Mask of Shadows

by Linsey Miller

  “Did you see the shadows?” I asked. Our Queen’s palace was built over the ruins of the old mages’ keep on the defunct border between Erlend and Alona. They were one nation now and had no reason for the school with magic gone. She’d been Head Priestess of the Mind before the war. The other two head priests had created the shadows. She’d tried them as war criminals after Rodolfo was done with them, but the gallows were a faster death than they’d deserved.

  I liked Rodolfo’s methods more—a taste of their own treatment and no Erlends left who could spread the knowledge of shadow creation. He’d died to save us all from the threat of shadows ever returning.

  “Lies.” The old mage spat out of the carriage. “People afraid of their own damned shadows, afraid of going to war, afraid of protecting what we’d built. And look at the trash that rose from our ruin.”

  I clucked my tongue. Wooden spires loomed over the roofs and battlements, and sunlight sparkled in the stained glass windows circling the towers. Walls of glass dyed blue and gold glinted with each jerk of the wagon. The new Igna flag fluttered over every peak.

  “And look at the trash Our Queen hasn’t claimed,” I said as I lurched to my feet and yanked my bag from the floor, whacking him with Grell’s hand. “When will her Left Hand reach for you?”

  He paled. As the carriage came to a halt, I rushed away from him and laughed the rest of my walk to Willowknot.

  A collection of guards shuffled through travel papers and checked bags at the city gates. I unwound the linen from Grell’s hand. Might as well be upfront with it.

  The line of people scattered. Grell’s hand reeked, flowers and perfume barely clinging to his rotten fingers.

  “How do I declare this?” I asked, holding it up.

  “Drop it.” A guard, pink cheeks fading to pale green, leveled his spear at my chest. “Tell me your name.”

  “No, it’ll splatter. My name’s Sal.” I held my arms out as far as I could and flipped back my hood, dirty strands of black hair falling across my eyes. Should’ve sheared it again before I left. “It’s my invitation.”

  “Take a break, Hackett. They’re here for the Left Hand auditions.” Another guard nudged the spear away from me and prodded Grell’s hand with a gloved finger, chuckling the entire time. “You got an actual invitation or just the hand?”

  “Just the hand.” I shrugged. “Poster said invitation or proof of skill.”

  Grell’s warrant included a handprint taken when he’d been arrested a few years back, all his identifiable scars immortalized in ink on the posters. They even listed the tattoos around his knuckles.

  The too-small signet ring on his middle finger wasn’t on the posters, but he’d gotten it after the arrest and had never been able to slide it over his knuckle again. If the handprints and posters weren’t enough, it was.

  “Who’s this then?” the guard asked, shoving Hackett aside before he could vomit on our boots. “Most folks bring heads.”

  “Grell da Sousa from Kursk. I wasn’t going to travel for days with a rotting head, and his warrant description includes his hands.”

  “Gang leaders fetch a pretty pearl, but Ruby’s been rough with the uninvited this year. There’s more of you than usual, and they already got eight invitees. You got anything else?” He tossed a handkerchief to Hackett and rapped hard on the gate. “Another one for the auditions!”

  “Only knives and the hand.” I pulled on my old mask and yanked my hood back onto my head.

  The guard beckoned me through a short door in the gate, steps leading down into a well-worn tunnel beneath the city. No room for thieves and killers on the public streets of our new capital. “You travel light.”

  I’d given up everything else. It would’ve only dragged me down.

  Five

  Ruby’s face was a beacon of red among the black-clothed auditioners. His mask glowed in the sunlight and cast flickers of red across the ground. He’d no visible eyes or nose, only a single smiling slit that split his cheeks from ear to ear. The gap was dark with metal mesh.

  I knew there were eyeholes—he had to see somehow—but when his eyeless face turned to me, I shuddered.

  “Name?” The metal muffled his voice. He was dressed in pale off-whites. Thick tan leggings covered his powerful legs, and his knee-length tunic, slit up to his hips, was sleeveless and fitted. The muscles in his arms tensed with each gesture.

  “Sal.” I lowered Grell’s hand.

  He tipped my hood back with one long scarred finger. No armor and no weapons. If not for the mask, I’d not have thought him Ruby. “Aliases?”

  “Sal.”

  “Nicknames?” I swore I heard him laugh behind his mask.

  “Sal.”

  “Grell da Sousa—an interesting bounty.” He plucked Grell’s hand from my fingertips and held it up. A nail tumbled from the green-veined flesh. “How’d you kill him? You couldn’t have gotten his hand without killing the man.”

  I winced. The crowd behind Ruby tried to catch a glimpse of me, and I shuffled so Ruby blocked their view. “Pin in the neck and knife in the ribs. It was quick.”

  The crowd was getting fidgety, and I was too with their eyes on me. They were all thick and tall with well-fed muscles and shiny new clothes. A few sported worn leather bracers and empty quivers. I’d nothing but two knives.

  “Your knife work was sloppy.”

  “I used a sword. A dull one. Pulled it off the wall in Grell’s office. Didn’t want to ruin my knives.” I sucked in a breath and steadied my voice when Ruby huffed in response. “I’ll get better with practice.”

  “Lovely.” Ruby flung Grell’s hand aside and pointed toward the soldier who’d led me here. “Practice on him.”

  I lunged. The soldier only had time to widen his eyes and raise his fists. I thrust my foot into his crotch. He gasped and crumbled.

  Worked on everyone.

  I clutched his collar and pulled him to his knees. He was a soldier. He’d signed up to die for Our Queen and this was his service. I slid behind him, one foot on his pants to hold him down, and pinned his shoulders between my knees. I needed to be Opal, and he needed to die. I gripped either side of his head.

  “Nothing personal.” I blinked away the image of his face.

  “Stop.” Ruby pressed a hand to the top of the soldier’s head. “Let him go.”

  I dropped him. He scrambled away and vanished into the crowd watching the auditioners. Ruby tilted my chin up, his mockery of a face grinning down at me.

  I hadn’t heard Ruby move. Hadn’t seen him.

  “Join the others.” He pulled a small black mask from his pocket, the sort one wore to the gallows that went over your head like a hood—thin and black with a sliver of a mouth and wide eyeholes. A pure white “23” as big as the mask was stitched across the face. “You’re Twenty-Three now. No more Sal.”

  “Thank you.” I pulled the mask from his hands, fingers shaking.

  One step closer to Opal, to the Erlends, to cleansing the hunger for revenge from my blood.

  Ruby huffed and waved me away. The auditioners all stared—Five raked me over with pale eyes, Fifteen rolled his massive shoulders back, and Thirteen, hooded gaze focused on my hands, showed off the old jagged runes etched into her arm. I held back a shudder.

  No one spoke. We snuck silent, less-than-secret glances at each other while Ruby paced across the gate. Most auditioners were taller than me. Fifteen was the tallest, and Seventeen was the widest. Three was stoop-shouldered and slouching, all wiry muscles, but her belt had worn spots for knife sheathes. Twenty-One’s long nose tented his mask.

  Auditioners One through Eight must’ve been the invited—their masks were slightly better, their stances slightly looser, and most of them seemed my age or close enough.

  Great.

  The tunnel gate creaked open. Hackett, the soldier I’d made sick, peered around the crack. A brawny arm hooked through the opening above his head and forced the gate open. Ruby stilled.

 
“Name?” Ruby’s voice was the perfect mixture of bored and cutting.

  “Victor dal Graf,” the newcomer said. He was a street fighter—I knew his type—with scarred, swollen knuckles and a crooked nose.

  Two and Four snorted, and a few others I couldn’t see laughed. Killers with information were dangerous people.

  “Aliases?” Ruby circled Victor. “Nicknames?”

  “Snap Bone,” said Victor. He looked strong enough to snap my thigh. “I fight down in Kursk.”

  I’d never heard of him.

  “Undoubtedly.” He waved Hackett forward. “Victor, kill him.”

  Hackett backtracked.

  “Kill him?” Victor’s eyebrows bunched together. “What’s he done?”

  Ruby nodded and held out his hand. “Thank you, Victor, but that will be all.”

  Ruby waved Victor to the gate. Hackett clapped Victor on the back while another, with one arm and enough height to reach, whispered in Victor’s ear. The gate shut behind them in a puff of dust.

  “So.” Ruby spread his arms wide in welcome, scars from years of sword work and fighting black in the sunlight, and laughed. “It begins with twenty-three.”

  Six

  Ruby stalked around us, eyeless mask looking us up and down. “This audition will end with one of you becoming Opal. Either the Left Hand, under the guidance of Our Queen, will select the most promising from the remaining three or the last living auditioner will ascend to the position.”

  A side door to the building next to us opened and a line of servants filed out. Ruby beckoned them forward.

  “There are only three rules while you are here: kill your competition, do not get caught doing so, and do not harm anyone outside of the audition. If any member of the Left Hand has significant evidence of your involvement in a death—enough to secure an arrest and sentencing were you brought before court—you will be disqualified. If we believe your actions caused injury or could have harmed anyone not involved, you will be disqualified or killed. At our discretion. Any questions?” Ruby raised his head, blinding us with flickers of red light, and clapped. “Excellent. A servant will take you to your room. I hope to see fewer of you at breakfast.”

  Ruby meandered over to the soldiers we’d been asked to kill upon arrival and dismissed us with an offhanded wave.

  A free-for-all. I didn’t need a servant getting in my way with laundry and cleaning and whatever else they did. They might be great for gossip, but the last thing I needed while auditioning was nosy questions about my clothes.

  Or an extra person who could rat me out to the Left Hand.

  “Auditioner Twenty-Three?” A servant wearing a plain gray uniform trimmed in blue with no jewelry or weapons bowed her head to me. “If you’d come with me to your room.”

  She led me through a series of unobtrusive servants’ hallways. Patches of rough mortar from recent renovations dotted the walls, and wooden support beams crisscrossed the ceiling above us. Just enough grip to climb and enough space to hide. My servant opened a door in the middle of a hall.

  “A bath is prepared—”

  “By who?” I asked. The room was small and drafty—the shuttered windows were glassless and the door off-kilter. A washing tub rested in one corner and a ratty straw mattress in the other. Rath’s orphanage horror stories at least had raised beds for the kids to share.

  Of course, we’d probably ruin everything with blood. I’d not waste the good bedding on us either.

  She inhaled sharply. “I prepared a bath, for bathing, for you.”

  “I know what bathing is.” I checked the lock on the door—weak and easy to pick—and the window shutters. “You clean it too?”

  “I did.”

  I prodded the pile of fresh black clothes on the bed and ran a finger along the tub’s rim. Curls of salted, mineralized steam dampened my sleeves. “Where’d you get the water?”

  “The well. I am a servant, and as such, I answer to Dimas, not the Left Hand. If you take offense with how I draw your bath, you may take it up with him.”

  I leaned against the tub. “Not taking offense. I just don’t fancy dying before the competition even starts.”

  “I will endeavor to keep poison out of your baths and meals then,” she said dryly. “You’ve never worked with servants?”

  I gestured for her to shut the door. I didn’t need everyone knowing my whole life story. I’d robbed a few servants and known folks who’d taken scullery maid jobs, but that was it.

  “You’ll know me only as Maud.” She settled against the door, hands clasped behind her. “I’ll cook your meals, except breakfast, do all your cleaning, washing, and other such chores. But I’ve no obligation to help you win. I report any suspicions, or I lose my job.”

  I nodded. “I’ll keep the suspicious bloodstains to a minimum then.”

  “That would be preferable.” Her mouth twitched into a tight-lipped smile. “But the black should hide most of the blood, and I can remove any stains that aren’t.”

  “Keep my clothes clean and the other auditioners far from my things. No questions or gossiping about me. Not about my scars, my clothes, or my measurements. I dress how I like to be addressed—he, she, or they. It’s simple enough.” I ticked each point off on my fingers for emphasis. Even when I spelled it out for nosy people clear as I could, they couldn’t grasp why.

  I’d settled for hand-me-down clothes and shit lodgings for life. I wasn’t compromising me. Our Queen preached acceptance and peace. They’d accept me.

  They had to.

  “If I make a mistake addressing you, you may correct me.” She swept past me to the bath, touched the water, and tapped her damp finger to her tongue. “If it helps you to know, Opal’s servant is paid five pearls per month. I take pride in my job, and I need it to survive. I will not err in serving you.”

  I whistled. Enough to keep four people well and fed for a long while. I’d never heard of serving jobs paying in pearls. My savings were in plain, old copper halves, and sixty-four made a silver.

  “Nothing wrong with being in it for the money,” I said. If she wanted it that badly, she’d be more open to helping me. With nothing but three loose rules and a broken door between me and the others, I’d be dead by morning. “Do I get any money while I’m here? I’m going to need some things to stay alive.”

  “The Left Hand set aside a small amount for the auditioners assuming some wouldn’t have the appropriate funds.” She pulled out a purse no bigger than her hand.

  “Twine, wire, mice—”

  “What?”

  I sighed. “For testing my food. Mice, bells, ax, hammer, nails, and a better blanket.” The door was useless, and I’d have to nail it shut and string the entryway with wire. That’d at least slow attackers down. “You get that, I’ll bathe, and knock twice when you get back. Bring me breakfast tomorrow too. Something small.”

  She came back as I was getting dressed. Her sleeves were rolled up, bruises from cleaning dotting her arms in fading shades of blue and yellow, and a large basket dangled on her arm. She locked the door behind her.

  Smart.

  “I’ve got what you wanted.” She set down the basket and rubbed one of the callouses on her palm. “I will not deal with the mice. They are yours to care for.”

  “Deal.” Mice were better poison testers than Maud anyway. I nodded to the door and held out my hand—might as well make working together official. “You don’t get in my way or get me killed, we’ll get on fine. And you’ll get your five pearls.”

  Maud smiled, more bared teeth than grin, and bowed instead of taking my hand. “You won’t even know I’m here.”

  Doubtful.

  I nailed the door shut behind her. She was serious, and money was a good motivator. If the Left Hand said she wasn’t part of the audition, she wasn’t. I’d have to trust her not to poison me. The moment she got nosy about my clothes, she was gone. Wasn’t like laundry was a necessity.

  Sliding the lady’s ill-fitting silver ring
on for luck, I lined the window with nails and laced the shutters with wire and bells. Least I’d have time to wake up before they broke in, and if they did, there was no dodging an ax in this small room.

  “First night,” I said to the mice. I tipped the dirty bath water down the drain in the corner, made a person-shaped bump in the bed, and leaned against the drying tub. The ax was heavy in my hands. “Think they’ll come?”

  Let them. They’d get an ax in the face and a handful of pain.

  Seven

  The bells rang once that night, soft and chiming beneath the screams echoing down the halls. Someone’s hand plucked the wire, but the bells sent them back into the night. I spent the morning removing nails from the door.

  “There’s blood,” Maud said when she entered, shuddering with each word. “You’re expected at breakfast if you can walk.”

  I snatched up a roll from her small—thankfully covered—tray and squished the thick yellow butter between the two halves. “You get sick at the sight of blood, we’ll have problems.”

  “Breakfast will be served every morning, and you’re to attend so the Left Hand can do a head count.” She frowned, ignoring my comment about blood. “I won’t bring you anything again unless you ask for it.”

  I nodded. “Where’s it at?”

  Maud led me down the hallway, servants bowing out of the way.

  Food, a room, and no fear of getting robbed the moment I turned my back—I could get used to this. Should get used to this. It would be this way till I died, no matter if that was tonight or twenty years from now.

  Might get stabbed to death at any moment, but that could happen anywhere.

  Maud had slipped a long black dress with thick leggings into the basket for me this morning. With a quick twirl, flaring the dress out around me, I nicked a plum from a wide-eyed servant’s tray and slipped it under my mask. If we were eating with the Left Hand, we were eating well. I needed to take full advantage of it, gain some weight so I could stand against the others. Maud wrinkled her nose.