on. Or there won't be lions or councillors or adventure tonight.”

This time it was he who followed her. She had the feeling that he was testing her. Would she go in the same direction that he'd chosen? Would she interpret the distant wingbeats against the sky properly to lead them to their goal?

She'd show him where to go—literally, in fact.

She hurried around the next corner and kept looking up at the night sky between the edges of the roofs, until she finally slowed and took pains to make no more sound. From here on they ran the danger of being discovered. She just didn't know whether the danger threatened from the sky or from one of the doorways.

“It's that house over there,” Serafin whispered.

Her eye followed his index finger to the entrance of a narrow building, just wide enough for a door and two boarded-up windows. It seemed to have once been a servants' annex to one of the neighboring grand houses, in
days when the facades of Venice still bore witness to wealth and magnificence. But today many of the palazzi stood just as empty as the houses on the Canal of the Expelled and elsewhere. Not even tramps and beggars squatted there, for in winter the gigantic rooms were impossible to heat. Firewood had been a scarce commodity since the beginning of the siege, and so the stripping of the abandoned buildings of the city had begun long ago, breaking out their wooden floors and beams in order to heat the woodstoves in the cold months.