​​​​4 Mirror Image

THREADFIN DARTED ABOUT, tossing rubbish aside in a tumult of dust. Flames danced upon the ends of copper wall lamps splitting his form into chaotic shadows upon the stone interior. He’d taken a large room over an abandoned inn. Pole and the others had taken a second one close by.

Tystria wasn’t a city. It was a warren of narrow streets and alleys. While locals navigated this web with precision, outsiders often became lost. In fact, two resident primes counted on it. The illegal slave trade was growing. Rumour suggested the governor and her family were dead, and there were no imperial soldiers in the city.

They’d found the one inn neither prime had a stake in. It squatted on the edge of the city with a nearby tannery the reason for its demise. The smell didn’t bother Threadfin, but the others complained. Apparently, it smelled like ‘a thousand bloated corpses soaked in grolg piss’ to quote his Darken accurately. Threadfin found the scent comforting. It had a hint of sweetness. Breathers, what did they know?

The inn’s name was, The Shattered Kingdom, or so proclaimed a faded sign outside. His room boasted a single hearth, which remained cold and full of bird droppings, an old cot, a small table, and a tall covered mirror. The last item he’d recently acquired. Rat leavings and discarded rubbish littered the old floorboards, a few bones, and tufts of animal hair. Threadfin thought of it as homely. As he searched, he picked up a battered tome, brushing off the spiders. His shoes crunched on the carcasses of dead cockroaches. He tossed the book aside.

In a corner, a copper bath waited, looking out of place. Pole had prepared it with the usual natron salt. The Darken had sourced a supply through a prime who’d taken over a quarter of the businesses, including a dyer. Primes no longer accepted scrips, just coin. So, it had cost five times its worth, five hundred silver dralans, but moisture was an enemy to the undead. He wished he had a little lye to rub into his hide, but he wished for a lot of things.

Despite the alterations to his body, much remained the same. The one discernible change, apart from the faint iridescent scales and horns, was his desire for meat. For his entire existence, guck, which mostly consisted of seaweed and fish guts, had sustained him. Now, he felt the need for red meat, bloodier the better. An unnerving development, which wouldn’t do for his reputation. A wooden plate sat on the table near the window; nothing remained but a large cracked thigh bone, the marrow sucked out.

‘Grim-damnable mess,’ he grumbled scattering through a pile of rubbish. ‘You should clean up in here, Nip. What did I bring you along for anyhow?’

The mongrel uttered several clicks and clacks, which Threadfin would never understand. ‘Oh, don’t be such a dramatic shrimp,’ he said, as the creature hissed from beneath the table. Aiyana had lent him the scribe for scribal duties. Not that he had any of those. ‘Where, in the name of the Spectrum above, is it?’

The mongrel yowled as another useless tome flew towards it. Threadfin paused and picked up a scroll. ‘Here now, wasn’t all your pain worth it?’ He’d brought it along in case.

The mongrel now hid behind the bath, from where there came a guttural sound, punctuated by a hiss.

Threadfin rubbed at a new horn poking from his face. He wondered if he should file it. Might make him less, what, frightening? Half the time, his Darken poked fun at him with everyone else snickering. ‘You’ll have to return to my sister, Nip. You’ll need to be on your best behaviour.’

The mage grinned as the mongrel uttered another series of growls and chirps. He had no doubt they were insults. He was starting to take to the little fellow. They were getting along better at least. None of the fake politeness one needed with breathers. The respect would follow. He was certain of it.

A book hurtled towards his head and he ducked. ‘Hey!’ He eyed the innocent-faced scribe who disappeared amidst the rubbish. I’m supposed to be the viral mage, saviour of the world, or whatever. Instead, I have a mongrel tossing books at me.

Ignoring Nipper’s nattering, he shoved the plate onto the floor and opened the scroll on the table. Within was the broken shard of a bronze blade.

He picked up the fragment. The reflection within was as it had been over four months ago. It had been during one of Scatter’s infamous lessons. He’d heard rumours once of an Atlantian inventor who’d managed to create images of people or things, from light, trapping them in fabric. Foolishness, or else he’d been a spectral mage of some description. It sounded too close to capturing souls. Made him think of soul shards. Examining the fragment, he wondered if there wasn’t a link.

The scene within the bronze was dull and blurry. He wiped at it with a scaly finger, smudging the grime. No reflection of the room he occupied, despite it being a reflective surface. His own face was missing too, but he guessed it was because at the time, he’d had no reflection.

Within the fragment was Lorn Larthuz. He’d found out her family name from Pole, who’d known a little about her. Her gaze was on the back of his head, or so he guessed. She was smiling at him. A warm smile too. He stared at the image, dumbfounded. Was it some trick within the metal? He’d never known her to smile, not at him. He swiped at it, trying to clean it. He would need some oil and cloths. He dared not give the task to Nipper. He might never see it again.

On instinct, he pulled out another bundle from his belt. The gift from Astra. The girl was currently with Sind downstairs, preparing for the journey to the capital. Carefully untying it, he removed the cloth to reveal a broken dagger. The hilt was white bone, banded with silver, curved. The blade was snapped halfway, not unusual with bronze weapons. On impulse, he placed the shard with Lorn’s image next to the blade. They fit.

If Threadfin Todder knew anything, it was coincidences did not exist. He’d been wracking his dried-up brains for a solution to finding her. He’d almost given up. Dare he trust the girl’s word or was it some elaborate trap? It felt like he was being manipulated.

After rewrapping it, he stuffed the bundle into a leather satchel, and placed the shard in a belt pouch at his waist. He wasn’t going to try to pick apart the how’s or why’s. Something told him that with this blade whole, he could find her.

He turned to discover Nipper waist-deep in a brown leather sack. The mongrel emerged to stuff several items into it. Most had the glint of gold or silver. Where had all of it come from? The creatures had sticky fingers, a trait his sister refused to acknowledge. ‘And where do you think you’re hauling that off to? Out visiting the local palaces and such were we?’

Nipper gave him a series of sharp chirps, friendlier than usual. A sudden cheerfulness often suggested the scribe was up to no good, or wanted something.

‘This is not the right sort of packing, Nip. You’re going home with Sind, and she won’t let you bring all of that. Not like we don’t have gold or silver in the Black Palace, you know.’

Nipper growled and stamped his foot, glaring for all his worth. His scarred features scrunched up into a horrifying contortion. Where mongrels got their scars, Threadfin didn’t know, but it seemed they were born with them. Or their parents had a vicious streak. Were they born, or did they pop out of the ground?

The mage slid two daggers into the sheaths on his belt, each below the hip. His Darken had gifted him a pair of horn-hilted blades, once belonging to a thrael they’d cornered. Another, he’d strapped to his leg. Back-ups in case anything went wrong.

‘Fine,’ he said, ‘but you make sure my rooms in Icarthya remain in the same mess I left them. I’ll know if anything is missing. You’d best go find Sind. Take care of yourself, Nip.’ Between a series of spitting growls, the mongrel left, dragging a bulging sack twice its size. Threadfin would never admit it out loud but he’d miss the little guy.

He turned to regard the old mirror. It stood against the wall on a wooden stand. A moth-eaten blanket smothered in cobwebs concealed it. The largest of its kind, once housed within the governor’s palatial mansion. Looters, which included Nipper it seemed, had stripped the palace of anything valuable. The same looters would later have to hand everything over to the primes – this bit not including Nipper. Threadfin had purchased the mirror for ten times its worth.

With a swift tug, he removed the blanket. It reflected the light thrown by the room’s lone lead-lined window and the lamps. It felt odd being able to see his reflection after spending most of his existence without one.

He turned left and right examining himself. Staring back was a face and body he didn’t know. Faint iridescent scales replaced the desiccated, fraying skin. Their colours changed and faded as he moved. Short horns poked from his forehead and cheekbones, and the new one on his chin. He probed them with a finger. You are one ugly bastard, he thought. He plucked a dead maggot from his cheek, flicked it away. They didn’t like the natron.

He grabbed the blanket and was about to cover it up again, when he paused. Everything about his reflection was the same, but for one detail. Instead of a blanket, his reflection held a black sword, dripping blood.

It raised the weapon, and struck.

The mirror cracked.