Chapter 187: Rehearsal in the Hall

Morning light slid across thirty feet of glass without finding one single guest in the silent Hall of Mirrors. Squad Nine crossed the empty floor in a loose line, their footsteps answering from every wall a beat late.

"Chat, I have never seen so many of me in one room, I have never wanted fewer," Pipa muttered, patting her drone.

Zinnia lifted a hand, "Walk slowly, the floor keeps a record of every careless step."

The Master of the Gilded Foxes waited beneath the great chandelier with a roll of blueprints under his arm. He wore plain gray silk, a Bureau guard at his shoulder, looking like a man who lost an argument.

"These are the original plans, drawn the year my grandfather laid the first panel," he said, unrolling them across a folding table.

Bruno planted both fists on the corners of the table to hold the paper flat against the drafty air. Ganzo leaned over his shoulder, the shadow of his beard falling across the north wall like a small storm.

"Eleven doors, four balconies, one kitchen corridor that smells of onions even on paper," he rumbled.

"The doors bolt themselves when the glass wakes, so I marked every bolt in red ink, with the weakest hinge underlined twice."

"Then we put a pair of hands on every bolt, Pipa's drones in the rafters, a Steelhorn under the chandelier."

Pipa unzipped a duffel the size of a small cow, producing six drones that blinked awake in a row. She clipped one to each pillar, whispering to them like nervous little pets on their first day of school.

"Each drone carries one of Tilly's lamps, so every mirror gets a face full of rain-colored light," she said.

"Does the light hurt the glass?" Nilo asked.

"It annoys the glass, Tilly says an annoyed mirror cannot concentrate on anybody's face."

Pipa tapped her brooch and the six drones rose into formation, lit lenses sweeping the Hall in a slow ring. Blue-gray light spilled from their lamps onto the glass, making every reflection flinch a full half step from the shine.

"Pretty lights, my girl, though I would have gone with fireworks," Ganzo said, squinting up at the rafters.

Zinnia pointed at the center of the floor, where one small black tile sat alone among the many pale ones. It was no larger than a dinner plate, polished so deep that the chandelier hung inside it like a star.

"Father, what is that tile, I have walked this floor since I was four and nobody ever explained it."

"That is the Tailor's pin, it holds the seam where the Hall was hemmed on the night the sky tore."

"You never told me," she said, her voice going flat.

"I told no one, a seam like that keeps better as a secret."

'Twenty years of silence in one black tile. Every Fox I meet keeps a staircase behind a door.'

Nilo stepped toward the black tile, stopping a pace short as every mirror in the room tilted toward him. The air above the pin felt thin, like the top of a staircase that descended further than it should.

"Do not stand on it, I mean that as a request and as a threat," the Master said.

"Noted, I'll stand on the tile next to it, that way I'm only half in trouble."

"Half in trouble is how my daughter describes your entire career."

Zinnia coughed into her fist, her ears turning pink, while her father smiled the smallest smile Nilo ever saw there. Bruno cleared his throat very loudly, sensing the moment sliding toward something that required tea and a very large napkin.

"Is there tea in this house, or only sandwiches and secrets?" he asked, loosening his collar.

Ganzo walked a slow circle around the floor, lifting each foot as if the tiles were made of eggshell. He swung Tusk in a careful arc, lowering it with the grave face of a bear in a shop.

"Captain, what exactly are you doing?" Pipa called from the rafters.

"Practicing not breaking the floor, it is harder than breaking it, I assure you."

Aunt Marisol swept through the side door with a sandwich tray and a sunhat large enough to shade a horse. She crowned Ganzo with it before anyone could object, then he wore it with the dignity of a visiting king.

"Sandwiches, my darlings, nobody saves a city on an empty stomach, and Captain, that hat is divine on your cheekbones."

"Madam, I will wear it to the end of the world," Ganzo declared, adjusting the brim.

Bruno stood beneath the chandelier and gripped its chain in both hands, his Toro horns flaring from his temples. The links creaked under his grip, yet nothing fell from the ceiling, so he grunted once in plain satisfaction.

"Hmph, if the ceiling comes down I hold it, I have held worse."

"You held a whole slab in Ferrier Row, the ceiling should be scared of you."

Zinnia drew her rapier and tapped a panel, a thin flicker of gold running along the flat of the blade. Her reflection cut back at the glass, sending a ripple across the whole wall like a stone in a pond.

"Reflection Reversal works on the old glass... it cuts back exactly as hard as it is cut."

"Then the Hall has a dangerous daughter, the first good news I have received all week," her father said.

Calla dropped from a balcony rail without a sound, landing beside the table where the blueprints lay. She traced a gloved finger down one page, stopping at a small square that nobody else noticed.

"Laundry chute behind the kitchen, the drawings call it a drain and nobody has looked at it in forty years."

"A twelfth exit means a twelfth place for him to walk in, I would rather watch it than nail it shut."

"Then I will mark it in red and post a drone," Zinnia answered, pulling out her pencil.

The Master folded the blueprints with trembling care, then pressed them into his daughter's hands without a word of warning. She held the paper tight against her chest the way other people held a letter they hoped to never open.

Tilly's voice crackled in the radio at Nilo's collar, flat static first, then her usual annoyance, "Your lamps are on the mirrors, I charged you extra for the cables, so do not trip on them."

"Thanks, I'll try to fall on something cheaper."

"Do not disappear... that goes for tonight too," she said, then the line clicked dead.

He crossed to the east wall, where the tallest panel stood, then laid a glove flat on the glass. His reflection rose to meet him, wearing his coat and scarf with that ordinary face nobody could ever keep.

'Just a mirror. An old, polite mirror that remembers everything about everyone.'

The face in the glass slowly looked down at its own chest, as if inviting him to follow its gaze. A brass hook jutted from the coat, driven through from behind, yet the reflection smiled as though nothing was wrong.

"Zinnia," he said quietly, "come here and tell me what you see—"

Every drone in the rafters swung its red eye toward him at once.