Free The Margrave by Catherine Fisher Page B

was reflected and Raffi himself repeated endlessly, from the front, sides, and back, looking unfamiliar in the depths of the myriad looking glasses.
    “I need a pen.” He turned, ducked under a tent of glass; looking up, he saw his own face, grotesquely foreshortened, staring down. “What is this place?”
    “The Watch brought them all in here.” Milo’s voice, muffled with distance, came from somewhere near the ceiling. “They didn’t like them. They were all over the castle. One of the prisoners told me there’s supposed to be a ghost in one, but no one knows which. Of someone crazy who used to look in them.”
    “Halen’s mirrors!” Raffi stared. They were all sizes and shapes, oval, tiny, enormous, elaborately gilded. In them he looked dirty and harassed and for a second thought he saw, far back, the shadow of a man, reflected from one to another. He turned, unsure. The sense-lines were reflected too. They tangled and confused him. Just as he felt dizzy, a small object dropped from above, landing with a rattle.
    “Pencil. That’s all I’ve got.”
    Raffi took a deep breath. Halen had lost his mind here. That was what Galen thought. Tormented by the Makers’ failure, by the thought of Kest’s treachery.
    He bent down and groped after the pencil; when he found it, it was small and the end had been chewed away. He looked at it in disgust. “Thanks.”
    He sat in the dust with his back against one of the mirrors and worked on the code. Carys had taught him how codes were broken; he was sure she would be using one of those she had invented herself, and hurriedly he listed alphabets, slotting in the different code words they had agreed on. At the fourth attempt the words started to make sense. “Got it,” he whispered. The room was oddly silent. He raised his head. “Milo?”
    The mirrors were empty. Only a spider ran across the floor, or the reflection of one. He worked quickly. The message formed, letter by letter, along the edge of the grimy paper. GONE TO MAAR AS PLAN. IMPORTANT. MARGRAVE LOOKING FOR
    He stared at it, cold. Looking for what? There was another word, completely smudged. Was it Raffi ? Without knowing it, he crumpled the paper, staring at himself in the dim recesses of glass. The Margrave is looking for Raffi. His vision had been right. It was true. She had found out.
    He forced himself not to panic, smoothing out the paper, rubbing his tired eyes. It might not be. It might not. Staring at it didn’t help. It had five letters. Or four. It could be Crow. But they knew the Margrave must be looking for the Crow. Why would she bother telling him that?
    “ Got you!”
    With a yell that made him jump, a shadow fell from the stack of mirrors and crashed against him; Raffi cried out and rolled in shock, whipping out a mind-flare that made Milo huddle up with a screech.
    He banged his head against a mirror and stared. “What was that?”
    Raffi was shaking, sweating. “Brainless idiot!” He rubbed one hand down his face. For a moment he had thought . . . but that was stupid.
    “And what does she mean by ‘plan’?” he whispered.
     
     
    GALEN WAS DOWN in the ground-floor hall, a vast assembly chamber with a tiny fire blazing at each end. He and the Sekoi were organizing care for the wounded; as Raffi came in, a crowd of Alberic’s men streamed out past him. Raffi was almost too angry to speak.
    Galen turned, but before he could say anything, Raffi flung the crumpled letter down on the floor.
    “Why didn’t you tell me?”
    The keeper looked at him steadily, then down at the letter. “What is that?”
    “A message. From Carys.”
    The Sekoi made a small mew of surprise. Neither of them looked around. Galen took a step toward the paper, but instantly Raffi stamped his foot on it. He felt as though his whole body was trembling with wrath.
    Galen sensed it. He looked at Raffi, sidelong, a dark look. “Say what you want to say, boy.”
    “You should have told me! You let us think that