Luke just stood there shaking his head as Karigan started to remove Raven’s tack.
“Oh, Miss Goodgrave,” he said. “The Inspectors are thick as a hill of ants in the dark hours. How could you endanger yourself so? How could Mr. Harlowe?”
“We were careful.”
He muttered to himself, but when Karigan reached for a curry comb, he grabbed her wrist.
“No,” he said. “I’ll take care of Raven. We will discuss this again later. But now you change your clothes and go to the house. You get in there before the professor comes down for his breakfast. Hopefully Mirriam is not yet up and about.”
Karigan didn’t waste another moment and did as Luke told her. He would keep her secret, she was sure, then she shook her head. One more secret to layer on top of all the others.
Inside, the only ones who appeared to be up and about were the cooks, firing up the ovens to prepare breakfast. She hastened past the kitchen and all the way to her room without being seen.
When she reached her room, she threw herself into bed and fell asleep before she could even finish the phrase, The scything moon is held prisoner in the chamber of forgotten days . . .
She dreamed she was taking tea with Yates. “Yates,” she mumbled.
They sat at a table draped in a lacy white cloth with a silver tea service between them, and plates of fancy tea cakes and scones. Yates paid her no heed for he was intent on sketching in his journal . . .
“What is it you draw?” She was so tired, even in the dream, that it was difficult to make her mouth form words properly. She felt deadened.
He did not reply. It was then she realized their tea table was surrounded by the dusky environs of Blackveil Forest, shadowed limbs writhing around them, and pairs of malicious eyes glowing from behind tree trunks and in the snarled brush.
Why am I here? she wondered.
She reached for the teapot, but it had transformed into a looking mask—not the perfectly smooth oval mask that had encased the tumbler’s head at the king’s masquerade, no. No, it was riddled with spidery cracks, and when she touched it, it fell to pieces, so many shards glimmering in the middle of the table.
She picked one up and held it to her eye. In it she beheld the universe, stars piercing black emptiness. She traveled, the stars sweeping by, falling ever more distant, racing away. To where was she traveling? Why?
She gripped the table to steady herself, but the shard of the looking mask stayed in her eye so that she still hurtled through nothingness.
Out of her other eye, however, she could still see Yates sketching obliviously in his journal.
“Help me,” she told him between gritted teeth. “Make it stop.”
He paused, and looked at her with mirror eyes. All the beasts of the forest who had been watching stared at her with mirror eyes.
Karigan sat up in her bed with a muffled scream and clawed at her eye. It took her several seconds to realize she was awake and her vision was normal. It took even longer for her quickened pulse to slow down. “Gods,” she murmured. Shaken, she fell back into her pillows and drew her covers back up.
Her room had lightened, and when the bells tolled in the city, they rang six times. She’d been asleep maybe an hour, hour and a half. What had brought on the dream? Why hadn’t she dreamed of the tombs or heard the spirit voices of slaves? She thought to pull out her mirror shard and look into it—put it up to her eye—but after the dream, she feared what she’d see. She snuggled beneath the safety and warmth of her blankets, and before she knew it, she became heavy with sleep once more.
• • •
It seemed like she’d barely drifted off when she was roused by Lorine’s arrival to ready her for breakfast. A good hot bath helped wake her up, but by the time she reached the dining room, breakfast was already underway. The professor and his students all politely stood at her entrance, except Cade who was nowhere to be seen. Where was he? Had he gotten home safely?
“Good morning,” she murmured, and took her place at the end of the table opposite the professor. The gentlemen sat, and the professor, his usual aloof self, was quickly nose-deep into his paper of news. The students resumed the conversation she had presumably interrupted, and she turned her attention to the plate of eggs and sausage Lorine brought her. She sipped tea, her reflection in the dark liquid reminding her of mirror eyes. She set it aside hastily and decided to worry about Cade and where he might be, which turned out to do anything but calm unsettled nerves. She did not listen to the students at all, until she caught the word “circus.” She looked up and listened attentively.
“Does the paper say anything about it, Professor?” Mr. Card asked.
“Eh?” the professor peered over the top of a page.
“The circus. I heard it’s packing up.”
“Oh. Yes. The paper only says it’s ending its season here and moving on.” With that, the professor returned to his reading.
“I heard the Eletian is going to the Capital,” Mr. Stockwell said, “to show him off to the people there.”
Karigan almost dropped her fork with its piece of sausage impaled on the tines, her attention now focused on the students.
“Wish they’d exhibited him here,” Mr. Ribbs said. “Who knows if he’s the real thing.”
“Oh, he’s got to be authentic,” Mr. Card replied, “or Dr. Silk wouldn’t bother with him. Dr. Silk found him and owns him, so it’s not surprising the Eletian would be heading to the Capital. I heard the Eletian will be a gift to the emperor himself.”