Chapter 81

Nässla leads the crew single-file along a narrow path of starlight laid like a carpet over nothing. On either side, endless reflections: of them, of the stars, of reflections of reflections.

walking without looking, stinging-hairs glittering.

on either side. In each one the crew is reflected slightly wrong: Vigolas wearing a crown, Kompis without a dog, Trollmage awake and fast, Smurjan with one shadow. What they could have been assigned.

staring at his reflection: a slim, quick, wide-awake elf, nothing troll about him.

at the back of the line, Mingus at his heel, his bare wrist in his other hand.

in the nearest mirror: a man in a Trisdel uniform, rifle on his shoulder, collar at his throat, no dog. What the desk planned for him.

The starlight path ends at a door-shaped mirror, framed in white Trisdel stone. Through it, a long marble hall, lined on both sides with silver mirrors, and in front of every mirror a Mirror-Ward in a white robe, mask of polished silver, standing still as a statue.

counting under his breath.

cracking his knuckles. Behind his heavy lids, violet light is building.

stepping into the circle.

a hand on his shoulder.

The crew runs into the fog: Vigolas first, Smurjan at his shoulder, Rougeina flitting on foot, no Swaps, Drekk carrying the troll, Nässla walking calmly through the middle of it all, and Kompis with Mingus.

A Ward looms out of the fog in front of Kompis. He freezes. No threads, no Subtick, nothing. Then Smurjan's palm comes out of the fog beside him and shatters the mask. Smurjan doesn't look back. He was simply there.

running on, and something starts to happen in his face. He's reading the crew without threads, by the old way: shoulders, breathing, the way people lean.

No golden threads anywhere. But he sees Rougeina's shoulders tighten before a Ward lunges at Drekk. He sees Vigolas's head tilt before a mask turns. Small human tells, everywhere.

Kompis, sinless, shouts first:

Drekk ducks. A Ward's silver baton whistles over his mask. Vigolas's fist comes round and punches the Ward through a mirror.

Kompis calls "LEFT!" and Rougeina goes left.

He calls "Smurjan, behind!" and Smurjan turns.

Mingus herds a Ward into a mirror like a sheep, and it vanishes into its own reflection.

Nässla brushes a stinging hand across a Ward's sleeve as she passes. The Ward stops, welts rising, and blurts "I hate this job", and the nettle pushing out of its wrist proves it true.

The fog thins at the far end of the hall. Behind them, sixty-two Wards lie cracked and groaning, masks shattered or turned to the wall.

panting at the end of the hall, hands on his knees.

grinning.

At the end of the Hall of Wards: two tall doors of mirror, each one reflecting the crew a hundred times, receding into an infinite corridor of themselves.

stepping up to them. She is the only one with no reflection in the doors at all.

beside the doors, drawing all eight blades. Her silver ring is cold on her wrist, the rose script warm.

drawing Lilla Ulv, the silent pistol.

The octagon: eight walls of mirrors climbing out of sight. In the air the seven sins hover as slowly turning shapes of light (an emerald coin, a crimson blade, a gold knot, a violet hourglass, a silver ring, a rose ribbon, an amber mouth), each printing its pattern onto the light. In the centre, at a desk of crystal, a tall, ageless woman in a gown of tiny mirror-scales, silver-white hair in a crown braid, a crystal quill in her hand. Her face keeps changing: stranger, stranger, stranger.

KATRIEL · K-V ARCHITECT · Architect Six, Keeper of Sin Assignment

looking up from her ledgers with a kind teacher's smile, wearing someone else's face.