Catherine Fisher - Obsidian Mirror

Jake watched, not sure what was happening. Summer seriously scared him. Finally Venn said, “All right. But just you. You don’t need this rabble to deal with Janus.”

She laughed. “So true. But they’ll wait in a ring around your house. There’ll be no way out for this Replicant.”

She made a signal to Gideon to stand aside. He didn’t move. “Let me come with you.”

She laughed. “Why should I need you? Stay here.” She pulled the string and the mare’s jaw clacked. “Stay and play, like the rest.”

She turned away, and swept past Jake, and he saw how Gideon looked after her, a look of pure hatred.

Venn led Summer into the Abbey. As she passed over the iron set into the threshold, Jake saw how she shivered, but Venn held her white fingers tight, and then they were inside, hurrying through the ice-cold stillness of the empty rooms.

Jake looked back. “Don’t do anything stupid.”

Gideon turned the gray horse’s skull to face him, and moved its jaw. “I’m under a spell, Jake,” it clacked, in a sour, bony voice. “There’s nothing I can do.”

“But is it true?” Wharton snapped. “What he says? You told us…”

Sarah shook her head. “It’s not that simple. He’s trying to turn you against me.”

She glanced around, desperate. She was cold and shivering, despite Wharton’s coat, which he’d draped around her shoulders. Where was Jake when she needed him? Where was Piers?

“You’ve lied to us all along,” Rebecca said.

“You can talk! No! Listen to me! Janus is the future. A possible future. It all depends on what Venn does with the mirror.”

Maskelyne, standing between the glass and the Replicant, stared at her as if he no longer knew whom to trust.

“What do you mean?”

“What she means,” Janus said, smiling, “is that if Venn succeeds in his plan to bring back his wife, it will have wider repercussions. The mirror will become a priceless artifact, and there will be no way he can keep it secret. In about a hundred years from now this faction that calls itself ZEUS tries to…”

“He’s lying.” Sarah stepped up to Wharton. She shook her head, furious. “He knows I can’t tell you. I dare not tell you.”

Wharton said quietly, “You have to. How can we understand otherwise?”

Sarah looked at Maskelyne, then at Rebecca. She felt suddenly so tired, she just wanted to crumple somewhere and rest, but then in the black depths of the mirror something moved, and she caught a brief flicker in the corner of the room.

She stopped. Rebecca gave a gasp of delight.

Wharton turned.

Venn and Jake were standing in the doorway of the Monk’s Walk. Just behind them was an astonishingly pretty young woman wearing a simple black dress, and, Wharton noticed in surprise, no shoes.

“Jake! Thank God! What happened?”

Jake said, “Too much to explain now.”

“And your father?” Wharton glanced at Venn, who shook his head.

The woman came in. She walked in a strangely delicate, girlish way, and her smile was so sweet, Wharton felt oddly troubled by it.

She looked at Janus with open curiosity and Janus looked at her.

At once Sarah knew the Replicant was at a loss; that it had encountered something outside its knowledge.

“Who are you?” it snarled.

“Summer is one of my names.” She stared in fascination at the mirror. “So this is it. Your obsession. Your gateway to bliss.” She was talking to Venn, but he had turned to Sarah.

He said, “So what’s the world like in your time, Sarah? Is it so terrible that you can’t tell us about it? Do you want my mirror to change things, to make things better? Or is it so perfect that you don’t want any chance of it being spoiled?”

His voice was raw with bitterness. Sarah stared back at him. Then she came up close to him and stood face-to-face, her blond hair short and ragged.

She said, “There is no world. In my time, the world is gone. All the people, the animals, the cities. Destroyed by a madman. And do you know what he used to destroy it? No meteor from space, no terrible plague, no nuclear explosion. He used your mirror, Venn. Your mirror destroyed my world. ”

All the lights went on.

With a whine of power the web shuddered.

The doors slammed. Every machine and piece of cable in the room seemed to flicker into sudden new strength.

From nowhere Piers voice crackled from a speaker, making Wharton jump.

“The house is secure, Excellency. Welcome home.”

24

The fate of humanity rests on our efforts. We are only a few against his power, but we have courage. We’re the sacrifice. The avengers. If we succeed we’ll never know it. Perhaps if there is a future we’ll be looked back on as gods, or angels. Believe in your destiny. Let nothing—not hatred, not despair, not even love—stand in your way.

Illegal ZEUS transmission

Dec. 1848

It has taken three days but finally they have found her. The men I employed brought her to the house this morning; a small, tousled, rather ill-smelling child wearing ragged clothes and boots that were too big for her. She was bruised and handcuffed. I fear my agents may have been a little too free with their fists.

She examined the room, stared at me, and altogether showed quite remarkable spirit. She said, “Never thought I’d be in this gaff again.”

Her eyes fixed, as if drawn by fascination, on the mirror.

I have restored the order of the room. The rifled mess Venn had made of my desk is now neat again, and the gleaming brass machinery is silent. In the three days since he and the boy vanished I have not been able to obtain any sign of energy from the device at all.

“Release her,” I commanded.

“She’s greased lightning, guv. She’ll be gone before you blink, like last time, when we broke in. And she’s a biter. Toby’s got the marks of her all down his arm.”

I said, “Then you will please stand outside and allow no one to leave. You, Toby, will be compensated for your…er…injuries.”

After they had gone, taking the cuffs with them, the urchin sat herself in a chair and looked at me with a fixity that made me uncomfortable.

“Cost you, didn’t I?”

“More than you could guess.” I sat opposite. “So, Moll, isn’t it?”

“Might be.”

“Look here, Moll. I have a proposition to put before you. How would you like a warm er…gaff, for a while? Plenty of food. New clothes.”

She said, “Here?”

“Yes. I…”

“I ain’t no trull, mister.”

I blushed. I was appalled. For a child of, what, eleven? her knowledge of the seedier aspects of the world was startling. “My dear child, I assure you…Good heavens…No…Please, let me make myself clear. I need information. I simply need to know everything possible about Venn and the boy Jake Wilde. Everything! Where you fell in with them, what they might have told you. Did they speak about their future world? About flying machines? About traveling to the moon? About cures for diseases? About…investments?”

She eyed me, and I realized in my enthusiasm I had slid forward and was perched on the edge of the chair, my voice hoarse with excitement.

I cleared my throat and drew back.

But I had already shown her what such knowledge was worth.

“Jake said a lot of things.” She shrugged, careless. “Like, you was a pompous old git.”