Kaylin thought about this as she ate.
Mandoran soon joined her, looking glum and exhausted. Had he been mortal, she would have attempted to send him back to bed. Since he wasn’t, and given that he was up against the wall of Annarion’s frantic fear for his brother’s safety, she decided against it.
“He’s going to be the definition of anti-fun until we find his brother. I’ve taken quite a personal dislike to Lord Nightshade.” He pushed food around his plate as if the eggs were unappetizing. “If it weren’t for his brother, we could try to learn to be ‘quiet’ at a reasonable pace. The way things stand now, Annarion might as well be mortal.”
“And you mean that in the nicest possible way, of course,” Kaylin replied.
“Not really.” Being on the receiving end of Kaylin’s glare, he glanced at Helen; her Avatar had been waiting, more or less patiently, in the dining room. She appeared entirely unruffled by his comment.
“Look, I understand why mortals are in a rush about everything—they get old and weak so quickly that they can’t afford to take their time. We’re not mortal. We have time.”
“We don’t know what happened to Nightshade.”
“We know he isn’t dead.”
“There are worse things than death.”
“One of which would be practicing with Annarion,” Mandoran replied. Wincing, he added, “Great. Now he’s angry.”
Kaylin was on Annarion’s side this time, but said nothing; the Hawks had taught her to leave Barrani arguments between the Barrani who were having them.
*
Thanks to Annarion and Mandoran’s not exactly silent disagreement, Kaylin was in no danger of being late for work. The midwives had called her out twice during the past three weeks; they’d sent a runner to the house each time. So far, Helen seemed unwilling to install active mirrors in the manse. Mirrors were modern necessities. Anyone of import used them to communicate, especially in emergencies. Since Kaylin was feeling surprisingly awake despite the hour, she turned to Helen to tackle the subject for a third time.
“I need some sort of working mirror connection somewhere in the house. It doesn’t have to be everywhere. It could be in one room. Or even only in mine. Marcus mirrors whenever he needs someone to shout at, and the midwives’ guild mirrors when there’s an emergency. So does the Foundling Hall. I can’t ask the midwives’ guild to send a runner between the endangered mother and this house and expect me to make it there in time. So far I’ve been lucky, but I doubt that will last.”
Helen’s expression flattened. There was a reason this was the third attempt at discussion. “I have made some inquiries about the mirror network; they are incomplete thus far. I am perhaps remiss; I do not wish to insult either you or the people for whom you work. But the mirror network is not secure. I am almost certain such forms of communication would not have been allowed in my youth.”
“Almost everyone has some sort of mirror access.” Everyone, Kaylin thought, who could afford it. She hadn’t had a mirror when she’d lived in the fiefs. She hadn’t daydreamed about having one, either—she hadn’t really been aware of their existence until she’d crossed the bridge. “Some people—mostly Barrani—have even set the mirror network to follow them when they move from place to place. And if the Barrani are willing to use it, how dangerous can it be?”
“There are many things the Barrani do—and have done in the past—that you would consider neither safe nor respectable.” Helen sighed. “Understand that the mirror network is a magical lattice that underlays the city.”
Kaylin nodded.
“At the moment, it is a magic that I do not permit across my boundaries. It appears to have been designed to travel around areas of non-cooperation; it therefore skirts the edge of my containments. I have not disrupted it in any fashion—it did not seem to be directly harmful. If you wish to have access to your mirror network, I would have to alter my protections to allow the grid’s magic to overlap my own, at least in part. I do not know who, or what, is responsible for the stability of the grid; I do not know who, or what, created the spells that contain it; nor do I fully understand the magic that sustains it.”
“Don’t do it,” Mandoran said.
Kaylin glared at him. “Why not?”
“You don’t let stray magic into the heart of your home.”
“Everyone else does.”
“So I’d gathered.” He winced. “Teela’s in a mood, by the way.”
Great.
“I don’t know what kind of power your people have—I have to assume it’s not significant.”
Big surprise.
“But someone with significant power could transmit or feed an entirely different kind of magic through the lattice on which the mirror network is built.”