Rigg stepped through into the passage. Param worked a lever and the wall slid silently back down. No wonder Rigg hadn’t been able to find a door. Just one of the limitations of his gift. He could tell where people had passed, but not what the place had looked like when they came through.
Rigg had expected the passage to be dark, but there was a faint silvery light. He made his way toward the seeming source of the light, wondering if there was some exterior vent that let in the ringlight.
It was soon clear that the light came from a mirror, which was reflecting light from another mirror—beyond that Rigg could not see how many other bends there might be. The light in this space was ringlight. On a cloudy night, this passage would require a candle—or such knowledge of it as would allow someone to pass through it in the dark.
“Did it hurt you?” he asked. “To go through the wall? Or door, or whatever it is?”
“Yes,” she said. She held out a hand. He touched it and recoiled. She was hot, like a child with a bad fever. He touched her forehead, her cheek. Hot all over.
“You can’t do that ever again,” he said.
“I have to,” she said. “I have no idea how to open it from the outside. But it’s not that bad. I cool down soon enough. It’s not like stone or brick—stone burns me, my clothing catches fire. I have to watch to make sure I never brush against stone when I’m hiding.”
In reply he hugged her. “You have no idea what it meant to me, to know I had a sister.”
“And to me,” she said. “He told me never to tell Mother that I knew about you. But you were coming and you would set me free.”
“I will,” he said. “I know how to follow these passages to get through the outside wall.”
“Under it?” she asked.
“The land these houses are built on was raised. It’s not as high now, because the weight of the houses presses it down. So some of the passages may have water in them now—this is the river delta, and water is just below the surface everywhere. But as long as we can breathe, we can make it out of here. One long passage leads to the Library of Nothing.”
“How can you know this? Have you gone into these passages before?”
“No,” said Rigg. “But I’ve seen the paths of the people who’ve used them. I know where they went. That’s what I do—I see their paths, even when they’re hidden behind walls or underground.”
“You have a much more useful gift than mine,” she said.
“Mine didn’t get me into this space. Mine doesn’t allow me to disappear in plain day.”
“Yours doesn’t burn you up when you pass through things.”
“I’m sorry I walked through you that time.”
“It wasn’t bad,” she said. “We were both moving—it means we didn’t occupy the same space for very long. Walls are stationary. I’m the only one moving, and the contact lasts a lot longer.”
He held her hands tightly. “What did you call him? The man I knew as Father?”
“Walker,” she said.
“So he was in this house?”
“Yes,” she said. “I told Mother that one of the scholars had inadvertently helped me understand my gift. But really he came here as a gardener. The gardens still show his touch. Why didn’t you know he was here? Couldn’t you see his path?”
“Father—Walker—he doesn’t make a path. He has no path.”
“How could he manage that?”
“I don’t know if he manages it or simply doesn’t have one. He’s a saint, I think. A hero. He has powers other people don’t have.”
“But when I was invisible, he couldn’t see me, the way you can.”
“I can’t see you, I can only see where you were—the spot you passed through and left behind a moment before. And it isn’t seeing, exactly. I can close my eyes or turn my back and still find your path.”
“He said you were the best of us.”
“Us?”
“All his students.”
“So he told you about others?”
“He said the world has bent itself to make us. These powers run strong in this wallfold, he said. So everything depends on us.”
“What everything?” asked Rigg. “Restoring the monarchy? I don’t really care about that.”
“Neither do I,” she said. “Neither did he.”
“He told you so much,” said Rigg. “He told me nothing.”
“Are you jealous?”
“Yes,” he said. “And angry. Why didn’t he trust me?”
“He trusted you most of all, he told me that. He said you were the most ready. His best student.”
“I can’t do anything myself. I can see paths, yes, but I can’t do anything without Umbo—he’s the one who actually lets me move back in time. The way you got me in here. I can’t do anything myself.”
“You knew where this passage was.”
Rigg realized they were wasting time on reassurances that his own gift had value. “We don’t have very long. Someone’s going to notice we’re gone.”
“Probably not,” she said. “It’s the middle of the night.”
“You’d be surprised how closely they watch.”
“You forget that I’ve walked these rooms and halls for years now,” she said.
“Turning and turning,” he said.
“What?”
“You can’t hold still or you reappear. So you walk in small circles when you want to stay in a room without being visible. Your whole path is full of curlicues.”
“Yes,” she said. “Around and around. I’m so sick of it.”
“So why not reappear?”
“Because they’ll kill me,” she said.
“I thought it was just—they said it was a man who—took your clothes.”
“I was putting up with nonsense like that my whole life. No, this was a man with a knife. I didn’t have time to do anything but rush toward him—I call it ‘rushing’—and then pass through him. He didn’t know where I’d gone. Back then I hardly ever did it—rushing, I mean—and they might not have known I could do it. Now they know, though. Mother told me about the spies. They know everything.”
“They know only what they see and hear,” said Rigg.
“I can’t hear anything when I rush,” she said. “You were so clever to—the slate, I mean. Even Mother never thought of writing me messages and holding them really still.”
“We have to go. But first—can you see any mechanism here that seems to lead outside the room? Any connection to some trigger that might open the door from the outside?”
They both examined the walls of the passage, but there was nothing. The lever that opened it from this side was rooted in the wall, and everything else was hidden.
“I can go into the wall if you want,” she said, “but it’s pitch black in there. I won’t see anything and I certainly can’t feel anything. Except the heat and the thickness of it.”
“No, no, I don’t want you to do that. But . . . I’m such a fool . . . somebody had to build these passages, right? Somebody built the mechanism. If I go back to the beginning, I can find his path. Their paths. I can see where they went when they were hooking everything together.”
“You mean the paths don’t fade?”
“Not really,” said Rigg. “They get fainter, sort of, but it’s more like they get farther—but it’s not actually distance—they’re still there. They never go away or move. Shhh. Let me concentrate.”
It took five minutes for him to find the right time. Long ago there had been another building here, and as he struggled to find exactly the right path, Rigg realized that they must have built this portion of Flacommo’s house while the old house was still standing. To hide what they were doing from view.
Once he had the right paths, the answer was clear. “The trigger is in the ceiling of the corridor,” he said. “Too high up for us to reach, even if we jump. But if we had a broom, or a sword, or . . . anything with a handle . . . he worked in spots right at the corners of the wall panel. Maybe you have to push both. Or maybe one opens it and the other closes it.”