Chapter 4

The following morning, Uncle had to wake me by banging on my door. I got dressed and yawned my way through breakfast.

"Did you not sleep well?" he asked me over the rim of his teacup. "Fretting over your beloved?"

"In a manner of speaking." I told him about her father's ultimatum.

Uncle rubbed his chin. "I always thought he was after us for our money, but I wouldn't have expected him to be so obvious about it. This time yesterday, I would've told you to give up right away and deal with the shame of a broken engagement, as there wouldn't have been any chance of earning as much as he wants."

I yawned again and gave him an insincere smile. "But now you think we could find the mirror that pairs with our one and charge people to use them to send letters between here and Darmath, or maybe here and Sondis."

Uncle frowned. "Actually I was thinking we might sell them to a couple of noble ladies to use for exchanging gossip. But yes, my boy - sometimes it pays to think big."

I shook my head. "It's at least five thousand miles away. Probably nearer six or seven. There's no way we can go there, find it and return within the three months."

Uncle waved his hand dismissively. "It doesn't matter if it takes a year. When you come back, you can have your pick of Symeera's eligible ladies."

I scowled. "I've already picked. I can't go gallivanting to the other side of the world on an expedition that might bankrupt us."

"If you're sure you want her and no one else, I'll go and see if he'll give you more time."

If he agreed, our plan for the mirrors might yet salvage my engagement. If he refused, the engagement was gone either way, so I had nothing to lose now. But - "I'll do it." Half of my future happiness depended on marrying Shanu. The other half depended on keeping my uncle and her father apart.

"All right. I'll see about chartering a ship." He drained his tea and stood up. "And I shouldn't need to say this, but not a word to anybody about the mirror."

I went to Shanu's house. The butler told me the family were visiting one of her father's cousins and weren't expected to return until tomorrow morning. I said I'd call again tomorrow afternoon.

Back home, I activated the mirror, and its glass went black. For a moment, I feared it was broken, and then I remembered it was still night in the other place. As I stared into the mirror, my eyes adjusted to pick out stars - fewer than I expected. Perhaps it was cloudy.

Without stars here, I couldn't make my estimate for the longitude more accurate, and I couldn't estimate the latitude until midday there - a good twelve hours away if I was anywhere near right about the longitude. I went in search of a hook for the astrolabe, or a length of metal I could bend into one.

In one of the smaller boxes of miscellaneous rubbish we'd taken from Dyareg's house, I found a piece of thick wire about eight inches long. I measured it against the astrolabe to confirm my design would work, and then cast some spells to bend it into the shape I wanted. It was tiring work, and nowhere near as neat as a blacksmith could have done, but Uncle's warning not to involve anyone else echoed in my mind.

I found a hammer and some nails, and bashed one of the nails halfway into the top of the window frame. I hung the hook over the nail and gingerly hung the astrolabe from it. My contraption held. I looked out of the window at the passers-by to see if any of them had noticed this strange apparition, but none had, as far as I could tell. People hardly ever look up. I took some sightings on the tops of nearby buildings for practice, and then put the astrolabe away.

Sunrise at the other mirror was much earlier than I'd thought it would be - around ten o'clock here. I recalled hearing that at high latitudes, the length of the day varied greatly with the seasons. Here, we hardly knew what seasons were. I decided to try measuring the sun's height to work out how it was done. I determined that the sun in the picture was a fifth of the apparent diameter of the real sun, meaning that I'd have to multiply angles in the picture by five to get their real sizes. After much measuring and drawing and calculating, I was confident that I could find the angle between the sun and the horizon. Now I just had to do that at noon in the picture, when the sun would be at its highest. I wouldn't know that until it had already happened, so I decided to measure the sun's height periodically. From the kitchen, I fetched a miniature hourglass that Mara sometimes used to time the boiling of an egg.

I wasn't good at waiting. I fretted and fidgeted, noticing every little distraction, looking everywhere except at the hourglass. More than once, I missed a measurement and wanted to kick myself. But eventually, after I'd turned the hourglass more than a hundred times, I made a couple of measurements that were the same as the ones before. The next one was smaller, the next smaller still.

Breathless, I went through the calculations for the largest measurement and applied the correction for the ephemeris from Father's tables. Allowing for the fact that the astrolabe was marked only to the nearest degree, the other mirror's latitude was between sixty-five and seventy degrees south of the equator. Not as far as I'd feared, but still a good two thousand miles south of here - and still an uncertainty of about three hundred miles.

Did we really have any hope of finding the mirror in that much uncharted territory? We'd wander around the icy wastes until our food ran out, or some wild animal killed us. Shanu would never see me again - would never find out what had happened to me. She'd mourn for as long as was proper, then would marry someone else - someone her father approved of. I couldn't do that to her. It would break her heart, twice over. I'd stay here. Let Uncle go alone on his search for barrels of fish fur. But then I wouldn't be able to afford to marry Shanu - I didn't imagine for a moment that Uncle would give me any of the profit if I didn't go, even though without me, he wouldn't have a clue where to start looking.

The slow tolling of a bell pulled me out of my introspection - the Mazorean temple summoning the faithful to evening prayer. It reminded me that I hadn't eaten since breakfast. I wondered why Mara hadn't called me to dinner, before remembering today was her day off. Was it my turn to cook? If so, Uncle should be shouting at me to get on with it... no, he wasn't home yet. How long did it take to charter a ship, anyway?

I should make something to stave off my own hunger. Uncle could feed himself if he didn't come home on time. I picked up the mirror to conceal its picture when it occurred to me that I now knew the difference in the time of day between here and the other mirror. The Mazorean bell was rung by a mechanical clock, which was widely considered to be the most accurate in Asdanund. It rang at six o'clock, and noon had passed at the other mirror, so it had to be less than ninety degrees west of here. How much less? Two turns of the egg timer to realise noon had passed, a turn and a half calculating, probably another turn feeling sorry for myself... So how long was a turn of the egg timer? Long enough to boil an egg, obviously.

I hid the mirror under my bedclothes, then slipped the egg timer into a pocket and headed out to Kandar Square, from where I could see the clock. The last few stragglers were hurrying into the temple. The clock was marked in half-hour divisions, so I stood there until seven o'clock, feeling like an idiot as my eyes continually flicked between the clock and the egg timer. Secular clocks had mechanical figures that performed a little dance on the intervals that they wanted to mark, but the Mazoreans, of course, considered that sort of thing frivolous. Even the bell had been a compromise between the traditional and progressive wings of the church.

I expected a Man of the Peace to ask me what I was doing, but apart from a few passers-by who gave me strange looks, nobody paid me any attention. The sand was about halfway through its eighth fall at the end of the half-hour. So one fall took about four minutes, which meant that noon at the other mirror had occurred about eighteen minutes before the bell rang. So local time at the other mirror was five hours and forty two minutes later than here, meaning it was... eighty-five and a half degrees west. Not quite a quarter of the way round the world, but not far off. I put the timer away and headed home.

By the right-angled triangle theorem, the other mirror was about six thousand four hundred miles away in a straight line, and doubtless much longer allowing for sailing along coasts. Father had once mentioned that ships averaged a hundred miles a day, so my estimate of two months to get there had been optimistic. Shoulders sagging, I turned around and headed for home.