“My name’s Bill,” the boy said. “I’m eight. Why are your eyes closed like that? And how can you talk when your mouth isn’t open?”
“He’s a man of special talents,” said Sister Emilia. “You should taste his chicken potpie. Where are your people, Bill?”
The boy said, “I live down in St. Elmo, and I came up here on the Incline Railway with my mother and today I ate a whole bag of saltwater taffy and didn’t have to share a piece with anyone else.”
“Maybe the taffy had magical properties,” Sister Emilia said softly to Brother Zachariah.
“My mother said not to wander off,” the boy said, “but I never pay any attention to her unless she’s het up like a kettle. I went through the Maze of Mirrors all by myself, and I got all the way to the middle where the fancy lady is, and she said as a prize I could ask her for anything I wanted.”
What did you ask her for? Brother Zachariah said.
“I thought about asking for a battle with real knights and real horses and real swords, like in King Arthur, but the lady said if what I wanted was real adventures, I should ask to see the world as it really was, and so I did. And after that she put a mask on me, and now everything’s strange, and also she wasn’t a lady at all. She was something that I didn’t want to be around anymore, and so I ran away. I’ve seen all kinds of strange people, but I haven’t seen my mother. Have you seen her? She’s little but she’s ferocious. She has red hair like me, and she’s got an awful temper when she’s worried.”
“I know all about that kind of mother,” Sister Emilia said. “She must be looking everywhere for you.”
Bill said, “I am a constant trial to her. Or so she says.”
Over there, Brother Zachariah said. Is that her?
A small woman standing by a tent advertising MYSTERIES OF THE WORM DEMONSTRATED THRICE DAILY was looking over in their direction. “Bill Doyle!” she said, advancing. “You are in a heap of trouble, my little man!”
She had a carrying voice.
“I see my fate is upon me,” Bill said in grave tones. “You should flee before you become a casualty of battle.”
“Don’t worry for us, Bill,” Sister Emilia said. “Your mother can’t see us. And I wouldn’t mention us to her either. She’ll think you’re making it all up.”
“It appears I have gotten myself into a real predicament,” Bill said. “Fortunately I am as good at getting out of tight spots as I am at getting into them. I’ve had lots of practice. A pleasure to have met both of you.”
Then Mrs. Doyle was upon him. She seized her son’s arm and began to pull him back toward the exit of the carnival, scolding him as they went.
Brother Zachariah and Sister Emilia turned to watch them go in silence.
Finally Sister Emilia said, “The Maze of Mirrors, then.”
And even if they hadn’t encountered young Bill Doyle, they would have known they’d found the place they were looking for when they came to the Maze of Mirrors at last. It was a pointy structure, painted all over in glossy forbidding black, fissures of red running through the black paint, the red paint looking so fresh and wet that the building appeared to be seeping blood. Through the entrance, mirrors and lights dazzled. THE TRUE WORLD AND THE FALSE, said the sign. YOU SHALL KNOW EVEN AS YOU ARE KNOWN. THOSE WHO SEEK ME WILL FIND THEMSELVES.
The reek of demon malignance here was so strong that even Brother Zachariah and Sister Emilia, wearing runes to keep from being overpowered by the stench, flinched.
Be careful, the voices in Brother Zachariah’s head warned. This is no ordinary Eidolon demon.
Sister Emilia had drawn her sword.
Brother Zachariah said, We should be careful. There may be dangers here that we are not prepared for.
Sister Emilia said, “I think we can be at least as brave as little Bill Doyle was, facing danger.”
He didn’t know he was dealing with a demon, Brother Zachariah said.
“I meant his mother,” Sister Emilia said. “Come on.”
And so Brother Zachariah followed her into the Maze of Mirrors.
* * *
They found themselves in a long, glittering corridor with many companions. Here was another Sister Emilia and another Brother Zachariah, stretched out monstrously thin and wavy. Here they were again, squashed and hideous. There they were, their reflections’ backs turned to them. In one mirror, they lay on the shores of a shallow purple sea, dead and bloated and yet looking utterly content to be so, as if they had died of some great happiness. In another, they began to age rapidly and then to crumble away to bare bones, the bones to dust.
Sister Emilia had never been fond of mirrors. But she had a craftswoman’s interest in these. When a mirror is made, it must be coated in some reflective metal. Silver could be used, though vampires were not fond of this kind. The mirrors in the Maze of Mirrors, she thought, must have been treated with some kind of demonic metal. You could smell it. Every breath she took in here coated her mouth, her tongue, her throat with a kind of greasy residue of despair and horror.
She walked forward slowly, her sword held in front of her, and stumbled into a mirror where she had thought there was an open space.
Careful, Brother Zachariah said.
“You don’t come to the carnival to be careful,” she said. This was bluster, and perhaps he knew it. But bluster is a kind of armor too, as much as taking care is. Sister Emilia had appreciation for both.
“If it’s a maze, then how are we to know which way to go?” she said. “I could shatter the mirrors with my sword. If I broke them all, we would find the center.”
Hold your sword, Brother Zachariah said.
He had paused in front of a mirror in which Sister Emilia was not present. Instead, there was a slender white-haired boy holding the hand of a tall girl with a solemn, beautiful face. They were on a city avenue.
“That’s New York,” Sister Emilia said. “I thought you hadn’t been there!”
Brother Zachariah advanced through the mirror, which allowed passage as if it had never been there at all. The image was gone like a popped soap bubble. Go toward the reflections that show you whatever thing you most long to see, Brother Zachariah said. But that you know to be impossible.
“Oh,” Sister Emilia said involuntarily. “Over there!”
Over there was a mirror where a Sister much like her, but with silvery hair, held a glowing blade between tongs. She plunged it into a bath of cold water, and steam shot up in the shape of a dragon, writhing and splendid. All her brothers were there too, watching in admiration.
They passed through that mirror too. They made their way through mirror after mirror, and Sister Emilia felt her chest grow tight with longing. Her cheeks burned red too, that Brother Zachariah could see the vainest and most frivolous longings of her heart. But she saw the things that he longed for too. A man and a woman she thought must have been his parents, listening to their son play his violin in a great concert hall. A black-haired man with blue eyes and laugh lines around his mouth, building up a fire in a drawing room while the solemn girl, smiling now, perched on the lap of Brother Zachariah, no longer a Brother but a husband and a parabatai in the company of the ones he loved most.
They came to a mirror where the black-haired man, now old and frail, lay in a bed. The girl sat curled up beside him, stroking his forehead. Suddenly Brother Zachariah came into the room, but when he threw back his hood, he had open, clear eyes and a smiling mouth. At this sight, the old man in the bed sat up and grew younger and younger, as if joy had renewed his youth. He sprang out of bed and embraced his parabatai.
“It is horrible,” Sister Emilia said. “We should not see inside each other’s hearts like this!”
They passed through that mirror and now came face-to-face with one that showed Sister Emilia’s mother, sitting before a window, holding a letter from her daughter. There was the most desolate look in her eyes, but then the mother in the reflection began, slowly, to compose a fire-message to her daughter. I am so very proud of you, my darling. I am so happy you have found your life’s work.
I see nothing shameful in you, Brother Zachariah said in his tranquil voice. He held out his hand, and after a moment Sister Emilia looked away from the reflection of her mother writing all the things she had never said. She took the offered hand gratefully.
“It is shameful to be vulnerable,” she admitted. “Or so I have always thought.”
They passed through the mirror, and someone said, “And that is exactly what a weapon maker and armorer would think. Don’t you agree?”
They had found their way to the heart of the maze, and a demon was there with them—a handsome man in a well-cut suit that was the worst thing that Sister Emilia had ever seen.
Belial, Brother Zachariah said.
“Old friend!” Belial said. “I was so hoping it would be you they sent sniffing after me.”
This was Sister Emilia’s first time encountering a Greater Demon. She held the sword she had forged herself in one hand, and Brother Zachariah’s warm hand in the other. If it had not been for those two things, she knew she would have turned and fled.
“Is that human skin?” she asked, her voice wavering.
Whatever the suit was made of, it had the glazed, slightly cracked appearance of poorly tanned leather. It had a pink, blistered look to it. And yes, she could now see that what she had thought was an odd flower poking out of the boutonniere hole was actually a mouth pursed in agony, a cartilaginous lump of nose sagging over it.
Belial looked down at the stained cuff sticking out past the sleeve. He flicked a speck off. “You have an eye, my dear,” he said.
“Whose skin is it?” Sister Emilia said. Her voice was steadier now, she found to her great relief. It was not so much that she wanted to know the answers, as that she had found quite early on in her training in the Adamant Citadel that asking questions was a way to discipline your fear. Taking in new information meant you had something to focus on besides how terrifying your teachers or your environment were.