The image suddenly let go, and Lila wrenched backward, gasping. Pain scored her hand, and she looked down to see tiny cuts, drops of blood welling on each of her fingertips.

The cuts were clean, the line made by something sharp. Like glass.

She held her hand to her chest, and her reflection—now just a girl in a tricorne hat—did the same.

“The sign says do not touch,” came a voice behind her, and she turned to find the stall’s vendor. He was Faroan, with skin as black as the rock walls, his entire outfit made from a single piece of white silk. He was clean-shaven, like most Faroans, but wore only two gems set into his skin, one beneath each eye. She knew he was the stall’s vendor because of the spectacles on his nose, their glass not simply glass, but mirrors, reflecting her own pale face.

“I’m sorry,” she said, looking back to the glass, expecting to see the place where she’d touched it, where it had cut her, but the blood was gone.

“Do you know what these mirrors do?” he asked, and it took her a moment to realize that even though his voice was heavily accented, he was speaking English. Except that no, he wasn’t, not exactly. The words he spoke didn’t line up with the ones she heard. A talisman shone at his throat. At first she’d taken it as some kind of fabric pin, but now it pulsed faintly, and she understood.

The man’s fingers went to the pendant. “Ah, yes, a handy thing, this, when you’re a merchant at the corner of the world. Not strictly legal, of course, what with the laws against deception, but …” He shrugged, as if to say, What can you do? He seemed fascinated by the language he was speaking, as if he knew its significance.

Lila turned back to the mirrors. “What do they do?”

The vendor considered the glass, and in his spectacles she saw the mirror reflected and reflected and reflected. “Well,” he said, “one side shows you what you want.”

Lila thought of the black-eyed girl and suppressed a shudder. “It did not show me what I want,” she said.

He tipped his head. “Are you certain? The form, perhaps not, but the idea, perhaps?”

What was the idea behind what she’d seen? The Lila in the mirror had been … powerful. As powerful as Kell. But she’d also been different. Darker.

“Ideas are well and good,” continued the merchant, “but actualities can be … less pleasant.”

“And the other side?” she asked.

“Hmm?” His mirrored spectacles were unnerving.

“You said that one side shows you what you want. What about the other?”

“Well, if you still want what you see, the other side shows you how to get it.”

Lila tensed. Was that what made the mirrors forbidden? The Faroan merchant looked at her, as if he could see her thoughts as clearly as her reflection, and went on. “Perhaps it does not seem so rare, to look into one’s own mind. Dream stones and scrying boards, these things help us see inside ourselves. The first side of the mirror is not so different; it is almost ordinary….” Lila didn’t think she’d ever see this kind of magic as ordinary. “Seeing the threads of the world is one thing. Plucking at them is another. Knowing how to make music from them, well … let us say this is not a simple thing at all.”

“No, I suppose it’s not,” she said quietly, still rubbing her wounded fingers. “How much do I owe you, for using the first side?”

The vendor shrugged. “Anyone can see themselves,” he said. “The mirror takes its tithe. The question now, Delilah, is do you want to see the second side?”

But Lila was already backing away from the mirrors and the mysterious vendor. “Thank you,” she said, noting that he hadn’t named the price, “but I’ll pass.”

She was halfway back to the weapons stall before she realized she’d never told the merchant her name.

Well, thought Lila, pulling her cloak tight around her shoulders, that was unsettling. She shoved her hands in her pockets—half to keep them from shaking, and half to make sure she didn’t accidentally touch anything else—and made her way back to the weapons stall. Soon she felt someone draw up beside her, caught the familiar scent of honey and silver and spiced wine.

“Captain,” she said.

“Believe it or not, Bard,” he said, “I am more than capable of defending my own honor.”

She gave him a sideways look and noted that the satchel was gone. “It’s not your honor that concerns me.”

“My health, then? No one’s killed me yet.”

Lila shrugged. “Everyone’s immortal until they’re not.”

Alucard shook his head. “What a delightfully morbid outlook, Bard.”

“Besides,” continued Lila, “I’m not particularly worried about your honor or your life, Captain. I was just looking out for my cut.”

Alucard sighed and swung his arm around her shoulders. “And here I was beginning to think you cared.” He turned to consider the knives on the table in front of them, and chuckled.

“Most girls covet dresses.”

“I am not most girls.”

“Without question.” He gestured at the display. “See anything you like?”

For a moment, the image in the mirror surged up in Lila mind, sinister and black-eyed and thrumming with power. Lila shook it away, looked over the blades, and nodded at a dagger with a jagged blade.

“Don’t you have enough knives?”