witches were rarely ninnies—and for that matter, rarely wealthy. They were also not ordinarily his customers, but perhaps this person had her reasons for coming here. He decided she could indeed be a witch, and telling the exact truth.
“Who is ‘we’?” he asked.
“My husband and I. Really, he’s the one who wants to hire you, but he’s busy with the baby, so I came instead.”
The husband was busy with the baby, so the wife was running his errands? The beautiful young wife who claimed to be a witch and whose slim figure showed no evidence of having recently borne a child? Gresh glanced at his sisters. He wanted to hear this explained, but he had his business to attend to. “I do not run errands,” he said.
“Fine,” the woman said calmly. “Then let me put it this way. My husband is a wizard, and he wants to buy a specific magical item from you.”
Gresh could hardly deny that that was exactly his line of business. “Could you wait here for a moment, please?” he said.
“Certainly.”
He turned and hurried to the vault door, where he fished out the key again, unlocked the lock, then pried a large black wax seal off with a thumbnail, being careful not to mar the rune etched into the wax. He set the seal aside, to be softened over a candle-flame and re-used later, and placed a glass bowl over it to keep it safe from stray fingers. If anyone else touched that seal, anyone but himself, it would explode violently, and Gresh did not particularly want to risk burning down the shop because Twilfa got careless or a customer got curious.
“There,” he said, opening the vault. “Twilfa, find her blood for her, would you? I’ll help you in a moment. And afterward, I want you to find Tira.”
“Tira?” Twilfa looked at the woman in red, then back at her brother. “What do you want her for?”
Gresh glared at her silently for a moment, then turned back to his waiting customer without explaining. Twilfa ought to be able to figure it out for herself, and he did not care to say anything that the customer might overhear. An ordinary person wouldn’t have heard a whispered explanation at that distance, but a witch would—as Twilfa ought to know. Tira, another of their sisters, was a witch, and Twilfa had certainly had plenty of opportunity to observe just how keen Tira’s senses were. One witch could always tell another and could also evaluate the other witch’s honesty. Tira might be useful in assessing the customer in the red dress.
Twilfa threw one final curious glance at the stranger, then stepped into the vault, Dina close behind.
“Now,” Gresh said, returning to the front of the shop, “what was it your husband wanted to buy?”
“A mirror,” the witch said. “A very specific mirror, about this big.” She held out her hands in a rough circle perhaps five inches in diameter. “He last saw it in the Small Kingdoms, in the mountains near the border between Dwomor and Aigoa.”
“The Small Kingdoms.” That was more or less the far side of the World, and explained her accent.
“Yes. In or near Dwomor.”
“And is this mirror still there?”
“We don’t know.”
Gresh suppressed a sigh. “My dear, the Small Kingdoms are almost a hundred leagues from here, and my time…”
“We have a flying carpet to take you there,” she interrupted. “And we can pay you well.”
Gresh blinked. “A flying carpet?” He glanced at the vault; Dina and Twilfa were out of sight behind the iron door.
“Yes.”
Flying carpets required high-order magic; not one wizard in twenty could produce one reliably. And a wizard who had one, assuming he had made it himself, could generally find most of the ingredients for his spells without assistance, rather than paying Gresh. Certainly finding a mirror should not be so very difficult for such a wizard.
“What’s unique about this mirror?” he asked. “Why do you want me to find it for you?”
The self-proclaimed witch replied, “It’s where spriggans come from.”
Gresh considered that for a moment. On the face of it, it seemed preposterous—but then, a great deal of what wizards did was preposterous. She looked calm and sincere, and why in the World would anyone come to him with so absurd a story if it wasn’t true?
“Have a seat, my dear,” he said, gesturing to the maroon velvet chairs in one corner. “I’ll need to hear the whole story, but let me finish with this other customer first.”
CHAPTER TWO
Once Dina was safely on her way with a fresh bottle of blood, Gresh locked and re-sealed the vault, closed the front door, and settled on the other velvet chair. He watched as Twilfa slipped out the back, then turned to focus on his customer.
“Now, my dear, if you could explain to me what you know of this mirror, I will consider whether or not I can obtain it for you.”
“Thank you.” The woman nodded an acknowledgment. “My name is Karanissa of the Mountains. About four hundred and seventy years ago, in the course of my military service, I met a powerful wizard named Derithon the Mage, or Derithon of Helde. He was much older than I, but we thought each other to be good company, and before long I found myself living in his castle—a magical castle floating in a void outside the World entirely. Are you familiar with such things?”
“I’ve heard of them,” Gresh said cautiously. He was wondering now whether he was dealing with a witch or with a madwoman. Although nothing she had said was impossible, Gresh had never before met anyone other than wizards who claimed to have lived more than a century, and as he understood it, manufactured places outside the World were extremely scarce—not to mention notoriously dangerous to create.
“Well, Derry had made one, which could be reached through a Transporting Tapestry. We lived there happily for a time, but one day Derry was called away, leaving me in the castle, and he never returned. The tapestry leading out of the castle stopped working, stranding me there. I found out later that Derry had died just on the other side of the tapestry, altering the appearance of the room—you know how Transporting Tapestries work?”
“In theory,” Gresh said. He had heard them described, and of course he knew what ingredients went into the spell to make one, but had never personally used one. Anyone could simply step into the image on the tapestry and instantly find oneself in the actual place depicted, no matter how far away it was—but the image had to be exact, or the tapestry would not work properly, if at all. “I don’t quite see how his death would change anything, though.” Gresh knew there were spells that would stop working if the wizard who had worked them died, but they were much less common than most people supposed, and he was certain that the Transporting Tapestry wasn’t one of them.
Karanissa sighed. “The tapestry came out in a secret room, and Derry died there, and no one found his body. The tapestry didn’t work as long as his bones were lying on what was depicted as empty floor.”
“Oh, I see.” He had not realized the tapestries were that specific, but it made sense.
“The point is,” Karanissa continued, “I was stranded in his castle
