It was sharp and thick, but then we were outside and running and my heart pounded against my chest in the sheer joy of knowing I could run. No nudging and no corrections.
“Our Queen, despite her power and mercy, has not persuaded all the nobles clinging to their Erlend roots.” Amethyst’s voice didn’t waver despite the dust and footfalls. I hated running with a mask, and she managed to yell midsprint. I sped up, gaze stuck on her, and pushed myself to run faster. I wanted to do that. “We are her last resort in such cases. Those against us are not kind or merciful. They do not care who gets in their way.”
My answer of dressing in their colors and avoiding them completely probably didn’t help.
“We do not kill if it can be helped. We serve Our Queen, and she serves her people. It is our job, then, to make sure they are safe, even when the machinations of their traitorous masters put them in our path.” Amethyst slid to a stop at the gate leading into Willowknot.
“Two and Eleven,” Emerald shouted from her perch on top of the gate. “Three and Fifteen, Four and Twenty-Three, Five and Seven, and Six and Ten.”
I spun around. Eleven, Fifteen, Four, Seven, and Ten were the last to arrive at the gate. Ruby stepped forward with his shackles.
They wouldn’t. We couldn’t run or fight or do anything chained to another person.
“The forest has been cleared for the occasion, and the dal Abreu and del Contes families have loaned us their guards. They will attempt to stop you. You may disarm and stun but cause no lasting damage.” Amethyst grabbed half the shackles from Ruby and starting chaining us—hands shackled behind our backs and chains linked through the shackles of our partner. “Our last Opal died because he could not escape while shackled to another prisoner in Lord del Weylin’s cells. We will not make that mistake again. You escape, you follow me, you keep up, and you don’t kill anyone. Except each other, of course.”
At least Four and I were roughly the same height.
I snuck my lock picks from my pocket into my sleeve, trying not to attract attention. Ruby eyed me. Maybe. Why’d they even bother? His mouth was little more than a mesh slit, and they weren’t putting me at ease pretending they could look at us. He leaned in close enough that I should’ve felt his breath on my ear, but there was nothing.
“About tutoring.” He locked the shackles in place and looped me back-to-back with Four. “Lady de Farone said you were acceptable.”
I doubted Elise had used the phrase “acceptable.” She seemed more flowery. Maybe an “adequate,” but that would’ve stung.
“She’s an excellent tutor,” I whispered back to him.
He laughed.
“You may kill your partner.” Emerald loomed over us, carrying a bow and hunting arrows—the blunt kind with a hooked end meant to capture game alive. “We will immediately suspect you though.”
“And you may escape the shackles,” Ruby said, ushering us to the gate. “If you can. How you finish this race is entirely up to you.”
“We only care that you finish it.” Amethyst looked at each of us in turn, purple mask turning to Four and me last. “Keep up.”
And she was gone.
Seventeen
The lot of us stared at her fleeing back. I slipped the lock picks out of my sleeve and tugged on the shackles. Four smacked into my back.
“We will be duly impressed if you and your partner survive.” Ruby took a spear from one of the soldiers and righted Two and Eleven, who’d fallen over as soon they’d tried to move.
Emerald leapt from the wall to the gate to the ground quickly as could be. “But it’s not a must, so long as we don’t think you killed your partner.”
“All right.” Four steadied himself, his shoulders popping. “We stay calm and you do what I say, and we can get out of this easily.”
“Speak for yourself.” The cuff around my right wrist clicked open and I untangled myself from Four. I held up my picks. “You need help, or you good?”
He jumped, swept the chain under his feet, and pulled his arms in front of him. A similar set of picks appeared in his fingers. “I’m good.”
Five and Seven, still stuck together, took off into the forest with Five shouting orders. Either he didn’t want us to see him escape or Seven was about to lose a hand.
I ran through the gate. The creak of leather armor sounded to my left, and I ducked right, tumbling off the path. I rolled over my shoulder and launched myself to my feet without stopping.
Amethyst was far ahead, a purple glint among the pine needles, and I was the only auditioner in the trees. I glanced over my shoulder and grinned, sprinting farther away from the pack of auditioners stuck at the gate. Four fought off a soldier while Two dragged Eleven toward him. The soldiers were good at slowing us down.
And I was good at outrunning soldiers. All I had to do was finish the race, and Four had enough skills to take care of himself. I didn’t need him slowing me down or finding some clever way to kill me without arousing suspicion.
But Amethyst was long gone. She had to be heading west or we’d be too close to Willowknot proper. I’d only been running for a little while, and I could already hear the far-off sounds of the town behind the grunts of the fights. I sprinted west through the trees.
“Found you!” A leg shot out from the underbrush and ripped me from my feet. The soldier who’d led me to auditions, who I’d been so willing to kill, rose up from the forest floor. He grinned. “Nothing personal.”
He loomed over me. I crawled backward, putting as much distance as I could between us. I couldn’t kill him, and he’d not drawn any weapons either. I stood.
“It wasn’t personal.” I slid my right foot back and raised my fists, balance shifting to the balls of my feet.
He laughed. “I know, but that didn’t make it hurt less.”
Fair enough.
I darted forward, slapping my palms over his ears. He hooked a foot behind my ankle and shoved me. I grabbed his collar, falling back and bracing myself, and jammed my foot into his stomach as I hit the ground. I kicked up, and he went tumbling over my shoulder.
“That’s not personal either,” I said.
He pulled himself to his knees and opened his mouth.
The blunt end of a spear rammed into the side of his head. He fell with a sickening crack. I drew my knives.
That wasn’t a disarming hit.
“Do you know how much time I wasted dealing with Eight?” Five tossed the spear aside and drew his short sword. He moved perfectly into the guard position Ruby had been trying to teach me. “Come on then.”
Five waited. I shifted back and forth, flipping one of my knives down. I could dodge a sword, block a few weak hits, but he’d planned this. He must’ve run nonstop to catch up with me.
I lunged, faking left. He slid his feet aside and drew the sword across his right. I twisted away from him and dove for the soldier, ripping his sword from his belt. Five stared at me, eyes drooping and bored, and straightened his mask. I tightened my grip on the hilt.
Five huffed. “Easy.”
He swung at my left. I blocked, the hit shaking my arm, and faster than I could follow, his blade cut across my chest and slipped into my right side. Pain, white-hot and blinding, burrowed into my chest, and the slick pull of his sword leaving my skin shivered down my spine. Blood seeped down my ribs, and he flicked his blade against mine. The sword flew out of my hand.
“Amateur,” he muttered, pulling back for a final strike.
He had the noblest, northernest accent I’d ever heard. Panic and rage washed over me, fluttering in my veins till my fingers shook against my side and sharpened my thoughts. I curled my fingers into the dirt. He leaned closer.
He wasn’t better than me.
I flung dust in his eyes. He stumbled, sword arm falling. I thrust my knife through his shoulder, twisting the blade till he screamed, and ripped it out. He smacked my side, fingers digging into the cut.
I couldn’t beat him in a fair fight, but life wasn’
t fair—and neither was I.
I kicked his sword aside. My wound was agony with each twist of my torso, and the soldier—my soldier who Five could’ve killed—was stumbling to his feet. I punched Five in the nose. It snapped.
“Amateur,” I said.
He could be better than me at all the noble things he pleased, but I would be Opal, and he would be dead eventually. Even better if he panicked and dug his own grave. Let him tremble.
“Every night when you’re holed away in your little nest”—I stepped on his hands and grabbed his collar, pulling him up so I could stare into his eyes—“think about how the only reason you’re still breathing is because that guard woke up, how the only thing keeping me from climbing up there and putting a knife in your neck is how little I care about your face, and dream of me. Dream of me coming for you.”
I shoved him back into the dirt. He twisted and coughed up a glob of spit and blood. The soldier blinked up at me.
I took off. Again. At this rate, Amethyst would be seventy by the time I finished the race.
Blood oozed between my fingers, making my grip on my knives slick and impossible. I’d need stitches.
Tomorrow would be the worst.
I kept quiet and low. I couldn’t afford any more fights unless I struck first, fast, and hard. Screams and hurried footfalls echoed through the woods. Maybe I should’ve stayed with Four—he couldn’t kill me without being blamed, and Five wouldn’t have taken on both of us. I needed soldiers and all the helpful supplies they carried with them.
And they were easy to find, breathing too hard and alone. I snuck up behind one, creeping onto a stump so I could match his gangly height, and trapped him in a choke hold. He fought and flailed, right arm getting a few good hits before he passed out.
“Thank you.” He’d bandages in his pocket. I washed off my cut and wrapped it, shuddering with each brush of cloth against my torn skin. It wasn’t too deep, not too deep at all.
Heavy footsteps pounded up the path. I picked up the soldier’s bow and slid behind a tree. Memories of Emerald’s hands ghosted over my skin—back straight, stomach in, and arm bent back till the string brushed my cheek. I sucked in a thin breath.
Seven stopped in front of me, dodging an arrow from the other side of the path. He was worse for wear with a new black eye and shackle-shaped bruises around his wrists. He leapt to disarm the other archer as I fired, and he didn’t notice my too-wide, wobbly shot. I practiced a few shots into the trees next to me. My aim was spotty at best, but Seven was broad. A body fell across the path.
Seven emerged from the bushes, nose bloodied.
I fired. My arrow tore through his shoulder, taking a strip of his shirt. He clapped a hand to his arm, and I drew back for another shot. It flew over his head.
Shit. I tossed the bow aside and grabbed a spear, clawing my way up into the branches of a needle-heavy pine. Seven crashed through the curtain of thick leaves and toed the soldier. I hooked my knees around a branch.
Nothing personal.
He spun, wits catching up too late, and I swung out of the tree. The spear ripped through his chest, pinning him to the trunk, and he took a bubbling breath. His last breath burst from his lips in a spray of pink.
“Sorry.” I gripped the branch and unfurled myself from around it, dropping unsteadily to the forest floor. “That probably hurt.”
I couldn’t work the spear from the tree. Staring at him itched at me, a prickling at the back of my neck that wouldn’t let up. If I’d been a little slower, a little weaker, he’d have killed me as easily and left me out here to rot. If his death at my hands was justice, what would that have been?
I walked away, the imaginary weight of his dangling arms heavy on my shoulders.
A long ways after, a rough voice grunted on the path and metal clashed against metal. I crept forward slowly.
Four flipped a soldier over his shoulder and hissed as one of the blunted arrows hit his thigh. The shot came from near me, and the soldier looped an arm around Four’s ankles. I moved through my side of the woods as quiet as I could.
Four sent the soldier running with a quick jab and a threat. The archer rose from their hiding spot, and I kicked the back of their knees. Collapsing into the path, they dropped their bow and scrambled away from me. Four stepped on their sleeve.
“Stop.” He glanced at me, mask twitching with his smile. “Fancy meeting you here.”
“Thought a stroll would be nice.” I knelt over the soldier, hooked an arm around their throat, and squeezed till they went limp. “It’s been refreshing.”
“Refreshing?” Four nodded to the cut on my side. “You good?”
“Great.” I pressed harder on my wound and gritted my teeth. “Real good. How’re you?”
“Better than you.” He leaned around me, eyes focused over my shoulder. A throwing knife slid into his palm. “Duck.”
I sat down hard. An arrow tore through the leaves where I’d been, and Four threw his knife across the path.
The patter of fleeing feet sounded behind me.
“How long it take you to learn that?” I nodded to the knife in his hand. It wasn’t at all like one of mine, too long and thin to be of much use up close.
He helped me to my feet. “How long it take you to learn how to fight?”
“Not long.” I grinned at Four’s snort. “The moment between me getting punched and them trying to hit me again.”
“My aunt threw knives and taught all the kids. Kept us too busy to get in trouble,” Four said. “I’m ready to be done with this if you are—side by side, run straight through with no stopping?”
Only carnival folks would think knife throwing wasn’t trouble.
“Sounds good.” I nodded and drew a knife. Better safe than sorry. “Let’s—”
A scream drowned me out, the sound bone-shatteringly loud and drawn out, raising the hairs on the back of my neck and gooseflesh on my arms. Four shuddered.
“Myr—Three?” He turned to where it had come from, but no second shout came. “Three!”
I grabbed his arm. “Hush! You’ll draw everyone here.”
“That was Three.” He shook me off and started running, his wide eyes and panicked breaths finally showing his age. “We know better than to scream.”
He vanished into the trees. Lady bless. I stomped after him, one hand holding my side and the other grasping a knife. If she knew not to scream, whatever had happened to her was enough to break that training. I squished through the mud, pushing branches aside. Red smeared across the wood.
If I was bleeding that much, I was done for. I touched my side—no fresh blood.
Sweat rolled down the back of my neck. Four’s frantic calls faded in the distance, and I took a step back. A steady drip splattered against the ground.
I looked up.
Eighteen
An empty face stared back at me, skin gone and bones bare.
“You’re not real,” I whispered, hands flying to my neck. The damp was sweat. There was no blood. There was no body. My nails scraped down the back of my neck. “You’re a dream. A memory.”
Red stained my fingers.
I stumbled in the mud. Mud—water. There must be water nearby. That was it, had to be it. I was simply too thirsty to think straight, had lost too much blood, and my dreams were creeping into the day. I fell to my knees, sinking into the earth, and the farther I reached, the drier it got. There had to be water, a river, a pond. There had to be.
It wasn’t real. It was never real.
The drip rang in my ears, loud and clear as bells. I took a breath, hoping for the damp scent of earth and springs, but the metallic, salty taste of blood invaded my mouth. I tore my hands away from the underbrush and cloth came with them.
Three’s mask, torn as her flesh, hung from my hands. Strands of hair fluttered in the breeze.
I screamed.
The sound ripped from my throat, rattling out of my mouth, and a rushing filled my ears. Three was real, had been
real, and this was real. The drops of blood crashed loud enough to deafen, and I dragged my gaze up. The mask fell from my hands.
Three hung from the branch like laundry left to dry, a stiletto knife sticking from the back of her neck.
I clawed my way up a tree. They were back, they were back. The shadows had found me, the only Nacean face they’d missed. Twigs ripped through my arms, bark splintered under my nails, and I clung to the sturdiest branch I could find, trembling among the leaves. They couldn’t climb. They never looked up. They wouldn’t find me.
A muffled, breathy word broke the shrill whine in my mind.
“Who?”
Three! Three, Three. Lady, I didn’t know her name, but she wasn’t theirs to take and tear and play at. She’d such brown eyes.
Staring.
“Who is that?”
I tried to breathe and couldn’t, air catching in my throat. My hands shook till they blurred. I pressed my palms into my eyes.
My tree trembled. The shadow moved beneath me, nothing rasping over bark, clawing for my skin.
“Who are you?” the blackness muttered.
They couldn’t have me.
A shriek cut through the haze—overpowering the rushing in my ears and dripping burned into my mind.
The others. I’d forgotten the others. They didn’t know what the shadows were like, what they really were, how to stay clear of them. No one deserved this death.
Four sobbed, one hand fluttering around Three’s face and the other clenching her mask. He screamed and screamed and screamed, and I was sure the sound would never stop.
“Climb.” The word died in my throat, buried under breaths I couldn’t take and the taste of blood. I sucked in a deep gulp of air and shimmied down the trunk. “You have to climb.”
Four looked up. My feet hit the ground, slipping in the mud.
Black claws curled around his shoulders and dragged him back. He howled, the sound filling my head. Three’s mask hit the ground.
The noise died.
I ran.
The others, all the others—Ruby and Emerald and Amethyst. The auditioners, the soldiers, Our Queen. The shadows would kill everyone.
They’d kill Elise.
Mask of Shadows Page 9