“Exactly! And it was the detail of those infantry boots that clinched it, that made me believe absolutely that you are who you say you are. They matched the roster. How could you have known such a fine detail if you hadn’t been there, or read the reference only I own, which is stored here in my secret library?”
“You did not tell me any of this,” Cade said, and now he looked at Karigan with perhaps more belief in his eyes.
“I am telling you now. I’ve kept you busy watching the students while I researched.” He gestured with an expression of pride at his shelves of books. “I did find something intriguing, my dear,” he said, turning back to Karigan, “and about Blackveil. It seems you entered the forest and never returned. And if I may leap to a conclusion, you never returned because you ended up here.”
Karigan now found herself gripping her armrests. “You mean I never returned home? Not even from here?”
“The records, scant as they are, reveal nothing.”
A scream of despair welled up in Karigan’s chest.
MISSING
“It does not mean you never returned,” the professor said, his expression kindly. “It just means I never found a record of it.” He stood and started scouring the bookshelves, muttering to himself.
For Karigan, it was as if a trapdoor had flung open beneath her, revealing a yawning chasm. She did not want to be stuck here—she wanted to go home to her friends and family, the world she knew. His pronouncement had defeated any hope that she would find a way back. She squeezed her eyes shut trying to recall the words the Berry sisters once told her about the future . . . It is not set in stone. That’s what they had said. Even the looking mask had shown her the infinite possibilities, the variations of the world’s time threads. But if she were already in the future, could her past now be set in stone?
When she opened her eyes again, the professor was rolling the ladder along the bookshelves until he found whatever section he wanted and climbed. He reached for a volume on the top shelf. “Ah, yes,” he said muttering to himself. “This one.”
Cade Harlowe simply stared at her, immovable. She stared back, refusing to be intimidated.
“Here we are,” the professor said. He clambered back down and handed Karigan the book before retreating to his chair. “The last evidence.”
She examined it. It was ledger size, bound in plain leather, so like the many others she had handled; but the leather was worn and damaged by moisture, and the pages within as delicate as fallen autumn leaves. She carefully flipped through a few of the pages, gazed at the precise handwriting within, set in columns listing payroll by the week. Some of the ink was smeared, some pages torn or too stained to read, but she knew this ledger, had handled it in a different age. And she knew the handwriting well, for it was her own.
She caressed the familiar names listed in the columns: Mara Brennyn, Ty Newland, Alton D’Yer, Osric M’Grew . . . A few more pages in, and she saw where she had written, Deceased next to Osric’s name, and the time-in-service pay he had not lived to collect. A notation showed that the pay, and a death benefit, had been forwarded to his mother. She wiped a tear from her cheek before it could besmirch the ledger.
She had not been happy to take on the duty of keeping the Rider accounts, but with her merchant background, Captain Mapstone had thought her the best one to handle them, and rightly so. Maintaining the ledgers for the business ventures of Clan G’ladheon had been her least favorite duty when she worked with her father, but she’d been good at it. She’d thought it a terrible irony when she ended up having to do it for the Green Riders.
Now as she looked upon those names, no few marked Deceased as Osric’s had been, she realized it had been an honor to keep the ledgers. And what a marvel to have such a connection to her own time, something as mundane as this. It was almost like, she thought, peering out of one’s own grave. No, better to think of it as a window to her own time.
She continued looking, oblivious to the two men who watched her intently. Of course she saw her own name listed and rate of pay. There was that snarl she’d made of Rider accounts at the end of winter. Well, the end of winter back in her own time. She smiled, remembering the mess, spending such long hours trying to untangle it that she’d forgotten the payroll. Here her handwriting grew less tidy, as though she’d been frantic to fill in names and numbers in record time. Unpaid Riders were unhappy Riders.
Pages rustled as she turned them. Abruptly her own handwriting ended, and the equally neat but distinctive hand of Daro Cooper began. The captain had thought it wise that another Rider be trained to handle the accounts during Karigan’s absences, and Daro assumed that duty when Karigan left for Blackveil.
“How did you ever . . . ?” Karigan began. She glanced up at the professor. “How did you ever find this ledger?” She was surprised something so mundane had survived the years as well as the presumed purging of such records by the empire.
“It was not easy. Occasionally one in my work stumbles upon such relics from the time before the emperor. I am duty bound to hand over anything of particular interest to the emperor. Not all of it, of course, comes into his hands. And there are others who . . . scavenge . . . beneath the emperor’s notice. There is quite a healthy black market for relics. I purchased the ledger from one such dealer. Indirectly, of course. Wouldn’t do to leave a trail for the Inspectors to follow.”
“Black market . . .” Karigan murmured, her gaze drawn once more to the book. She turned the pages, everything looking right and orderly, until abruptly she came to Yates Cardell’s name and the word, Deceased. A sob caught in her throat, and her eyes blurred the matter-of-fact statement that his accrued pay and benefits were to go to a cousin in D’Ivary Province. Had Daro cried when she made the entry, as Karigan had when she recorded the deaths of Osric M’Grew and others?