Chapter Thirty-eight

The young woman opened the door suddenly and spilled light past the barrier in the middle of the citadel. Glare turned the black iron into a grid of silvery reflection. The smith's dog whined.

Platt sneezed and jumped to his feet in surprise. "P-princess!" he blurted and sneezed again. "I—that is, is your father here?"

"Phew!" Miriam said, wrinkling her nose.

She waved dismissively to the attendant. "I don't want to talk to you. Go stand outside."

The princess carried a sable muff and wore a short sable cape over a coat of creamy silk brocade which covered her to the ankles. The ornament of light which Sparrow had made for her oscillated around her neck in golden radiance.

The mirror that Sparrow had given Krita was a bulge beneath Miriam's cape instead of being worn in plain view as was her wont.

"Lady princess," Platt said as he knelt with his head bowed. He peered up at Miriam from the corner of one bright, cunning eye. "Your father the king was most speci—"

"Shut up!" Miriam said. "I told you to go outside. I don't like the way you smell."

"But I mustn't—" the attendant whined.

He raised his head as the princess strode toward the barrier. A quick glance through the open door proved that she had come by herself. To her back Platt continued, "Anyway, you can't talk to the prisoner now, lady. He's in a trance. His mind's lost in the Matrix."

Miriam turned like the nut of a crossbow rotating to loose the string.

"Then we'll have to wake him up, won't we?" she snapped. One of her perfect hands slid out of the muff and snatched the empty bowl from Platt's three-legged table.

Miriam's ring twined like a snake on her middle finger. Its gold scales and garnet eyes quivered on the pewter as she rang the bowl along the barrier. The racket was as loud as the gates of Hell crashing open.

Sparrow woke up. His body rose upright before the mind returned to light his pale eyes. The event was more similar to a glacier calving icebergs than it was to the movement of a living thing.

Princess Miriam stepped backward. Her shoulder bumped Platt, who had approached behind her.

Miriam screamed and struck the attendant with the bowl. "Get out!" she shrieked at him. "I told you to get—"

Platt scuttled to the outside door with the graceless haste of a frightened spider. Miriam hurled the bowl at his head.

"—out of here, Hell take you!"

The pewter dented on the transom instead.

She turned back, recovering her aplomb with a shiver like the motion of a fore-edge book being thumbed to release its hidden scene. Sparrow smiled at her.

The princess blinked. Whatever expression she thought she had seen on the prisoner's face was gone as suddenly as it appeared. It could have been a trick of the light. . . .

"You," she said haughtily. "Prisoner! I need you to do something."

The smith rubbed the spot between the dog's eyes. The animal licked his huge calloused hand.

"What can I do for you, lady princess?" Sparrow asked. His voice was a rasping caress.

"I—" Miriam said.

She paused to look back at the door. Platt's shadow was visible, though the attendant himself was concealed behind the stone doorpost.

The princess stepped up to the bars again. She unpinned her cape and held it with one hand as she lifted the mirror from around her neck. The ornament of light quivered as Miriam's hand and the gold cord slid through it, but the helix continued its dual track unimpeded.

"It's my mirror," Miriam whispered. She waggled its face toward Sparrow. Since the light was behind her, the reflection was never more than a pale blur. "It doesn't work any more."

The smith locked his hands behind his neck and stretched.

"I see myself in it, lady princess," Sparrow said. Cords of sinew stood out on his neck. "What could be wrong with that?"

"You fool!" the girl snapped. "I mean it's only a mirror! It doesn't show me the places I want to see, the way it should."

"Ah," said Sparrow wisely. "Show it to me, then, lady."

He pointed to the filthy floor between the bars. "Set it there and step back while I take it," he said. "We can't have my jailor telling King Hermann that I put you at risk, now can we?"

Miriam spun on her heel. "You!" she cried to the eye that slid aside an instant too late to go unseen. "Get out into the courtyard, you little foulness! Or I'll have Daddy flay you!"

The attendant's shadow bobbed away from the doorjamb. Platt was mumbling something exculpatory.

The princess set the object down. She did not move back. Sparrow leaned only as close as necessary to pinch the cord between his thumb and forefinger, then rocked to his former position as he inspected the mirror.

"Ah," he said. "Ah, I see what the problem is."

The mirror had stopped working because the ornaments Sparrow had made for Princess Miriam interfered with its ability to take power from the Matrix.

Just as the smith had intended.

"You can fix it, then?" Miriam said, unable to keep a tone of concern from her voice. The mirror was unique and uniquely wonderful. Even the princess in her arrogance had realized that.

"Very difficult, lady princess," the smith lied solemnly. He closed the mirror again and set it where Miriam had placed it. "But I think . . . yes. But in two weeks, at the new moon. Not during daylight. And not now."

"I don't understand!" Miriam said, making the words an accusation rather than a confession of ignorance.

"The Matrix, lady princess," the smith said. He waved his hand dismissively. The dog smelled the hormones Sparrow was exuding and growled in anticipation.

"Well—" said the princess. She drew herself up in a regal pretense that her will had not been thwarted.

"One thing, lady princess . . . ?" Sparrow added.

"What?" she snapped.

"For this particular task," the smith said, his voice rasping softly like a dog's tongue, "I'll need a skin of strong wine. Can you bring that when you return with the piece that I will repair?"

"I don't see why I should bring you anything!" the princess said. "You're only a slave."

"Ah, not for me, lady," Sparrow said. "For the task. Only for the task."

"We'll see," she said coldly; turned, and swept out of the citadel. She paused on the threshold for a moment and called back over her shoulder, "You'd better fix it!"

When the princess was gone, Platt slunk back inside.

"What was that all about?" the attendant asked spitefully. He did not expect an answer.

Sparrow smiled at him. "Oh, she's a fine girl," he said. "She came to thank me for the ornaments I made her."

"She did?" said Platt in puzzlement.

"Oh, yes, a fine girl and worthy of her family," Sparrow said. "And to prove how grateful she is, she'll come back when the moon is dark and bring a skin of wine for us. Is that not a fine girl?"

Platt shook his head. He found his bowl. He morosely attempted to press out the dents, using the butt of his knife as a mallet.

The smith lowered himself onto his furs and slipped back into his trance. Platt glanced through the bars, then returned to his own task.

He supposed that Sparrow was making some piece of a battlesuit.