“Or we could do this.” I concentrated on the magic in the mirror, listening for the trigger. It was easier than working with the enchantments floating all over the castle. There was only one spell on the mirror. I hummed and sent my power into the metal. I felt the magic take hold, but nothing happened.
“Do what?”
Felix’s voice echoed around me, the words coming from both the cat and the mirror.
I blinked. “What is this mirror supposed to do?”
My own voice poured out of the mirror, though Felix didn’t react. I hummed again, cutting off the enchantment.
“It allows you to look in on people from afar, but I don’t know the invocation.” Felix leapt from the bed, landing only a couple of feet from me.
“I used the enchantment,” I told him. “It made what we were saying come out of the mirror. Probably because I didn’t know to focus on someone else first. But I didn’t see anything. Let me try again.”
This time, I focused on Marc before triggering the enchantment. I heard faint rustles I couldn’t identify, but nothing else.
“Let me see.” Felix stretched up, balancing against my leg, and tried to get a look at the face of the mirror. I turned it toward him, though it showed nothing but a normal reflection. Through the enchantment, I heard a crash, then a familiar voice calling someone an idiot. Felix reared back and fell. “Where did that come from?”
“The mirror,” I said, my attention on the faint sounds once more. “Marc is in the same location as my father, it seems. Probably a tavern in Leort.”
“The mirror is supposed to show us people.”
“I invoked the enchantment, and my power manifests as sounds. Maybe if you invoke it, we’ll see something.” I stopped the enchantment once more and placed the mirror on the floor next to Felix.
He looked from the mirror to me. “How do I invoke it without knowing the trigger?”
“Look at the magic on the mirror and try to identify where it starts. Nudge that point with your own power.”
It took a few minutes, but finally Felix gasped. “That is not the sort of tavern I would expect to see Marc in.”
I could see nothing but a reflection of the ceiling in the mirror. I crouched and placed a hand gently on Felix’s back, and the image in the glass changed. When I lifted my hand, the reflection returned. Alright, then. I touched Felix once more and studied the image forming in the mirror.
He was right—the tavern was rougher than I’d expect Marc to favor. But it was exactly the sort of place my father visited. The perfect place to find cheap beer, gambling, and gossip about opportunities for those who didn’t worry about legalities.
As we watched, my father took the seat opposite Marc and began to talk. No sounds came out of the mirror. I quickly sent my power into the glass, where it mixed with Felix’s. Now we could both see and hear.
“. . . see more gold,” Edwin was saying.
“I told you, you’ll get more when the job is done. If that’s all you called me here for, then we are done.” The secretary stood up, using his height advantage to loom over Edwin. “Only send me a message if you have something worthwhile to tell me, or you won’t see any more gold.”
“Then you don’t want to hear my news?” Edwin asked in the sly tone I detested.
Marc pivoted back to the table. “Then you do have something to share?”
Edwin shrugged. “Depends.”
“Gods damn you,” Marc muttered. He reached into a pocket and pulled out a half gold piece. He held it up, shifting it higher when Edwin reached for it. “Only if your news is worthwhile.”
“I think you’ll be interested, all right. I have it on excellent authority that Constable Berklay—”
“Constable? Do you mean the butler?”
“If I had meant the butler, I’d have said the butler, wouldn’t I?” Edwin rolled his eyes. “I’m talking about his brother. The constable.”
“Fine, what about this constable?”
“Well, he went to Rose Castle today.”
Marc smiled. “The rumors have gotten that bad so soon?”
