Lilia watched the two walk off toward the green flag of a unit of tirajistas. Then she glanced back at the mirror. Up. The figure embedded in it. There was some puzzle here she needed to figure out, but she wasn’t seeing it. She placed her hand on one of the pillars. She could see no red mist here, nothing manipulated by Oma. She tried to put her hand between the pillars and found a solid wall of air, though. It was a parajista-built barrier. So, at least two sorts of magic-users would have to work together to gain access.

Lilia began to walk slowly around the mirror. As she passed to the other side, she saw that the reverse face was a flat, solid surface, just like the back of any mirror. She spent a few minutes walking back and forth, taking in the impossible vista visible on one side and the flat pane on the other. She kept walking, trying to keep her gaze on her feet at least as much as on the mirror. A few people at nearby camps stared at her, and she knew that if she made more than one revolution, someone was going to question her. She didn’t have much time.

She arrived back at the front of the mirror. Gazed again at the withered figure atop it. Maybe her mother was alive, but from the look of what they’d done to her, it wasn’t any kind of life Lilia would recognize. She studied the long streams of red haze braiding up the edges of the mirror. They radiated toward the middle of the mirror.

Zezili and Isoail, her shadow-mother, had thought she could unravel this because she was the daughter of the woman who built it. But why did that matter? What did she have or know that no one else did?

Lilia gazed at her mother’s body. Then she stared down at her wrist.

She remembered Taigan pushing her from the edge of the cliff, telling her to fly.

The trefoil.

Litanies and songs focused power, but it was patterns that built objects of power. Specific patterns writ large. Like the trefoil pattern her mother had seared into her skin. It wasn’t just a ward of protection. It was a ward that told her how to build things.

Lilia stared more closely at the braids of mist. She concentrated on one of the songs Taigan had taught her, the one for perceiving objects created by power. Then she took a deep breath and focused.

Nothing happened.

What had she done back there with the legionnaires? How had she called Oma then?

I’m afraid, she realized. Back then, I wasn’t afraid.

Fear. Fear of death, fear of life, fear of failure, fear of succeeding. Bundles of fear that knotted her insides and tore at her guts. Kept her wound tight, closed off.