This was not promising.
From her position directly behind the Arkon, Kaylin couldn’t see what had caused him to freeze. “Arkon?”
“I do not care what the Emperor says,” the Arkon said. “If we survive this, I am going to burn the Arcanum to the ground.”
“You’d have the full support of most of the Halls of Law,” Kaylin told his back. “What are you staring at?”
He moved to the side, and she entered the house—or tried. Standing in front of her, with a very dubious expression, was...herself. “Is this a mirror?” she asked the Arkon. “Can you see your own reflection?” She couldn’t see his reflection—only her own.
“It’s more complicated than that, but yes.” He snorted in disgust, and small flames lapped the edge of his beard. The Arkon drove his fist into the mirror; the mirror didn’t shatter.
To the familiar, Kaylin asked, “Can you do anything?”
Silence.
“Mandoran? Annarion?”
The answer was a resounding no. They saw exactly what the Arkon and Kaylin could see: images of themselves. Only Mandoran seemed to find this disturbing.
The Arkon chose to share his disgust in loud draconic. Kaylin lifted her hands to cover her ears, as his speech was not brief.
Bellusdeo replied. Her voice was thinner; it lacked its usual resonance. Kaylin told herself that this was because it lacked her usual anger, but couldn’t make herself believe it. And only an idiot wasted time trying to believe their own lies.
“Is Sanabalis with her?”
“Yes. He is...injured.”
“Maggaron?”
“He is—understand that this is Bellusdeo’s phrasing—‘stupid.’”
Which meant alive, but not in great shape. “Is she in the basement?”
The Arkon spoke again. This took longer. So did Bellusdeo’s reply. “Yes. She recognizes it from Records. She cannot hear you, by the way; she can hear me. I do not think she can hear Annarion or Mandoran, either.”
The two Barrani were conferring. They did so in silence, although Mandoran’s expression made it clear that it wasn’t an amusing conversation. “We think there’s a way in,” he finally said.
“Good,” the Arkon replied. “Find it.”
Mandoran approached the mirror. To Kaylin’s surprise, she could now see his reflection as well as her own; the Arkon’s was still absent. He reached out, placed his palm against the center of his own reflection and pushed. The reflective surface, which had showed no sign of reaction at all to a Dragon’s weight and momentum, bent. It didn’t break; it stretched.
Mandoran then moved a yard to the side and tried again; Annarion did the same in the opposite direction. Here, the lack of most of the front walls helped. But if the putative Barrani weren’t as confined to this existence as Kaylin or the Arkon, it didn’t matter. To their hands, the reflective barrier was not as solid, but it wasn’t permeable. Nothing they did could bring it down.
Bellusdeo roared. This time, the Arkon did not respond.
“What—what did she say?”
“She is tiring,” he replied.
“Does she say what she sees? Is there any clue at all?”
He didn’t answer, and she was never going to be desperate enough to grab him by the shoulders and shake him. Not the Arkon.
Not Mandoran or Annarion, either. She backed away from the house and turned toward Gilbert—or what remained of Gilbert. He was frozen now, like a wave in motion—but with tentacles and a million eyes. He might have been the nightmare version of a starry sky. Or the monster version, if monsters told stories to their offspring.
And Gilbert was not a monster. Gilbert had saved Kattea. Gilbert was willing to save them all.
“Mandoran. Annarion. Come here.”
“What have you found?”
She shook her head. “I think—I think I might have a way in.”
They stared at her. She fished around in the small satchel of things-that-must-not-be-lost-on-pain-of-quartermaster and withdrew the very expensive pocket mirror the Hawklord had insisted she requisition. She wanted to stay in the quartermaster’s good books. Or at least his mediocre books. Or even his minor-pest books—instead of his public-enemy-number-one books, which was where she often resided.
But in the close call between pissing off the quartermaster and pissing off the man responsible for her job, she’d chosen the quartermaster.
“That’s a portable mirror.”
Kaylin nodded.
“That you’re not supposed to use.”
She nodded again. The Arkon joined them. His eyes brightened visibly—which meant they became orange, rather than the bloodred they’d been stuck in—at the sight of it. “You mean to use the mirror network to get in.”
She hesitated. “Not exactly.”
“Not exactly?”
“I mean for Gilbert to use the mirror network to get in.”