Qinnitan swallowed. “Yes.” He turned back to her. His eyes were as empty as those of the red and silver fish in the Seclusion’s pools. “I would like to have a bath,” she said. “To bathe myself. Surely even you don’t plan to hand me over to the autarch stinking like this.”
He turned away and stepped to the door. “Perhaps.”
“Why won’t you tell me your name?”
“Because the dead need no names,” he said, letting the door fall shut behind him. She heard the latch fall heavily into place.
Somebody was talking to him in the passageway outside. It sounded like the captain—one of the autarch’s best, from what Qinnitan had gathered from the few crewmen she’d been able to overhear. She had also gathered the captain wasn’t happy taking orders from their kidnapper, whoever and whatever he was. She untangled herself from Pigeon and moved quietly to the door so she could put her ear against the crack.
“… But it cannot be helped,” the captain was telling the nameless man. “Do not fear. We are a faster ship—we will catch the autarch’s fleet within a few days.”
“If it must be, it must be,” their captor said at last after a long silence. A little emotion had crept into his voice—impatience, maybe even anger. “I will be back by nightfall. See that we are ready to cast off then.”
Now it was the captain who could not keep the irritation from his voice. “A new rudder cannot always be fitted on the instant, even in a port town like Agamid. I can only do my best. The gods will always have their way.”
“Not true,” said their captor shortly. “If we fail to catch up to the autarch, even the gods will not be able to save you. That I promise you, Captain.”
Qinnitan walked on her tiptoes back to the bed and climbed in next to Pigeon. The sheets were damp and the boy’s skin was sweaty. Could he be catching some fever? She almost hoped so. It would be a good joke on the murderer who had stolen them if they both died of some workaday illness before he could deliver them to their fate.
“Sh,” she whispered to the shivering child. “We will be well, my chick. All will be well ...” But her mind was racing along like a cart rolling downhill. They were in Agamid the captain had said, and by the grace of the sacred bees of the Hive she recognized the name, a city on the southeastern coast of Eion, just north of Devonis. One of the girls in the Citadel’s washroom had been from Agamid. Qinnitan turned her memory upside down now, but couldn’t remember anything else the girl had said except that the port city had been claimed by both Devonis and Jael so long that the population spoke several languages. That did not help her. What she needed was a way to get off the ship while their enemy was away. If only she could think of a diversion…
“Do you trust me?” she asked the mute boy a few moments later. “Pigeon? Do you trust me?”
For a long moment he didn’t seem to hear her, and she worried he might be too ill to do anything, let alone risk his life trying to escape. Then he opened his eyes and nodded his head.
“Good,” she said. “Because I have an idea but it’s a bit frightening. Promise you won’t be too scared, whatever happens.”
His thin hand came out from under the single threadbare blanket and he squeezed hers.
“Then listen. We only have one chance to make this work.” And if it went wrong, one or both of them would die. She didn’t say that, but Pigeon already knew it. They had been living on stolen time ever since the nameless man had dragged them up the gangway of the autarch’s flagship.
Fever or fire, she thought. Either way, I’ll burn before I let the autarch touch me again.
9. Death in the Outer Halls
“Goblins, especially the solitary larger sort, were still found in remote parts of Eion even after the second war with the fairies. A goblin was killed here in Kertewall in the March Kingdoms during King Ustin’s reign, and its body was kept and shown to visitors, who all agreed it was no natural creature.”
“I must confess that I do not understand any of this, Chaven.” Ferras Vansen shook his head. “Gods, demigods, monsters, miracles… and now mirrors! I thought witchcraft was a thing of poisons and steaming cauldrons.”
The physician’s smile looked a little forced. “We are not discussing witchcraft here, Captain, but science,” he said. “The difference is one of learned men observing rules and sharing them with other learned men so that a body of knowledge is built up. That is why I need your help. Please tell me one more time.”
“I have told you all I can remember, sir. I fell into the darkness in Greatdeeps. I fell for a long time. Then, it was as though I slept and dreamed. I can remember only snatches of that dreaming and I have told them to you. Then I walked out of darkness—and yes, I remember that part very firmly. I fell into the shadows, but I walked out on my feet. I found myself in the center of Funderling Town—although I did not realize it at first, of course, since I had never been there.”
“But you were standing on the mirror, am I correct? The great mirror that reflects the statue of the god the Funderlings call the Lord of the Hot, Wet Stone—Kernios, as we Trigonates name him?”
Vansen was getting tired and couldn’t understand why Chaven kept asking so many questions about the way he had returned to Midlan’s Mount. Hadn’t he explained it all that first day?
“I was standing on the mirror, yes. I didn’t know the Funderlings had a different name for him, but it’s clearly an image of Kernios. Now that I think of it, that’s what that one-eyed monster Jikuyin planned in the first place—he wanted to open a door to the house of Kernios, whatever that might have meant. But I didn’t think about it long because I quickly found I had other things to consider.” He smiled a little. “A horde of Funderlings carrying all manner of sharp objects, for one thing. And if I remember correctly, you were the one leading them, Chaven, so there is nothing more I can tell you that you don’t know already.”
“It all makes a kind of sense,” the physician said slowly, as if he had not heard the last bit at all. In fact, he had seemed to stop listening after Vansen mentioned the house of Kernios. “Perhaps there was another mirror within the darkness in the Greatdeeps mines where you fell,” he mused. “Or something that acted the same way—we cannot even guess at all the knowledge the Qar still have, or that the gods once shared with them.” Chaven began pacing back and forth across the refectory, one of the few places in the temple of the Metamorphic Brotherhood other than the sacred chapel itself that was big enough for the two men to stand upright and move freely. “And at the other end, a sacred place in Funderling Town—dedicated to the god under a different name, but dedicated nonetheless. As though a single house had a door that opened in Eion and another that gave onto sunny Xand!”
“Again, you’ve lost me, Doctor.” Ferras Vansen could only spend so much time talking about such things, considering, pondering. He was a soldier, after all—his country was in danger and he ached to do something about it. “But please, do not waste your strength explaining. I am too simple for such things.”
“You underestimate your own wit, Captain Vansen, as always.” Chaven laughed. “The question is, have you convinced yourself? In any case, do not mind me. I have much to think about before I can make even the beginnings of sense out of this. The horrifying thing is that Brother Okros was one of the best men on just these matters, and I ache to share this with him and hear his thoughts even as a part of me wishes I could cut out his heart.”