Faces

by E. C. Blake

  Then she sighed. She’d told Herella not to distract her, and here she was distracting herself. She concentrated again . . . and to her surprise, touched that aspect of her Gift easily. She could see the soulprint, like a ghostly copy of Herella’s face laid over the copper skin. She could also see within it the discoloration, almost like a tumor, marking her betrayal. So if I just remove that, she thought, and then smooth the rest . . . and freeze it in place . . .

  Her hands moved over the copper. Magic flowed out of her. More magic flowed into her from Whiteblaze. The work was delicate. If even a hint of betrayal remained visible . . .

  Time passed. She had no notion of how much. And then, finally, it was done. She released the Mask and stepped back. She took a deep breath.

  The room had gone dark, only gray twilight showing through the cracks in the shutters.

  Herella was gone.

  SIXTEEN

  Black and Silver

  MARA SPAT OUT a curse she’d learned from Chell’s sailors and spun toward the archway into the shop. She stopped dead as she saw the Maskmaker standing there, a covered platter in one hand and a bottle of wine in the other. “I thought you might be hungry when you were finished,” she said, and Mara swallowed her anger, again wondering why it had come so easily, and managed a small smile instead.

  “Thank you,” she said. “That’s very considerate.”

  “Is it done?” Herella asked. She crossed to the table, put down the platter and the wine, and leaned over the Mask. “It’s . . . perfect,” she breathed. “You can’t tell it’s been broken.”

  “Wouldn’t be much use if you could,” Mara said. The smell of roast chicken from the platter was making her mouth water. “May I . . . ?”

  “That’s why I brought it,” the Maskmaker said absently. She picked up the Mask. “And the magic . . . ?”

  “Think what you want. Say what you will. The Mask won’t care.” Mara lifted the lid of the platter. The bird looked as wonderful as it smelled, and there were roast carrots and potatoes accompanying it, plus a small loaf of crusty bread with a pat of butter melting inside it. “You made this?”

  Herella laughed. “Well, it’s not as if I have servants. I cook for myself. And I’m pretty good, if I do say so myself.”

  “I’d say you’re wonderful,” Mara said, and sat down to eat. But she froze with a piece of bread halfway to her mouth as pounding erupted on the front door.

  “Watcher!” Herella said, her hand flying to her throat.

  “Put on your Mask,” Mara said. “I’ll answer it.”

  She got up and went out into the shop. The pounding came again. Mara reached up and undid her ponytail, letting her hair fall loose around her shoulders. She gave it a good mussing with both hands, rubbed her eyes, and then reached out to open the door, yawning as she did so, so the Watcher on the other side got a good look at her gullet before he saw anything else. “Oh!” she said, snapped her mouth shut, and then laughed. “I’m sorry, you woke me.”

  “I apologize.” It was the same Watcher who had met her in the street. “The sun has set. You cannot leave your horse on the street. Have you even fed and watered him?” He peered past her into the dim interior of the shop. “Is the Maskmaker here?”

  “I’m here, Tranik,” Herella said from behind Mara. She glanced over her shoulder. The Maskmaker was wearing the renewed Mask, though there was a slight tremor to her voice that hinted to Mara that perhaps she was not entirely sanguine about its effectiveness.

  Mara, holding her breath, looked back at the Watcher—Tranik. But if he noticed anything strange about her Mask, he didn’t say anything—and he certainly would have, being a Watcher. “Hello, Herella,” Tranik said. “The girl will stay with you tonight?”

  “Yes,” Herella said, and the tremor in her voice was gone. “We are still discussing her Mask, and I can hardly put her back on the road in the night with bandits about.”

  “Her horse must be stabled,” Tranik said. “Curfew is already upon us.”

  “I’ll see to it,” Herella said.

  Tranik nodded. He lowered his gaze to Mara. “Remember, when you go back, I will send two Watchers with you to talk to your parents.”

  “I remember,” Mara said.

  The Watcher grunted and stumped away.

  “What will you do about that?” Herella whispered.

  “I don’t know yet,” Mara said. “Where do I take the horse?”

  “The stables are in the building in back,” Herella said. “Bring the horse around the side of the house and I’ll let you into the yard.”

  Mara stepped out into the deepening gloom. There were still a few people on the street, but all seemed in a hurry to get somewhere else. Curfew, she thought. Just like Tamita. She untethered the horse. “Sorry, boy,” she said. “I should have looked after you the moment I arrived.” He nuzzled her coat, looking for food, and she felt guilty. She turned to lead him to the stable, then paused. She had the feeling she was being watched, and unlike most people, it was just possible she really could sense that. She looked around. No one appeared to be paying her any mind, all focused on getting to wherever they needed to be rather than out on the street after curfew. She raised her eyes. There were hills to the south of the town, nothing but dark silhouettes in the fading light.

  Edrik, she thought. He couldn’t leave well enough alone. He sent someone to watch me. She felt the flare of anger that was becoming all too familiar, and tamped it down. Even if she were right, and Keltan or Hyram or someone else from the unMasked Army were in those woods overlooking the town, there was nothing she could do about it. She just hoped they didn’t do anything foolish.

  She led the horse around the side of the house as instructed. The Maskmaker was holding open a gate in the courtyard wall. Mara led the horse through, and then around to the back of the outbuilding she had thought held only the Maskmaker’s kiln. There were only two stalls, neither occupied, but there was fresh hay and fresh water and the horse was pleased to see both. Leaving him happily munching, Mara followed Herella back into the workshop. Herella bustled around, lighting the oil lamps that punctuated the walls. In their yellow light, amplified by oval mirrors, she stepped to the round workshop table and reached up to remove her Mask once more. She held it out at arm’s length, staring at its copper face. “You did it,” she said in wonder. “You actually created a Mask that can fool a Watcher.”

  “Now do you believe I can do what I say I can do?” Mara said. “Now will you help me do it?”

  “I’ll help,” Herella said. “If you can really overthrow the Autarch . . . I’ll do anything.” She gave her Mask a nervous glance, but it remained merrily intact.

  “Then let’s get started,” Mara said. “After I finish eating.” She sat down to conclude her interrupted repast.

  “I still don’t have enough silver to make a Child Guard Mask,” Herella said as Mara munched.

  “But can you get it?” Mara said. She regarded the bottle of wine, but decided not to have any. It didn’t seem like a good idea before sculpting a Mask on which the overthrow of the Autarch might depend. She and wine had never really gotten along very well.

  Herella chewed on her lower lip, a childlike sign of uncertainty that made her look younger. “Perhaps,” she said. “But not until the morning shift at the mine. I know the morning foreman. Maybe I can sweet-talk him.”

  “Let’s start with the Watcher Mask, then,” Mara said. She pushed aside the now-empty plate, and turned to regard the pigments on the shelves. “As I remember my father’s lessons, for black we need cobalt, manganese, and iron rust?”

  Herella nodded. “Very good.” She pointed to the green wall. “They’re all on the top shelf, just to the left of the door. If you could fetch them down for me . . . ?”

  They labored into the night by yellow lamplight. Mara found herself enjoying the work more than she ex
pected. It brought back memories of . . . was it really just last year? . . . working with her father in his workshop during her pre-apprenticeship, learning the shaping and firing of clay even though she was prohibited from learning anything of how to infuse them with magic. That knowledge had come from the Lady. If this all ends well, she thought as she kneaded the clay, I could become a potter. I’d like that. Nice and peaceful. Safe . . .

  When the clay was mixed with the elements that would turn it black when fired, Herella hesitated. “This is the point where I would normally infuse it with the ‘recipe,’” she said. She went to the shelf and brought down a black lodestone urn. She opened it, and Mara looked inside. It contained black lodestone dust, pulsing in her Gifted vision with all the colors of magic . . . magic Mara knew she dare not touch, for it was linked to the Autarch.

  “Leave it out,” Mara said.

  Herella nodded. She put the urn back on the shelf, then returned to the table. “Will you sculpt it, or shall I?” she asked.

  “I will,” Mara said. “I’ve seen more Watchers than you have.” That was an understatement.

  “Did your father craft Watcher Masks, too?” Herella asked as Mara took the clay and began to mold it onto one of the blank wooden face molds that formed the basis for all Masks.

  “Only for high-ranking Watchers who wanted something special,” Mara said. “The Watchers have their own Maskmaker, I was told, though I never knew who it was.”

  The Mask quickly took shape. Mara cut out the eyeholes and the mouth opening, the latter smaller than a normal Mask’s. She had done this basic level of sculpting for her father many times during her pre-apprenticeship; she had done it for herself during all her failed attempts to make fake Masks for Catilla. She thought she could have done it in her sleep.

  All Masks looked the same until they were placed on the face of the person being Masked: then, through the magic they contained, they shaped themselves . . . or failed, tearing apart the wearer’s face in the process.

  Pain . . . terror . . . the crunch of her nose breaking . . . blood on white stone . . . her mother’s screams . . .

  She shuddered, and deftly adjusted the brow; one side was slightly thicker than the other. Then she was done.

  “That was good work,” Herella said. “You would have made an excellent Maskmaker.”

  “No offense,” Mara said, “but I’m hoping that soon there won’t be any Maskmakers at all.” She smiled a little. “I’m afraid that means you’ll be out of a job.”

  Herella smiled back. “Nothing would make me happier.” She regarded the blank Mask. “So will you add the final enchantment?”

  Mara shook her head. “I know how to do it . . . now . . . but you have more practice. Please?”

  “Of course.” Herella reached into the basin of magic. Mara watched her. This was the step she had not been able to replicate when she was making fake Masks for Catilla, the reason her Masks had been nothing but heavy bits of pottery.

  Herella deftly passed her hands over the Mask. Mara could see red-gold magic flowing into the clay, which continued to glow in Mara’s Gifted sight even after Herella withdrew her hands. “Done,” she said. She looked at Mara. “It needs days of drying before you can fire it, you know. Can you wait that long?”

  “No,” Mara said. “I can’t. But I don’t need to.” She dipped red from the basin of magic in the middle of the table and passed her hand over the Mask. It hissed and a cloud of steam rose into the air and vanished. “Bone dry,” Mara said.

  Herella touched the Mask. “Well!” she said. “I wish I had that trick.” She glanced at the basin. “But I will run short of magic by month’s end at this rate.”

  “If all goes well, that won’t matter,” Mara said. “Now for the plain white Mask.”

  “I’ll do it,” Herella said. “Second nature.” And indeed, it took her less than an hour to produce it. Once again, Mara used magic to dry it. Herella put both of the new Masks on a tray, said, “I’ll put them in the kiln,” and went out the back door into the darkness.

  This time, Mara started not with clay, but with wax. Casting a metal Mask was far different from carving one from clay. First the Mask had to be modeled in wax. The wax Mask would then be covered with a heavy coating of clay—leaving one strategically placed opening. The clay would be fired, melting the wax and hardening it. The melted wax would pour out through the open channel, and then, once the clay had cooled, the molten silver would be poured in through that same channel. One it had solidified, the clay covering could be broken, and the Mask polished.

  Casting a metal object normally took a matter of days, but that was without magic involved. With what the Lady had taught her, Mara could do it in a day, cooling clay and silver far faster than normal: but it still started with the wax carving. She had barely begun when Herella returned. “Tomorrow night at the earliest before we can pull them out,” she said. “Couldn’t you fire the Masks with magic as well?”

  “Maybe,” Mara said, “but it would be delicate work, and if they cracked, we’d have to start over. No, we’ll leave that part of it to the kiln.”

  She bent back to her task. Herella watched for a while, then disappeared. She came back in half an hour or so. “I’ve prepared your bed,” she said.

  Bed! The word sounded wonderful. Mara brushed her hair out of her eyes with the back of one hand. “Can’t come until I’ve finished this.”

  “Top of the stairs, first door on the left,” Herella said. She continued to watch Mara work. “You look a lot like your father,” she said softly after a few moments. “I watched him work by gaslight one evening during my training . . . you stick the tip of your tongue out between your lips when you’re working, just like he did.”

  Mara stopped working. She’d forgotten that. She pulled her tongue back into her mouth and blinked away sudden tears. Then she picked up her scraper and bent over her work again.

  By the time she had finished the wax Mask, covered it with clay, and put the mold into the kiln, Herella had been long asleep. Mara straightened her aching back. She had no idea how late it was. She turned down the lamps, went out into the shop, found the stairs and the room at the top of them, undressed, and was asleep within seconds of laying her head on the pillow.

  ···

  The next day they went to get the silver.

  “The foreman’s name is Ginther,” Herella said as they climbed the road to the mine, paved, like the road she had seen running along the cliff face, in crushed white stone. Mara had told Whiteblaze to stay put, and the last she’d seen of him, he was contentedly snoozing in a patch of sunlight in Herella’s courtyard. “Ginther was sweet on me once, I think. Married now, and three near-grown children—all of whose Masks I have made—but I should be able to talk him into giving us what we need. Some of the other foremen, it might have been harder. There aren’t a lot of Gifted in Silverthorne except for the Watchers, so there’s a bit of superstitious wariness.”

  Mara remembered how even Keltan had reacted when she had first used magic in his presence to repair Kirika’s torn cloak in the cavern they had passed through on the way to the Secret City. “I’ve encountered that myself.”

  “You,” Herella went on, “just stick to the story you told Watcher Tranik. Same story, mind: last thing we need is Ginther and Tranik comparing notes and something not adding up. Tranik is sharper than you’d expect a Watcher in the back of nowhere to be. Maybe because what we mine is valuable to the Autarch. But don’t speak at all unless Ginther asks you a direct question.”

  They were approaching the top of the road, and a kind of guardhouse, a little hut that stood outside the gate through the fence surrounding the mine buildings. One window in the hut faced their direction; the other was at right angles to them. Both were unshuttered, and inside the hut Mara could see the shadowed figure of a man, bent over.

  The morning shift had enter
ed an hour before and the night shift was long departed, so they had the road to themselves. They went up to the guardhouse. The man inside, who wore a plain gray mask marked on the cheeks with the crossed hammer and chisel of a miner inlaid in silver (naturally), looked up as they approached.

  “Maskmaker,” he said. “What brings you to the mine?”

  “Hello, Shanks,” Herella said briskly. “I need to see Foreman Ginther. Is he in his office?”

  The miner nodded and got up. “I’ll take you—”

  “No need,” Herella said. “I know the way.”

  The miner nodded again, and shifted his gaze to Mara. “And who’s this?” he said. She couldn’t see his expression, but she heard the leer in his voice.

  “Ranch girl, in to make Masking plans,” Herella said. “How’s your wife, Shanks?”

  Shanks looked away from Mara. “Fine,” he mumbled. “She’s fine.” He sat down. “Go on in,” he said without looking at them again.

  “Thank you,” Herella said. She led Mara through the gate in the fence, a simple wooden construction maybe six feet high—nothing on the scale of the stockade around the magic mine. Well, she thought, they don’t have to worry about their workers escaping.

  The smelter loomed ahead of them, smoke rising from it, and behind it, the waterfall cascaded down the cliff face. The wheezing sound grew louder. “What is that noise?” she said. “It sounds like the building is breathing.”

  Herella laughed. “Suppose it is, in a way. Although a human making that sound wouldn’t be long for this world . . . it’s bellows. They’re driven by the waterfall back there. Keeping the fires hot enough to smelt the ore.”

  “Are we going in there?”

  Herella shook her head. “Shanks said Ginther’s in his office. It’s in one of the outbuildings—that one, over there.” “Over there” was a modest one-story structure made of stone, with a slate roof. Herella led the way to it and stuck her head in the open door. “Ginther?”