“I doubt she knew anything about the blood or the hearts. And what am I going to do? Demand restitution?” I was fairly sure that Nurse received a royal pension and wasn’t in poverty. I was also sure that a single chest of goods from one of my father’s ships was worth more than she saw in a year. “I don’t think she’s going to do it again.”
He nodded slowly. “So now what do we do?”
I snorted. “We wait for the king to arrive, shower us with praise, then get the hell out of here and go home.”
“I suppose you’ll go back to being a healer.”
“I suppose you’ll go back to being a guard?”
He grunted. After a moment, he said, “I may be done with guard duty. I’m too old for this. You’ve seen my ribs.”
“Yeah.” We had made our way, without really thinking about it, down to the garden, to the stone bench where we’d met so often. There was a gardener working in the distance, but we were well out of earshot.
“You know,” I said, sitting down, “sometimes healers go into pretty rough neighborhoods.”
“I’ve seen some of those neighborhoods. It fills me with dread that you’d go galloping through one without an army at your back.”
“I never gallop,” I said, with dignity. “But it had occurred to me that maybe a bodyguard wouldn’t be a bad thing.”
“Had it, now?” He raised one eyebrow.
“They might have to stay at the house. Or at least near it. I could get called out at any time of day or night.” I shrugged. “Of course, you’re done with guard duty. Maybe I’ll ask Aaron—”
“You will dono such thing,” Javier growled, and kissed me, while hummingbirds buzzed furiously around us both.
CHAPTER 32
The mirror-desert was gray on gray, with the sky a soft blue overhead. I shifted my basket to my hip as I climbed the steps to where Lady Sorrel sat.
“I didn’t expect to see you again,” she said.
I sat the basket down. “Are you alone here?”
“It seems so. That dreadful woman is gone, and her guards have all gone running away.” She sniffed haughtily. “Not that they were good company anyway. But they might have left me one of the horses.”
“You might talk to the mirror-gelds,” I suggested. “If you get lonely. They’re… um… intelligent. Sort of.”
She tilted her head and looked up at me skeptically, the exact same way that her counterpart did. That her eyes were solid gray did not lessen the effect at all. “And what, young lady, is a mirror-geld?”
I sat down on the cold chair beside her. “That’s a very good question…”
After she’d listened to my explanation, such as it was, Lady Sorrel said, “Huh.They sound fascinating. Horrible, but fascinating. Well. If I get lonely, perhaps I’ll go talk to them.” She gazed at the reflected patch of garden a while longer, then said abruptly, “I don’t mind this. You’d think I would, but I find whole days go by while I just sit and watch the hummingbirds. And at night there are moths. It’s very peaceful.” She pursed her lips. “Not much of my life was peaceful, you know. Not for many years. This feels like a rest, at last.”
I nodded. “I brought you something, in case you get cold.” I flipped open the basket and pulled out a stack of blankets in the most brilliant colors I had been able to find.
A smile spread across her wrinkled charcoal face. “You’re a good girl,” she said, and patted my hand. “Come back anytime.”
After Sorrel, there was only one loose end left. I sat on a bench against the villa wall, where the bougainvillea had grown into a shaded arbor. The shadows lay light and gray along the wall. One of those shadows had a single golden eye.
“Grayling?” I asked quietly, after we’d sat together for a little time.
A thin sigh rippled through my head. He stretched. “More questions, I suppose?”
“Not this time. Or at least, not yet. First I have an answer for you.”
“How novel.” He examined his claws, found one imperfect, and began nibbling at the point.
“I couldn’t figure out how the first person had gone through the mirror,” I said. “The Mirror Queen couldn’t put anything through. The real queen ate a mirror-apple, but someone had to have brought it back with them in the first place. You said the old woman brought the apples through before the Mirror Queen imprisoned her. But how did she get through?”
