Marie Brennan - Doppelganger

“What about the fall? Do you remember that?”

It was hard to pick any one day or night of riding out from the rest; the last five years of her life were a smear of roads, inns, towns, saddling her horse, unsaddling her horse, building campfires, being rained on, with only occasional landmarks to distinguish one bit of traveling from another. She closed her eyes, but it didn’t help her memory. Riding, riding, then a blank. “No. I don’t.”

A short, tidy man came into the room then and introduced himself to Mirage as Marell. After reassuring him of her health—she felt fine, aside from the lump on her head—she asked about Avalanche.

Marell nodded briskly. “Bodyguard job in Vilardi. The Silk Consortium is there, negotiating with some of the major shipping companies. There’s a lot of bad blood, so the head of the Consortium hired Avalanche to keep poison out of his food and daggers out of his back.”

“How long are they there for?”

He tapped his fingers against his chin, head tilted back, apparently doing mental calculations. “They broke up recently over some argument, I believe, but it was a temporary halt only. They’re aiming for an agreement within the next week.”

That gave them just enough time to meet the witch in Ravelle before heading on to Vilardi. Mirage was relieved; she had been afraid her mysterious blackout would make them miss Avalanche. He was their best hope for figuring out the motive behind the assassination. “What time is it now?”

“The temple rang Light an hour or so ago.”

More than half the day wasted. Mirage wanted to swear, but restrained herself; Marell looked too proper for that. “Well, we can still get a few hours of riding in.”

Eclipse shook his head before she even had the words out. “No. You need to rest some more.”

“I’ve just slept for a full day. That’s plenty of rest.”

“You don’t know that you’re well yet!”

Mirage brushed one hand against the opposite wrist, drawing his gaze. Her sleeve covered the scar, but he understood. They were blood-oathed to their Hunt. Catching Avalanche in Vilardi was more important than pretty much anything else.

Eclipse sighed. “We’ll saddle our horses ourselves, Marell. Thanks for your help.”

They camped along the road that night, having ridden as long as they could without endangering Mist and Sparker in the poor light; the road here was not well-maintained. Mirage toasted bread as Eclipse saw to the horses, then passed him food silently when he sat down at the fire.

“What do you think caused it?” he asked between bites of bread and cheese.

She didn’t have to ask what he was referring to. Her blackout had been on her mind all afternoon, too. “I have no idea.”

“You might have been poisoned,” he said. “I can’t figure out how, though.”

“Not poison,” Mirage said, shaking her head. “Can you think of anything that works like that, delaying for however long, and then taking the victim down between one breath and the next? I know I didn’t feel myself fading. It was sudden.”

Eclipse considered it for a moment before shaking his head as well. “No. I don’t know anything that would do that.”

“Not to mention that there’s no good reason I can see to poison me like that. What did it accomplish? It delayed us for about half a day. That’s it.”

“Maybe delay was the point.”

“But only half a day? I can think of six different ways to slow someone down, every one of them more effective than that.”

They ate in silence for a while, listening to the crackling of the fire and the small noises of the horses shifting around. The weather was hot and still, with scarcely a hint of a breeze. Mirage suddenly missed Silverfire, far to the west; it generally had cool evenings, with a breeze off the nearby river.

“What if it was a spell?” Eclipse said.

Mirage stared at him. “What?”

“A spell. That would explain the speed, and also why neither of us noticed anything. A witch might have knocked you out.”

“And why would she do that?”

He shrugged. “I didn’t say I had it all figured out Again, maybe someone wants to delay us.”

“Kerestel, we’re working for the witches. One of them has been killed. They want to know who did it. Why would they slow us down?”

Eclipse put his hands up. “Fine, fine. It was just a random idea. I never said it would clear everything up.”

Mirage took a deep breath. Snapping Eclipse’s head off wasn’t fair, even if he should have known that was a sore spot. His suggestion of magic had touched a nerve already raw from her discovery in Tari-nakana’s house.

“Sorry,” he said, before she could say anything. “I should’ve thought before I said that about a spell.” He paused, and looked down at his hands. “It is something we should keep in mind, though.”

Mirage touched his shoulder. “It’s all right. We have to consider this from every angle. If the plausible explanations don’t make sense, it’s time to look at the implausible ones. And I’m going to have to stop twitching at every mention of magic; I’m working for a witch, for crying out loud.”

He grinned. “Old habits die hard.”

“But that doesn’t mean they shouldn’t be killed.” Mirage stretched and tossed the heel of her bread into the fire. “You want to take first watch?”

They settled themselves for the night, but Mirage did not fall asleep immediately. She couldn’t. Lying with her back to the fire, she stared into the shadowy underbrush and brooded.

Fine talk you make. “We have to consider this from every angle.” And yet you don’t tell him the whole story .

It was easy to rationalize her silence. She herself didn’t understand what she had felt in that instant before she fell from her saddle. It had flashed in her mind and then vanished without a trace, leaving her unsure she’d felt anything at all. But the memory had branded itself vividly enough in her mind that she couldn’t quite dismiss it as imagination.

Lying in the darkness, she closed her eyes and retreated into her mind, summoning the memory back. What had she felt?

The closest analogy she could find was the feeling she’d had a few weeks before, riding to Corberth with Eclipse. For the briefest of instants, it had felt as if an old and well-known friend, absent for many years, had been at her side again, as Eclipse was. There and gone, all in a heartbeats And then, before she could do more than register the flash, she had blacked out.

And I suppose it’s too much to hope that the two are unrelated .

Could it possibly have something to do with Eclipse? He was the one person she would consider an old and well-known friend. There was no one else, either from Silverfire or the years before that, whom she had felt particularly close to. Certainly not her parents, whom she had seen only a few times since being sent to the temple at the age of five; and they were dead now anyway. Maybe I was visited by their spirits. Wouldn’t that be a neat trick .

It had felt familiar. But Eclipse had been there, just a few steps behind her on the road. And it hadn’t felt like him anyway.

Mirage shivered, then made herself lie still. She heard Eclipse shift, but he said nothing. I don’t want this to have anything to do with the witches. Bad enough that I have red hair. Worse still that Tari-nakana was tracking me. I’ll work for them, but that’s the extent of my involvement. I don’t want them interfering with my life. Any more than they have already .

She took a long, slow, deep breath, and exhaled it carefully. Then, putting such thoughts firmly aside, she cleared her mind and went to sleep.