I'd sprung the catch on my panelled window, still unfixed since I'd left, and swung a leg over into the room. As clean and tidy as I'd left it; the bed had been made with a different set of sheets, white with bluebells sewn in a pattern across the edges. I reached back in habit to push down the window once more, making its flaw unknown to most glances. There was no dust on my dressing table, and a silver-backed hairbrush lay below the enamelled mirror, polished so that no streaks showed on it. I traced the ends of the flowered patterns across its gilt frame with a finger, and there was no residue left on my hands. I wouldn't have expected otherwise; the servants would have kept it clean.
The girl in the mirrored reflection was short and slight and almost resembled the sketch upon the notice of the city's bounty, wearing a rough shirt cut like a boy's. Her dark hair had been raggedly cut short and carried traces of green dye on its ends, tied back behind her neck and tucked below the collar of her shirt. Behind the gaunt line of her cheekbones was a faint scar below her right ear; perhaps from... I'd learned how to take pain; perhaps it had even been Shar-Teel in training. Her hazel eyes were greenish in this light and dark shadows lurked below them, for tiredness and loss. There was wiry muscle across her arms and shoulders, and her stance even now was as if she feared she was about to be attacked. I untied my hair, and gathered it into a more respectable small bun at the nape of my neck. I could go to my wardrobe for a change of clothes, too, and wear one of the old dresses I'd missed, even though by now of course it would be months out of date in fashion. And steal a pink one or two for Imoen; the hems might be let down a little for the inch of her height, but other than that she was pretty in anything.
That was only putting it off. I looked one more time from the mirror's surface to the dark walnut of the wide wardrobe; and turned away to my own door, dressed like an adventurer. We still had Sarevok's letters; the only other Grand Duke had to know what he was. I crossed the wide room; there was so much more space than any room at an inn. But, compared to the open spaces we lived in: small, and confined by the iron bars of the windowpanes and the heavy door.
Then the door to my room had opened before I could lay hands on the knob. And instead of a servant, I saw only myself.
She was clean and neat and her dress was the blue-flowered one with the second-best lace petticoat below it, the matching lapis earrings dangling from her earlobes and a bracelet of small black pearls at her wrist. Her face was surprised, and her short dark hair was smoothed into a neat bun. Her skin was unlined and unpainted. She pulled her mouth into an expression of surprise. She was the reflection, from ages back in Ches.
I dashed past her; I pushed her into the room and slammed the door shut. There were sounds of something beating on the oak; I pushed the lock and the bolt into place, on the outside because Daddy had some strange ideas. The beating continued, but she wasn't me, she couldn't pick it, whoever and whatever she was, she didn't even turn to go for the window but only kept hitting it with her fists, or something else—
I ran for my father's rooms. The passages seemed strangely devoid of people.
He was in his bed; I forced open the door with little finesse. There ought to be healers waiting on him if he was ill; clerics at his bed, herbalists' remedies and potions... But there was only him. He lay back under the curtained bed, alone. He'd been grey-haired before; but perhaps not quite so starkly-featured, and certainly not lying back like an old man.
"Daddy—" I managed. "I'm sorry. There's a lot—it wasn't all my fault—I didn't run away, in the end—"
Tell him, I told myself.
"Sarevok was behind the iron crisis and I have the letters to prove it. It doesn't matter if you believe I don't belong to you, it's true I've done things— But he started the iron crisis, he can't be right about this war, so you have to stop it. Please, just look at what he wanted..."
He stared at me; coldly, forbidding, and that had always made me silent before. It made me lose my voice even now.
Then his skin shredded grey and torn apart, and multiple images of the person in the bed appeared, their hands moving in unison for another spellcasting.
Since the rule was to disrupt a caster: the dwarven shortsword came from my pack, and I ran to him. It. It.
Very appropriate, for one of Durlag's children.
The thing in the bed was gone, slaughtered. There were torn rips in my clothing. Claw-marks that I had the power to get rid of. I ripped the tapestried overhang of the bed to clean the blade of the sword. The thing was grey-skinned and not human. It was not, and had never been, what I had first thought of it. My father was dead somewhere, and so never would...
The estate was indeed quite deserted. I'd lost my way, wandering. The flower-vases were smashed in the library, and the shelves were empty. Some noises, though, had come from the kitchen below; I didn't find out what they were cooking there. But nothing and nobody had seen me while I crept through the halls.
Then I saw Eddard's face. He wore his black doublet with silvered hems and buttons, his sword neatly sheathed by his side, walking slowly and easily through the portraited corridors. His face wore a contemplative expression, as so often. Thinking about some piece of business, usually, merchantry and all the things he could not share with me since he had grown out of childhood so much sooner.
"Dear sister," he said; he offered his arm. "Your dress is quite inappropriate. You ought to put on something far better for tonight's dinner with Lady Fannaline and her sons."
His eyes were the same as ever. The same hazel as my father's below my brother's dark hair, concerned and serious and kind. He wore his silver signet ring on the little finger of his right hand, and it was exactly identical to the one I had worn around my neck even through shipwreck and trouble.
"Thank you, brother," I said simply. "You're kind to me. I've missed you so since last we met." We walked past the portrait of my dead Silvershield grandmother with long fair hair, wearing a green gown with old-fashioned farthingale, her hand resting on her husband's shield.
"Since this morning?" Eddard said, and gave a sharp smile. "You're a devoted sister, my dear."
"How could I fail to be?" He led me back toward my own room. "I think I want to borrow one of Brilla's costumes, Eddard. After all, I never get new clothing for myself."
He laughed. "Frugality in a time of war, then, dearest sister. Certainly she will not object. I favour you in purple, rather. It will match me."
"That charming one with the amethyst bodice," I replied. "Brilla purchases things that she ought to know all too well would never fit her; how silly! And then complains to Cook that she has created food too heavy on purpose."
Eddard pushed open the door to Brilla's suite for me like a gentleman, and then allowed it to close behind us. There was nobody present. Her bed stood ornate and well-made, her jewel-box closed upon her own dresser. Her wardrobe hung ajar. It was Eddard who walked over to it and rustled in it for clothing.
"Here it is, sister," he said. Rather roughly he pulled the elaborate violet dress from its wooden peg, and walked back to me, holding it in his hands. "Was this the one that you meant?" He let it hang down, near to my body. "It looks as if it would fit to you, though it will trail on the ground behind you for your height. Far too close-fitting for her; the low bodice...would just suit your shape, perhaps."
He leaned close, an arm around my shoulders. We'd barely touched as brother and sister, before. That was the smell of the cologne Eddard used, and sandalwood in his hair. Even my brother's clothing was exactly recognisable, fine doeskin boots and polished scabbard and that doublet. I'd wanted so to find him in the wilderness and have his protection.
"Go ahead and try it on, dear sister. Truly those clothes are unacceptable. My word, Skie, s'blood; what in the world have you been doing? I want to see you out of them, quite soon."
His hand scraped my bare shoulder, below the tears that my father had left in the shirt.
"Come now, sister. I think that we both know what we are to each other."
I stopped moving. "What is the plan?" I asked, hoarse-voiced.
"But you already know!" Eddard said, silver-eyed, and I stabbed and he changed.
He was not a caster as the one within my father's rooms. Damon killed my brother the first time through a backstab. Shar-Teel had taught me the right angle for a throat from the front. I learned a lot from both of them.
Brilla; where was she as well? That wasn't too hard to think about.
I ran out from the balcony in the east wing, down to the thick bushes of the topiary-cut tall deer. There were indeed sounds of gardeners moving about; or guards. I went past them, and back the way I had come. The letters were still in the pack. The burning sword was still unsheathed.
Imoen was there once more.