Obsidian Mirror (19 page)

The small man scratched his tiny beard. “I know it’s a bit soon after yesterday’s scare. If it were up to me, we’d wait, but…” He shrugged.

Sarah looked past him. “Some people can’t wait.”

“Some people have waited too long.” Venn watched from the archway across the kitchen. His eyes were on her. Ignoring Piers, he said, “This will be the last time for you, Sarah. If it works, I’ll wear the snake myself. You’ll be free to go.”

The dismissal alarmed her, but she smiled. “You’re so sure.”

“Try to describe what you see as it happens. Piers will prolong the exposure as long as possible, until the web is under pressure. We won’t risk losing you in there.”

“You mean you won’t risk losing the bracelet.” She turned, bitter. “I know how much I’m worth.”

“You agreed to this,” he snapped back.

“I did. But what about Jake? It’s personal for him.”

Venn didn’t move. Then he said, “I’ll find him.”

Piers picked up the tea-towel and re-folded it neatly. “Excellency, something else. The alarms. There was
someone watching the gate earlier. We should be careful. If it’s—”

“I don’t care if it’s the devil himself.” Venn turned. “Five minutes. And we test this thing to its limit.”

He went out. She stood, looking after him.

Piers said quietly, “You’ve been reading Symmes’s journal.”

It was so sudden, she couldn’t even bluster. “Yes…I found it. I haven’t gotten to the end. I gave it to Jake.”

“There is no end. It stops in the middle of a burned page. Symmes vanished too, they say.” He looked up. “If you’re not happy…”

“I’m fine.” She stared at the empty doorway. “I’m ready. It’s what I signed up for.”

The handle of the lock-up door turned softly. Rebecca swallowed a gasp. Maskelyne, an edge of shadow beside her, did not move.

The wolf growled, a low sound. They saw its claws, long and sharp, slide under the door, its nose savoring their scent. Then it was dragged away. With a crash that made her heart leap, someone kicked the door. “Is that you, Sarah? But then, how could it be?”

The voice was so close, Rebecca felt she could have touched the speaker, if the door had not been between them. It was a young man’s intrigued whisper.

“The wolf smells you. Are you some village ghost? Some echo from the delay?”

The door shuddered again. The wolf whined.

“Are you some Replicant? Or are you a journeyman, straying in time?”

Maskelyne’s fingers held her in silence.

Yelps and scratches.

The purr of a passing car.

The tiny, tiny hiss of falling snow.

Neither she nor Maskelyne moved a fingertip, because they both knew that the stranger was still there, listening, a faint dimness beyond the threshold of the door.

Finally, after a long moment, his voice whispered, “If so, my advice is to
journey away
and do it at once. Because this time is not a safe one for strangers.”

Then there was just the snow.

After five full minutes Maskelyne whispered, “Gone.”

He leaned over and eased the plank away. When he tugged the door open, snow gusted in, and they saw that darkness had fallen on the bridge. He stepped out, and after a moment, beckoned.

Climbing through, Rebecca saw that despite the chilly wind, the snow was thick. The bridge was white with it, the footprints of a man and a wolf rapidly filling, leading away toward the Abbey.

She breathed out. “Who was he? What was that creature?”

He shook his head. “That wasn’t a man.
That was the copy of a man.
It seems I’m not the only one looking for the mirror.” He turned to her, and she saw his worry. “Apart from Jake and his tutor, is there anyone else at the Abbey? Anyone at all?”

Rebecca shrugged. “Just that girl.” She frowned. “Her name’s Sarah.”

The door opened.

Jake looked up from the pages of Symmes’s journal, his mind full of the scarred man and the mirror, over the scatter of his father’s books across the carpet. Each was open, and he had out all the letters he could find, and notes, and photos, because he had begun by searching for anything about the Chronoptika and ended by just sitting and reading and remembering.

Maybe the bleak loss showed in his face as he stared up, because Venn stood silent a moment, his glance around the dark room swift with discomfort.

“We’re trying again. Now. If you want to be there.”

It was grudging. But Jake nodded. He pushed the books aside and stood up. “I’m surprised you want me.”

Venn shrugged. “I don’t. But David would.”

T
HE SILVER SNAKE
closed around her wrist like an alien hand, but this time Sarah was ready for it.

She stared into the obsidian mirror.

In its convex darkness she saw the room, warped and unfocused, a blur of shapes in the gloom of the winter afternoon. She saw the soft, relentless snowfall outside the mullioned windows.

They were all watching her—Piers at the computer, Wharton perched on a broken armchair, Jake leaning against the stone wall, his arms folded in rigid defense, after his bitter argument with Venn that it should be him.

But Piers had told them both to shut up, and he had clasped the bracelet on her wrist.

Venn stepped back. “Anything yet?”

“No.” Sound was muffled in the soft carpet. It was there to protect the mirror if it fell. She frowned. What if it did fall? Would that be enough?

Venn turned on Piers. “Now?”

“Less response than before. The temporal axis is steady. No fluctuations.”

Her hands were sweating. She stared into the mirror, willing it to change, praying something would happen to its stubbornly solid surface. Glancing at Wharton, she sensed the rising silence of his disbelief. He was a lot shrewder than he looked. Had he told Jake about her?

The room was dim, woven with the dense web of cables between her and the Chronoptika. Its pillars rose into darkness, their capitals adorned with clusters of crumbling ivy leaves and carved acorns. Under some, the faces of green men peeped through bramble, tendrils of leaves sprouting from their mouths.

They were watching her too.

Piers sighed. “Nothing. Maybe we should take a break.”

“No!” It was her own cry, echoing Venn’s.

“No,” he said, walking around behind Piers. “We increase power.”

“I don’t think that’s wise, Excellency. It’s already at the maximum we—”

“Don’t argue with me! Just do it!”

Wharton was on his feet. “I don’t think—”

Venn turned, lean and ominous. “No one asked you.” He came and stood in front of Sarah. “Be ready. There might be a strong reaction. If you feel anything at all, just say. If you can’t speak, raise a hand, and we’ll switch it off. Understand?”

Wharton said, “I want you to know I heartily disapprove of all of this. Jake. What do you say?”

Jake was looking at Sarah. Quietly he said, “We should go on.”

He knows.
The knowledge flickered through her fear, her swift sight of Wharton’s shock. He knows I’m not who I say. And he’ll sacrifice me if it means getting his father back.

Venn was already at the controls, that mishmash of Victorian wiring and dials, roped with modern cables. He adjusted a few dials, said, “Now Piers,” and turned to watch the mirror.

Nothing seemed different, but at once the air changed. It seemed sharper, tasted of metal. Jake peeled himself off the wall. A whine he had barely been aware of before was growing, inside his ears, inside his skull. It was climbing to a shrill, subsonic needlepoint of intense irritation.

Sarah was still, focused on the mirror.

She made a small movement, as if in pain.

Jake said, “What is it?”

She didn’t look at him, her gaze caught by her own curved reflection.

“It’s starting,” she said.

Gideon lay on the top of the high wall of the estate and watched the snow settle on the flat roof of the car below. All he had to do was slide his legs over and jump. He would land safely, ankle-deep in the snowy lane. He would be free.

He didn’t dare.

Between him and that safe landing lay centuries of days and nights, sunrises, moonsets. So many lifetimes that almost nothing was left the same from the place he had been born to. He dragged dirty hair from his eyes and lay with his chin on his hands.

Was it true, or one of her lies?

Would he crumble to dust, would old age fall on him as soon as his foot touched the outside? Was Venn’s estate really a protected outpost of the Summerland, with nothing but death beyond its borders?

There was only one way to find out. He stood up, balancing.

From here he could see the weathervane on the church tower at Grimsby Deep, miles away. That was the church he had been baptized in; vaguely he remembered a gaunt, echoing space. It had stayed with him,
but it must be very different in there now. For him seventeen years ago. He had not changed by as much as a lost eyelash.

Everything else had rippled through fat, inexplicable changes. Houses appeared, almost overnight. Carts had crawled, then cars had sped up the lanes. Small planes had fought each other in the sky. Pylons grew. Strange wires that the swallows gathered on every autumn hummed in the frosty wind. What were they all? When had they come? He couldn’t remember. And he had never been beyond, to the places where cars and people arrived from, where the planes sailed from, the small fascinating silver birds that flew so high.

He had asked her once, what they were. She had kissed his forehead and said,
“They are the enemy, sweet boy.”

A voice said, “You would be a fool to jump.”

He wobbled, then crouched and turned, furious. “Don’t creep up on me!”

The Shee, waiting in the dark branches of a pine, smiled its charming smile. It was a male, gracefully dressed in blue and silver, its long hair tied back. “What are you looking at? May I see?”

They all had this childish curiosity. He said, “A car. Someone’s parked it here. And I think they’ve come inside.”

He could see from the snow that the car had been here a while. It was a dark, sleek machine, and its skin gave out no heat.

The Shee wandered over to the gates and Gideon jumped down beside it. The creature indicated with a long finger. “Look.”

The gates were open; as far apart as a man could slither. They swung, slightly, in the icy wind. The camera was already clotted with snow. Gideon said, “What is that thing?”

“Venn’s scrying device.” The Shee gave a languid grin. “It will see nothing today. Not even these.”

They both gazed at the footprints that led through the gap between the snowy gates, and up the dark, clogged drive.

A man’s. And the splayed spoor of the wolf.