Marie Brennan - Doppelganger

For the hundredth time, she wished she could be there to handle this in person. But she could not risk approaching the doppelganger so closely. None of them could.

“Keep Miryo drugged,” she said at last. “Her magic isn’t stable, but she may attempt to use it anyway. Bring her south to us as quickly as you can.”

“And the other?”

“Shimi-kane is tracking it now. We will contact you again when we have its location confirmed.”

The Cousin nodded. With a single note, Satomi ended the spell, and the woman’s image vanished from the mirror in front of her.

She sat for a moment, staring at her own reflection in the glass. One hand came up to brush back a few strands of her pale, fiery hair. No white in it yet; after the last half year she felt as though there should be. The discovery of Tari’s heresy had pained her deeply, bringing up long-buried memories of her own doppelganger. And that had been just the beginning of her problems.

Satomi truly wished that Miryo could be made to understand. She wished that for all the heretics, but Miryo above the others. The young woman showed so much promise; she was bright, and adaptable, and devoted. But she was also, in the end, flawed. She had come to believe whole-heartedly in the lies Tari had spawned, and she would not listen to reason. Satomi grieved that she must kill Miryo, but there was no choice. She could not place the survival of one talented young woman above the continuation of Starfall itself.

The alarm on her personal quarters tripped. Satomi composed her face, then rose and went to admit Shimi.

“It worked,” the Air Prime said. “The man is heading north, quite rapidly.”

Satomi studied her colleague closely. There was a glint in Shimi’s pale, cold eyes she did not like. Arinei had been upset over Tari’s betrayal, but that was nothing compared to Shimi’s fury when she learned that Ashin was a part of it, too. The Air Prime was furiously bent on seeing all of the heretics destroyed. Her goal was not wrong, but Satomi would have to watch her and make certain the woman did not carry it too far. This needed to be a careful bloodletting, not a bloodbath.

“And have you succeeded in spying him out?”

The Air Prime dropped her eyes. “No. Not yet.”

Of course not. None of them had seen him in person, and secondhand descriptions were nowhere near as helpful in directing spells. Again Satomi cursed the circumstances that kept them remote from the actual events.

Shimi didn’t seem worried. “I’m certain it’ll be with him. Our informant says they’re close friends, and they’ve been traveling together for some time. I doubt the doppelganger will have abandoned his side now, when it needs an ally.”

Satomi could only hope she was right. If the doppelganger had split off from the other Hunter, they would have a difficult time finding it. “Very well. Spell to Tsue and inform her. Have her send a detachment after him—no, more than a detachment. They’ll need to gather more of the Cousins in the area, if they’re going to take the doppelganger prisoner. The rest will bring Miryo south.”

Mirage watched from the shadows as several mounted figures rode out through the gates. She could not see them well, but they were almost certainly Cousins. It was dusk already; she wondered at their late departure. What moved them, that could not wait until morning?

When they were out of sight, she dismissed them from her mind. They might return, and she’d have to keep an eye out for that, but in the meantime, her concerns were with the ones still in the house.

The building in front of her was a large, dim bulk in the fading light. It belonged to Linea, the Lady of Abern; she retired there occasionally for foxhunting and parties. Now, however, it lay empty, and the Cousins had appropriated it for their own use.

A faint, almost imperceptible pull had drawn Mirage there, leading her on when the tracks she was following became too faint to trust. She suspected it was the same connection that had led Miryo to her. And it had brought her here, to the forested fringe around the house, but now it had failed her.

Not completely; she could tell that Miryo was in the house. But there was nothing beyond that. No sense of her double’s specific location.

Mirage gritted her teeth. Not good enough .

She closed her eyes and focused on the sensation she had been following. It was weak, and hard to pay attention to; it faded whenever she directed her attention to it, like a light so dim it only shone in peripheral vision. But Mirage was determined not to accept that. She concentrated on thoughts of Miryo: her appearance, her voice, the way she behaved. The ways in which she was different from Mirage. The strange feeling Mirage got every time she went to do something and found Miryo had done it already.

Give over, Void it. Where is she?

There .

Mirage’s eyes shot open. Western end of the house, top floor but below the attics. Not quite on the corner.

Now she just had to find a way in.

She hummed the way she had heard Miryo do, but felt nothing. Not surprising; it would have been too much to ask that she be able to sense any alarm spells. She’d have to walk in blind, and hope to outrun pursuit.

Wait. Think about that. There weren’t any witches there when you were ambushed. You’re lucky there weren’t; one spell and you would have been out of your saddle, on the ground next to Miryo. So if there weren’t any witches there, will there be any here?

That seemed downright stupid. Why not send a witch to help capture them? Miryo couldn’t cast reliable spells, but she could still wreak havoc trying. Why wouldn’t they send someone to deal with that?

“ The doppelganger is anathema to us. It is destruction and oblivion, the undoing of all magic. It is the ruin of our work, and the bane of our being. It and our magic will never coexist, and its presence threatens all that our powers can do .”

She heard Miryo’s voice, recounting Misetsu’s words, as if her double were standing next to her. Mirage actually jumped, then made herself be still.

Could that be it? If I’m a danger to them, and to their magic ... they may be afraid to put a witch anywhere near me .

If that’s the case, there may well not be one in the house .

She couldn’t be certain her logic was correct.

But does it matter?

Not really .

Mirage would go in after her double whether there was an alarm spell or not. She considered that, and found it acceptable. Stupid, but acceptable.

She stood there in the shadows for a moment longer. Exhaustion permeated her body; she’d driven herself hard to get here. Mist was in poor shape. Mirage was in worse.

But she had been even more worn down before, and she knew how to deal with it.

Mirage closed her eyes and went inside.

There was a place within her, one she had found years ago, when she first made the commitment to be more than an ordinary Temple Dancer. It had served her well during the extra training she put herself through. When she went to Silverfire, it was all that had kept her going during the days when the students gave her the worst they had, when the masters demanded more and faster progress from her, to prove her right to stay. There was a place inside where she could go and not feel pain or weariness, where she could put them aside and focus on the task before her. It was an internal emptiness, a clean space where all of that melted away. Mirage closed her eyes and found that place. She took three slow, deep breaths, and felt her exhaustion drop from her. Her muscles were loose, relaxed, but ready to leap into motion. She could be tired later. Right now, she had something she had to do.