The Universal Mirror (5 page)

Embr carried Quentin past the doorway easily.  His prisoner’s head stirred as they walked past the doctor’s but his breath was still shallow.  Asahel couldn’t tell whether or not Quentin was coherent but he thought that he glimpsed bright eyes opening for a second before closing again.  He ducked into a doorway as Embr passed the next corner and Taggart halted, his face crinkling up as he stared into the crowd.  Asahel was out of place, even here, his clothing rough but still clean.  Unlike Pig and Taggart, his pants were not constructed from crudely-hewn patches.  It was a sure sign that he was an outsider and this was not a place he could afford to be marked.

His eyes stared up at the door, noticing that it had a crude crest of its own.  It had been hacked above the window with some blunt knife, a shovel resting on a lily.  He frowned, not understanding what it meant.  It was, however, a reminder of where he had to go.

Turning on his heel, Asahel began to walk as quickly as he could towards the city’s heart.  He kept his head lowered, hoping that he’d avoid any trouble.  As he’d expected, he did.  The Underbelly throbbed in the darkness, with encounters far more desired than any that he could provide.  His feet shuffled against the cobble, stumbling on the uneven paving as he kept moving.  There was no real sense of direction, simply a need to keep pressing on lest his friend find danger at the hands of the men that he’d met at the Thana.  The anger that he’d felt at Quentin was still present, though muted—it had dulled in the wake of a bigger problem.

Asahel ran out of the Underbelly and towards the heavy stone structures that marked the district in which Quentin lived.  He was out of breath by the time he reached the first of the streets, resting his palm against a tree, huffing as he tried to formulate his thoughts about who to take this problem to.

The City Guard wasn’t an option.  Their ranks had been corrupt as long as Asahel had been alive.  They were just as likely to save Quentin and ransom him themselves.  They’d call it a fine, Asahel knew, but it was as good as extortion in the end.  Not to mention—he shuddered—the penalty that the Guard would call for if Quentin’s reasons for being in the Thana were discovered.  Quent’s lips were loose at the best of times.  Asahel didn’t believe the possibility of torture would tighten them.

He straightened up, letting his feet carry him as he thought.  Catharine Gredara was another obvious option.  Quent’ll not forgive you if you ask her, he realized.  The light in his friend’s eyes flared as he spoke of his wife but invariably deadened when the subject of Catharine’s affection came up.

No, if Catharine truly had no love for Quentin, he wouldn’t wish him worse.  Even if, Asahel was silently cursing him for the mess he’d created.

His foot stepped on a twig.  The sound of its crack was harsh in the silence.  A passing Guard paused, touching the golden braid on his hat in slow salute, his eyebrow raised in question.

“I… I’m here to see a friend. That way.”  Asahel said, clumsily pointing down a narrow side street ahead.  The Guard relaxed but he noticed that the man’s step was still slow.  Suspicious.

Best not to draw attention.  With those words in mind, he swiftly walked towards the street.  He ignored the shadow behind as he glanced at the tall doors, reading the names.  The buildings here were tall and narrow—wealth in this part of Pallo was measured by elegance and height.  It showed by the darkness of the place, lit by lanterns even in the daytime.  It was this that gave Lantern Street its name—that, and the gilded lamps that its watchmen carried as they passed the narrow corridor.  Were it not for them, Lantern Street would easily have decayed into something worthy of the underworld through which Asahel had just traveled.  There were some who whispered that once, this very street had marked the Underbelly’s start.

He realized as he passed a second Guard that he hadn’t lied—there was a man on this street with which he and Quentin had gone to university.  As with almost all the students, Felix Carnicus had been part of the golden number whom had grown up with Quentin.  Unlike the rest, Felix had kept from tormenting Asahel.  He hadn’t tried to stop the constant teasing and fighting as Quentin had done but he’d walked away from it, at least. 

Asahel had given him credit for that.  Even if Quentin hadn’t.

It was those small comforts, after all, that Asahel had used to carry himself from one day to the next in the colleges where he was told over and over that he had no place, whatever his magical talents.  It didn’t mean that Felix and Asahel had spoken in the three years after university’s end, nor that they had spent much time together in their school years.  The colleges existed to train magicians in the use of magic and the restrictions—or Heresies—that bound it.  It was a system that relied, in part, on the fact that magic proliferated in the upper classes.  The magicians left the universities and returned to the same world that they had always known, changed themselves only slightly by their education.  If anything, all that magic did was to bind its users more firmly to the privilege of their class.

Not so for Asahel.  He hadn’t been a part of that world to begin with and his brief journey with the university had made him painfully aware of it, yet still barred from it.  Even now, he could still feel the grit of work under his fingernails: cassia, pepper, galingale.  It was, he knew, all Quentin saw sometimes when their faces met, the wrinkles and lines of hard work that separated them from one another.

 But Quentin tried.  And trying was enough for Asahel.  It was enough for him to brave a trembling hand to the door of the Carnicus estate, rapping three times.  Tat.  Tat.  Tat.  The brass ring rattled back against the wood as he dropped it.

It was a long silence.  Asahel could feel his stomach drop, making him queasy as he stared down.  His boots were caked in mud from his run out of the Thana and to the leaf-choked gutters of the Underbelly.  He rubbed his toe against the stone, trying to wipe it off as he realized how badly it looked.

Then the rain began to fall.

Asahel turned, feeling the drops splatter against his nose.  He sputtered, rubbing at the water dripping from his nostrils with a dirt-smudged hand.  He’d taken four good steps into the rain when he heard a door open behind him.

“Asahel Soames?”  The words were mingled surprise and awe.

“Aye.”  He turned.  Dark eyes reflected their own surprise as Asahel saw that Felix himself had answered the door.

Three years wasn’t a long time but it was long enough for a man to change.  There was little about Felix Carnicus that had.  He was leaning against the doorframe, his palm splayed against it to give his scrawny frame the attempted appearance of barricading the entrance.  The man looked as if he’d just stumbled from a badly made bed.  Every inch of him seemed in slight disarray—from the short, spiky brown hair pointing in all directions to the unevenly trimmed stubble that seemed to do the same.  The look in his gray eyes was sharp despite the rest of him, already analyzing Asahel before he’d had a chance to say more.

“I can’t have you standing outside my front door,” Felix said.  “People will talk.”

“Oh.  Right.”  The color flooded Asahel’s nose and cheeks as he moved back, ducking his head.  He was caught by a hard grip on his upper arm, knuckles digging into the skin.

“No, you ninny.  Come inside.”  The grip was too strong for Asahel to refuse.  He allowed Felix to drag him inside, slamming the door behind.  His head was still downcast, dark curls damp with the rain and dripping.

“I’m sorry,” Asahel stuttered.  “I’d not meant to wake—”

“No, you didn’t wake me.  I never sleep.  I was known for that in the colleges, don’t you remember?”  He hesitated, apparently realizing that Asahel might not remember.  “No matter.  My manservant’s getting on and doesn’t hear the door most times.  Especially when the knock’s timid.”  Felix smiled a little, his eyes still fogged with sleep despite his contrary statements.

Asahel stood there, his fingers wrestling with the edge of his left sleeve.  The water squeezed out, dripping down on his boot and spattering the brown leather black.

“Can I get you something to drink?”  Felix asked, as gracefully as if Asahel had come by in the afternoon, rather than the middle of the night.  He seemed all knees and elbows suddenly as he looked at Asahel, leading him into a smaller sitting room.  A table rocked as Felix’s hip bumped it, its surface jerking slightly.  Asahel reached out, catching it with his hand unconsciously to hold it steady.

“I’ve not—” he began to say, still not meeting Felix’s eyes.  “It’s not—not a social call.”

“If it was a social call, it’s half past midnight,” the other man’s eyebrow quirked.  “I don’t think we’d be in the sitting room.”  Asahel’s cheeks flamed at the remark as he pulled his hand away from the table, wishing away his blush and failing.

“I shouldn’t’ve come.”

“Don’t say that.  We haven’t talked since the colleges.”  Felix grimaced slightly.  “Not that I blame you.  I was abominable to you, we all were, but I hardly think you’re looking for an apology for that now.”  He walked over to a second table with a decanter and pair of glasses on it, pouring himself a drink.  Asahel noticed that he didn’t take a sip nor offer it, however, simply held it like a prop.  Felix’s grip had gone pale.

“But it’s not money,” Felix continued, studying Asahel’s face.  “You’re too proud for that—you always were, and besides, I’ve always thought you’d a strong head on your shoulders.  And it’d be no good coming to me about women.”  He tilted his head slightly, looking down into Asahel’s brown eyes.  “’Who falls in water doesn’t drown but who falls in badly will.’  Shasrow.  Bad writer, decent advice.”  Felix cleared his throat.  “Tell me.”

There had to be a reason that he’d come, Asahel thought.  Magic was three-parts fate, he’d been told by a professor once, and here he was, standing in front of a magician that he’d never believed he’d speak to again.  Swallowing his fear, he answered, “It’s… Quent.”

“Quent?  Quentin?”  The other man’s features wrinkled.  “Quentin Mathar?  Excuse me, Gredara.”  Felix took a step back, setting the untouched glass down.  “I didn’t realize the two of you were thick.  Quiet earth, does Catharine know?” 

The words were well-intentioned but they stung. 

“No.  We don’t talk socially much.  Quentin and I, I mean.”  Anyone could guess that Asahel didn’t speak to Catharine at all.  So few people did. 

Asahel scratched the back of his neck, his shoulders slumping down as his voice pinched.  “Aye, it’s been more… more talking of things from university really than anything.”  He didn’t quite dare tell Felix more than that—the man had just proven again to him that the old divides would never be crossed.

“You don’t see Quentin publically,” Felix commented, unaware of Asahel’s thoughts.  “And you haven’t seen me in years, yet you’re coming to me on his behalf.  Whatever this is, Asahel, it’s a bad business.”  His hand stretched towards the glass, then clenched again.

“It’s not how it looks.”

“I don’t think you know how it looks or how I want it to look.”  The taller man was eying him, his thumb rubbing the stubble on his chin slowly.  The gaze was so intense that Asahel couldn’t tell if Felix was considering a laugh or a scream.

“I shouldn’t have come.”  He turned his head.

“No, what you shouldn’t have done was to come and then make an attempt at running away.”  Felix neatly stepped in front of him, blocking the exit.  “You know I’ve no love for Quentin or him for me and I should say there’s less there now than there was at school.”  He hesitated.  “But I can’t chide you for running when it’s all I did in the colleges.  Give me a chance to prove I’ve grown.”

“Why would you want that?”  Asahel asked, his voice a hoarse whisper.  He bit his lip, worrying it between his teeth.  “Aye, no, I’ve spent too much time worrying over this when we’ve not that time to waste.”

“What is it then?  What’s happened?”

“Quent’s been taken.”  The words were sour in his mouth, coming out in short bursts as if he was spitting out a bad taste.

“Taken?  By what?”  Felix looked as if he was struggling to appear concerned. 

Asahel respected the effort in spite of himself.  He fumbled with the explanation, not knowing how he’d fool the other man.  He decided on the truth, however unbelievable he knew the truth to seem.  “Grave robbers.  I think.  They’re some sort of gang, any road—we ran into them by the Thana.”  The use of “we” was a false note, the lie clearly not unnoticed by the way that Felix’s eyes had slanted.

“The Thana?  Well, that’s not one I’ve heard before,” was all he said, a strangely bitter note in his voice.

“Believe me,” Asahel said, desperate.

“You’re a man of many depths, Asahel, but they don’t include lying.  A liar wouldn’t spin something like that.”  He frowned, fingers giving his glass one last brush before stepping away from it.  “I ought to ask why me but you’ve got your reasons, I assume.”

Felix’s mouth twisted as he added, “And I’ve met Catharine, even if you haven’t.  I’m a better bet if you want Quentin back alive.  I, at least, don’t hate the man.”  Amused at something Asahel couldn’t determine, he laughed to himself.  “Hate’s a strong word.”

“I just need to get him out.  I’ll not try to ransom him alone.  I reason they’d just hold me as well.”  Asahel ducked his head to avoid Felix’s gaze, glancing down at his feet, too heavy and clumsy to carry him swiftly from anywhere.

“They might, at that,” Felix smiled.  “Unless you’ve gotten better with a sword.”  Asahel shook his head.  “Fortunate I kept up with it then.”