Chapter 84
Broken mirror covers the floor in a carpet of shards, thousands of them, each reflecting a sliver of the scene. Rougeina lies in the middle, her forearm a ribbon of torn rose light stretched between her skin and Katriel's quill.
pulling slowly, almost gently, like drawing a thread from a hem.
gasping, eyes rolling.
The crew can't get to her: Smurjan wading through the last Wards, Vigolas bouncing off his own reflected lightning in the shards, Kompis on the floor still wrestling the gold-masked Ward that has his Lust, Kali down on one knee after the twin-duel.
who has not moved this whole fight, stepping forward at last across the shards. She leaves no reflection in any of them.
She walks straight to the crystal desk. Katriel's Wards turn their mirror-masks on her, and their masks show nothing: there's no pretending in her for them to reflect. She reaches out a bare, stinging hand.
closing around Katriel's wrist, the hand that holds the quill. Red welts bloom on Katriel's flawless skin.
hissing, trying to pull free.
Her face flickers: stranger, stranger, stranger. She opens her mouth to say "Katriel Bregnveld, Author of Character"—
flaring white-hot. A nettle pushes out through her skin.
unmoved.
The quill trembles in her stung hand. The flickering faces slow. Then the truth comes out of her, small and appalled, because under the sting nothing else can:
It cools. The truth doesn't burn.
on the floor, hearing it. Her eyes focus on Katriel's flickering face. And she looks: not with blades, not with Swap, but with the thing in her that has been inscribing for twenty-seven years. Envy. Becoming what you see.
Through the stream of strangers' faces on Katriel, she looks for the one that isn't borrowed: the way Katriel holds her quill, the small proud tilt of her chin, a girl who stood very straight once.
getting up onto one knee, the torn ribbon of her Envy still stretched to the quill.
stung, unable to lie, her face flickering slower and slower.
the pupils flaring rose.
The torn rose script stops tearing. It begins to write itself, fast, the unwritten half pouring back down from the quill into her skin, line after line of rose script racing up her arm, over her shoulder, along her collarbone.
Key-trial: copy someone.
For one heartbeat, Rougeina becomes Katriel.
She rises from the shards tall, ageless, silver-white hair in a crown braid, a gown of mirror-scales: Katriel's own true face, the one she lost centuries ago, on her killer's body, rose script blazing across it like veins of light.
And the ten thousand shards on the octagon floor, every broken piece of every mirror, obey her, because for one heartbeat she is the Keeper of Sin Assignment. They lift off the floor in a vast slow storm of glass and turn, every one of them, to face the woman at the desk.
And for the first time in centuries every mirror in the octagon shows one face. Katriel's. Not a stranger's. Her own, worn by Rougeina.
stung, staring at ten thousand reflections of her own face hovering in the air. Her own face on someone else. The faces on her own body stop flickering.
quiet, using Katriel's own voice.
Rougeina, in Katriel's shape, reaches into the air and places: Pride, placement, turned round, now turned back. The cold silver ring on her wrist rights itself with a click, like a key turning. Her Pride is aimed where it should be again.
She points one finger at the gold-masked Ward pinning Kompis to the floor. The shards place themselves around it, a cage of glass, and the Ward freezes, its stolen gold glowing.
the heartbeat ending. Katriel's shape drains off her like water off glass, and she's herself again: crimson hair, green eyes, barefoot, eight blades. But now her whole right arm, shoulder and collarbone are covered in finished rose script, glowing.
THE ENVY CODEX · VOLUME I · OPENED.
wide awake on Drekk's back, staring.
letting the crystal quill fall from her stung fingers. It clinks on the glass. She sits down slowly at her ruined desk. She doesn't look at the crew. She looks at her own reflection in a single shard on the desk: still her own face, not flickering any more.
letting go of Katriel's wrist. Her own palm is welted from holding on.
walking across the shards toward the desk, two blades drawn. Every shard she steps over reflects her, crimson hair, rose arm, and every one shows the same face. Her own.
getting up off the floor, reaching out, then stopping himself. Her list. Her choice.
Rougeina at the desk. Katriel looking up at her, wearing her own face for the first time in centuries.
nodding once, very straight, the way a four-year-old girl stood once at a desk.
reflecting Katriel's real face, eyes closed now, calm.
We see only Rougeina's shoulders, the rose script glowing down her right arm, two blades lifting. Beyond her, the shard on the desk catches a flash of steel.