Cade nodded, obedient as ever. But how obedient? the professor wondered, in light of his student’s countering opinion.
Gah, he thought. I have spent so much time intriguing that I’ve become suspicious of everyone. Even Cade, who is like a son to me.
His shoulders sagged as he led the way toward the stairwell. There was an enemy around every corner ready to reveal him and all he’d worked for. He had to be suspicious, even of his dear Old Button.
LETTERS
Karigan flipped the lever just inside the doorway of the third floor, and light came to life throughout the room. She hadn’t asked the professor’s permission to see her belongings, and why should she? He’d never said she could not. They were hers, after all, and she had no plans to disturb his other artifacts.
She sought the correct aisle, passing draped furniture and a stack of empty, gilt frames. She strode past a rusty kettle balanced atop a birdbath, and turned down the aisle, drawn inexorably on. Though the professor’s shelves were packed with all the treasures he’d amassed, she walked right past them, interested only in the objects that had traveled through time with her.
When she reached them, she found them just as she had last seen them, her uniform, her brooch, and the owl feather spread out on plain linen, the moonstone glistening on crumpled velvet. There, too, was her bonewood cane and the shards of the looking mask. She caressed her brooch, but felt nothing other than its smooth texture, no tingling resonance of her special ability, nothing. The moonstone only offered a dim flicker at her touch. She feasted her gaze on the green of her tattered, muddied uniform. Well dried now, the mud crumbled at her touch.
She had come here, she realized, because these items were her only link with home, her own time. She pressed her cheek against a length of green fabric. It had taken on the scent of the dusty mill, displacing any that may have come from her own time, even that of her toil through Blackveil. If only she could take her things back to the professor’s house—or at least one item, perhaps her brooch. But she knew the professor was right—her things were safer here. Maybe she could just visit them more often. She feared that the more she grew accustomed to the professor’s world, the more she would forget what it was like to traverse a public street unveiled or to carry a sword. She feared her former life would become like the memory of a dream, the details dissipating with every passing day. Already, she thought, she had adjusted to the acrid air of the city. The customs of the people were becoming more familiar to her. Would she forget what it was like to be a well-rounded citizen able to take part in the many spheres of life as she had in her Sacoridia? Would she accept her role here, limited to domesticity and having no say in her own affairs? The women here lived well or poorly based solely on the sufferance of the men who held control over their lives.
While Karigan’s Sacoridia had not been perfect, she could not believe it had come to this. How had Amberhill managed to steal the individual power of all the people here, leaving the women—and the slaves—trapped at the bottom of society?
It was the weapon. The weapon the professor said Amberhill had wielded in the decisive battle. Some great weapon, the one that had destroyed Sacor City and the castle. Now Silk was delving for a device that could counteract the emperor’s power, trying to reach it before the professor and his opposition could. If only she could get back home, warn the king . . .
The shards of the looking mask flashed when she thought of King Zachary. She jerked back, startled, but when there were no images in the offing, she assumed she had merely caught the light glancing on them at an odd angle.
Then, a few heartbeats later, the images came, revealing a chamber draped with heavy tapestries and shields. In the center of it stood King Zachary who wore a gleaming breastplate. He tugged at it, as if checking the fit. She did not see him as she’d once seen Captain Mapstone—the same image but at different angles in each shard. She saw his image as a mosaic that created a single picture.
She noted how light from an unseen window slanted in on the king, burnishing his hair and close-cropped beard more red-gold than amber. It glared on his breastplate. He was the same as she remembered, and yet not . . . His cheekbones looked sharper, his eyes shadowed, tired. Despite the sunlight, there was a darkness on him. He turned, as if to examine himself in a mirror from a different angle. His profile looked too thin to her. Had he been sick? She frowned, worried now.
An attendant came forward and also checked the fit of the breastplate, tightening side straps, and then stepped back and out of the image. Karigan wished she could hear what was being said, if anything. Wished she could step through the vision to be there in the chamber with him.
Theirs was a story of two people bound strongly to one another yet forbidden to be together. He was royalty, she was a commoner. He must marry Lady Estora to maintain the unity among Sacoridia’s twelve provinces in the face of threats from Second Empire and Blackveil. His taking a commoner as wife would only thrust the country into discord.
Not that Karigan hadn’t imagined such a marriage. She laughed at the thought of herself as queen. I’d be terrible! A queen would be as confined to that role and to the castle as any woman of the professor’s time to the hearth and veil. If she stayed here, it would kill her. The confinement. The rigid and limited expectations. So would the crown. No matter it was the highest rank to which one could ascend—after the king, of course—it was just another kind of prison. Even duty-bound to the messenger service and required to follow orders from her superiors, she was freer as a Rider, as free as anyone could be, which was amusing because she had once believed the opposite.