THE DWARVES were around her, snuffling like colts.
“We leave you alone,” they said, more or less in one voice, “and provide you a window upon the wicked world, and your vanity betrays you. There is nothing but grief out there! Haven’t you learned this yet?”
She sat up and felt the back of her head, where blood had matted.
“Have you been to Arezzo and back?” she said. They shook their heads.
“The farther we got from you, the less sure we seemed of ourselves,” said Heartless sadly. “Your kind imagination of us—as individuals, with names, of all things—has begun to seem a kind of nourishment. Without your regard, our initiative was sapped.”
“You must get that mirror back and regard yourselves,” she told them. “Oh, my head hurts so.”
“It would have hurt you worse until it couldn’t hurt you further, had we not come back.” Heartless held out the ivory comb. Several of its tines had broken off, and among those that remained was a residue of blood and dried matter and threads of her raven black hair. “A serried rank of small poisoned stiletti,” he said.
Still, it was a beautiful thing, even with broken tines.
She steadied herself with a hand to her temple, and then said, “You are too kind, and too . . . too . . .” She wanted to say little, but that would have been repaying their kindness with rude honesty; she thought too incomplete, but that also seemed uncharitable. And too attentive was wrong. Without their attention, she would be dead.
She didn’t finish her sentence. They helped her to her feet. Across the room—and didn’t the venison smell wonderful! Where had that come from?—she saw the silvery fog in the wall, the oval through which she had once seen Montefiore. She walked over to it and put up her hand to her head, and held the ivory comb gingerly in place, taking care not to scrape her scalp with it.
She didn’t know if it was herself she was seeing. The reflection was imprecise, varnished with mist; but there was a woman’s face therein, and as its lips moved, so Bianca moved hers, as if under a spell. “Mirror, mirror,” she said. “What is to become of us?”
“What is to become of you, if you don’t take care?” complained Gimpy.
“We won’t be here forever to guide your every step,” snapped Deaf-to-the-World.
“As if we have nothing better to do,” added MuteMuteMute.
“We have nothing better to do, damn the fact,” observed Bitter, “but that still doesn’t mean we want to do it.”
“We will be here forever,” said Heartless. “That’s the truth of it. But you, dear Bianca . . .”
He didn’t finish his sentence, just stood looking at her fondly.
“You must take the mirror back,” said Bianca. “What are you waiting for? You want to be human enough, you have to learn to steal. What was the first act of disobedience but a theft? Let me come with you, I’ll lead you as a band of rogues. The robber queen! I like the notion.”
“It isn’t safe for you yet,” said Nextday.
“You’re less than men,” she said. “How do you know what’s safe for me?”
They had protected her and she had shamed them. Bitter made a rude gesture before the others could stop him. “We’ll go as far as the bridge anyway,” said Nextday decisively. “We’ll look to see what we can.”
“I ask your pardon for my crude remarks,” she said, but they paid no attention to her.