In the House of Five Dragons
35. The Mirror
“We write our own destiny. A man is lord of his fate, not its slave.”
— Rikard Mazrem
Laurael paged through the papers Bastil left that morning. Bills and invoices, for the most part, that needed her signature before the steward could pay. There was more than enough money, of course, but Laurael pursed her lips to keep the line-forming frown at bay.
Gaius spent too much money. On himself, on food and clothes for his women. The boy had no restraint. Well, he would learn that in time. It was the nature of young men to enjoy their pleasures and it was a mother’s privilege to provide them. She plucked her pen from the crystal inkwell and signed her name in a swooping script.
“Mother?”
She looked up from the pile of papers and nodded to her son. Smiles created as many lines as frowns.
“Hae, Gaius. Come sit,” she said.
He hooked a chair from against the ornately paneled wall and pulled it up to the other side of his mother’s desk. Gaius sat down and propped his round chin on one hand, elbow balanced on the seat’s slender arm.
“Well, I won the Lyceum vote for Father.”
His deliberately casual tone was not lost on Laurael. Gaius thought himself quite clever. Perhaps he was, but she had given him life, raised him and taught him all he knew. Gaius had no secrets from his mother.
“Tell me what happened that makes you so proud,” she said.
Gaius hurried through the story to what he obviously considered the good part.
“There was no way those dry old bastards were going to give Rikard the vote unless I gave them something more than honor to think about. It was Liam, of course, holding up the whole thing. But then I reminded him that if he could sell the wheat, he could recover everything he lost when the shipment went bad. So then he voted with us.”
“He would have made enemies,” Laurael said. “Now he’ll seem a hero to all those who wouldn’t have eaten this winter.”
“Liam and his investors won’t seem half the heroes that we’ll be tomorrow. Or that I was today. No one else could have managed it, not even Father,” Gaius said, grinning. “He’s insisting on doing this pact right in the middle of Mazrem Square.”
“I’d not have expected such hubris from him.”
“You are as snide as any consul, Mother,” Gaius said. “Mazrem Square is the only open place in the city large enough. Unless you plan on volunteering our home. Tychon certainly won’t offer the palace.”
Another frown pulled at Laurael’s lips, as insistent as Rikard on his most amorous nights. Gaius was actually defending his father. The man was a threat to her son, not an ally, but Rikard had always inspired that sort of blind, idiot loyalty. Perhaps it wasn’t wise to make Gaius spend so much time with Rikard. It had clearly taken a toll on the impressionable young knight.
“You will be the hero of the day,” Laurael told him sternly. “Not Liam. Not your father. Without you, Rikard would have nothing tomorrow for his grand gesture.”
“Hae. I don’t think I’ve ever seen him struck speechless quite like that.”
“Your father challenged Emperor Tychon on the Lyceum floor today and won. It was a devastating blow to Tychon,” Laurael said. She set aside the stack of papers she had been working on and hooked her finger at Gaius. “You did supremely well today, my son. Tomorrow night, I shall give you a present. Now thank me and go.”
“A present? Gods, I hope you’re not thinking of throwing some sort of party. Father and I have a lot of work to do tomorrow.”
“Trust me, Gaius.”
“Not likely. You’re a poisonous woman, Mother.”
Gaius stood and gave his mother a kiss, then left her office. Laurael rubbed her chin thoughtfully until her finger came away with a white sheen from her powder. She wiped it lightly on a soft cloth she kept on her desk and examined her perfectly buffed nails. They would stay clean, of course. She would not do the deed herself, though it might have been simpler.
I am mother to the next emperor of Carce, not some House assassin.
The moment had finally arrived. Rikard had faced Emperor Tychon as an enemy and won an important victory. All eyes were on her husband and that would only sharpen Tychon’s paranoid terror of the young hero. Rikard’s death would certainly be tragic, but not entirely a surprise. Everyone would suspect Tychon, so publicly shamed before the Lyceum today. The consuls would remove the emperor, perhaps even demand his execution or exile, and then all Carce would turn to Gaius.
Laurael checked her makeup in an ornate silver mirror before she left the office. It was time to set the future into motion.
He will bring them back to us, Stumble repeated. He was thinking to himself, daydreaming. He’ll bring them–
He craned his stone-feathered head skyward. A musical crash of thunder interrupted the young curiosity, like a harp dropped from a great height. Flickerdim stirred, as heavy as lead. His stars were dimmer than ever now, little more than silver-gray pinpricks like a dusting of dull pewter. In fact, Flickerdim seemed more metal than night. The Alterrans cast about, searching for the source of the thunder.
Was it the sky? Stumble asked.
Hae. The Shatter have taken the high ground, Flickerdim considered slowly.
He has to hurry… How much time is left?
Very little.
Flickerdim tasted the air with a tongue like a wisp of smoke. All around them, the tips of the tree-tower’s branches curled and blackened as though burned. At the extreme edges of vision, shuddering, shimmering shapes moved through the peeling color, tugging at it with insubstantial claws. Flickerdim closed his failing eyes and pondered. Lacking the old wisdom’s introspective sense, Stumble hopped from branch to branch, closer to the trunk of the tree and then higher.
The branches here were like the blind, pale sponges that lived in the dark and secretive Terran seas. The leaves were different, too. Tiny ashen worms chewed away at the peacock-bright fronds with frightening speed. Stumble stretched out a stony green claw and shook the branch with a sharp decision, but only a few of the little gray worms fell off. The rest clung tightly to the Uprising. Stumble hopped along the branch, tugging at the worms with his beak. They were cold and tough.
They’re Shattering decisions up here! he cried.
Stop! Flickerdim alarmed. Stumble, come back! They’re too close! They are pulling at the Uprising itself!
The branch shook beneath Stumble. The curiosity beat his malachite wings, but his stone feathers were suddenly heavy and difficult to move. Stumble opened his banded beak to shout, but it grated and ground like a Terran’s teeth in the grip of a nightmare. He couldn’t move.
Something beneath the Uprising thundered again and Stumble scrabbled at the rotting wood, but it was as flimsy as excuses. It crumbled under his stony talons and then he was falling down through the frigid air.
With a hiss like escaping steam, Flickerdim lunged out from his perch lower in the tower. He sank suddenly substantial fangs into Stumble’s shoulder. Larger, longer tendrils — each as colorless and bland as the worms gnawing at the Uprising — lashed out at Flickerdim. When the star-serpent pulled Stumble back into the relative safety of his own branch, darkness oozed from a dozen shallow wounds along his midnight sides.
Why am I heavy? What happened? Stumble asked when he had shaken his feathers back into place.
Flickerdim curled into a tight coil once more, blinking rapidly. Even the gray of his eyes was gone now… They’ve broken the last lines of the song. Even his faith in us will not slow them much longer.
What do they want? What can we do?
Nothing. Flickerdim’s empty eyes drooped heavily and another star went out. We are all that remains, Stumble. They are here for the tower. For us and we have nothing left with which to fight. Only the blood and sacrifice of VEIL can keep the Uprising from falling. The pact tomorrow must succeed.
Cadmus Castor had to recount the story of the Lyceum’s vote seven times before he left the Sun Court, then twice more over dinner when his wife and his oldest son asked. Afterward, Castor remained in the darkened triclinium while his wife put the children to bed. The servants came to clean up, but he waved them off.
He was exhausted. There were orders to give, schedules to make and infuriatingly smug men to listen to. Castor had served in the Sun Court his entire life and had never been called upon to make a single pact with the Alterra. There were some who remembered the old ways and were all too happy to teach. Castor had traced and written the glyphic pact symbols into a waxboard so many times that afternoon that they seemed burned inside his eyelids. Tomorrow, seven thousand knights would fill Mazrem Square with blood and, perhaps, palatable wheat.
Castor pressed his fingertips against his eyelids until the darkness turned as red as embers. The triclinium still smelled of the roast duck he had for dinner. For all his impassioned speeches, Rikard Mazrem gave his men no idea what the Alterra would take in return tomorrow. Did anyone ask? Castor doubted it. VEIL was caught up in the fever of Rikard’s renewed vows of honor. Every knight wanted to prove themselves to the great hero.
It was growing late and tomorrow would be a long, dangerous day. Castor pushed himself up off the couch. The house seemed to sense his weariness, empty and draped in heavy gray shadows.
Someone had already extinguished most of the lamps, turning every hallway into a dark terrestrium. Only the hard marble floor under Castor’s bare feet betrayed the illusion.
He found himself holding his breath as he listened for any other sound of life besides the soft padding of his own steps. Wood creaked and stone settled with grating sighs. Outside, Dormaen slept as restlessly as a child the night before his birthday.
The living sounds of his home and his city should have soothed Castor, but they didn’t. Rikard’s plan… it had honor and purpose, Castor supposed. VEIL was a military organization and it was easy to forget that they knew how to do anything more than fight. Rikard had reminded them. The legens didn’t even carry his sword.
As far as Castor knew, the blade still hung on his son’s wall, no more than a show piece.
Fury rose in Castor’s throat, tasting thin and acidic on the back of his tongue. He shoved his way through the bedroom door harder than he should have, startling his wife. She gasped and dropped the shoulders of the tabba she had just been removing, leaving her naked to the waist. But Castor’s anger would not abate.
“Sorry,” he said.
Without waiting for an answer, Castor stalked off into the adjoining chamber. Beads of water from the bath his wife must have taken earlier dotted the floor like dew. Castor contemplated the tub. It no longer steamed, but it was probably warm enough to soothe the tightness in his shoulders.
Hae. Just take a bath and relax. Forget this.
But Castor didn’t want to forget. What did Rikard Mazrem know of honor? True honor? He was only a boy, or close enough. What made him a hero? One desperate act in the icy Fiore mountains? Honor was not desperate. It wasn’t sweaty and bloody. Honor was deliberate, a path that a man chose with careful forethought. He didn’t just fall down a slope and find himself upon it.
Yet the honorable path Castor had chosen, a life of dedication to his king and emperor, was thirty years gone. Ever since riders had first carried news of Njorn Pass into Dormaen, he found himself sliding down that slope that had led Rikard to honor and Castor away from it.
A man must choose honor, he thought.
Castor heaved a sigh and unbuttoned the throat of his red saela. He caught his reflection in the mirror and sighed again. The man in the silvered glass looked old, beaten and tired. Perhaps Rikard’s path was the way. The only way. Was Rikard’s road the only one left to him now?
Castor thumbed open his bloodcap. Red welled up from the cannula like a blooming rose. He closed his eyes and touched the cannula to his brow. The gold was hard against his skin and slick with blood. With slow, deliberate care, he drew the circle. Castor opened his eyes and stared at his own blood. A salute, Rikard said, to VEIL and the Alterra.
The blood… moved.
For a moment, he wondered if it was some trick of the waving light filtering in from the bedroom. But he felt it on his skin, dripping upward, out and then angling unnaturally. Castor gaped at his reflection in the mirror. The blood was moving, rearranging itself on his forehead. It prickled with heat, as though he sweated molten metal.
Castor stared. Words.
The blood was writing out words across his skin.
Your path.
What…? Castor closed his eyes, but when he looked again, the words stubbornly remained. He scrubbed at the blood with his forearm and gasped. His arm was smeared in red, but still the words stood out against his pale, bloodless skin.
No… they had changed.
Our path.
Castor swiped his hand across his brow again, but the letters would not move. Something buzzed in the back of his skull like an angry insect, making his head ache. Castor pulled away from the glass. Even when he moved, the bloody words dripped down the mirror.
Curious and horrified, the general gingerly touched his fingers to them. There was nothing there! Nothing but cold, smooth glass. Castor grabbed the mirror from its stand and flung it across the room, intent on smashing the glass against the opposite wall. The silver disk spun through the air, but seemed to impact something else long before the wall. Something invisible, impossible. The glass rebounded and went still, floating in the center of the room as though held by invisible hands.
Slowly, the mirror spun toward Castor, facing him. Following him.
The general backed quickly away. Terror burned both hot and cold through Castor’s body. What was this? What in the bloody hell was going on? If he could get out of the bathing room, he could get to his sword… The Sun Court general took another few quick, darting steps backward. His progress was awkward, but he didn’t dare turn his back on the mirror. Castor risked a quick glance back over his shoulder. How far away was escape?
Something covered the wall, something like spider webs, but stretched out to unnaturally vast proportions. Each strand was as thick as a man’s finger. Even so, the fibrous barrier was hard to see. It shone like ice or glass, as absolutely transparent and nearly invisible. Castor heard his wife calling to him, asking if something was wrong. He wanted to shout back to her, but some deeper instinct silenced him. This was the work of nothing natural, nothing of this world.
The Alterra… What did they want? The damned dream-eaters had never come unbidden to a VEIL knight…
There was a silver slice of motion and Castor found himself face to face with the mirror. Blood dripped down over its surface, obscuring the reflection beneath. Castor searched for his own features in the glass, but through the dripping gore, he saw only an endless roiling, cloudy grayness that should have been unimpressive, but that somehow filled him with a deep, chill dread. Icy sweat dripped down the back of Castor’s neck.
The blood cinched together, flowing into the mirror’s center against all natural law. And then it stretched out again like something living.
We are, it wrote.
We are who we are not.
Are. Are not.
Alterra. We are SHATTER.
The air was stiflingly cold. Every breath stung and the pain in the back of Castor’s head turned into blades of ice. This was nothing like what Rikard had described.
Rikard Mazrem… The legens’ name bubbled and slithered in blood. Angry, smug. The deep, endlessly flat grayness was everywhere. Still contained within the mirror, but its… taste… seemed to fill the room, painted all the world in bleak. The blood flowed again, the only point of color in all existence.
Our path. Your path.
We want what you want.
Rikard Mazrem must fail.
Cut the ties that bind. Worlds flow apart.
We will give you the knife.
Break him. Destroy Rikard Mazrem.
Shatter’s enemy. Your enemy.
Bleed to us.
No pact. We want nothing in return.
Nothing.
Castor remembered the Shatter, remembered Rikard Mazrem cursing their empty name. Enemies of the Uprising. Empty ghosts that wanted each world for itself, to sever all ties.
You want the old world.
So do we.
Old, old, old.
Before Rikard Mazrem.
Before Terrans.
Undo what has been done.
Everything just as it was… before Rikard Mazrem. Before he took the Sun Court away from their emperor, before he made Castor vote against his right and honorable master…
Castor opened his cannula again. Blood spattered onto the tiled floor with every sluggish beat of his heart. Drip, drip, drip… like the rhythmic ratcheting of gears somewhere in the void.
Castor’s blood swirled at his feet, a vortex of inky black in the pale light, a wordless agreement. Cold understanding flowed into him, numbing him. His wife called to Castor, but he was no longer listening. Everything was gray. Perfectly empty, perfectly ordered. The nothingness sighed breathlessly.
We will show you the way.
The way to everything you want.
To break everything he has built.
To SHATTER.
The bloody mirror cracked, shattering with a sharp retort, and fell to the floor in a hundred glittering pieces.
