“Could they have gone over the balcony?” I asked.
“You tell me.”
The railing had balustrades holding it up; it wasn’t a solid piece. I supposed the hands could have crawled there. I shuddered at the thought and was glad when Javier went through the doors first.
The mirror-desert was even grimmer at sunset. The red sky, cut with black, gave the scene a dreadful quality, like looking down into some bleak, forgotten hell. If the mirror-stuff had reflected even a little of the red, I think it might have been less disturbing. Then it would have just looked like weather. The stark gray under that blaze of bloody light was so clearly unnatural that it dragged at the eyes, while the mind struggled to make sense of it and failed.
There were no severed limbs and faces lying on the ground below, which was a relief, and also not something that I’d ever had to worry about before. Maybe theyhadjust dissolved. It was entirely possible that Grayling would just run when he saw them, the same way that I had, and he was too… toocatto admit that he didn’t know what happened afterward.
We turned away from the red sky in mutual unspoken agreement.
“We’ll have to start checking the other rooms soon,” Javier said. “The poisoner’s bound to be in there somewhere.”
“Tomorrow, then.” He didn’t press me to do it tonight, and I was grateful, and slightly resentful for being grateful. I knew hewas humoring me because he hadn’t seen the mirror-geld and had no idea just how horrific they’d been.
We parted at the door. I took shameful advantage of my status as a guest, had the tub filled with hot water, and soaked in it while reading the Red Feather Saga. The heroine’s cousin had just found a secret door in the house seized by her evil uncle when he’d stolen her inheritance. She was making what I felt was an excessive fuss about it being full of spiderwebs.Spiders, feh. You should see mirror-gelds.
Grayling was already on the bed when I got in. He flicked an ear at me but didn’t open his eye. “I know, I know,” I said, contorting myself so that I didn’t disturb him. For a small cat, he took up an ungodly amount of space. “Ear mites. Good night.”
I think he said, “Good night,” but I was mostly asleep by then, so it’s possible I dreamed it.
“Oh dear…” Lady Sorrel tutted at me during lunch the next day. “You’ve gotten quite a sunburn.”
I had? I had been avoiding the mirrors so determinedly that I hadn’t noticed. I pressed a fingertip into my forearm and watched the mark turn bright white against red. All that roaming around looking for cats had clearly taken its toll.
“I’ve got a lotion that works wonders,” Sorrel said. “Come with me.”
Her private rooms were exactly like I would have expected, had I given the matter any thought. Richly colored fabric lay on every surface, rag rugs covered the floors, and the seats were so deeply upholstered that when I sat in one, I sank down at least an inch. The furniture seemed to be mostly dark wood, but I caught only glimpses of chair legs and footboards under piles of fabric. The only exception was an armoire that looked large enough to sleep three, provided they were all good friends.
“Now, let’s see…” Sorrel said, going to a small sideboard whileI craned my neck, taking in the colors. She picked up a small jar, unstoppered it, sniffed, and put it back down. “Not that one… not that one…”
The sideboard was covered in little jars and bottles, like a vanity table. Except there was no mirror.
In fact, looking around, I couldn’t see a single mirror anywhere. And now that I looked at it, that fall of cloth against the wall wasn’t a hanging; it was clearly covering something tall and rectangular.
She turned back to me with a smile on her face, and I blurted out, “There aren’t any mirrors in here.”
Her smile fixed in place like a butterfly pinned to a card. “Ah,” she said. “No.”
I stared at her, this pleasant, charming woman who had been the mistress to a royal madman. Couldshebe the person that Snow had been talking about? It made no sense, but I’d given up on people making sense. And she was here and Snow would trust her. But why would she want to poison a twelve-year-old girl?
Revenge for Bastian’s death? Or maybe the mercury got to her, too, and she went mad in a much colder way?
Or maybesheactually poisonedhim, and now she’s… I don’t know, keeping her hand in?
I studied the ranks of bottles and vials on the vanity. If I hadn’t known about the apple, I’d be very suspicious right now. Granted, Lady Sorrel didn’t fit my idea of a black widow—not nearly enough husbands—but she might have her own motives that I knew nothing about.
Oblivious to my thoughts, she sank down into a chair opposite mine, the lotion bottle forgotten in her hand. “Bastian never liked them,” she said. “Sometimes he thought that his enemies were watching him through mirrors. It was the poison talking, of course.” She made a small, aimless gesture with her free hand. “Even after he was gone, I didn’t feel like surrounding myself with them. I used a little polished tin thing for checking my makeup.Then, of course, Randolph married and had his honeymoon here, and she brought all those mirrors as a gift…”
“There are a lot of mirrors here,” I said cautiously.
“So many. It showed how wealthy the bride’s family was. And the queen loved mirrors. She’d have had them up on every wall if she could. I’m told you can hardly turn a corner in the palace without meeting yourself coming and going.”
Damn it, I didn’t want to suspect her. Ilikedher. More than anyone here, except maybe Aaron and Javier.
“The servants think that it’s vanity,” Lady Sorrel said, with a laugh that was both amused and unutterably weary. “They think that I’m afraid that if I have mirrors about me, I’ll suddenly realize that I’m old. As if I couldn’t tell without that.” She lifted a hand like the claw of some great bird, the knuckles ridged and the tips swollen around the nail, then let it drop again. “Though you do forget sometimes, I admit. In my head, you see, I’m the same person that I always was. I see old friends and think, ‘But how did that happen? How didtheyget so old?’”
I smiled at that. Sorrel smiled back, then her smile faded. “I don’t know. Perhaps I’m going as mad as poor Bastian. But the mirrors in this house feel dangerous now.”
