Karigan stilled. Grandmother. It had to be.
“Let’s not worry Karigan with the wall,” Mara said. The significant way she looked at Garth made Karigan think they were under orders to keep her from worrying about anything at all.
Garth hunched his shoulders and sank his hands into his pockets.
“In fact,” Mara said, “I think it’s time to go see Condor.”
“Excuse me.” Ben poked his head through the doorway.
Maybe, just maybe, Karigan thought, her new room wouldn’t be so quiet after all, if she was already receiving visitors.
“Before you go,” Ben continued, “I just need to take a look at Karigan’s eye.”
Garth and Mara waited out in the corridor while Ben had Karigan sit in a chair beside the vanity and undid her bandage. He bit his lip while he examined her eye. It seemed to her he looked at it while trying not to look into it.
“I will get more ointment for the irritation. Can you see any more than you did?”
“Less,” she said, realizing her sight had gone darker than even when Somial had looked at it.
Ben chewed on his lip again. “I don’t know, Karigan. I’ve tried everything. The particle appears to be . . . It appears to be permanent. Forcing it out would certainly damage your eye beyond repair and ruin your vision for good. It’s like it’s clawed its way in there, so I’m not sure we could even force it out. It seems, well, it seems determined to stay lodged in there.”
He did not meet her gaze as he spoke. She guessed it was less the news he delivered than what her eye looked like, which was odd for a mender. Menders looked at everything.
She reached for the mirror. He grabbed her wrist.
“I want to see it,” she said.
“I think it’s better if you waited—”
“Now. I want to see it now. Everyone is tip-toeing around me, and I want to find out why.”
“You’re sure?” Ben asked.
“Yes.”
He released her wrist, and took a step back as if to absolve himself of any fault she might hurl his way. When she finally looked into the mirror, she saw that this could not be his fault. None of it. This went far beyond Ben.
MIRROR SIGHT
The mirror reflected her eye. Her eye reflected the mirror back and the image within it, unto infinity. Her eye, her entire eye, had turned silver, the silver of a mirror. No wonder Ben, and even Somial, had had a difficult time looking at it.
The mirror man, it seemed, had the final say, had called her bluff one last time. This she could not shatter like the looking mask, or even give away. It was a part of her.
“Karigan?” Ben asked. “Are you all right?”
“No,” she replied, “but yes.” Ben had, she thought, matured a great deal since her departure for Blackveil.
“Somial called you Mirare,” Ben said.
Karigan glanced sharply at him. “I remember him using that word.”
“He said there were once people who could see far, as he put it. The Mirari. They wore the looking masks in ancient times. He thought perhaps your ability to cross thresholds was somehow aligned with the mirror sight.”
As usual, everyone had been talking about her to everyone else, but avoided speaking to her directly. It no longer annoyed her that much. She understood how difficult it would be for them to broach the subject with her.
“I’ve tried not to look you directly in your eye,” Ben said, “because I saw images once, confusing images, some not pleasant.”
“Just like a looking mask,” Karigan murmured.
Ben nodded, and she lowered the mirror. It was then she realized the vision in her silver eye had gone black. Black and deep and . . . She saw stars. Their light stabbed into her eye, into her head, like a thousand needles. She cried out and closed her eyes, and the pain ebbed.
“Karigan?”
“Would you put the bandage back over my eye?”
He did so. This way no one would have to see the oddness of her eye, and it stopped the pain.
“Let me know if there is anything I can do for you,” Ben said. “Master Vanlynn has made the captain and king aware of your condition. I think the captain wanted to tell you herself, but you wanted to look . . .”
“It’s all right,” Karigan told him. “I’m glad to know.”
He left then, and Mara and Garth returned. She hated the pity on their faces. It would take her a while to adjust to this “condition,” as Ben called it. The anger had yet to surface. Maybe she was in shock, numbed of emotion. When the anger did surface, she was reserving it for the mirror man and the gods.
“Shall we go see Condor?” Mara asked, a little too brightly.
They bundled up for the trek outdoors. Garth hung back saying he had work to do elsewhere. Outside, the storm had settled to large fluffy flurries dropping in lazy swirls. The castle groundskeepers had worked long, hard hours to keep the stairs and paths shoveled. Some of the snow piles were as high as their shoulders. They had to trudge through deep snow to reach the pasture. Karigan didn’t mind—the winter air was clean, refreshing, lifted some of the care from her—and there were all the horses, the new ones and the old ones—snuffling through the snow for some tidbit of grass beneath.
One horse’s head went up high. He issued a shrill whinny and galloped toward them. Karigan stepped between the fence rails to get at him. When he reached her, he nuzzled her shoulder, her hair. She wrapped her arms around his neck. Mirror eye be damned. She pressed her face into his chestnut hide, all warm and furry with his winter coat. As long as he was there, everything would be all right.