The Mirrored City by Michael J. Bode

used his body to bind it once for… Maddox’s memories faded.
    “You seek to unravel the broken thread that winds through the labyrinth.”
    “I don’t have time or patience for riddles,” Maddox said.
    “You have time but lack patience,” Amnayleth hissed coyly.
    “My body is dying, and this vision will end when it does,” Maddox insisted. “What can you tell me about Lawrence?”
    “You know the Grand Design. Attain the Seal of Seals and you will know all things that will come to pass and how to bring them about.”
    “Not for all the money on the moon,” Maddox said flatly. “It would take me a year to practice at least. And it’s fucking dangerous.”
    Maddox had pieced together the Grand Design during a bender of deliberately fatal drug overdoses, not knowing what it was until it was too late. Now that knowledge was burned into his very soul. It could grant him omniscience and, by proxy, near omnipotence. Seeing the future came with a price—the loss of any sense of choice. Not only did it show him how best to achieve his desires, it also determined what he would ultimately desire.
    When the Inquisition ripped his mind apart, he didn’t resist. He believed his knowledge and immortality made him a danger to Creation. He found a refuge in the Sword—it had no great ambitions or any deep passion about forbidden magic. Plus the Sword suppressed the crazy mystic visions he was having now.
    The veiled woman brushed past him. “Knowledge comes with a price, Architect.”
    Maddox frowned. “What’s the price?”
    “Knowing it,” Amnayleth said.
    Maddox complained, “Just spit it out. Tell me what I need to know.”
    Amnayleth whispered, “The answers you seek are in the Palace of Keys.”
    “Wait,” Maddox said, nearly falling over in shock. “That’s an actual location in the city. Did you just… give me a straight answer?”
    “There are no straight answers to crooked questions.”
    He feigned relief. “Oh good, I was worried you were starting to make sense. How about where I can find the thing that attacked me?”
    “You stepped over the lover’s body when you sought the two-faced killer.”
    “It had three faces,” Maddox said, but he knew it was useless. He could sense the vision ending and the weight of Amnayleth’s silence. Of all the Guides, I had to get Mystery .
    He felt the world around him dissolve. The toxic combination of euphorium powder and firebrandy was killing him.
    Darkness swallowed him. And when it did, he would wake up in his room, the Sword at his side.

T WELVE
    Making A Play
    H EATH
    1.
    Night will fall upon Baash & Dessim
The Dark Stars will fall to earth
The broken mirror will have a thousand reflections.
The Eye of the Sun will turn to the Mirrored City.
    2.
    The Queen of Lies will rise in the West
A king is reborn in Dessim to humble beginnings
The Red Army will bleed over all Creation.
Baash & Dessim will be forever gone.
    —PROPHECIES OF PROSPERO , A FAMOUS DIVINER IN DESSIM
     
     
    THE STREETS OF Baash were clean and narrow, and although they were the same as the streets in Dessim, the plain alabaster city was almost completely unrecognizable. The buildings were unadorned on the outside, monolithic blocks of white granite, painted orange by the setting sun. Chants and songs came from all parts of the city as the faithful performed their final daily prayer to Ohan.
    This made it an ideal time to go undetected. Curfew would come shortly after, and phalanxes of Patrean guards would patrol the narrow streets in meticulously timed patterns, making it nearly impossible to move at night undetected. The good news was that Heath had practiced moving through those same streets in Dessim and had learned their quirks and shortcuts.
    He wore a black hood and half mask over the lower part of his face. His tunic left his scarred arms bare except for the leather gauntlets that held his trusty springblades. For a man pushing into his fourth decade, he was still in good