“Uh… well, I’d assume my father had brought some of his colleagues home and ask their names?”
Javier sighed through his nose, which is not quite the same as a snort but shares some common ground. “For someone who studies poisons professionally, you are remarkably trusting.”
I rolled my eyes. “It’s worked for thirty-five years. It’s not like I’m royalty. No one wants to kill me. Why would they?”
“Has your father never ruined a business rival?”
“Well…”
“And have you never given testimony in a poisoning case?”
“Errr…”
“Or saved someone the poisoner very much did not want saved?”
“When you put it likethat,I’m surprised I haven’t been murdered already.”
“That makes two of us.” His tone was so bland that I eyed him suspiciously. “At any rate,” he continued, “it’s also possible that we were observed previously, marked as outsiders, and they were waiting to kill or capture us.”
“Which still doesn’t get to the matter of why they were alive and moving in the first place,” I pointed out. “I’d think it was someone from our side wearing mirror-armor, but I saw the one’s eyes.” The memory of that flat charcoal gaze made me shudder.
“I don’t think they came from the villa originally,” Javier said, surprising me.
“What? How can you tell?”
“They weren’t dressed like our guards. And the one who almost caught us was wearing metal armor.” I must have looked blank, because he made a sweeping gesture down his body. “Look. The king’s guard generally wears quilted gambesons like this, yes?”
I nodded.
“Because you don’t wear metal in the desert, unless you want to cook yourself alive. But those guards are. And that armor was fitted, so wherever he came from, he was used to wearing it.”
“I bow to your expertise,” I said. “So they came from somewhere else, and either they came through the mirror or they carried armor with them and put it on here.”
“So there should be a real armored man somewhere around here,” Javier said. “But I certainly haven’t seen one.”
I massaged my temples. “What if there isn’t a real one?”
“Doesn’t there have to be? Reflections don’t come from nowhere.”
“No, but I think they might be awake,” I said.
A line formed between his eyes. “Awake?What do you mean by that?”
I sighed. There was no help for it; I was going to have to explain about Grayling. “Okay,” I said, carefully watching a corner of the ceiling in case it might have useful advice. It did not. “This is going to sound utterly mad. I wanted you to… err… accept the mirror-world before I tried to explain this part.”
The line deepened into a chasm that threatened to draw in the eyebrows. “Explain what part?”
“Someone told me that I had to watch out for reflections that were awake.”
“Someone—you mean someone elseknows?” His voice rose on the last word.“Who!?”
“Well… when I fell through the first time, I wasn’t exactly alone…”
To Javier’s credit, he listened to my story without scoffing, though his eyebrows escaped the chasm and began creeping up his forehead instead.
When I finally finished, he gazed at me steadily for an uncomfortable length of time, then said, “You’re right. It sounds utterly mad.”
“I know that.”
