Lumi turned with exaggerated slowness, smiling.
"I haven't had time enough for you lately, but I see you have met my son." In her voice, the room echoed; icy arches and walls seeming to bend to her imperial tone.
"He's dead," Kay managed, staring at the floor fervently. He had tried to redirect his attention as soon as possible but a half-glance had been enough to stagger him. He needed to stop getting blindsided by villains.
She didn't react to his statement so, to affirm that she had heard him, he asked: "You knew that already?"
"Of course." She left the former door and stepped elegantly to the collection of displaced shards on the floor. "You have been here two weeks and this is all the progress you've made? Too much time spent escaping."
"I have no reason to help you."
"We have a contract."
"Under duress, I think that invalidates most of them," he said, pushing on his glasses with clumsy fingers. The gesture was not a clean one, but she did him the decency of allowing it.
"You are lucky I respect our agreement still. I could have taken you years ago, yet I let you live out your life in the Mundy after breaking your word to me. And now, the contract is the only reason you are here."
"And you're to be commended for that." Saying those words to someone whose past looked like hers took a concerted effort. "But if I'm dead, you've nothing to hold over me, so I think you've waited a little too long to claim the contract. And to be frank, threatening to kill me again can be nothing compared to that… thing's… efforts."
"Which is why I won't threaten to kill you again," Lumi said with what Kay felt was unusual patience. "You are dead. I offer the rest of death, when you finish this and with it, our contract."
It would have been easy to be sulky and bitter and entirely silent at this, but words – the last gasping breath of life – wanted to be spoken. And he wanted to feel alive, while there was something here to fight against. Unless he misunderstood, she was offering the death part of death – stop breathing, seeing, and feeling – in exchange for finishing this ice puzzle.
"So what's this thing I'm to finish then?"
"You don't want to further discuss the prize?"
"It's not very interesting. And I've already got one, for the moment."
"And you do not wonder why you haven't returned to the Mundy yet? You're no longer a Fable, Kay. This is what happens to weak Fables. No one notices an absence, they leave no gap when they die, and they do not come back. Like the Mundy humans you have run to, you die."
"And if I'm a Mundy, this is… hell?"
"A diversion of my own creation. If you are killed here, you will die Mundy and go wherever Mundy humans would go."
There was such simplicity in this statement, made as if he should understand what dying Mundy meant. Half of him did. It fed the temptation to look full on her wearing an incredulous expression, which gnawed at his stomach. It was hard to hate her fully when she was a regal and detached voice, converging around him from each wall.
"And I will kill you, if you finish this for me," Lumi finished easily.
"Again, what is it I'm building."
Lead entered her voice and she stalked closer to him. "What does it matter?"
He looked off to the side, pulling off his glasses in a smooth gesture. "Because I'm no good to you insane. Or blind. I'm dangerously close to one and all I have to do is look on you to achieve both at once. I've seen the Adversary, I know my limits, so tell me what I'm doing."
Her laugh was like a rush of bells inexpertly played, coming to a sudden and unexpected stop. "You pit your sanity against my information?"
"You need it done on a hell of a deadline, and I want to know why."
"It is nothing you'd approve of," she said coyly and stepped closer. She was taller than he was and the whole dynamic was based on a campaign of intimidation. When she advanced, he retreated, and hit the far wall.
"I could solicit another," she continued. "I use you because we have a contract and you have the knowledge to complete it."
"Tell me what it does. I will look on you. I've nothing to lose that's not already gone." The flat deadness of his voice concealed the terror nicely. There was a limit to what he could bear seeing before steps had to be taken, but there was also a limit to the mind. Post-Adversary, Kay hated to admit that his mental state was about as stable as a snowflake. But Lumi had bought the gamble.
"It kills. Is that a fair enough answer?"
"No." And he started to look up at her. She slapped her hand over his eyes; his head slammed back against the wall, and she hissed, though not entirely displeased. More of a parent disapproving of a child than a villain delivering the death she'd promised.
"Incorrigible. But, since you play this game so aptly, it is the goblin mirror that has so affected your life. When it is complete, it will be a gate to any world I choose, permitting the instant transfer of anything or anyone with no mucking about in dragons' stomachs or dark middle-worlds. I can infect the entirety of your Mundy world from here. And I will."
He knew he remembered the mirror, the cuts on his fingers, the confidence when he began placing the pieces, with logic and clarity. It was familiarity, not skill. He had done this before.
"Naturally, I have cast such spells on the room that you will not be able to leave through the mirror, even if you possessed the necessary magics. As you have noticed, I am on a timeline and have not the time to come track you down again. However, my patience is significantly longer than yours and it would be better for both if you agreed now. You swore as a child that you would complete this mirror."
"I thought you would kill me if I didn't!" He wanted to feel the back of his head to see if there was blood but her hand remained over his eyes.
"And now I will keep you alive if you don't, such a life as this is. You'll tire of it sooner than I will tire of waiting. Anyway," and her hand over his eyes relaxed. "It's not as if anyone you know is there to be saved. The empire will rise again and the Mundy world will be conquered."
"There's still Fabletown."
"Dark killed them. Did you think something thriving on fear could be taken down by such fearful creatures as Fables? The others are dead, the only thing keeping you from joining them is our contract." The hand was removed altogether and Kay dropped his gaze quickly. Dead. All dead. Fortunate that there had never been anyone really important then, besides Bigby.
… and Snow.
… and Totenkinder, who had at least talked to him; and Beast; the members of the managerial network that ventured out of Bullfinch Street to speak to him. None of the Fables had really liked him but most had tolerated him on account of his ability– perhaps Mowgli had made it out. Kay had met him on his flight out of the Homelands, the other man's upbringing with animals setting off no alarm bells in Kay's visions, and it was hard to think of him dead, now. Time with Mowgli had always been peaceful, almost normal. Fate made up for that by giving the man a traveler's soul.
Kay didn't realize he had ended up sitting on the floor until Lumi spoke again. He almost looked up.
"I only take the Mundy out of the hands of Dark," she said without pity. "Everyone you cared about is already dead."
Nothing. Say nothing.
"You will not escape again. And you will not find death within this room."
"Maybe death will come to me," he said with false brightness. He still held the trump: blindness and insanity. All right, it wasn't much of a trump.
She spoke quietly, giving him just enough time to remember that the puzzle was all that stood between him and death.
"It will not. I can make your time here worse without inflicting blindness or insanity or death. You will fulfill this contract. If your will doesn't bend to mine, I can make it."
Another pause, giving him the obligatory opportunity to interject something heroic or noble or stalwart. Instead he brushed the snow out of his hair and absently fingered a shard with the other hand, sitting more or less motionless until the season took the hint and left. The temperature went up by what seemed like ten degrees.
On the wall, one of the mirrors winked out. Fifteen minutes later, another. Sometimes he would have a crisis of confidence and try to pry up the shards, succeeding only in cutting at his hands. Eventually the mirrors would start disappearing again.
