The Universal Mirror by Gwen Perkins Read Free Book Online

that there was something decent about his fellow student, a kindness Felix was too fearful to express.  And for good reason.
    And maybe I was right, Asahel thought.  At least… he opened that door.  He tried not to think about the ease with which Felix had done so, an ease never mirrored by the man who was his best friend. Quentin had never invited him into his home—it was, in fact, an unspoken compact that Asahel would never ask to be let into it.
    He crossed his arms over his chest, curious eyes examining the sitting room.  It had an aura of cold considering that it was a place where most men would receive visitors.  There was no sense of care or decoration within the walls that surrounded him.  While the furniture was richer than anything Asahel could afford, the chairs were stripped bare down to the heartwood.  There were no elegant embroideries or lush curtains as he would have expected. 
    The entire room had the sense of being very little used, something at odds with Felix’s easy demeanor and the culture of Cercia’s upper class.  There was little else to do with their time, Quentin had once told him, beyond place social call after call.  His friend had often bemoaned the fact that he spent more time at other houses than his own.  This house, however, was not equipped for that.
    Perhaps, Asahel said silently to himself as he walked over to a shelf, eyes now scanning dust, He’s alone.  Most men of fortune their age had wives—Asahel himself might have managed it had it not been for the ill tides that had lost the Serenissma.
    “It doesn’t matter how long you look, Soames.  No books are magically going to appear on an empty shelf.”  Felix’s voice entered the room before he himself came into view.  “Unless you’ve learned magic we weren’t taught at school.”
    “None at all.  I was just pacing.  I reasoned it better than just sitting about.”  He noticed that Felix’s “dressing” had consisted mostly of buckling on a broadsword and hesitated.  “Your sword’s a bit…”
    “Large?”  Felix supplied, laughing at the look on Asahel’s face.  “Well, it’s the smallest one I have.”  Holding up his hands in mock dismay, he added, “Seriously!  And you can’t expect me to go armed only with the cutlery at a time like this.”
    “Aye, but I’d not want to be attacked because you’ve that much steel waving about.”  He was answered only by a laugh.  Asahel simply sighed in response.  “It’ll be what it’ll be then.”  Following Felix to the street, he hoped that his old schoolmate remembered how to run as well as fight.
     

Chapter 6
     
     
    “Over the ocean—is where you will—fiiiind me—”A woman’s voice, high and flat, was what brought Quentin to his senses.  He lay still, not opening his eyes.  Instead, he concentrated on the sensations coursing through his body—the slow, heavy throbbing in his head and the pulsing red behind his eyelids.  His wrists felt chapped and swollen, the rope that bound them over his head coarse.  But not, Quentin could feel as he tensed against it, thick.
    He wasn’t close enough to the earth to pull the magic from it.  There was at least a mattress separating him from the ground beneath.  The pressure in his head made concentrating difficult.  Still, there was hope.
    “Over the ocean and over the sea—”The cracking notes shattered his concentration still further.
    “It’s ‘over the lea’,” he corrected, still not opening his eyes. 
    “Lea?”  The woman had stopped singing at least.  Her voice was slightly familiar but he couldn’t place it.  “That don’t make a bit of sense.”
    “Lea.  It’s an old word for meadow.”  A tutor had drilled that into him once.  Odd, that he should remember that when he couldn’t think of the man’s name.
    “Lea,” she repeated.  He could tell she didn’t believe him.
    Quentin cracked one eye open, peering at her through the slit of eyelid.