Marie Brennan - Doppelganger

“Fair enough,” the Hunter said after a pause. “Answer me one thing, and then I’ll give you your help. Who’s after you?”

Mirage considered it for a moment, and finally decided on honesty. Lying wasn’t going to make her any safer. “The Primes.”

She’d never seen Wisp show visible shock before. “ All of them?”

“All five.”

“Void.” The old Hunter exhaled slowly. “You don’t do trouble by halves, do you?” Mirage didn’t bother to answer that, and Wisp didn’t seem to expect her to. “All right. You and one other person. Why in the Warrior’s name did you pick Angrim for your hideout? Those damn bastards are all over the place, and if rumor’s to be believed, one of them sold you out. Nobody knows to whom, but I’m guessing it’s the Primes.”

Sold me out? Ice. I will rip that bitch’s guts out and hang her with them . Mirage gritted her teeth and tried to focus on the immediate issue. “Probably. They came after me awfully fast.”

“So why are you sitting still? They’ve got spells they can use to find people. You’re stupid to stay in one place. Only way you’re going to stay safe from them is to keep moving, as fast as you can.”

“They can’t find me.”

Wisp raised an eyebrow.

“It’s part of the stuff I can’t explain to you now. Just trust me on it. Eclipse is on his way to Silverfire, so ask Jaguar if you want the whole story; he’ll have it soon enough.”

“Don’t think I won’t do just that.” Wisp tapped a finger against her jaw, then nodded. “How about you be a priestess for a while?”

Mirage blinked. “What?”

“I can hide you at the temple. They’ve got cells for the ones who’ve taken vows of silence, and I can get you a pair of those. You wear a hooded robe and don’t talk to anyone, ever, or even leave your room if you don’t want to. Is your friend male or female?”

“Female.”

“Good. You can be neighbors. If it were a man he’d be stuck on the other side of the compound, and that would make things more difficult.”

Given how Miryo was behaving right now, splitting up would be more than just difficult. Mirage did not want to leave her double alone for very long. “That’ll work. Where should I meet you?”

“At the temple. Midnight. Bring your friend.”

When Mirage returned with news of a plan, Miryo simply nodded. She trusted her doppelganger to arrange things; she herself didn’t have the resources to hide them both. Or even just herself. She really didn’t have any resources, period. And it was easier to just accept what Mirage had set up.

The irony of their hiding spot did not escape her. Miryo felt a nearly overwhelming urge to apologize to the silent, cloaked figures who lived along their corridor. They came here for a Me of peace and meditation, living to honor the Goddess, and here she was, in their midst, her hands stained with the blood of women who had just been doing their jobs.

Goddess, I swear on my soul, I never meant to kill them .

But it felt so good, to finally do something, and touch the power I can feel all around me .…

Tsue’s choked-off scream echoed in her memory, and she flinched.

The old Hunter with the hatchet face had given her an odd look before leaving. Miryo had been hidden beneath a hooded cloak, so she doubted the Hunter had seen her clearly. Still, she could not shake the suspicion that Wisp had somehow guessed what lay so heavily on her heart Which was nonsense. But the idea would not leave her alone.

“Void it,” Mirage cursed softly, and Miryo jumped. “I should be sent back to Silverfire to be retrained. I bloody forgot to keep the paper with me when I came after you.”

Miryo felt dead. “So we don’t have any way to contact Ashin.” The desire to try the spell herself welled up inside her, and she gagged. Mirage didn’t seem to notice.

“I’ll go find Wisp this afternoon and get her to send a bird to Silverfire, for Eclipse when he gets there. That way he can tell Ashin, if he hasn’t thought of it already. It’s not perfect, but it’s the best we can manage.”

Miryo shrugged. If she had hoped to conceal her apathy from Mirage, though, she was disappointed. Her doppelganger gave her a sharp look. “What’s bothering you?”

What do you think ? Miryo couldn’t bring herself to say it.

Mirage guessed anyway. “The Cousins.”

Miryo stood and walked two steps to the wall of her cell. They were not supposed to be in here together, talking, but it was an hour for private meditation, when they were unlikely to be interrupted, and they were keeping their voices low. “I can’t be as calm about it as you can.”

She half expected her doppelganger to be unsympathetic; how many lives had Mirage taken? A few Cousins were nothing, especially in their situation. But Mirage nodded. “No, I understand. Believe it or not, I still dream about the first man I killed.” Miryo looked at her in surprise, and Mirage shrugged. “The rest don’t bother me as much—Wraith, for example—but the first one does. I didn’t even know his name.” Her eyes dropped to her boots, and she sighed. “You can tell yourself that it was self-defense, and that will help. A little. If you hadn’t cast that spell, getting you out of there would have been a lot more difficult. And odds are good I would have had to kill those Cousins anyway.”

At least it would have been you, and not me .

She was well aware that she had once been at least superficially prepared to kill her doppelganger. Questions of self-defense and so on had bothered her, but she had thought she had come to terms with them. It had been easier then, though. She had seen Mirage not as a person, but as an obstacle to be eliminated.

That was the problem. Tsue had been a person. And so had the other Cousins, even though she hadn’t known their names.

Mirage stood and laid one hand on her shoulder. “I know it’s hard. And nothing I can say is going to make it any easier for you. But please, before you beat yourself up over it, remember that it was self-defense. And defense of the other doppelgangers and their witches, whose lives are also at stake.”

Then she slipped out the door and left Miryo to her thoughts.

Wisp would eviscerate Mirage if she kept breaking contact protocol, so she had to jump through the usual series of hoops, though a different set from those she’d used the last time she was in Angrim.

At least it gave her something to do. Getting out of the temple and back into it without being identified or trailed by Thornblood people let her feel that she was accomplishing something useful, instead of sitting in her cell, waiting for—

For what? A miracle?

They were no closer to finding an answer than they had been when they faced off with knives in a hallway here in Angrim. With the Primes pressing them, they had no leisure to think, to experiment. They just kept on having to move, constantly running to stay alive.

Mirage kicked herself mentally. You’re not running now. You’re sitting in a temple. Complain about having to sit still, or complain about not having time to sit and think, but for the Warrior’s sake, don’t do both at once. Idiot .

And one task was even more important than figuring out the answer to the doppelganger problem. Not more important in the long term, but more important in the short term, because without it, they weren’t going to accomplish a damn thing, whether they were hiding in a temple, racing along a road, or sitting in a library with all the collected knowledge of the world available for their use.

She had to get Miryo back on her feet.

Miryo’s sleep that night could barely be called sleep. It was a shallow doze plagued by horrific memories: breaking her neck at the stream, hearing Satomi condemn her, killing Tsue and the other Cousins.