He reached down and picked up the largest shard of glass he could see—the fragment of black mirror. Although it was large and awkward to hold in one hand, the edges were wickedly sharp.
Good enough.
Hefting the makeshift weapon in one hand he moved back to the fallen man. He could extract a great deal of information out of a person with a blade. He knew a thousand ways of keeping the man alive while cutting the answers out of him, one by one.
He could have given Alonso a few pointers downstairs.
Daud stood over the man—and then stopped. His interrogation subject was staring, not at him, but at the mirror, his eyes wide, his forehead creased in apparent concentration. Then he began shaking his head, slowly at first, then with more and more energy, all the while his eyes locked on what Daud assumed was the man’s own reflection in the mirror.
Wasn’t it? He remembered the feeling he had when he looked into it: the sense of depth, the spinning giddiness of vertigo that threatened to overwhelm him, like he was about to plunge into an abyss.
Daud crouched down, adjusting his grip on the shard to hold it like the object it was—a mirror. He tilted it this way and that, pointing it toward the man’s face. In the gloom the mirror reflected what little light there was, forming a dull spotlight on the man’s face—a spotlight that was reddish orange, that couldn’t possibly be the reflection of the bluish glow of the room.
Could it?
The man sucked in a breath, tears gathering at the corners of his eyes. His lips moved and thick ropes of saliva dripped down onto his chin and his chest.
“No, no, no…”
Daud tilted the mirror; the light moved, the man’s eyes followed. He repeated the motion, and the man’s eyes moved with it again, like he was mesmerized.
Daud whispered, “Where is the Knife?”
The man shook his head, frowning like he was trying to remember. Then he lifted a hand, reaching slowly for the mirror.
Daud moved the glass out of the man’s reach, and the man flinched. Then he shook his head again, his mouth forming something. Daud wondered what it was the man could see in the glass. He had no idea what the mirror was, or where it had come from, but Norcross had clearly placed some value on it, putting it on a plinth next to the Twin-bladed Knife. Was it something else salvaged from the factory in Dunwall? Perhaps another kind of artifact—one, like the Knife, that was linked to the Void?
Or even to the Outsider?
Daud returned his attention to his questions. “Where is the Knife?” he asked again, his voice calm and level.
Finally the man managed to speak properly. “Karnaca,” he said. “Serkonos, Karnaca. It will be kept in a safe place.”
Daud fell into a crouch, careful to keep the mirror pointed at his victim.
Daud wracked his brains. Why Karnaca? Who were these people? What did they want with the Knife? They’d known that Norcross had it—more than that, they’d known exactly where to go, ignoring the rest of his collection and heading straight for the tower room. Not only that, they were a formidable gang, having overcome all of Norcross’s guards with apparent ease.
He frowned, every possibility that came to mind was troubling.
Then the intruder cried out, his eyes wide. “No, I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I… no, keep back! Keep away!”
He fainted, slumping back into the cabinet, his head rolling against his chest. Daud clicked his tongue, and reached forward to check the man’s pulse. It was there, slow but steady.
Daud’s gloved fingers curled around the edge of the mirror shard in his other hand. He held it low, out of his range of sight, but even now, he felt the urge to lift it, to stare into it, to try to see what the man had seen.
He glanced down and caught a glance of something orange, like flames, as the surface of the mirror flashed in his peripheral vision. He stood, quickly stuffing the shard into his tunic.
Karnaca. The thieves were already ahead of him and that advantage would only grow with each passing hour—Daud wasn’t entirely sure where Morgengaard Castle was, and he could spend a week wandering the countryside, trying to pick up the gang’s trail.
No, he would have to go to Karnaca directly. If the Knife was there, then that is where he would find it. But there was still unfinished business to attend to within the walls of the castle. If he was going to cleanse the world of the Outsider, he might as well cleanse it of another brand of evil.
He had to kill Maximilian Norcross.
It wouldn’t take long.
20
GALLERY TEN, THE NORCROSS ESTATE, SOMEWHERE IN SOUTH-CENTRAL GRISTOL
26th Day, Month of Earth, 1852
“Sometimes I ask myself, without these gifts, would I be a man to fear? Would I be called the Knife of Dunwall, with my name whispered through the markets and the alleyways, the high towers and drawing rooms? I’d like to think so, but it really doesn’t matter. As long as I bear this Mark, I’ll use whatever craft I have to force my will on the world. The harder trick is undoing what I’ve done.”
—COBBLED BITS OF BONE
Excerpt from a journal covering various occult artifacts
Daud headed back down to the entrance hall of Morgengaard Castle, through the service door and down the stairs into the passage that led to the processing room. He didn’t know where Norcross’s safe room was, but he’d seen the collector and his bodyguard take the left-hand path from the preparation room, so that was a start.
Things were not as he had left them. The processing machine had been rolled against the far wall and thethree-needled hoses that had been pumping chemicals into
