Jesstin came around the side. She waved a hand, and the wall turned to a curtain, which parted for him.
All around them were even more of the varied mirrors, hundreds of them, but these were different... alive. Some pulsed. Others moved side to side. One sang. Another dripped with... He wasn’t sure he wanted to know.
A blue fire roared in a hearth, above which a mirror reflected faces that were not their own. The faces changed every few seconds. A young woman and her mother. Two men. A family. An old woman on her own.
The Conductor laughed at his wonder. “You want to know how these mirrors work?”
“I didn’t come here to learn about how fucking mirrors work.” He broke his fixation from the ghastly collection.
“Oh, but you did!” The Conductor wagged her finger. She reached behind her head and tugged. A mane of silver hair cascaded around her shoulders. Her spectacles were different too, thinner and perched upon the end of her nose, but he hadn’t seen her switch them. “That is all you’ll find here. Mirrors that behave... or misbehave.”
Jesstin snorted to mask his disorientation.
The Conductor nodded at a small one hanging from the left corner of the low ceiling. “That one reads intention, the words not said.”
“And what am I not saying?”
She blinked, long and slow, milking the seconds. “You need a portail mirror, but you’re nervous. You don’t know what it will cost you. Someone has probably told you how they traded a day’s labor for a sleeping draught in one of the quaint village markets, and you look around at my mirrors and cannot imagine how much work you’ll have to offer to use my rarest and most valuable tool.”
The Conductor was half right. No one had told him anything about labor, but he was nervous. If the mirror cost him months of labor, he’d be better off walking. “Portail. I know that word.”
“But in your world, portails are fables, aren’t they? Doors between worlds, thin spots where one can cross, intentionally or not. It does not serve your regime to indulge such knowledge. If their citizens could travel between worlds? If they even knew other worlds existed, and were not fable?” The Conductor laughed. “Oh dear, can you imagine?”
Jesstin could, because the Reliquary—the crown’s spiritual puppets—was staunch in their assertion there were no other worlds. Anyone who spoke of traveling through the portails were branded liars, drunkards, or in the grip of madness. He’d never cared one way or another, but his recent experiences had left him admittedly curious. “Is Rivenholde... Are the Seven Sisters a different world than the kingdom?”
“The kingdom?” She laughed again. “Many worlds are kingdoms, but your Rhiagain kings would have you believing theirs is singular!”
“Well?”
“My confirmation would cheapen what you already know.” She waved her hand through the warm air. “You search for the one you love. But if you find her, the world you return to, should you return, if you can return, will not be as you left it.”
“I search for a good friend,” Jesstin replied, correcting her. He scraped sweat from his palms with his nails.
“You search for your heart.” The Conductor broke out into an unexpectedly earnest smile. “Yes, I can help you. If you know where she is, my portail mirror can transport you. If you do not know, you will need to purchase a tracker from?—”
“I know where she is.”
A chair that hadn’t been there before brushed the back of his legs to make him sit. Another materialized behind the Conductor, twice as large, which she nimbly perched upon. “The portail mirror is more formally known as the especular. My fee is the especular’s fee. I am merely its humble conductor.” She folded her hands and crossed her long, spindly legs. “To traverse the portail, you must confront the darkness.”
He held out his arms, waiting for something less absurdly vague.
“A series of tests,” she said. “Three, precisely. You will be presented with your darkest moments, which you must confront and relive, with honesty. These experiences are not fripperies, dear. They are the deepest corners of your being, those that never see light. Why? Because you’ve buried them deep under the soil. You already know what they are. We all do. We tend our corners well to keep them there.”
“What does that involve, confronting these... experiences?”
“It means whatever the especular determines it means. But know this. If you fail any of these tests, you will forfeit your flame and become one of the simulcra. That also means you will die. If you pass, your fee is deducted automatically, and you will find yourself exactly where you want to be! Ah, ah, I see your mind running ahead of my words. Your fee, Jesstin, is a piece of your soul. No, not your flame. The especular’s price is a piece of you, a part of your truest self you can never get back. An essence, if you will. It will be contained in a vessel much like this.” She reached into her vest and withdrew a vial. “What is the most important thing to you? Above all else?”
“My tavern,” he lied.
“You know I can see your truths, and you would lie to me? Pretend your family is not your most precious jewel?”
Jesstin twisted in the chair, which suddenly felt like a coffin. “If you’re threatening to harm my family?—”
“I don’t involve outsiders in deals they weren’t part of. That would not be very ethical, would it?” The Conductor flashed the vial. “And why should they be harmed? You are the one who must risk losing. You will leave all evidence of your existence behind to anyone you share blood with. Your sister, brothers, nieces, and nephews will not remember you, or that you existed at all.”
“There must be something else you want.” If what the Conductor was offering was true, then she was wrong. They would be harmed. Rhiain and Emrys had already suffered from the erasure of their memories. Even before they knew what Mathias had done, they had always felt incomplete. Unsettled. Jesstin knew exactly what it felt like.
“Me? No, no, no. I want nothing. That is the especular’s cost.”
