That was interesting, but not necessarily significant. Even if the cave was directly east of the lake, if the creature hadn’t headed due west over the mountains it might have missed the water. Depending what time of year it had emerged from the cave, the sun might have risen well to the south of due east, so that it might have headed northwest…
“Go now?” the spriggan asked, interrupting his chain of thought. “Please?”
“Fine,” Gresh said. He did not think he was going to get any more useful information out of the creature. He had used up his questions. He glared at the spilled blood and broken glass, thinking he hadn’t gotten much for the price. “You can go-but don’t come back, ever!” He shook a warning finger at the little creature. “I don’t want ever to see you again!”
“Yes, yes. Not come back. Promise.”
“Good enough.” He stepped aside and even opened the door. The spriggan dashed past him into the street, squeaking wordlessly.
Gresh stood in the door for a moment, watching it flee. He saw his sister Chira approaching, her sorcerer’s pack slung on her shoulder. She waved cheerily, and he waved in return. Cleaning up the blood would have to wait- it had probably already spread as far as it was going to and would have soaked into the planking anyway. It might well need magic to remove it. Talking to his sorcerous sister was more important; he tried not to waste anyone’s time but his own.
A moment later, after apologizing for the mess, he was ushering her to the chairs in the corner and calling to Twilfa to fetch tea.
“So, little brother, what can I do for you?” Chira asked happily, as she tucked her skirt under her and settled onto the velvet. She gave the broken jar a quick glance, then looked at him expectantly as she slid her bag from her shoulder and lowered it to the floor.
Gresh smiled at being called “little brother.” He was over six feet tall, at least six inches taller than Chira, and given his solidly-muscled build and her slim figure, he probably weighed twice what she did. All the same, the four- and-a-half-year difference in their ages ensured that he would always be “little brother” to her.
“I need to find a particular enchanted mirror,” he said. “It’s in a cave somewhere in the Small Kingdoms, in the central mountains-not the area right around Ekeroa, but somewhere between Vlagmor and Calimor, probably on the eastern slopes. A couple of magicians have tried to find it with various methods and failed, but so far as I know they didn’t try sorcery.”
“What kind of mirror?”
Gresh held out his hands as Karanissa had. “A hand mirror, roughly this size,” he said.
Chira looked down at her pack for a moment, considering. “Nothing comes immediately to mind,” she said. “It’s in a cave, you said?”
Gresh nodded.
“So I can’t follow the sunlight to it. And mirrors don’t have any special smell to track. What sort of enchantment is on it?”
Gresh hesitated. “A faulty version of Lugwiler’s Haunting Phantasm,” he said.
“Wizardry, then?”
“Yes, of course.”
“No ‘of course’ about it,” Chira said, reaching for the shoulder strap of her bag. “There are plenty of other kinds of enchantment.”
“Well, yes, but…you know I work mostly with wizards. And what other kind of magic would make it so hard to find?”
“Demonology. And some kinds of sorcery-we do work with mirrors sometimes.”
“True, true. I’m sorry.”
“Oh, don’t be sorry.” She waved a hand in dismissal. “You’re right, you mostly work with wizards, I know that. And I owe you. We both know that. So tell me about Lugwiler’s Haunting Phantasm-is that one that produces smoke?”
“No, that’s one…well, it doesn’t matter what it ordinarily does…”
“It might,” she interrupted.
“…but this mirror produces spriggans.”
Chira stopped moving, one hand holding the strap at her knee, the other tucked at her side. She stared at him.
“Spriggans?” she said. She glanced at the pool of dragon’s blood. “Like the one I saw running out of here?”
“Yes. Like that one-and yes, that one broke a jar of very expensive blood. Spriggans are a huge nuisance, and this mirror generates them. In fact, it may be the only source.”
“Someone knows where the spriggans came from?”
“So they tell me.”
“And they’ve hired you to find it?”
“We’re negotiating.”
“Why?”
“Why are we negotiating? Because we haven’t agreed…”
“Why do they want you to find it?”
“To destroy it, I think.”
“They don’t know where it is?”
“No. Spriggans carried it off and hid it in a cave, apparently.”
“Your customer told you that?”
“That spriggans carried it off, yes. I found out about the cave myself.”
“How did… No, never mind. I’m sure it’s a trade secret. Except…if one of our sisters could tell you it was in a cave, why couldn’t she tell you where?”
Gresh smiled. Chira did indeed know his methods. “It wasn’t anyone in the family,” he said. “It was an independent informant. He’d seen the cave, but didn’t know the route, or exactly where it was.”
Chira shook her head in amazement. “How do you find these people?”
Gresh turned up empty palms.
“Well, so someone’s hiring you to find this mirror and destroy it. You’re sure about that?”
“I’m sure about hiring me.”
“But destroying it? Not changing it to make something else, something worse?”
That possibility had not even occurred to Gresh. He wondered if Karanissa’s good looks had biased him, and had perhaps kept him from considering potential dangers. “I don’t know for certain,” he admitted. “But rest assured, now that you’ve pointed out the risk, I’ll make absolutely sure of their intentions before I let anyone else touch the thing. Assuming, of course, that I find it.”
Chira snorted. “You’ll find it,” she said. “You always find what you go after, one way or another. You always have. Remember when Mother hid the candy when we were little? It didn’t matter where she put it; you’d always have a piece by bedtime.”
Just then Twilfa emerged, carrying a tray bearing a pot and two cups of tea.
“Just two?” Chira asked, as she accepted hers.
“Mine’s in the kitchen,” Twilfa said.
“You’re welcome to listen,” Gresh said. “It’s all in the family.”
“No, that’s all right,” Twilfa replied. She set the teapot on a nearby shelf, then turned, tray in hand, and retreated toward the kitchen.
Gresh frowned at her departing figure.
“I make her nervous,” Chira said quietly, cradling her teacup.
“You’re her sister,” Gresh protested.
“I’m twice her age,” Chira pointed out. “I was halfway through my apprenticeship by the time she could crawl.”
“Well, I was about thirteen, and an apprentice myself,” Gresh said. “It’s not as if we were playmates, either.”
“But she works for you. She sees you every day. And you don’t carry around a bag of mysterious ancient
