Mirror Sight

“Draw the spikes out,” the Guardian said.

Starling shook his head but obeyed. He pulled the heavy metal stakes up, revealing how they tapered to a point and had pierced holes through the witch’s feet. They were crusted and flaked with blood and flesh. Cade pivoted around to dry heave, but he heard not a single cry from the witch. When he gathered himself and turned to look again, Starling had moved away, and the witch was taking her first tentative steps out of her cell. Cade extended his hand to help her, but she brushed him away. Her steps were small and mincing, shaky, but her expression showed no pain. With each step she grew steadier, and did Cade’s eyes deceive him, or did her wounds and mutilations look less . . . intense? She left footprints of blood behind her, but that was because she had stepped through the puddles of blood left by the dead guards.

She paused and pressed her hand to one of the damp walls, then withdrew it and touched her lips. Dabbed her palm with her tongue. Cade moved to her side. “Would you like water? I am sure we can find—”

“Oh,” she said, “there will be enough water.”

Cade did not know what to make of her response, but was it his imagination or had the turbines changed rhythm down below—quickened? He could no longer see any stitch marks around her mouth. The copious scarring of her body shimmered beneath the grime on her skin. Grime that sloughed away with each moment that passed.

Cade placed Silk’s pistol in his waistband and removed his jacket. He draped it over the witch’s shoulders. She nodded to him and drew it close.

Just then, the lift arrived at the other end of the corridor.

“Trouble,” the Guardian said, his sword held at the ready.

Starling laughed. “Your sword won’t help you this time, Guardian. They’ll come out shooting.”

Cade grasped his pistol and aimed it toward the lift. How accurate was it? How many would be in the lift? He had only the two shots. He licked his lips and watched as the doors opened.

Four members of the Scarlet Guard filed into the corridor. They did not come out shooting as Starling predicted. They were probably here just to change shift with their fellows. It did not take them long, however, to assess what lay before them and draw their guns. Cade perceived Starling diving to the floor to their rear, taking cover in the antechamber of the cell behind some bodies. The Guardian was already charging down the corridor, sword raised. The man was a maniac, if man he truly was beneath armor and leather. He did not slow down even as the guards pulled their first shots. Cade fired and missed. He had one more shot, had to make it good.

Before the Guardian could reach the enemy, before Cade could pull the trigger again, there was a change in the air. Cade’s ears plugged up from the pressure. A sharp wind whistled past him. At the other end of the corridor, it threw the guards backward. They slammed into the wall and floor and lost their guns.

The witch wove air with her hands, the bloody darkened wounds from the finger manacles now looking like simple ring bands.

The Guardian halted his charge to plaster himself against the wall while the wind roared past him. It ripped the weapons out of the hands of the guards, stripped them of their uniforms. They screamed. The wind began to strip them of something other than cloth. Their flesh.

Once again, Cade averted his gaze, and it was some time before the wind stopped and the screaming died. The witch just stood there, her arms limp at her sides, facing a scene at which Cade dared not look. Starling was right about what they had unleashed.

The Guardian returned and said. “We must go and meet Rider G’ladheon.”

“Yes,” Cade said faintly. For Karigan, he would brave the mess at the other end of the corridor.

Back in the antechamber, Starling climbed to his feet. Too late, Cade spotted the flash of metal, a gun he’d retrieved from one of the bodies. He fired. The Guardian’s body jerked backward, but he did not fall. Cade could not seem to raise his pistol fast enough, and Starling fired again. This time the Guardian staggered.

The witch whirled and wind ripped down the corridor. It lifted Starling off his feet and hurled him into her old cell. The door slammed shut after him, and locks clicked and closed seemingly of their own volition. A moment of silence was followed by muffled banging on the door.

Cade helped the Guardian sink to the floor. One bullet had penetrated plate armor over his chest, the second his gut.

“Lie quietly,” Cade said. “I will stop the bleeding.”

He cast about for something he could use as bandages when the Guardian gripped his wrist. As wounded as he was, he was still strong.

“No need,” he gasped.

“But—”

“Death is honor.”

Cade knew that phrase. “That is the motto of the Black Shields.”

The Guardian’s eyes flickered beyond the eye holes of his visor. “You . . . you know it?”

Cade nodded. “I was training. In secret. To be . . . I had hoped to become a—a Weapon.”

“I was King Zachary’s Weapon. And the queen’s.” The Guardian’s words grew faint. “Proud.”

Cade bowed his head, realizing there was little he could do to help him. A true Weapon, dying right in front of him.

“Tell . . . tell Rider G’ladheon. Tell her I died well.”

“I will,” Cade said, even as the Guardian’s grip slackened on his wrist. The sound of the pump apparatus that fed air to the Guardian from the cylinders on his back sputtered to silence.

“Unneeded,” the witch said.