“You’re not running away this time.” My grandmother stepped around her sister. She held a long, thin sword with runes along its length.
“You can’t stop this, Alica.” The Lady Blue stepped back toward the fractal mirror. “This world is broken. Death is broken, along with the darkness and the light. There’s a better life waiting for those of us with the strength of mind to take it. The herd is lost either way, but the shepherds can survive.” She faced the old women before her but I knew her words were for me.
“The people can be saved.” Grandmother raised her blade, the tip pointed at her enemy’s heart. “And I will fight to save them, however slight the hope of success.”
Mora Shival shook her head. “You speak about the people, girl, but it’s always been about keeping power in your own two hands. It’s fear that keeps you fighting. Fear of what you might be without history, without throne and crown to fill your peasants’ throats with cheers. You were born to power. You stepped up to it over the broken bodies and broken minds of your siblings. Somewhere behind those fierce eyes the dream of being Red Empress still burns, doesn’t it, Alica? You’ve been planning a route to the all-throne for so many years you can’t let it go even when you try. You broke Czar Keljon’s power in the east, neutralized Scorron, put the fear of God into the Port Kingdoms at your back . . . and here you are, advancing through Slov on a pretext, bound for Vyene. You’re piling corpses up faster than the Dead King—so don’t talk to me of ‘the people’.”
Snorri joined Hennan behind me and gestured voicelessly to the valve opposite us.
“The last chamber,” Kara hissed. “You can end all this.”
I hurried, hunched and fearful, across the chamber, skirting the blue star burning at its heart. The valve proved identical to the first. I pressed the key to it, causing the same trembling as whatever held it in place struggled to deny me, then came the same slow and grinding revolution of the inner cylinder. Over the grating I heard a last snatch of the confrontation back in Mora Shival’s tower in Blujen.
“How is that dear boy you broke getting rid of me back in Vermillion? Shouldn’t he be the third Gholloth? If anyone has a right to be emperor it’s him. The last emperor, twisted and drooling in the all-throne as he watches the world die around him.”
I wanted to shout that Garyus would make a good emperor—better than any of them—but the entrance narrowed to an inch and then vanished, sealing off sound and plunging me once more into darkness.
The whole structure shuddered, a deep-voiced groan resonating through the metal superstructure. Throughout the vast machine, in engines that the best minds among the Builders had conceived and wrought, one element battled the next, running wild now that the mirror which was both one and many lay cracked through.
I turned with the cylinder and eventually the slot reappeared in front of me, first a dark-grey sliver, then a finger-width only a shade lighter than the midnight all around me, a hand-width, wider . . . I stepped through.
A single light panel in the ceiling struggled into life, replacing the near-impenetrable gloom with a flickering red half-light, chasing the shadows toward the corners only to fall back and let them regroup. Four thick, square pillars occupied the middle of the room, each face covered with screens, all dark.
I saw immediately that the small amount of light I had first seen in the room came through the window beside the valve. I’d thought it a black panel but it was really a thick glass window that had been giving me a view of a dark room, and now showed Snorri and the others waiting at the far side of the valve.
To my left a dirty grey cloth hung over something on the wall. I twitched the thing off and found I held a cloak, tattered and stained by hard use. It had been covering the room’s mirror facet. The Lady Blue stood close to the mirror now, her back toward it, both hands raised. The lamps in her sanctum threw her shadow across me, the rest of their light spilling into the chamber. Grandmother and her sister stood before the Lady, their faces tight with concentration. I had seen that expression before, back in Grandmother’s memories when they both struggled against their reflections as children. Silver, glimpsed between the Lady Blue’s fingers, confirmed that in each hand she held a small looking-glass, angled toward her enemies.
The strain upon their faces held me. It kept the breath locked in my chest. It kept me silent. That’s when I heard the footstep behind me.
“Oh God. It’s Cutter John.” Fear’s cold hand knotted its fingers in my innards.
“Whoever that bogey-man is, he’s your creation. He can only hurt you in ways you can imagine. I, on the other hand, am going to hurt you in worse ways. Ways you can’t imagine.”
I turned on legs almost too weak to hold me up. Edris Dean stood there, devilish in the pulsing red glow, the dark crest of his hair night-black between widows’ peaks. The pale scar, horizontal below his right eye, seemed to underscore his words. A darker scar, thick and ridged, ran along the side of his neck where Kara had nearly taken his head from his shoulders.
Motion at the corner of my eye drew my gaze to the window for a moment. Dead men were emerging from the twisting corridors that ran into the depths of the machine in the chamber behind me. I could see Snorri’s mouth open in a roar, Kara shouting, or screaming, but no hint of the sound reached me.
“The Blue Lady sent me through the mirror ahead of her . . . with some friends . . . to secure the Wheel and make sure nobody tried anything foolish, like turning it off.” Edris smiled. He held a curved sword of black iron, its point resting lazily on the floor between us. It reminded me of the blades the Ha’tari carried in the depths of the Sahar.
I glanced at the window once more. There were a lot of dead men. All in leather armour trimmed with blue. They moved with worrying quickness, faces full of fury and dark with old blood. Snorri’s axe carved a path through two of them, splattering the window.
“They’re the Lady Blue’s men,” I said. “You killed them.”
Edris inclined his head. “Dead men are better at obeying orders.”
In the mirror the Lady Blue thrust her hands toward the Silent Sister and the Red Queen. “You were foolish to bleed your army here for so many weeks, Alica.” She hissed the words as if forcing them past gritted teeth. Grandmother fell to her knees with a cry, hands before her, wrestling with the invisible. The Sister went to her knees slowly, by degrees, first to one, then to both, as if a great weight were upon her, increasing from one moment to the next. “You spent so many lives and so much of your strength . . . and for what? To die at my feet.” The Lady Blue shook her head. “You were not the only one the years made stronger.”