Elaine kept clear of the lit main streets the whole way, and only when the familiar building came back into view did the tension in her nerves ease a little.
The night had grown deep. Most of the shops along the street had put their lights out, and only a few taverns still had their wooden doors half open. Drunk customers slumped over the tables while staff getting ready to close dragged long-handled mops over floors gone sticky with drink, or with whatever else had been spilled, and cloudy water ran over the thresholds into the roadside gutters.
Now and then the brass bell of a night watchman sounded somewhere off, its clear note drifting down the empty street in waves.
Elaine pulled her hood low and walked quickly, hugging the shadow the buildings threw.
The cloak had been cut open by an iron rack in the cellar, and its hem was covered in dust and damp mud. Her long silver-white hair was in some disorder as well, a few strands stuck to the side of her face and swaying gently with her fast breathing.
The wrongness inside her body still had not gone. The mirror-shaped white mark on the back of her hand had faded a great deal, and in the dim light was almost impossible to make out.
She went round to the back of the building, checked that there was nobody nearby, and only then felt inside her clothes for the needle Viola had left.
Her fingers were trembling slightly with nerves, and the first time she set it against the seal the point slid straight past the pale gold pattern.
She stopped and took a deep breath.
Behind her it was quiet enough that there was nothing but the small rasp of leaves against one another.
The second attempt worked. Elaine pushed the window open and climbed in, rather clumsily.
The instant her feet hit the floor her knees gave and she went into the low cabinet by the window. The books on top of it rocked, and one fell to the floor with a dull soft thud.
The room was exactly as she had left it.
The clothes by the bed folded neatly, the curtain stirring gently in the night air. Quiet here, and clean, and dry, two whole worlds away from that damp ruined cellar in the White manor.
Elaine sealed the window again before making her way slowly to the mirror with a hand on the wall.
The girl in the mirror was pale, her cloak covered in dust, her right hand still trembling faintly without her permission.
Only now did Elaine dare breathe properly.
Once she had fully recovered, it occurred to her to examine what had changed about her body.
She raised her right hand slowly and studied it for a while by the dim yellow lamp on the table.
The mirror-shaped white mark on the back of it had faded almost past seeing, leaving only a transparent outline, as though something were hiding under the skin.
She rolled her cuff up slowly. There was no wound on the pale slender arm, but when the light came at it from the side, several nearly transparent white lines surfaced beneath the skin.
They began at the back of her hand, ran up over the wrist, crossed the inside of her forearm and finally disappeared up into her sleeve.
Elaine frowned and checked the other hand.
The left was the same.
On both sides the lines seemed to grow along the blood vessels, only finer than veins, and far more regular. She followed them and slowly pulled her collar open until her collarbones and the top of her chest were bare.
The white lines that had vanished were hiding under the skin.
They converged from both shoulders towards her chest and joined near her heart, forming an indistinct mirror shape.
Without a careful look you would take it for nothing more than lamplight glancing off skin.
Elaine put out a fingertip and pressed it lightly to the centre of her chest.
The lines beneath the skin seemed to feel the touch, and brightened briefly.
And then the reflection in the mirror changed too.
The white lines on the reflection's chest were clearer than the ones on her own. Elaine snatched her hand away.
The white light dimmed with it, and the wrongness in the mirror was quickly gone.
Only she was left standing there, looking worse than she had a moment before.
She had gone back to the manor to look for a way to turn her body back. Elaine did not understand this world's marvellous laws especially well.
But she did understand Sacred Objects and Relics and Sealed Objects, and she knew that each of these marvels had rules of its own. Since that mirror could turn her into a woman, it might equally be able to turn her back into a man.
Except that the resolution might not be much of an ending. It looked as though the mirror had merged with her completely.
Just as Elaine was preparing to face that reality and sprawl on the bed and let herself rot for a while, she realised she stank, and that her legs and feet were caked in sewer silt, and gave up on the bed in favour of a bath.
It was while she was changing that she remembered.
She didn't seem to have eaten much of anything today, and had been starving for hours.
Which put her in mind of the bowl of broth that little girl had held out to her at the relief station that afternoon.
If she'd known, she'd have had a little of it... never mind. Before the bath, better to see what emergency food Raea had left her.
Meanwhile, the street outside the White manor had been completely sealed off.
The temporary fencing that had only blocked the front of the manor had been pushed out by Grey Tower staff all the way to the two neighbouring junctions. Several black carriages without crests stood across the middle of the street, their wheels pinning down freshly laid cordon cloth, and the men keeping order knocked at door after door, moving any residents still awake back from their windows.
The little tavern near the manor that catered to wealthy amusement and ran into the small hours had been forced to close early. On an ordinary night there would be any number of women of the trade putting on all sorts of "satisfying performances" here until dawn, but tonight the performances looked likely to be interrupted.
The owner complained about all the drink money he was losing while smiling his way through the business of escorting his still-drunk, still-shouting valuable customers out of the door. Expensive bottles stood unfinished on the tables, liquid of various colours trembling gently with the footsteps that kept coming from outside.
Several searchlights, hastily set up, were trained on the ruins from different directions.
The blackened outer walls, the caved-in roof and the broken beams were all laid bare under the electric light, and even the dust floating in the air was clearly visible. More staff carried equipment into the courtyard and put a fresh cordon around the area of the cellar.
The man in charge of guarding the site stood at a wooden table someone had carried out, the report in his hand more than half filled. Across the table sat a thin man.
He wore gold-rimmed spectacles on the bridge of his nose, though the light was such that his expression could not be made out.
"A few minutes ago there was an extremely strong anomalous reaction in the underground vault. It did not last long, but it affected nearly the whole manor. Every object capable of reflection lost its image at the same moment, and the readings are badly confused. There is no determining which category of contamination it belongs to, or whether it was a Relic reaction."
He paused briefly and looked over at the White manor.
"At present we cannot rule out a witch, or abyssal contamination. I recommend handing security of the surrounding area to the Judgment Tribunal immediately. Keeping ordinary staff here is too great a risk."
The Grey Tower officer seated behind the table did not answer at once. He was the officer responsible for the whole of the Old Crown District.
Contamination reports had been coming out of the Lower City without pause lately, and most of the manpower the Judgment Tribunal could move had already been sent there. There was no way to free up enough people to take over the White manor at short notice. Not tonight, at any rate.
After a moment he closed the report.
"The Grey Tower widens the cordon for now. Seal every entrance and exit, move the nearby residents out temporarily. We continue the examination once the branch's formal investigators arrive."
The order had not long been given when the men searching the perimeter came hurrying round from the rear of the manor.
Their boots and trouser cuffs were fouled with mud, and one of them carried a section of rusted iron grating.
"The drain outlet at the rear has been opened."
He set the grating on the ground and pointed at the fresh impact marks on it.
"The weeds nearby have been trampled, and there are fresh footprints inside the sewer. Whoever it was clearly did not come in by the front gate. They went along the old drainage system straight to the underground vault, and left again by the same route."
The Grey Tower officer looked towards the rear of the manor. That was indeed an easy place to overlook.
The Old Crown District was, as its name suggested, an old noble quarter. Its city works followed a plan a hundred years old, and a great deal of its infrastructure had never been brought up to current technology.
Including that much-criticised sewer system. To this day every one of Castibury's urban sewer legends had come out of this district.
On the evidence so far, tonight's disturbance was certainly not some Sealed Object hidden in the ruins losing control of itself.
Somebody had gone into the White manor, and had set off... or carried away... something considerable.
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Publicly Disclosable Information #3
The Sacred Codex Judgment Tribunal, ordinarily shortened to "the Judgment Tribunal", serves the Judgment Codex's Final Arbiter, Iscarion Noctis, also called the God of Judgment.
The Tribunal is a transnational Canon institution built around the Judgment Codex.
Its principal duties are investigating Counter-Canon contamination, handling anomalous incidents, hunting down Seal-Bearers who have lost control, sealing off disaster sites, and assisting local government in the administration of Sacred Objects, Relics and Sealed Objects. Some local Tribunal offices additionally take on identity witnessing, contamination inspection, missing-person registration and the keeping of order at major public-security incidents, and commonly work alongside the police force of the city or town they sit in.
The Tribunal is implacably hostile to any organisation or church connected with the Counter-Codex.
Official Tribunal facilities ordinarily attach to a Judgment cathedral, in the faith of the God of Judgment, Iscarion. Large cities have an independent tribunal house, containment rooms and armed field teams. Ordinary districts and smaller towns mostly have a Tribunal sub-office inside a cathedral; where staff are few, a serious incident requires a request for support from above.
Chiefly distributed throughout the Kingdom of Loren. Branches exist in the capital, in the industrial cities, in other towns and in most local cathedrals, which makes it one of the Kingdom of Loren's most important Canon institutions. A small number exist in other kingdoms, though there they serve only a supporting role.