Mask of Shadows

by Linsey Miller

  Maud straightened my clothes one last time and wrinkled her nose at my less-than-polished boots. “Go now—the guards will switch shifts after you get there. It should buy you some more time.”

  “You sure you’re not a criminal mastermind?” I muttered as I left.

  Maud only scowled.

  But she was right. Two yawning guards patted me down as soon as I crossed the threshold. I’d not stayed in training long enough to study the building, but it was larger and taller than it looked. The first floor dropped into the ground—more basement than anything else—and gave the guards their own little room for checking people as they came and went. I adopted Maud’s passive stance while they looked over me.

  “I only need something stronger to clean up my auditioner’s mess.” I shrugged while he patted down where I’d hidden my lock picks and dropped my voice into the soft, resigned tone of someone forced to do something out of their control. “You know how they are.”

  The explanation had been Maud’s idea.

  He huffed and waved me through, laughing when his partner saluted me through her yawn. I smiled back at her.

  “I appreciate it.”

  The building was mostly deserted. Only two servants paced the halls, scrubbing the floors by the dim dawn light. I fiddled with my heavy coat, high collar noose-tight and stiff sleeves confining as shackles. It didn’t take long to find Isidora dal Abreu’s laboratory.

  I wasn’t keen to leap out a window though. Not one I’d never seen. Worst-case scenario was that Maud misplaced the cart and I broke my legs, tumbling ass over shattered feet to the hard-packed dirt.

  I slipped my lock picks out, fumbled on my first attempt, but popped open the door on my second.

  None of this mattered; fear didn’t matter. I had to do this.

  I slipped into the laboratory. Shelves lined the walls from floor to ceiling, and glassware glittering in the dim light of one dying lamp littered the tables. A few chairs were scattered throughout—one covered by a fancy yellow coat with obnoxious black stitching had a sheathed sword with a melon-shaped pommel resting on the table before it. I slipped off my own coat and scanned the walls. I only needed a little nightshade.

  Any more and I’d be poisoning Four instead of fixing him.

  A sketch of the bell-shaped flowers covered a label halfway up the far wall. I picked the lock on the cabinet.

  Among the dozens of vials inside sat the one I needed. The small white crystals that countered Lady’s Palm were hard to create unless you were a proper physician, and they were usually too expensive to buy if you were a thief unlucky enough to need them. I carefully picked it up.

  I might actually pull this off.

  “You couldn’t ask me this last night?” The sharp, sleep-husky voice of Isidora slipped through the door. “Or literally any other time that wasn’t now?”

  I paused. A muffled laugh answered her.

  “Triad bless, you’ve not grown up at all.” The tap of her graceful footsteps neared.

  Only one thing left to do. No more time to stall.

  I backed up against a counter, kissed Elise’s ring, and leapt.

  Air hit my face. I bent my knees, vial of nightshade safe in my chest pocket. The world blurred, a smear of greens and browns ripping through my sight, and I clenched my teeth and looked down. A white smudge rushed toward me. A jolt shuddered up my heels.

  I collapsed, breath knocked out of me. A puff of down feathers fluttered over my shoulders. I checked the vial.

  Safe.

  Maud plucked a feather from my hair. “You’re welcome.”

  I opened my mouth but could only gulp down the breaths that my landing had smacked out of me.

  “I do love leaving my employers speechless.” She clicked something on the cart and shoved it down the path. “Did you get it?”

  I nodded.

  She’d caught me. She’d kept her word. I patted one of the pillows she’d tied around the edges of the cart.

  “Good.” She pulled a string and the knots holding the pillows in place fell. Quick release. Clever. “I’d have had a bigger mess to clean if I’d placed this incorrectly. It might be my job, but I loathe extra work.”

  I couldn’t stop myself from grinning even though my heart was still beating like horse’s hooves pounding my ribs to dust. My backside would be bruised, but it was worth it. I could bribe Four into recanting.

  “It was fun to watch too.” Maud shoved the cart across the little lip of the bridge. “You know what you remind me of?”

  Not a cat. Everyone said cat.

  Rath always said, “The slinking and staring and general air of arrogance only you and cats have mastered.” Then he’d point to the ratty-eared street cats with dark fur and feral eyes. The sort that hissed and clawed when people got too close.

  It made my skin crawl.

  “One of those mountain goats.” Maud raised her hands to her head, fingers curling into little horns, and scrunched up her nose. “The climbing ones.”

  I scowled. “A goat?”

  “Only the mountain ones.” She nodded. “They can stand on air, the good ones. Stroll right up cliff sides sleek as glass and never fall.”

  “How do I remind you of a climbing goat after falling out a window?” I kicked a dirty blanket off my legs and groaned. A goat.

  She laughed. “I saw one fall once. Made the funniest sound when it hit the ground—like the ground was the one in the wrong, not the goat.”

  I smacked her hand.

  “Trust me,” she said without flinching. “You’re a mountain goat.”

  I wasn’t a mountain goat, but she did catch me. I’d the nightshade in my grasp, and Four would soon recant. I settled back into the cart and watched the sky roll past overhead.

  “I trust you.”

  Thirty-Two

  Maud taught me the last little tricks of serving—pour Emerald’s drinks from the left while everyone else was from the right and keep your head ducked to avoid meeting gazes. I practiced slipping Lady’s Palm into a glass.

  Using dirt instead of the powder, of course. I wasn’t dealing with the real thing till I had to.

  So long as there was nothing else weird in his drinks, I could slip the Lady’s Palm to Four easily. All I had to do was be there on time.

  Which left me plenty of time to see Elise.

  I checked my uniform one last time, opened the door to the nook, and grinned. Elise sucked in a breath.

  “I will admit,” she said, rising from her chair and gliding across the floor to me, the fresh bite of lemon coming with her. She’d a stack of papers nearly tall as her, and she must’ve been working the night away while waiting for me. “While I would love for you to be Opal, I am very fond of your face.”

  She touched my cheek, fingertips clean but a few stubborn smears clinging to her palm. I smiled and ducked. I’d no mask to hide my blushing now.

  “Thank you for waiting for me. You must be tired.” I picked up her other hand and took a breath, ready to tell her everything she deserved to know.

  “I’m used to it.” She ran a thumb along the back of my hand where she’d splattered ink last night, little dots still visible. “I’m sorry. I try to keep my mess to myself most times.”

  I gestured to the smudge on the tip of her nose. “You can leave whatever marks you want on me.”

  “I can’t say no to that.” She laced her fingers through mine and tugged me to the table. “One last chance to talk.”

  I shuffled after her, gaze stuck on my hand in hers, and cleared my throat. “If I don’t die, I’ll find a way to talk to you again, even if it’s just a letter. You taught me to read and write, and I owe you for that.”

  “You don’t owe me anything.” She hummed deep in the back of her throat and pushed me into the chair. I curled my fingers around my palm, desperate to keep her warmth on my skin, and she picked up her pen. “But I would be upset if you didn’t at least write to tell me you’d lived.”

  I’d
come here looking for revenge and found a home. I could have both.

  I wanted both.

  “I’m assuming you’ve not joined the noble ranks of our servants?” Elise dipped her pen and gently—always gently, always soft—pried my hands apart, turning one over in her palm.

  “No, have to look the part today.” I tensed my fingers till the black line she’d drawn across my palm danced. “A meek little servant in a spotless uniform.”

  “Then I won’t ruin it.” Elise smiled and tucked the top button of the collar. “Relax.”

  “Ruin it?” My heart cracked against my ribs as her fingers slipped the buttons of the coat undone, one after the other, fingertips sliding down my chest. I held ramrod straight, painfully aware of her hands drifting lower and lower, the heat of her seeping through my thin shirt, and the brush of her hair against my chin.

  “That’s better,” she murmured, pushing the coat off my shoulders and pulling my arms free. She smoothed a hand down my shirt and rolled up the sleeves to my elbows. “I’ll keep the ink under your clothes too. Just in case.”

  I nodded, completely at a loss. Elise’s breathing quickened, and she dragged her nails down the inside of my arm. Her fingers paused above my racing pulse.

  “What have the auditions been like?” she asked. “The transition here? I’ve wondered how you ended up a thief in an auditioner’s mask.”

  “Exhausting.” I should’ve let Five kill me in the forest. At least it would’ve been faster than this slow death under Elise’s steady hands. “Life here’s better.”

  “Even with all the death?” She wrinkled her nose, and I’d a vivid flash of her face the first time we’d met as tutor and auditioner. I was so foolish—of course she didn’t like me for my dangerous mystery. Maybe a little, but after I’d become Twenty-Three, she’d preferred me. “I heard about the forest.”

  “The shadow kill?” I shuddered and gripped the table’s edge with my free hand. This was tender, intimate, and totally new. “I saw it. How’d you hear about it?”

  Elise glanced up, brush dripping ink into the pot. The sound slithered into my ears, and I shivered. She ran a warm hand up my arm.

  “The whole court heard about it. It’s an assault against Our Queen’s promise of safety. If she can’t keep the children sent to learn in her court safe, then no one will trust us. It’s only one step from visitors killing visitors to visitors killing nobles, and if word got out—even if it were false—that the shadows were back, she’d lose her right to the throne.” She pushed her glasses up her nose with her wrist and sighed. “I was worried it was you.”

  I shook my head. “Harder to get rid of me than a boy with some knives playing shadow.”

  She tapped her pen once and slid the brush over my arm, ink raising gooseflesh up my arms. She swirled the thin black line into a delicate curl of letters and flourishes, her other hand holding my arm firmly in place as I tried to hide my trembling. She finished off the word with a long twisting tail circling my elbow, raised my arm to her lips, and blew the damp ink dry.

  Heat blossomed in the pit of my stomach, writhing in my chest till I was sure it would burst from my skin. I stared at the crown of her head—jeweled pins placed like river stones next to the sea-green ribbon running through her curls—and squeezed my eyes shut. I needed to remember all this, every touch and every breath, in case it was my last good memory.

  It was certainly one of few.

  I shifted, arm still in Elise’s grasp, and managed to mutter, “What did you write?”

  “Opal.”

  I laughed, the low pitch catching me off guard. “Optimistic of you.”

  “I’m an optimistic person—the thief who would be Opal.” Elise pulled my arm into her lap again and leaned out of her chair till our knees were pressed together. I could taste the sharp black tea on her breath. “And if you die today, I want to remember you in every way I can. Especially since I don’t even know your name.”

  “Sallot.” It escaped me in a rush. She wanted to think of me when all was said and done, whether I was Opal or not. It filled me with a desperate need to move and speak and scream it to the rising sun. “Remember me as Sallot.”

  “A name and a face,” said Elise. “Good farewell presents.”

  I laughed again, and Elise raised a hand to my face, fingers skimming my jaw. The sound died in my throat.

  “I wish I’d met you properly.” We’d met days ago, and I’d thrown all that time away. I wanted to close the gap between us and know if she tasted like tea, memorize the line of her fingers and subtle flick of her wrist as she wrote, listen to the soft, delicate sound of her breath between each word. I wanted all the things I thought I could never have.

  “Sallot.”

  The sound of my name on her lips cut through every last barrier keeping my words inside my head. “Elise, I like you.”

  Her eyes widened. “I would hope so, or I’d be rather embarrassed.”

  “No, you don’t—” I said and stopped. I grabbed her hand, pressing my forehead to hers so the words would reach her even if my voice softened and fled. “You don’t understand. I hate Erlend. My entire life’s been stuck in the shadow of Erlend’s crimes, and I didn’t like you. I did, but I didn’t realize it. I kept trying to think of you as the same as the others, the lords and the ladies who started the war and razed my home, but you’re not like them. Not at all. And I’ve waited for so long for some chance to show them up and help Our Queen, and it’s here, but you’re here too, and I—”

  Elise closed the distance between us and pressed a light, chaste kiss against the corner of my mouth.

  “You shouldn’t kiss people who could kill you,” I whispered, all the blood in my veins singing her name and urging me to kiss her.

  “Don’t presume to know what I should or shouldn’t do,” she whispered back. “I know what I want, and that was a kiss for good luck. Do not die—you’ve an awful lot left to do and even more to explain to me.”

  I nodded. “I do owe you some explanations.”

  “Tonight then.” She turned in her chair till her back was flush against my chest and her hair brushed my chin with every breath. “Until then, something to remember me by.”

  Elise picked up her brush again. She dragged the ink across my arm in small sharp strokes. Drips turned into wispy letters under her fingers, and illegible scrawls bloomed into words I knew I’d seen but couldn’t place, blackening my skin from fingertips to elbow. She curled over my arm, and her lips seared my palm.

  “There.” She leaned against my shoulder instead of moving aside, ear pressed to my chest, and sighed.

  A faint black lip print shone in the center of my hand, her words spiraling out around it.

  “What’s it say?” I asked, resisting every desire to tilt my head and taste the answer on her lips.

  Tonight. If I lived.

  Elise chuckled, the sound ringing in my ears. She blushed and rubbed the ink from her lips with a thumb. “It’s a poem.”

  “But what’s it say?”

  “All the more reason for you to survive tonight.” Elise stared at me over her shoulder, lips set in a mock-serious, ink-smeared smirk. “It’ll keep me in your thoughts. I’m very selfish, you see.”

  “Not even a little bit.” I grinned. I wasn’t likely to stop thinking of her unless I got dumped in the Caracol. “Least tell me the book.”

  “The Way of Melting Snow. Isidora let me borrow it.” She glanced at the clock and shoved the pen into my hands. “Quick—your name.”

  I flexed my fingers, afraid the ink would crumble like ash. She wanted some part of me on her for longer than a heartbeat, and the thought rendered me senseless, unable to even recall what letters made up my name. “It won’t be pretty.”

  “I don’t want it to be pretty. I want it to be yours.”

  I picked up the pen with a shaking hand and wrote my name on her arm, splattering extra ink across her wrist and leaving a spotty trail of black from letter to lett
er. I was sloppy and sharp, none of Elise’s soft curves. She smiled down at it.

  I held our last glance in my mind as close as the ink on my skin.

  Thirty-Three

  The second test was a tense affair. Two was first, eyes darting over every dish and cup placed in front of her. The Left Hand watched from across the table, and Ruby tapped Two’s fingers with his spoon each time she raised a piece of food to her nose to sniff.

  “Subtly,” he drawled. “It’s very rude to insinuate your host is attempting to kill you.”

  Ruby glanced at me when he said it or at least turned his face to my corner. The Left Hand hadn’t told the guards to stop me when they let me enter. I stood in the corner meant for Maud, arms trembling after holding a pitcher of wine still for so long, and they let me be. Except for Ruby.

  He kept dumping his wine in the potted plant behind him and demanding I refill his cup. Dying by his hand might’ve been better than this.

  He must’ve recognized me.

  Two ate enough to be polite. She spat the poisonous mushrooms from the first dish into a handkerchief; took the wine but wisely refused the poisoned tea; and palmed the candied plums dusted with extra sugar and deadly sunrise trumpet. The servants moved only when called.

  By the time Two was done—alive but chastised for her posture—I was tired of holding a half-full pitcher of wine. This was too boring to be bearable.

  Four entered. Finally.

  I straightened. He was only two steps away and laughing. I gripped the handle of my pitcher tighter, the weight of Elise’s words on my skin giving me courage, and waited to pour his wine. The other servers fluttered around him, taking twice the time to set up his first plate so Emerald could slip white powder into his grits. He saw, smiled, and motioned to me. He never looked away from the Left Hand.

  Perfect.

  I bowed next to Four with my hand holding the packet of Lady’s Palm on top of the pitcher to keep it still while I poured a steady stream of poison into his glass. The poison dissolved on contact—odorless and tasteless once in liquid. Four must have assumed that if the Left Hand hadn’t touched the wine that it would be safe. Perfect.