Page 49 of Hemlock & Silver

The coolness of the mirror-world was a shock after the heat of the day. I unbolted my door and reached for the doorknob, but Javier stepped in front of me. “There’s a chance she’s out there now.”

“She’s what, seventy? I think I can probably fend her off.”

“Can you fend off a poisoned knife?”

“Can you?”

He tapped the quilted armor surcoat that he had donned. “Cloth will bind a knife like you wouldn’t believe. Besides, this is what I’m for .”

I grumbled but let him go first. He opened the door, slipped outside, then gestured to me, something complicated with two fingers. I assumed it meant it was safe to exit, though it could have meant anything up to I have decided that I would like curry for dinner . I followed.

We were halfway to the stairs when a door opened across the courtyard and a gray figure stepped out of it. I watched the reflection close the door, and stand frozen.

“Begin in Lady Sorrel’s rooms?” Javier asked.

“Yes, I… wait…” The gray figure had begun to walk along the hallway perpendicular to us. With no mirror in sight.

I grabbed Javier’s wrist. “That one’s moving!”

Javier’s head jerked around, and he stared at the gray figure. It was a man, and though it was hard to tell in the gray-on-gray twilight of the mirror, I didn’t think he was wearing a servant’s livery. One of the guards, perhaps?

Another door opened to our left, much closer. Javier spun around, drawing his sword. It was another man, and this one seemed to actually be wearing armor.

The gray man closed the door and began walking toward us. Javier put himself between me and the newcomer, sword held up between us. “I thought you said they didn’t move!” he hissed.

“None of the others did!”

The first gray man turned the far corner and came down the hallway toward us as well. They both had a steady, measured gait that was somehow more frightening than if they had been charging.

“Maybe we should get out of the way?” I said. “I don’t know why they’re still there without a mirror, but maybe they’re going to another mirror? If we just step to one side…”

The armored one drew his sword.

“… Or not.”

Javier said something short, sharp, and sexually explicit. I darted toward the nearest door, two down from my own room— Please, Saints, let it be unlocked!… Oh blessed Saint Adder, thank you!— and yanked it open.

Javier leaped through the doorway after me and slammed it practically in the armored man’s face. I heard him fumble with the lock, then ram the bolt home, just as a fist descended on the other side.

Knock. Knock.

I looked around the room. It was clearly another guest room, though not quite so large as the one I was in. There were dustcovers on the furniture, though, so it appeared unoccupied.

Knock. Knock. The door actually rattled in the frame that time. The narrow metal bolt seemed terribly puny.

“Is there a way out?” Javier had his shoulder against the door, holding it in place.

“Balcony, if we want to break both legs. Unless… Aha! ” I yanked a dustcover away from the wall, revealing a standing mirror. It wasn’t nearly as large as mine, maybe four feet tall by eighteen inches wide, but it looked onto a sunlit world that looked like salvation.

Knock. Knock. Knock. The armored man’s fist struck like hammerblows against the wood. Every one knocked Javier back an inch.

“Go, go!” my bodyguard said. I could hear wood splintering. “I’m right behind you!”

I went. I had to duck and turn sideways, and I felt my ass scrape against the frame, but I was through.

Whereupon the dustcover from the real world fell over me, and I flailed like a bird trapped in a windowsill, trying to get it off.

Javier ran into me, full tilt. I fell down. He fell down. The dustcover fell over both of us. Something whacked me in the ribs, and I realized he still had his sword out. Thankfully it had just been the flat, or an already-bad day would have gotten a great deal worse.

“Stop moving,” I ordered, clutching at the edge of the sheet that I found near my knees. I tried to yank it loose, with minimal success.

In the mirror, the armored man looked down at the two of us lying sprawled on the floor in the real world. His face was cold and chiseled stone, and then he smiled.

None of the other reflections had had any expression. Seeing this one felt very, very wrong.

He reached out a hand to the mirror. Javier swore and got the sword up over me. He can’t come through—he’s just a reflection—this isn’t how it works—

The gray figure tapped one finger against the glass, and there it stopped. He was wearing gauntlets. Sound didn’t carry to this side of the mirror, but I could imagine what steel would sound like against glass.

Tap. Tap. Tap. Still with that unnerving smile. His eyes were blank, but his head was tilted down, so I was certain he was looking at us. I swallowed convulsively.

The door to the room opened. The reflection stepped back. Javier lurched toward the sound, sword up to meet this new threat.

The hair with a maid attached stood in the doorway, her mouth an O of surprise. She was carrying a feather duster.

I looked back at the mirror, but the reflection was gone. And I was lying on the ground, on a sheet, extremely rumpled, partly underneath my equally rumpled bodyguard.

The maid’s eyes traveled over the two of us. “Hullo, Javier,” she said. “Miss.”

There is a level of blush beyond which human capillaries simply won’t hold any more blood. I lay under my bodyguard and wished for a vasoconstrictor.

Javier closed his eyes. “Hello, Eloise.”

Huh. Her name is Eloise. Good to know.

Eloise put the feather duster on her shoulder, where her hair promptly engulfed it. “We air these rooms out once a week so they don’t get musty,” she said.

“Very good,” I said. Ergot. Ergot’s a vasoconstrictor. You get the hallucinations, though, so that won’t work. Damn.

“I tripped,” said Javier. “And… err… Healer Anja tried to catch me. And we fell. On the floor.”

Arsenic might work; you get the white complexion out of it.

“Uh-huh,” said Eloise. “Do you want me to bring some sheets for the bed in here, then?”

Yes, definitely arsenic. Several pounds ought to do it.

“That will not be necessary,” I said, with what shreds of dignity I could muster under the circumstances. “Please don’t be so clumsy again in the future, sir.”

He scrambled off me and extended a hand to help me up. “Certainly not, Healer Anja.”

“And put away your sword.”

“Yes, Healer Anja.”

Eloise nodded. “I’ll come back later, then,” she said, and stepped out. The door shut behind her.

My neck snapped around toward the mirror so fast that I felt a vertebra pop, but there was no figure in the mirror except our own.

We retreated to my room. I passed a servant on the way and felt myself flushing again, even though there was absolutely no reason to be embarrassed about walking somewhere with my guard.

Up until five minutes ago, I hadn’t worried that anyone other than Aaron would think anything salacious was going on.

Now everyone in the villa would think so by daybreak.

Oh hey, I wonder if they’re going to think that I’m cheating on the king?

Once we got to my room, I started laughing.

I couldn’t help it. All the fear and embarrassment and adrenaline came out in a hyena-like cackle, and Javier jumped like a spooked horse, which made me laugh harder until I collapsed in a chair, and I finally managed to gasp out, “They’re going to think I’m cheating on the king !

” and his eyes went big and round as saucers, and then he started laughing, too.

It was one of those laughs where if you meet each other’s eyes, you start up again, and that sets them off, so it took a good five minutes all told until we finally settled.

I wiped tears from my cheeks, resolutely not looking in Javier’s direction.

“Saints,” I said hoarsely, feeling wrung out.

“I needed that. Oh, we’re in such a mess, aren’t we? ”

“Yeah,” he said. “Yeah.” I heard him get up and risked a glance in his direction. He poured some water from the pitcher on the table and drank it down, then leaned against one of the bedposts. He caught me looking in his direction and lifted the cup in an abbreviated salute.

“So some of them can walk around,” I said, leaning back in the chair, “and they didn’t seem friendly.”

“Not friendly at all. Though I can understand their position.”

“Eh? What position?”

“How would you react if two strangers suddenly appeared in the middle of your house?”

“Uh… well, I’d assume my father had brought some of his colleagues home and ask their names?”

Javier sighed through his nose, which is not quite the same as a snort but shares some common ground. “For someone who studies poisons professionally, you are remarkably trusting.”

I rolled my eyes. “It’s worked for thirty-five years. It’s not like I’m royalty. No one wants to kill me. Why would they?”

“Has your father never ruined a business rival?”

“Well…”

“And have you never given testimony in a poisoning case?”

“Errr…”

“Or saved someone the poisoner very much did not want saved?”

“When you put it like that, I’m surprised I haven’t been murdered already.”

“That makes two of us.” His tone was so bland that I eyed him suspiciously. “At any rate,” he continued, “it’s also possible that we were observed previously, marked as outsiders, and they were waiting to kill or capture us.”

“Which still doesn’t get to the matter of why they were alive and moving in the first place,” I pointed out. “I’d think it was someone from our side wearing mirror-armor, but I saw the one’s eyes.” The memory of that flat charcoal gaze made me shudder.

“I don’t think they came from the villa originally,” Javier said, surprising me.

“What? How can you tell?”