I didn’t like the sound of that.

“Get in there and try it.” At least he refrained from pushing me in this time.

“That should do it.” An unfamiliar voice behind me.

Turning, I saw the hands draw back from the mirror facet, revealing the Lady Blue’s haggard face and bright eyes once again. “That should do it,” she repeated, her voice like a rasp, no trace of the culture and humour I remembered from the Red Queen’s memories.

“Do what?” I wanted to ask but my tongue stuck as my mouth went dry. I could see some of the thinnest hairline fractures closing up.

“The mirror’s healing itself.” Kara stepped back. “Go! Hurry!”

Keen to be away now, I slid into the space past the slot, folding my arms across my chest. I stood in a vertical tube a little taller than myself. A silver panel with no markings was set into the curving wall before me. Lacking any other ideas, I pressed the key to it. “Open.” The structure shuddered. “Open!” The panel turned black. “Open, damn you!” Something began to move with the sound of tortured steel, an awful scraping noise that put my teeth on edge.

“Jal!”

I turned my head just in time to see Snorri vanish as the inner cylinder rotated, with me inside, sealing away the opening slot. I kept the key pressed to the panel and prayed hard to any god that would have me. The light stuttered and died. I’ve known weeks pass more quickly than the thirty seconds that followed. Eventually a bright vertical line appeared, broadening with agonizing sloth into a gap wide enough for me to press myself through as the slot in the inner cylinder rotated into alignment with the slot affording access into the next room.

“Decontamination cycle complete.” A lifeless voice spoke in the cylinder as I stepped out.

The first thing to hit me was the stink, as if something had crawled in here to die. Fortunately that was also the only thing to hit me. The chamber was larger than I had expected, with irregular walls giving on to narrow convoluted passages trailing off beyond the reach of the pulsing red light. A time-star floated at head-height in the centre of the chamber, burning blue above a black disc set in the silver-steel floor. I kept myself from looking at it, sensing the thing could hook a person, leaving them to spend the rest of their life staring at it.

A facet of the fractal mirror had been set in one of the few flat sections of wall. The spiderweb of fractures continued its slow healing process and for a moment the Lady Blue turned her attentions to her sanctuary’s door. On the walls around her a dozen or more unbroken mirrors now hung in spots where the original occupant of the space had been shaken down. All of them the same: a plain mirror in a cheap pine frame . . . The same mirror I had seen hanging in a score of places in Tuttugu’s cell as he lay dead.

In the section of wall directly opposite me was a valve like the one I had just come through, next to a large black rectangular panel. I pressed the key to the outer casing of the valve that had admitted me. “Keep turning.” The thing ground on with agonizing slowness, fighting every inch of the way.

In the mirror the Lady Blue’s door shuddered beneath a great blow. Then another. On the third hit it shattered as if it had been made of glass, wickedly sharp chunks flying in all directions. The Silent Sister stood revealed in the doorway, stooped in her greying rags as always, the hint of that enigmatic smile gilding the thinness of her lips, one eye dark and penetrating, the blind eye glowing as if her head were full of light. Behind her, taller, broader, armoured in crimson half-plate, the Red Queen, smoke rising from the mantle about her shoulders as if she might at any moment burst into flames.

“Alica.” The Lady Blue tilted her head to acknowledge her visitors. “And your sister. I never did quite catch her name.”

Behind me Kara slipped out of the valve which kept on turning, rotating its opening back toward Snorri and Hennan. “Don’t look at the star,” I hissed, pushing her face away from it with one hand. “Perhaps you’ll introduce us?” the Lady Blue said.

My grandmother made no reply. The Silent Sister stepped into the room, and as she did so, reflections of the Lady Blue leapt from the new mirrors on the walls, each racing toward the original, running into her, somehow becoming one with her. Each joining painted Mora Shival more firmly into the world, adding definition to her, making the blue of her robe deeper, more intense, more vibrant, making her flesh more solid over her bones.

“No.” The Silent Sister spoke only that word and every mirror exploded into fragments, glittering clouds blooming before each frame. Even the cracks across the fractal mirror spread for a moment rather than healing. I couldn’t tell you what she sounded like—I only know that the word was spoken.