The Dark Mirror

The braziers in the Queen’s camp burned all day, and Wren, who had cleaned more fireplaces than anyone else in this story, thought they were the worst fires she had ever seen.

There was one in front of her now. It stood on three iron legs in the ash, a wide black bowl as big as a cartwheel, and in it there was a fire: you could see the flames moving, tall and pale, the colour of moonlight on a puddle. But there was no smoke, and no crackle, and no smell. And there was no heat. Wren had held her hands out to it when they first sat her down, out of plain habit, and had kept them there for a long time before she believed it. It was like holding your hands out to a picture of a fire.

“That wouldn’t draw a fly,” she told the nearest knight. “Whoever laid that wants sacking. Mott’d have had the skin off your back for a fire like that.”

The knight did not answer. None of them had answered all day. There were six of them, standing round her in a ring at the edge of the camp, and they had not moved since morning except, very slowly, to turn their grey faces as the light went round.

On the pole of the nearest tent sat an ash-crow, watching her with its head on one side.

“And you can stop that,” said Wren. “I know what you are. You’re a pawnbroker with feathers on. I’m calling you Grubb.”

The crow went on watching. After a while another one came and sat beside it, and then a third, and they all three looked at her, and Wren found she did not feel like naming the others.

She was sitting on the ash with her knees drawn up and the lamp in her lap, inside her coat, where she could feel it. They had not tied her. They had not needed to. She had tried once, about noon, to walk out of the ring of knights, quite casually, as if she were going to look at something; and they had closed in front of her without a sound, shoulder to grey shoulder, and simply stood there, cold coming off them like the breath of a cellar. She had sat down again.

The singing-stone had hummed all day. In the end she had wrapped it in the end of Tobin’s scarf to muffle it, and it went on humming through the wool, thin and steady, like a tune somebody has forgotten to stop.

Every so often, when the knights were not looking — which was always, and never — she opened her coat a crack and looked at the lamp.

It was burning, small and gold and steady. It had not gone out, or dimmed. It only burned, the way it had burned ever since the Heskeths’ kitchen; and when she looked at it, the little circle of ash in her lap turned from grey to a warm dark brown, and the ribbon at her wrist was red.

“They said they don’t want you,” said Wren. “They said she wants me to do it. Blow you out. Myself.” She gave a short laugh. “As if. I’ve carried you from Emberwick to the sea and up this blasted hill. I’ve carried you out of a mine. I’m not blowing you out for a lot of grey tin men and a crow called Grubb.”

But she did not sound as sure as she wanted to, even to herself. And when she closed her coat again she sat for a long time staring at the pale fire, thinking about a face she had seen through a gap in some stones, and about how she had known — before she even turned her head — exactly what she would see.

Course you didn’t, she thought. Course.

And then, because she was honest, which is not at all the same thing as being kind: You said you wished it had been him. Remember? On the harbour wall. You said it to his face.

She remembered.

She put her forehead down on her knees, and stayed like that, while the pale sun went over.

Varrick came for her at the gloaming.

He did not take her by the collar this time. He only stood at the edge of the ring and said, “Miss Ashby,” quite politely, and waited; and after a moment Wren got up, and the knights stood back, and she followed him through the camp.

It was a large camp, and a very quiet one. Grey tents stood in rows across the ash. Hollow Knights stood between them, and did not talk, or eat, or sleep, or play at dice the way the Warden’s guards used to in Emberwick; they only stood. Ash-crows sat on every tent-pole. The pale braziers burned without a sound. And at the heart of the camp, where the ash began to rise towards the foot of the Hill, there was a tent bigger than all the others: tall and round and grey, with its door-flap tied back.

Varrick stopped beside it.

“I’ll leave you here,” he said. He was rubbing his right palm with his left thumb, slowly, under the gauntlet; Wren did not think he knew he was doing it. “A word of advice, Miss Ashby. You won’t take it, but I’ll give it anyway.” He looked down at her with his grey eyes. “Don’t argue with her. Everybody argues with her. It doesn’t help.”

“Did you?” said Wren. “Argue?”

Varrick did not answer that. He only stood aside for her to go in.

The inside of the tent was grey, and very large, and very cold, and at first it seemed to be quite empty.

There was a brazier in the middle of it, burning pale. There were grey hangings on the walls, and a grey carpet on the ash, soft as moss. There was a tall thing at the back of the tent covered with a grey cloth, about the height and shape of a person standing still. And there was a chair, high-backed and grey, with someone sitting in it.

Wren had thought — she did not know quite what she had thought. That the Queen would be enormous, perhaps, like the shadow of the long paper hand on Ash’s sheet. Or that she would be ugly, and old, and cruel, with a voice like a crow. She had heard the voice. She knew better than that. But she had still, somehow, expected something she could hate on sight.

The woman in the chair was beautiful.

She was very tall, even sitting down, and she was grey from head to foot — but not the grey of ash, or of old dishwater, or of the knights’ faces. She was the grey of frost on a window in the early morning, when the sun is just about to touch it. Her hair was silver-grey and fell to her waist. Her skin was silver-grey and smooth as a pearl. Her gown was grey, and seemed to have been made of mist that had decided to stay. She looked, Wren thought, like a statue somebody had carved out of frost, and then — out of pity, or loneliness — had asked to come alive.

Only her eyes were dark. Not grey, but dark: wholly dark, all the way through, like the inside of a sealed flue.

She smiled when she saw Wren. It was a sad, kind, tired smile, the way a grown-up smiles at a child who has stayed up far too late.

“Wren,” she said. “Come in, child. Come and sit by the fire. I’m so sorry about the cold. I know you feel it.”

It was the voice. Of course it was. Sweet and low and reasonable, like warm milk — and somewhere underneath the sweetness, the milk going cold.

“We’ve spoken before, haven’t we?” said the Queen. “In a boat. You were crying. I’m afraid I wasn’t much comfort to you then. I hope I can do better now.”

Wren did not sit down. She stood just inside the door, with her coat held shut over the lamp and her chin up, and said the first thing that came into her head, which was: “You look like a nob.”

The Queen laughed. It was a lovely laugh, low and delighted, and it was the worst thing Wren had heard all day.

“Oh, I like you,” she said. “I always did. Do you know, I have been watching you since you were very small? A little thing on the roofs of Soot Lane, with your knife and your brushes, cutting your own hair, stealing your own bread, owing that dreadful man money you could never pay. And never once asking anyone for anything.” She shook her head slowly. “Everything costs. That’s what you always said. If it doesn’t cost you now, it’ll cost you later. You knew that at four years old.”

Wren said nothing.

“You were right,” said the Queen gently. “That’s all I wanted to say. You were right, and they told you you were wrong. The old man told you. Only given, he said, and what is given, grows.” She looked at Wren with her dark eyes, and there was nothing in them but sorrow. “And what did it cost him, Wren? His tower. His city. His good leg. And then, at the very end, a door, in the dark, under a mountain. That was the price of his gift. He paid it. And now you are paying it.” Her voice went softer still. “And the boy. Poor boy. You said a hard thing to him, on the harbour wall.”

“Don’t,” said Wren. Her voice came out much smaller than she meant.

“I don’t blame you. Who could? He sold your friend. But you’ve thought about it since, haven’t you? Every night.” The Queen sighed. “That’s what the lamp does, child. It’s very beautiful, and it’s very warm, and everyone it touches loses something. You’ve seen it. You’ve been carrying a debt in your coat for so long, and you can never, ever pay it off.”

Wren’s hand had tightened on the lamp through her coat. She could feel it, small and warm against her ribs.

“You want it,” she said. “That’s all this is. You want it, and you can’t have it, because it burns. Your tin men tried. I watched them.”

“I don’t want it,” said the Queen. “I couldn’t take it if I did. Nobody can. You know that better than anyone.” She turned her lovely head a little, towards the cloth-covered thing at the back of the tent. “I only want to give you something. That’s all. For once. Will you let me?”

This is the part of the story that Wren never liked to tell, and I shall tell it as quickly as I can.

The Queen rose from her chair. She was taller standing than any man Wren had ever seen, and she moved without a sound, and the frost-grey gown made no rustle on the carpet. She went to the tall covered shape at the back of the tent and drew the cloth off it.

It was a mirror. An oval of black glass, taller than Wren, in a plain grey frame. It did not shine. It did not reflect the brazier, or the tent, or the Queen. It was dark all the way down, like deep water at night.

“Look,” said the Queen. “Only look. You needn’t do anything else.”

Wren did not want to look. But she was twelve, and somebody had said don’t, in a way; and so she looked.

At first she only saw herself. A thin girl in a too-big coat, with cropped black hair and a sharp chin and a long knitted scarf, very small in the black glass. Then the black began to move behind her reflection, like smoke clearing from a chimney; and then it was not black.

It was a room.

A small room, low and warm, with a fire in the grate — a real fire, red and orange and crackling, the colours so bright and so sudden after the long grey day that Wren’s eyes stung. There was a table with a cloth on it, and a loaf, and two cups. There was a window, and through it a sky — a blue sky, bluer than Ash’s coat had ever been. And in the room there were two people.

One of them was a man. He was sitting by the fire with his sleeves rolled up, and he had big hands, and he was laughing at something. The other was a woman, standing at the window with her back to the light. She had dark hair, like Wren’s, and a sharp chin, like Wren’s, and when she turned round from the window and looked out of the glass — straight out, as though she could see Wren standing there in the grey tent — her face was the face Wren had never been able to remember, not once, in all the years of trying.

And it was exactly right. That was the terrible thing. Wren had not known she had forgotten it until she saw it, and then she knew she had never forgotten it at all.

“Wren,” said the woman in the glass. She held out her arms. “Oh, Wren. There you are.”

“Wren!” said the man, and got up from the fire, and his laugh was warm and deep and full of welcome. “Look at her. Look how big she’s got.”

Wren could not move. She could not breathe. Her hand had come up of its own accord, and was touching the black glass, and the glass was cold.

And then the woman in the mirror began to sing.

She sang very softly, rocking a little where she stood, the way you rock a baby without thinking about it. And the tune went into Wren like a key into a lock. She knew it. She had always known it. It was the oldest thing she had.

“Morning comes, morning comes,” sang her mother, “and the dark shall not keep us…”

And there she stopped.

She did not falter. She only stopped, and smiled out of the glass, and drew a breath. And then she went back to the beginning, and sang it again, exactly the same, in exactly the same voice: “Morning comes, morning comes, and the dark shall not keep us…” And stopped. And smiled. And began again.

Something about it caught in Wren, like a sleeve on a nail; and then let go.

She did not think about it. She could not think about anything. Her mother was singing to her, and her father was laughing, and the fire was red, and the sky through the window was blue, and her eyes were so full that the whole bright room in the glass swam and ran together like paint in the rain.

“Are they real?” she whispered. “Are they — is it really them? Are they alive?”

“What a question,” said the Queen’s voice behind her, very gently. “Look at them, child. Do they look like a lie to you?”

They did not. They looked like the only true thing she had ever seen.

“Then I’ll go,” said Wren. Her voice was shaking. “I’ll go there. Tell me where it is. I’ll walk. I don’t care how far—“

“There’s no road, Wren. Not one you could walk.” The Queen came and stood beside her. She did not touch her. She only stood there, tall and grey and sorrowful, and looked into the mirror too, as if the room in it made her sad as well. “But you can be there tonight. Now. For ever. With them, in the warm, and nobody will ever make you pay for anything again. All it costs —“ and she smiled, a little ruefully, as if it were a joke between them — “is nothing. Nothing at all. Isn’t that funny? After all this time. It costs one breath.”

Wren’s hands had found the lamp inside her coat. She did not remember taking it out. But it was out now, in her two hands, small and gold, and in its light the grey carpet was a dull deep blue.

“You blew it out once, I think,” said the Queen. “In a chimney, the first night. And it came back. That was only a sweep hiding a light; it didn’t mind that.” Her voice was like a hand stroking hair. “And once, in the Warden’s Hall, you threw it away, and it went cold and dark, and it would have stayed so. But a boy went down in the dark and carried it back to you.” She sighed. “There’s no one to carry it back this time. That boy lay in the ash this morning and watched you go. And this time, you would mean it.”

In the glass, her mother sang. Morning comes, morning comes, and the dark shall not keep us…

“Only breathe out, little sweep,” said the Queen. “That is all. You have carried it so far, and it has cost you so much. Let me give you something, for once, that costs you nothing.”

Wren looked at the lamp.

She thought of Ash, and the door in the dark. She thought of Sister Hale going down sideways in the ash, and Mira’s wet white face, and Tobin’s spectacles in a gap between two stones. She thought of every place the lamp had ever taken her, and what each one had cost, and who had paid. She was so tired. She had been tired since Vaelport. She had been tired, if she was honest, since she was four.

She could no longer tell whether the mirror was a lie. She was no longer sure it mattered.

Slowly — as slowly as somebody walking in their sleep — she lifted the lamp, until the little brass rim of the chimney was almost touching her lips. The warmth of it was on her mouth. It smelt of bread, and summer.

The flame bowed towards her.

It did not flicker, or shrink, or try to get away. It only leaned in towards her face, the way it had always leaned towards anyone it wanted to reach, small and gold and patient, as if it were listening.

In the black glass her mother smiled, and held out her arms, and began the song again from the beginning.

And Wren breathed in.