The Universal Mirror by Gwen Perkins Read Free Book Online Page B

words, too young of face for the tone in her voice.  She wrenched at her hair as she spoke, fingers twisting it as if she was coiling rope.  “Why’s the best dress you ever wore in your life the one you get to bury in?  There’s no life after this.  It don’t matter none to them.”
    “No, it doesn’t,” he agreed cautiously.
    “Waste not, want not.”  Meg’s brown eyes hesitated as they surveyed his body, still tethered to the bed.  “Figure someone like you don’t know much about want.”
    I hope that’s not a threat, Quentin thought, but he knew that it was.  He stretched, trying to ease the ache in his joints.  It was money that she needed.  Killing him wouldn’t get her—or her companions—much of that but he doubted that they realized that ransoming might not be any better.
    “Maybe I don’t know about want,” he agreed.  “But I’ve got some idea of how I can help you.”  This time, Quentin didn’t ask for release.  Another idea was forming in his head, uncertain though he was that what he guessed about their midnight digging was correct.
    Meg didn’t look at him as if he’d said anything worth consideration.  She was thin under her layers of clothing, Quentin realized as she sat on the edge of the bed, barely making an imprint in the mattress.  Her hands clasped together in her lap, fingers locking around one another.  A stray curl had slipped from the nape of her neck and he noticed a flea clinging to one of the hairs.
    “I said I could help you,” he repeated, trying to pull himself up.  The throb in his head made it impossible to fight the rope.  He sank back down, head flopping back against the lumpy mattress.
    “You’ll need to talk to Da for that,” Meg replied.  “I’m not the one makes decisions here.”  She stood, but slowly—the movement of a woman who’d spent the entire day on her feet.  “I’ll ask for him.”
    Quentin closed his eyes in relief, opening them again when he heard the sound of footsteps nearing the headboard.
    “Hmph.”  The man he remembered as Taggart was standing over him, bushy dark eyebrows knitting together as he reached for Quentin’s bonds.  “You’re a magician, Pig says.  I let your hands free, you’ll not bring down a curse on me?”
    “I can’t,” he replied by rote, the force of long-instilled teachings behind it.  “It’s Heresy.  Haven’t you heard the stories?  Seen them parade Heretics in the square?”
    “Heresy, eh?  Don’t know exactly what that means, whatever the law says.”  He spat on the floor, to make it clear that law had little force here.  “But my girl, she seems to think you’re one what can be trusted.  Far as that goes.” 
    Taggart worked at the knots with fingers made crooked by time, speaking as he did so.  “Taggart’s the name.  As much of one as I’ve got left.  We don’t put much stock in the names a man’s born with down here.”  His thumbnail scratched Quentin’s left wrist which was too numb to feel more than a slight sting.  “My dear mother…. she’d like to have forgot mine.  If she was still alive.”
    “I’m sorry,” Quentin said, glancing nervously at Taggart’s clumsy hands and dirty, jagged fingernails.
    “Don’t be.  Was the Plagues.  Couldn’t ask a fairer death than that for the hag.”  He jerked at the rope and Quentin felt it ease.  “Her whole mouth covered in boils.  No last words for her.  Kindest thing earth could’ve given.”
    “But the Plagues were horrible!”  Quentin exclaimed, unable to help himself.
    “Life’s horrible.  Then we die and who knows what’s given.”  With a final wrench of Taggart’s fingers, Quentin’s hands came free, arms falling over the side of the bed.  His skin tingled too strongly for him to move them easily and he contented himself with flexing his palms.  Taggart gently helped him sit up, his touch more gentle in this gesture than it had been in granting freedom.  His hands