Page 40 of Hemlock & Silver

In the end, I didn’t go back into the mirror after all. Instead I draped a sheet over it and a towel over the one in the washroom. When the maid brought me a dinner tray, both she and her hair took a long look at the covering, then carefully ignored it.

I went to bed early, but even though I was exhausted, sleep eluded me. I kept opening my eyes, looking to see if the sheet had been moved aside. It hadn’t, but that didn’t stop me from checking.

When I wasn’t worrying about being watched, I was brooding on the look that Javier had given me. There was no question that I’d mistaken it. His lip had actually curled back in disgust, and for a man who doled out his expressions the way a miser doled out coins, that said a lot.

It must have been the bit where he half carried me around while I was sweaty and limp and retching. This struck me as unfair. I was hardly at my best, but it’s not like I make a habit of poisoning myself.

Well…

Okay, I do poison myself, but not all that often. Once or twice a year. Once a season at most. And he’s never had to deal with it before. He’s only seen me limp and retching the one time. (Sweaty, fine. We were in a desert, after all. But it’s not like I don’t wash regularly.)

Anyway, when he gave me that look, I was standing upright and hadn’t vomited once. So there.

I rolled over, hugging a pillow against my chest. Fine.

Maybe it was me. Or maybe he just didn’t like women.

I hadn’t gotten that impression, but some people are subtle.

(I hadn’t realized that about Scand until after I’d fallen wildly and inappropriately in love with him at age fifteen.

He immediately went to my father in stark terror, and then Father had explained to me about the birds and the bees and, more specifically, the bees who preferred the company of other bees.

I was horribly embarrassed and hid in my room for a week, until a new shipment of books arrived and I got over it.)

Even if Javier preferred men, though, I’d just squeezed his hand to let him know it had come through. You’d have to work to read desire into that.

I was just about to start another round of pointless brooding when something landed on the bed with a soft thump.

I shot upright, ready to run. A quick glance at the mirror showed that the sheet was still over it, but they might have snuck through and put it back, and what if—

“Jumpy, aren’t we?” said the cat.

My breath went out in a whoosh. “Oh. It’s you.”

“No need to sound quite so thrilled.”

“Do you need something?”

“No.”

“Then why are you here?”

“Your bed,” Grayling said, with a pointed glance at the pillows, “is warm.”

“… ah.”

He waited until I’d lain back down, then strolled up the length of the bed, examined my sleeping position, then pushed at my arm repeatedly with one paw until I’d moved it to his liking.

“You could just tell me what you want moved,” I grumbled. His claws weren’t all the way in, and the pinpricks itched.

“Too much talk before bed gives you ear mites,” he informed me, and curled up in a ball practically in my armpit.

“Do humans even get ear mites?”

“Keep talking and you’ll find out.”

He was small and soft and very warm. I lay there, slightly un comfortable, my neck crooked and my arm itching from his claws, and felt, despite everything, grudgingly privileged.

I fell asleep not long after he did, and I didn’t even dream.

In the morning, with Javier presumably still asleep, I decided to pursue knowledge a different way. A way that would likely involve cream.

I didn’t delude myself that one night spent snuggled up against my arm was going to change Grayling’s behavior. I’ve known too many cats. Nevertheless, I had an idea.

When I was young, my father had tried to teach me the merchant’s art of bargaining, and while it dealt largely with understanding people, which meant I took to it like a duck to arsenic, I did remember a few things.

“Anja-bear,” he said once, “there’s a certain kind of person who needs to be smarter than you.

It’s mostly men, but I’ve known a few women like that, too.

What you do is say something you know is wrong so that they can correct you.

That makes them feel smug and in control of the situation.

” He’d winked at me. “ Then you take them for everything they’re worth. ”

It was possible that human psychology wouldn’t work on a cat, but I suspected that this might.

Cats all know they’re smarter than you are, and they’re smug as hell about it.

(This is not to say that there aren’t kind and loyal and humble cats out there.

There probably are. I’m just saying that even the nicest cat in the world thinks it’s funny when you fall down the stairs.)

I went down to my workroom, left the door open, and began washing the glasswork, a chore I’d been putting off because the very fine tubes require some time spent with a small wad of sponge soaked in alcohol, on the end of a bit of wire.

About halfway through this process, the rooster made a hostile noise, and the cat landed on the table with a soft thump.

“Hello, Grayling,” I said.

He rolled over on his back and wiggled invitingly. The fur on his underside looked as soft and fluffy as a storm cloud.

“Oh no,” I said. “Don’t even try it. I know it’s a trap.”

The cat tilted his head sideways, still upside down, and flicked his tail. “Trap?” he said, sounding affronted. “How is it a trap?”

“Because if I go to pet your belly, you disembowel my arm.”

The single yellow eye narrowed. “Did I ask you to pet my belly? I’m quite certain I didn’t.”

“You rolled over and wiggled!”

“That,” said the cat, rolling to his feet, “was an invitation to wrestle. You’re misinterpreting it, then blaming me because I didn’t go along with your misinterpretation.

Typical.” The tip of his tail continued to shiver.

“If you think that a chime-adder ringing its tail is a sign of affection, whose fault is it when you get bitten?”

I stared at the ceiling for a moment, annoyed. The cat was right. Damn it. How embarrassing. “Sorry,” I said, a bit gruffly. “You’re right.”

This seemed to mollify him. “Have you come to badger me with more questions, then?”

This was rich, given that he’d been the one to come into my workroom, but I didn’t want to start off arguing. “No, no,” I said. “I think I’m getting the hang of things.”

“Are you, then?” he asked, in a tone that implied I was wandering naked in the desert without a map.

“I think so. Though the first time I saw someone’s reflection just standing there, to one side of the mirror, it gave me a hell of a turn.

Just that horrible mirror color all over.

” I went back to scrubbing the glassware, watching the cat out of the corner of my eye.

“Though I suppose they bleed if you cut them, same as the rest of us.”

“They do not,” said Grayling. I noticed with some satisfaction that his tail had stopped twitching. “If you cut one, they’d be solid mirror-stuff all the way through.”

“Really!” (I had been pretty sure this was the case, of course, after my test on the plant.) “So they aren’t really alive, then?”

“Alive,” said Grayling, “is complicated.” He turned his paw over and inspected the burgundy pads. “What you ought to worry about is awake .”

“Awake?” I started to ask what he meant, then remembered my father’s advice. Let him correct you. “Those reflections didn’t look like they were asleep.”

“They were not asleep, but neither were they awake.” Grayling nibbled at a claw. “You’ll know if you meet a waking one.”

“Will I?”

“Oh yes.”

Without knowing more, I couldn’t come up with a statement for him to correct, so I went directly for a question. “Are they dangerous, then?”

“Are humans dangerous?”

I snorted.

Grayling stretched, clearly amused. “There’s your answer, then. I don’t suppose you have any cream?”

“I don’t suppose that I do. I could probably manage a bit of fish, though.

” I set the glass tube down in the sink where he probably couldn’t knock it onto the floor.

I suspected we’d come to the end of the discussion, but maybe I could get one more question in.

“Do you have any idea why someone would be feeding mirror-food to a human child?”

Grayling inspected his paw again.

I put my hands on my hips.

The cat cocked his head in my direction and gave a small, piteous mew. “I’m sorry,” he said. “I seem to be faint with hunger.”

“Answer the question and I’ll fix that.”

“Ugh.” He flicked his tail in annoyance. “I am not a dog performing for a treat.”

“No, you’re a heartless monster being bribed.”

This seemed to please him, as I’d rather suspected it would. “You’re certain that there’s no cream?”

“The cook will make rugs out of both of our hides if I come asking for more.” I reached out a hand toward him.

He shoved his head nonchalantly under my fingers, and I scratched at the base of his ears, feeling the small round skull vibrate with a purr.

Strange that a brain that size could hold something that talked and thought as well as a human.

I really hoped that it was because he was a mirror-cat and that all cats weren’t like this.

It’s one thing to know that your pets are judging you, but it’s quite another to know that they’re doing it on the same level a human might.

(I wondered if Grayling, being a mirror-cat, was made of the gray mirror-stuff himself. But the only way that I could test that would be to cut him, and I didn’t see any way that would end well for either of us.)

“So why would someone feed mirror-food to Snow?”

The purr stuttered briefly. “Those who eat mirror-food gain some… abilities. You’ve seen them yourself.”

“The ability to go in and out of the mirror?”

“Among others.”

Others? I racked my brain, trying to think of another ability.

Grayling pulled back from my fingers. “So hungry…” he said, and gave another piteous mew.