Mirami nodded. “Well, you may wait until the way is safe. We have time. Send men by the way you mention to learn whether or when it can be used. As soon as it can be used, come to me here.” The mirror went blank.
The duchess did not move or speak. She knew the trick of blanking the mirror but continuing to listen in order to learn what the person at the other end might say. She did not betray herself with a sound. She merely stood, very quietly, in her deep, warm room, surrounded by things that clicked, lights that turned on and off, other things that hummed and buzzed in combinations that conveyed nothing to her. In one corner the watcher loomed; very occasionally it clicked, buzzed, hummed as it watched her.
The thing that watched her! They had been living at Kamfels, she and her father and her baby brother and Mirami, except that Mirami sometimes went to Ghastain. Mirami had friends there. Alicia liked it when her mother went away, because then she could have her father all to herself. He was so handsome, and everyone liked him. Hulix was just a baby with a nursemaid, and he didn’t get in the way. Sometimes her father put her on the horse in front of him and they went riding. She had pony of her own, too, but riding with Father was more fun.
One night, she was wakened by a sound. When her eyes opened she saw a great, tall shadow carrying a little light that shined up onto his face, a face like a skull, only shadows for eyes, a mouth all teeth, wide and bony. That was the first time she had seen the Old Dark Man, and she was frightened. “I’m a friend of your mother’s,” he said. The voice was a surprise, calm and pleasant, flowing into her ears like syrup, full of sweetness. “Get dressed,” he said. “I’m taking you to visit the place your mother grew up, the Old Dark House.”
“Does Father know I’m going?”
“No. Your father doesn’t know. No one knows.”
“They’ll know I’m gone.”
“No, no one will know you’re gone. You’ll be back before they wake up.”
She didn’t know how he took her. He was holding something like an egg. He clicked it and they simply walked out of her room and into another room through flashing things that looked like mirrors. Zing, zing, zing, flash, flash, they were there.
“These are the cellars of the Old Dark House,” he said.
“They aren’t very nice.” The stones were cold, the ceilings hung with webs.“They have spiderwebs.”
“That’s because no one can come down here to clean. No one comes here but me and my family. Your mother is part of my family.”
“So I’m part of your family?”
“You are.”
“But I’m really the duke Falyrion’s daughter, you know. He’s my father.”
“Really?”
“Really. He is.”
The Old Dark Man smiled a very curious smile. “And does he love you dearly?”
“Oh, yes, he says so.”
“Ah. Well, I have deep regard for you, too, Alicia. I’m going to teach you some wonderful things, but first you have to learn that you will not tell the duke and you will not tell your mother.”
“Mother says I must tell her everything.”
“Everything but this. This is our secret.”
She had objected, and he had hurt her, only a little; the scar hardly showed, just enough to convince her that she should not tell her father, should not tell Mirami. Then he had instructed her: the large mechanism in the corner was there to watch and protect her; she must let the large mechanism see everything she did when she was here; this mechanism was used in this way; that mechanism was used in that way. He called them mechanisms, not ease machines. During their visits—always at night, always when Mirami was away—he had moved several of them onto a low bench where she could use them easily: the seeker-mirror mechanisms; the fatal-cloud mechanism; the sending mechanism. He had shown her how to connect the seeker-mirror and the sending mechanisms together to make a haunting. She had wanted to send a haunting onto Mirami, but the Old Dark Man hadn’t let her.
Mirami never knew that Alicia had visited the Old Dark Man. He had always come for her after dark; he had always returned her before anyone knew she was gone. In later years, Alicia had sometimes wondered if he had moved her at all, or whether he had perhaps not directed her to dream everything she had learned, had seen. Later, however, when she became Duchess of Altamont, when she took possession of the castle, when she went down the stairs and opened the secret door, using the key on the screen as he had taught her, everything had been just as she had seen it as a child. Everything that had happened between her and the Old Dark Man had been real and was still a secret.
One of the things he had taught her was to keep her accounts balanced.
Now, instead of raging, Alicia thought very carefully of the account she kept with Mirami. Mirami had questioned her, then ordered her, then given her a specific time in which to comply with the order, as though she, Alicia, were a servant! She had also ridiculed Alicia’s manner, her style, her way of being. None of this was unusual, and the Old Dark Man had told her how to cope with it.
“Comply. Comply in a timely manner. Then do something that Mirami would not like at all
