Page 51 of Hemlock & Silver

I left Nurse giving Snow sips of carefully guarded water and retreated to my room, feeling as if I’d been beaten with hammers.

Two apples! Saints.

At least I knew now that it wasn’t Lady Sorrel. That was a good thing. Except that now, apparently my suspect was a woman who’d been dead for months. Could she have given Snow orders before she died? Was Snow still obeying them, even now?

Could the queen have known about the mirrors?

She came from Silversand, and she brought the mirrors with her. Their primary industry is mirrormaking. If anyone was going to find out…

Did that mean the rulers of Silversand knew? They weren’t our enemies, but Javier was right to be afraid of that knowledge in the hands of… well, of anyone, really.

I gave up, summoned Eloise, and sent her to find Javier. She gave me a look that I didn’t want to analyze too closely. “Miss… you know that men need a bit to recover after…”

I put my head in my hands. “Just… please tell him I need to speak to him.”

When he arrived half an hour later, he didn’t look terribly pleased.

I suspected that word of our supposed affair had spread.

“Don’t tell me,” he said. “Something else has gone wrong now, hasn’t it?

” He pinched the bridge of his nose wearily.

“I should just staple myself to your back. Every time I leave you alone, something else happens.”

I told him about Snow. At the end of it, he still didn’t look pleased, but he’d sunk into a chair and was staring at the ceiling while he did it.

“Now what do we do?” I asked him hopelessly.

He shook his head. “What would you do if you could?”

“If I could? Lock Snow in a room with no mirrors, one door, and the two of us as door guards.” I smiled mirthlessly. “Though the king was specifically opposed to that.”

“If she gets much sicker, they’ll let you do just about anything,” he said grimly.

“If she gets much sicker, nothing I do will matter. Convulsions. Shit. It’s the beginning of the end.

If she keeps going…” I rested my forehead on my fist against the bedpost. “The king would let us lock her up if we told him about the mirrors. But then he’d know about the mirrors.

But if we don’t do it, Snow will die unless we can figure this out, preferably yesterday. ”

Javier grunted. It was the grunt that meant agreement, or at least acknowledgment, so I kept going.

“This is like one of those horrible philosophy questions. Do you sacrifice one person to potentially save thousands?” I huffed a laugh.

“I always thought that was such an easy question, too. Obviously you sacrificed the one person. It turns out it’s a lot harder when you’re going to watch the person die. ”

“And now?”

I stared at the ceiling. We couldn’t tell the king. We’d have to find another way. I wasn’t willing to give Snow up for lost. If need be, I’d kidnap her and take her out in the desert myself, away from any sort of mirror.

I relayed this plan to Javier, who pinched the bridge of his nose. “I want to tell you that’s a terrible idea.”

“No, it’s fine, it is a terrible idea.”

An hour later, sadly, we had no better ideas. The sun had set, and Javier finally got to his feet and gave me a narrow-eyed look. “Is it safe for me to go back to the barracks, or is something else going to happen as soon as I leave?”

“You could stay here, if you’re that worried,” I said waspishly, then realized what I’d said. I could feel blood rushing into my cheeks. “I don’t mean it like that. I mean… you know what I mean.”

“No uh, ” he said agreeably. Damn it, it wasn’t fair that he had to be reliable and brave, did he have to have a sense of humor, too?

“Definitely no uh.” The tips of my ears felt hot. “I’ll see you tomorrow. Maybe if we sleep on it, we’ll think of a better idea than kidnapping.”

His sigh seemed to come from his toes. “I hope so. Because if this goes on much longer, Saints help me, I’ll be helping you do it.”

I slept that night with the mirror covered, and I woke feeling, if not optimistic, at least slightly less doomed than I had the night before.

I’d write a letter to the king and tell him that no, Snow really did need to be locked in a tower somewhere.

I’d make up an allergy to mirrors. Some people were allergic to silver, after all, and nobody outside the guild knew what chemicals were going into the things. Javier could help me write the letter.

I went down to my workroom in a better frame of mind and spent a pleasant hour puttering around, doing all the small tasks that had needed doing for days but which I’d been putting off.

I let the rooster out to roam around and tossed a little parched corn down to give him something to do.

“Not much longer now, buddy,” I told him.

“You’re probably out of danger. Which I suppose means you’ll have to come home with me, or else you’ll end up in the stewpot. ”

Naturally that was when someone knocked. “Healer Anja!” a voice called through the door.

“What is it?” I called back.

A pause, then another knock. “Healer Anja?”

Damn it all to hell. I scooped up the rooster so he wouldn’t bolt when I opened the door, and tucked him firmly under my arm. He radiated resignation.

I pulled the door open and saw… no one. What?

I took a step forward, into the hall, looked left, looked right, caught a glimpse of a body and a chair, and then someone dropped a mirror on my head.

The cold wash of silver went through me like a line of ice water. The rooster squawked in alarm. Something crashed. I looked down to see that I was standing in a radiating pile of shards. By the look of the frame, it hadn’t been a terribly large mirror, but they’d angled it perfectly.

“What?” I said, as the rooster flailed in my arms. “Why—?”

The scrape of a boot on the tiles was the only warning I had. I looked up, saw the guard from before, saw that he had a sword out, and threw the rooster directly into his face.

Much is made about the aggression of roosters toward people, but I’ve always felt that was a sign of poor husbandry.

If a rooster attacks humans, you eat him.

This solves the problem nicely, and you get a chicken dinner out of it.

It also removes them from the gene pool, so the next generation of roosters will often be rather more pleasant.

Most roosters go their whole lives without ever lifting a claw against a human under normal circumstances.

The key words there, however, are normal circumstances .

Being flung into someone’s face is not normal.

The rooster went feetfirst, leading with his spurs, which were quite impressive for a beast his age.

His claws hit the ornate open mouth guard, one got tangled, and in panic, he began beating the mirror-man’s head with his wings.

The guard let out a yell. (Anyone would, really.

I hadn’t heard them make a noise before, but I decided this wasn’t the time to dwell on it.) He had a sword, but there are some circumstances where having a sword works against you, and one of those is when the enemy is quite small and attached to your head.

Unable to attack the bird without stabbing himself in the face, he dropped the sword and began flailing.

I did not stick around to see the outcome.

I tore past him, down the hall, into the central courtyard, and ran up the stairs.

Someone had apparently decided that I needed to go back to the mirror-world, and I did not want to find out why.

I heard shouts behind me—shouts plural—and felt an intense pang of guilt for the rooster.

Sorry, buddy. I’m not fast, so I needed the distraction.

I will make an offering to Saint Bird for you.

I made the top of the stairs with a stitch in my side and ran for my room. I yanked the door open, thought, Wait, wasn’t that supposed to be locked? and skidded inside.

And stopped. And stared.

My mirror had been shattered. It lay in a hundred pieces, throwing fragmented stars of color across the ceiling and walls. I took a numb step forward. How had this happened? You couldn’t break the mirror from this side, could you? So someone must have done it in the real world, but why?

The same reason they dropped a mirror over your head. To trap you here. And you walked right into the room.

I spun around, but it was too late. Cold mirror-stuff arms closed over me, clamping my arms to my sides like a vise.

“ Hey! ” I yelled, struggling. I’m not a small woman, as I’ve said before, and I managed a couple of good kicks, then a hard stomp on the instep. My captor yelped, and his grip loosened a little, but before I could take advantage of that, another figure stepped into view.

It was the armored man, and he had his sword again. He put the point up to my face until my eyes crossed looking down it.

“Ah,” I said, and swallowed hard. There was a feather stuck in the helmet’s mouth guard, and several long scratches in his dark gray flesh. My rooster had given his best, and I’d squandered it like a fool.

“Come with us, Healer Anja,” the armored man said. His voice sounded strangely flat, as if it was coming from some place without echoes. “Your presence is requested by the Queen.”