The Wheel of Osheim

“That was foolish.” The Lady Blue wiped her mouth where a flying shard had cut her. “To spend your power so.”

“You’re not running away this time.” My grandmother stepped around her sister. She held a long, thin sword with runes along its length.

“You can’t stop this, Alica.” The Lady Blue stepped back toward the fractal mirror. “This world is broken. Death is broken, along with the darkness and the light. There’s a better life waiting for those of us with the strength of mind to take it. The herd is lost either way, but the shepherds can survive.” She faced the old women before her but I knew her words were for me.

“The people can be saved.” Grandmother raised her blade, the tip pointed at her enemy’s heart. “And I will fight to save them, however slight the hope of success.”

Mora Shival shook her head. “You speak about the people, girl, but it’s always been about keeping power in your own two hands. It’s fear that keeps you fighting. Fear of what you might be without history, without throne and crown to fill your peasants’ throats with cheers. You were born to power. You stepped up to it over the broken bodies and broken minds of your siblings. Somewhere behind those fierce eyes the dream of being Red Empress still burns, doesn’t it, Alica? You’ve been planning a route to the all-throne for so many years you can’t let it go even when you try. You broke Czar Keljon’s power in the east, neutralized Scorron, put the fear of God into the Port Kingdoms at your back . . . and here you are, advancing through Slov on a pretext, bound for Vyene. You’re piling corpses up faster than the Dead King—so don’t talk to me of ‘the people’.”

Snorri joined Hennan behind me and gestured voicelessly to the valve opposite us.

“The last chamber,” Kara hissed. “You can end all this.”

I hurried, hunched and fearful, across the chamber, skirting the blue star burning at its heart. The valve proved identical to the first. I pressed the key to it, causing the same trembling as whatever held it in place struggled to deny me, then came the same slow and grinding revolution of the inner cylinder. Over the grating I heard a last snatch of the confrontation back in Mora Shival’s tower in Blujen.

“How is that dear boy you broke getting rid of me back in Vermillion? Shouldn’t he be the third Gholloth? If anyone has a right to be emperor it’s him. The last emperor, twisted and drooling in the all-throne as he watches the world die around him.”

I wanted to shout that Garyus would make a good emperor—better than any of them—but the entrance narrowed to an inch and then vanished, sealing off sound and plunging me once more into darkness.

The whole structure shuddered, a deep-voiced groan resonating through the metal superstructure. Throughout the vast machine, in engines that the best minds among the Builders had conceived and wrought, one element battled the next, running wild now that the mirror which was both one and many lay cracked through.

I turned with the cylinder and eventually the slot reappeared in front of me, first a dark-grey sliver, then a finger-width only a shade lighter than the midnight all around me, a hand-width, wider . . . I stepped through.

A single light panel in the ceiling struggled into life, replacing the near-impenetrable gloom with a flickering red half-light, chasing the shadows toward the corners only to fall back and let them regroup. Four thick, square pillars occupied the middle of the room, each face covered with screens, all dark.

I saw immediately that the small amount of light I had first seen in the room came through the window beside the valve. I’d thought it a black panel but it was really a thick glass window that had been giving me a view of a dark room, and now showed Snorri and the others waiting at the far side of the valve.

To my left a dirty grey cloth hung over something on the wall. I twitched the thing off and found I held a cloak, tattered and stained by hard use. It had been covering the room’s mirror facet. The Lady Blue stood close to the mirror now, her back toward it, both hands raised. The lamps in her sanctum threw her shadow across me, the rest of their light spilling into the chamber. Grandmother and her sister stood before the Lady, their faces tight with concentration. I had seen that expression before, back in Grandmother’s memories when they both struggled against their reflections as children. Silver, glimpsed between the Lady Blue’s fingers, confirmed that in each hand she held a small looking-glass, angled toward her enemies.

The strain upon their faces held me. It kept the breath locked in my chest. It kept me silent. That’s when I heard the footstep behind me.