Chapter Seven Faith of Selûne #4
He hadn’t said that. Saeldian had, just at his left shoulder.
Saeldian was out there, smiling with the Kell he could see. But Saeldian was here, made of shadow—like him? Was he—
“I can’t get back in,” Saeldian said. “It pushed me out. Hells, all nine of them!”
Kell went still. That was really Saeldian’s face. Not a speck of illusion clung to them, making them oddly static and…ordinary. Curls haloed in frizz. Flawless makeup gone.
Kell had seen Saeldian like this often when they first met and became friends as well as partners. Near the end, though, Kell had hardly ever seen Saeldian’s unillusioned face. But this was them, exactly them, with everything they blurred, shortened, lengthened, tailored, and hid plain to see.
Kell never thought he’d see their face again.
Saeldian looked at him, and even made of shadow, their expression drained. They touched their own face; they covered it with the square and sturdy-palmed hands they were born with.
No. No time for that. “Saeldian. It’s a charm placed on the gem.”
His voice made no sound; Saeldian heard him. They shook their head. “It wasn’t the charm that got me.”
That was their real voice, the one only he had heard, only when the job was done. When they were alone. When they could let go of disguises and masks.
They covered their mouth.
He’d heard their voice. He’d seen their face. There was no time to soothe them. “You can fix it later. The charm didn’t work on you, but you’re in here. How?”
“I knew what it was. I was trying to take it away from you to break the charm. It made sense. You wanted to touch it, right? You couldn’t think of anything else.”
It did make sense. Saeldian was an elf-human. Their mother had been human, and her wheelwright husband had been human. Saeldian’s father, demonstrably, had not been their mother’s husband.
“Right. I wanted a closer look, and now we’re not in our bodies. So where are we?”
The Kell he could see turned to smile at Lorzok and Jubilee. The Saeldian he could see smiled too, all their subtle little illusions still there—the tiniest shifts to their true face that made them eye-catching and magnetic. But their bodies were strangely stretched. The whole room was. Why?
Saeldian pressed both hands to their cheeks. They covered their mouth.
“Think!” Kell cried. “Where are we?”
They bent their head—to hide from Kell’s sight? “It was a magical trap. It got you. I think this is an abjuration spell. We’re in…the ethereal? No. I can still feel me, but it’s faded.”
“Me too. If it’s not the ethereal, where are we?”
Saeldian looked to the illusion they had set in front of the watching spells. They were still fooled into gazing at their reflection. Then they nodded. “Look at the angles. We’re in the mirror.”
“How do we get out?”
“I don’t know!” Saeldian shouted.
The Saeldian they could see shook their head, as if a fly buzzed by their ear.
“You heard that,” Kell said. “I saw you react. We’re connected. Cast something that will make you stop!”
“The mirror was my last big spell, I said.” Saeldian pounded their fist into their thigh. “I only have cantrips.”
Smiling Kell and Smiling Saeldian held the gem together as they moved closer to their friends.
“We can’t let Jubilee and Lorzok touch that gem,” Kell said. “Try anything.”
Saeldian put up a hand and pointed it at Smiling Saeldian—no, at Lorzok. “Through copper, hear me—it’s a trick!”
Lorzok didn’t even blink.
“Hear me, by my will.” Saeldian tried casting the message cantrip again. “It’s a trick!”
Still nothing.
Saeldian looked like they might cry. “I can’t. It needs actual copper—which is stuck on my real body right now. I can’t send him a message without it.”
Saeldian was drained of the power to cast impressive illusions and clever escapes. The spell was a good idea; if they could tell Lorzok, he could help them. But Saeldian couldn’t reach him. Their spell needed a physical focus.
But Kell could. Kell knew a spell that didn’t need a copper wire, or a magic gesture, or even time to rest. But that spell would—
Outside the shadow, Lorzok lifted his hands.
No. They couldn’t all get trapped in here, unable to stop their smiling selves from doing whatever the trap was compelling them to do. Kell would apologize later.
He gathered his will, gave a theatric snicker, and cast: “Lorzok, you weird, unloved son. Do we look normal to you? It’s a trick!”
Smiling Kell’s mouth opened and spat the vicious insult at his best friend, who flinched away from his words. Kell’s heart clenched with the apology he couldn’t utter.
Lorzok backed up one step. But Jubilee swung her head to check on Lorzok. Her body twisting. Her fingers—
“No!” Kell and Saeldian shouted, but Jubilee’s fingers brushed against the jewel, and then Jubilee appeared here, while he and Saeldian gasped at the Jubilee outside the mirror.
Jubilee stumbled and stared at the Jubilee out there, who smiled and moved in step with the others closer to Lorzok.
“We’re in the mirror,” Saeldian said. “I can’t cast anything, but Kell could; I didn’t have copper wire—”
All three of them smiling. Lorzok backed up a step. He was too close to Saeldian’s mirror. If he broke through it…
But instead, he sang, “All the stars are smiling while you watch them play,” and stroked the air in front of their faces. They stopped smiling. The Kiss fell from Kell’s fingers—
Kell landed hard on his knees and one hand.
The lights were brighter. The air smelled of perfume, sweat, and a thousand pastries.
The Kiss of Enduring Love lay on the floor, not so shiny, not so fascinating.
Saeldian sat on the floor shivering, their illusory mask restored, and narrowly avoided extending their long, elegant hand to pick it up.
Kell laced his fingers together behind his back. Jubilee scrabbled away from it.
Lorzok muttered another spell, and Kell felt the pull of the gem break like a bit of thread. Then Lorzok slipped a silk pouch over one hand and picked it up, pulling the bag around it. He pulled the drawstring shut and stared at the prize swinging from his fingers.
“You’ve caused quite enough trouble for one day, little stone,” he said.
“I lost count. How much time do we have?” Saeldian was back in their gently perfected face.
Not literally perfect, but better than that—fascinating.
Kell had watched this face evolve over the years.
He’d thought it had summed Saeldian up completely: nothing that detracted from what they wanted a mark to see and believe.
But that was wrong. Saeldian had been at their limits without this illusion. Without it, they’d been afraid—no. Distressed, as if they had been in a nightmare.
“Not enough,” Lorzok said. “Let’s not push our luck any further.”
He didn’t look at Kell.
“Lorzok, I’m sorry. We were trying to reach you. Saeldian couldn’t send you a message without copper. The only spell I could use was—”
“Vicious Mockery,” Lorzok said. “The spell worked.”
Kell felt like boot scrapings. If Lorzok would just punch him, he’d deserve it.
But Lorzok wouldn’t hurt a fly. He would explain to mosquitoes that Kell got hives from their bites.
He’d negotiated the equitable distribution of their food pack with a bear last tenday.
Lorzok wouldn’t hurt anyone if he had another choice, because he wasn’t a monster.
But Kell was.
“I’m sorry.”
But Lorzok wasn’t paying attention to him. “Guards are coming.”
Boots thumping on stair risers. Genial conversation Kell couldn’t make out, but the tone was relaxed. They hadn’t been caught, but they were about to be.
“Scatter,” Saeldian hissed.
Lorzok tossed the pouch at Kell and fell to all fours.
Kell caught the bag. Jubilee bolted to the alcove where they had waited for Lady Tarm and her servants to set the spells. She bent over the doorknob and slipped inside, closing it behind her.
Lorzok shifted into the form of a house cat. He trotted down the stairs on the opposite side of Jubilee’s escape, meowing at the top of his tabby-striped kitty lungs at the guards, whose voices Lorzok had distinguished from the music and chatter before the rest of them.
“The handsomest fellow, aren’t you?” a guard said, delighted with Lorzok’s feline antics. “Who’s collecting petting tax? Is it you? Oh yes, it is you!”
“I swear, you and cats,” the other guard said.
They had only a moment. Would the guards split up, each of them going up one staircase to the top? Smart guards would, so they would. They couldn’t follow Jubilee, Saeldian couldn’t cast any more major spells, he had…nothing that would get them out of this cleanly.
Only one thing left. “Diversion.”
Saeldian’s form shifted. Human, with bronze-brown hair, summer-sky eyes, freckles over an upturned nose, and…
a wide, low gown that couldn’t stay up without the most sizeable assets Kell had ever seen Saeldian illusion.
She (definitely she, right now) tugged him toward the alcove closest to the guards’ voices.
“Best kind of caught?” she asked, and before he could answer, he was against the wall with Saeldian pressed against him.
“Knave’s gambit, accepted,” Kell said, and caught the delicate jaw Saeldian had sculpted in two hands, gazing into their eyes as he brought them closer, closer, until their eyelids slipped half closed. They melted into him, and those assets pressed firmly against his chest.