“Dangerous?” I asked. How much did she know? Was this a warning or a confession?
“Mmm.” Lady Sorrel turned the bottle over in her hands. Her hands trembled, but her grip was still sure. “Perhaps all mirrors could be dangerous. Most of them aren’t, I imagine. These, though…” She gestured toward the shape with the cloth hung over it. “I haven’t trusted them since before the queen died.”
“What do you think is wrong with them?”
She studied me for a long, long moment, and I actually saw the moment that she decided she’d said too much. “Nothing, I’m sure. An old woman’s fancies. Perhaps I really am afraid of growing old and I’m trying to pretend I’m not.” She rose to her feet and handed me the bottle. “Use that on your skin twice a day, my dear,and maybe by the time you’re my age, you won’t end up quite as wrinkled as I am.”
I thanked her and left, my stomach already beginning to knot with dread.
“Lady Sorrel?” Javier asked. He sounded like he was about to protest, then reconsidered. “Well. I suppose it’s possible.”
“The timing fits,” I said gloomily. “Damn it, I liked her. Anddon’ttell me that bad people often go out of their way to be likable, because Iknowthat, and it doesn’t make it any less awful.”
“By those standards, you’re definitely a good person,” Javier muttered.
“Thanks.” I wanted to glare at him, but I didn’t, because it wasn’t his fault he’d been assigned as a bodyguard to someone with all the grace and tact of a charging water buffalo. He was stuck with me. However much I feared the king’s displeasure, the royal guard had to have it much worse. I settled for scowling at my shoes.
We were in the open part of the gardens again. Cicadas screamed overhead, and locust trees cast filamented shadows across the ground. I sat on the bench, and Javier stood beside me. To a distant observer, we were healer and bodyguard, nothing more. Certainly not two people discussing sedition against the lady of the manor.
Leather creaked as Javier shifted his feet. “I’m sorry,” he said finally. “I shouldn’t have said that.”
“It’s fine,” I said wearily. “I know what I’m like.”
“You’re not unlikable, though. You’re just blunt. And stubborn. And you want to be right.”
I sighed. “You sound like my sister. She used to say that once I knew I was right about something, I’d club people over the head with it rather than let it go.”
“You’re dedicated to the truth. That’s not a bad thing. And you’re passionate about lots of things.”
“That doesn’t help.” I shook my head. “It turns out that very few people want to listen to a treatise on the long-term effects of lead poisoning whenever they pick up a bottle of sweetened wine.”
“I wouldn’t mind.”
I looked up, startled. He was looking at me intently, and I felt a flush start to creep along my skin. I had to remind myself that this was the same man who had given me a look of such disgust only a day or two ago.
A bird whistled overhead—whit-wheeet!—and startled us both. I looked away hurriedly, and Javier tried to pretend that he hadn’t just grabbed for the hilt of his sword.
“Anyway,” I said, clearing my throat. “Do you really think Lady Sorrel could be the one behind all this?”
Javier shrugged helplessly. “I’ve never actually spoken with her. I’m attached to the king’s household, and normally I go where he goes. I can tell you that everyone who works here thinks highly of her, but that doesn’t mean anything. IfIwas going to be evil, I’d treat the staff very, very well.”
I tried to picture Javier being evil and couldn’t quite manage it. I suppose there are evil people who are solid and reliable and even-tempered, but either you don’t meet a lot of them, or they hide being evil remarkably well. Either way, I imagine they pay their staff quite handsomely.
“How can we figure it out?” I asked. “I suppose I could ask Snow, but I’m not sure she’d tell me.”
“We could search her rooms in the mirror,” Javier suggested. “See if there’s anything incriminating. If she’s got a bushel of apples hidden there, for example.”
“That’s a good idea.” I rubbed my forehead. “Saints. What do we tell the king if it does turn out to be her? Will he even believe us?”
A frown creased the edges of Javier’s mouth. “We’d have to show him the mirror-world.”
The heaviness of his tone surprised me. “I thought we’d have to do that anyway?”
Javier was silent for a moment too long.
“You don’t think we should tell him,” I said.
He didn’t meet my eyes. “I keep thinking how dangerous this could be. As soon as they figure out how, everyone will be making as many mirrors as they can. It’ll become an arms race. And everything—everyone—will need twice as many guards so that they can be stationed in the mirror-world as well. We’d be opening another battlefront across the entire world.” He rubbed a hand over his scalp and looked suddenly old, not merely a man in his late thirties but ancient, with the weight of history looming over him. “King Randolph is a good man and a good king, but what if this gets in the hands of someone like Bastian the Demon?”
