by E. C. Blake
They rode up Processional Boulevard from the gate, past high-class shops only the wealthiest of Tamita’s citizens could afford to patronize. Well-dressed ladies with elaborate hairdos piled high above their ornate Masks chatted coolly with one another along the boardwalks bordering the boulevard, paved with massive blocks of white stone. Mara remembered sitting on the city wall with Mayson (she felt a pang and pushed it aside ruthlessly—no guilt, not now) and laughing at the countrywomen in the Outside Market who did nothing with their hair. She had not had her own hair done properly since her disastrous Masking. Now she was one of those country girls she had mocked. Well, she thought, it’s hardly the only change since then.
The guardhouse was just where Jess had said, and just where Mara remembered it: to the right of the Palace Gate, which stood open, though of course it was heavily guarded by Watchers. “Here we go,” she murmured to Keltan. “Ask for Prilk.”
“I remember,” he said. Together they rode up to the guardhouse, a stone building about half the size of Mara’s old house, and dismounted. The only door, which faced Processional Boulevard, stood open. Keltan stuck his head inside. “I’m looking for Prilk,” he said to someone Mara couldn’t see.
“You found him,” said a voice. Keltan stepped back, and a Watcher appeared in the doorway. He had a thick thatch of silver hair and brown eyes. His already thin lips thinned further in a moue of disapproval behind his Mask’s mouth slit. “Who’s this, then?”
“Her name is Prella,” Keltan said. “She’s from Yellowgrass.”
“And why is she here?”
“She’s a cousin of one of the Child Guard. Greff,” Keltan said. “She has bad news about his parents.”
“Greff.” Prilk nodded. “I know him.” He cocked his head to one side. “Why’d she rate a Watcher escort?”
“Coincidence,” Keltan said with a shrug. “I was coming this way on my own business. Offered to ride with her.”
Prilk’s lips twitched. “Coincidence. Right.” He looked at Mara. “How long since Masking, girl?”
“Couple of months,” Mara said. She kept her head down and barely murmured her reply, hoping Prilk would think her shy rather than terrified of being identified.
“Have a good trip?” he said to her.
She nodded mutely.
He looked past her at Keltan. “Bet you did,” he said, a leer in his voice, and sudden anger seized her. She could kill him where he stood—
She shoved the fury down, hard, and swallowed.
“Yes, I did,” Keltan said, with a dirty chuckle. And that made the fury surge again, even though she knew he was only playing a role.
I’ve got to control this rush to anger, she thought. I’ve got to. It’ll get us both killed.
It’s the Lady. She’s still in here with me.
She’s also dead, she told herself firmly. And you’re not. You can control it. You have to.
“Let me check the schedule,” Prilk said. He disappeared inside, came back a minute later. “All right,” he said. “Greff will be released from the Autarch’s presence in two hours. I’ll have him brought here. You can meet him in the back room, girl.” He jerked a thumb over his shoulder. “Ten minutes. And I’ll be in there with you.” He glanced at Keltan. “No need for you to be there,” he said.
“I’d like to be, if I can,” Keltan said. “I knew Greff growing up.”
Prilk shrugged. “Suit yourself. Two hours.”
He went back inside.
Mara and Keltan walked away from the guardhouse, leaving their horses tethered outside it. “Two hours,” she murmured to him. “And the riders from the Watcher Army could arrive any minute. Once the Autarch hears their warning, will he allow his Child Guard to leave his presence at all?”
“I don’t know,” Keltan said. They walked a few more minutes, ambling back down Processional Boulevard toward the main gate. “Mara, can this actually work?” He glanced at her. “I don’t want you hurt.”
“I won’t be hurt if this fails,” she said. “I’ll be dead. So will you. So will everyone we know in the unMasked Army. So will Chell and all his men. But we will also be dead even if we don’t try to overthrow the Autarch. Maybe not right away, but soon enough. So what choice do we have?”
Keltan sighed. “Perfectly true. Perfectly depressing.” He looked up and down the boulevard. “So. Two hours. What’s a good place to eat?”
“Do you have money?” Mara asked.
Keltan shook his head.
“Neither do I. And we might be just a little conspicuous in a restaurant anyway, don’t you think?”
“But I’m hungry,” Keltan said plaintively.
“There’s still some sausage and hard cheese.”
“Which we ate for the last three meals,” Keltan grumbled, but in the end, they ate the last of their marching rations sitting on a low wall that bordered a fountain and watching the Masked denizens of Tamita go by. “I hate eating in a Mask,” Keltan complained. “You have to cut everything up into small bits to fit through the opening. Which is extra-small in a Watcher Mask.” He tossed a piece of sausage to Whiteblaze: the wolf gobbled it up and looked up hopefully for more.
“It looks funny, too,” Mara said absently. She wasn’t really paying much attention to Keltan. She was feeling the ebb and flow of magic all around her as people passed by. A little from most, a lot from the occasional Gifted. So much magic. And how much of it is the Autarch drawing on through the newest Masks? she wondered.
She remembered what the Watcher on the road had told them about the Autarch forcing youngsters “fifteen to eighteen” into arms training. All of them would be wearing the new Masks. Could he control them, as the Lady had controlled her villagers in the mining camp?
She remembered thinking, when she was little, that the Autarch could see everything at once, that he was looking out through the eyes of the Masks. Her father had told her that was nonsense. But now she had met the Lady, who could look out through the eyes of her wolves . . . though Mara had never mastered the trick. Had the Lady also been able to look out through the eyes of the villagers in her Cadre, her “human wolfpack”? Did the Autarch have that knack, as well?
Could he be looking at them through someone’s Mask even now?
She shuddered. Keltan noticed and scooted closer on the bench. “Cold?”
“It’s not that,” she said. Then she reconsidered. “Not only that. It is chilly. And I left my cloak in my saddlebags.”
“Cold air must have moved in with that rain last night,” Keltan said. “Here.” He took off his Watcher’s cape and passed it to her; she draped it around her shoulders, not so much because she was really cold as because Keltan had been so thoughtful. That alone warmed her. “This uniform is warm enough without it,” he went on. “Warmer than ordinary clothes, anyway.”
“Not really that ordinary,” Mara said, and it was true: she’d felt horribly self-conscious since entering the city, dressed as she was in the usual unMasked Army garb of sturdy brown trousers, scuffed brown boots, a forest-green shirt, and a padded black vest. (The entire army had shed the blue-and-white uniforms of the Lady, for obvious reasons.) She remembered how, as her Masking had neared, she had hated wearing the modest long skirts and long-sleeved blouses her mother had insisted she wear instead of the short tunics she’d worn as a child, but she wished she had something like that now.
All around were Masked women, all of whom wore proper long dresses, not trousers, and in a riot of color: blues and reds and greens, white belted with gold, black studded with pearls harvested from the shallows of the southern sea. Well, well-off women wear those things, she amended herself, but they were pretty much the only women to be seen along Processional Boulevard. There were plenty more women in the city who made do with ordinary white blouses and staid blue or black skirts like her mother had made her wear. And a few, she knew, who
wore a good deal less, but only at night and only in certain neighborhoods. The Masks and everything else came off once they were indoors with their male “friends.”
She blinked. She didn’t usually think about such things.
You were thinking about them in the tent last night with Keltan, she thought. And in that hut with Chell a few months ago, when you tried to put your hand down his—
“Pants,” Keltan said.
She jumped like she’d been stuck. “What?”
“Pants,” Keltan said. “That’s what sets you apart right now. No women in Tamita seem to wear pants.”
“Not on Processional Boulevard. It’s a place to see and be seen.”
“Yeah? Didn’t spend much time in this part of town when I was growing up,” Keltan said sourly. “Father wouldn’t have liked it. And he’d have taken it out on Mother.” He looked down. “I tried so hard to be good, so he wouldn’t hurt Mother. And in the end . . .” He shook his head.
Mara glanced at him. He’d rarely talked about his family, but he’d told her that his father had killed his mother when he was ten, and had been hanged for it. He’d witnessed that, just as she had witnessed her father’s hanging, but unlike her he’d been pleased to see his father die. “What did you do, after . . . that?” she said. “You’ve never told me. How did you survive?”
Keltan shrugged. “Apprenticed to a tanner.”
Mara made a face. “Yuck.”
“Important work,” Keltan said. “Skilled work. I learned a trade.”
“But the smell . . . !”
“You get used to it,” Keltan said. Then he laughed. “Actually, no, you don’t. And it kind of follows you around. Which is why, even after my parents were gone, I wasn’t on Processional Boulevard very often. I was glad enough to leave the tannery when I decided to flee my Masking.”
“Did you tell your Master what you intended?”
“How could I?” Keltan said. “His Mask would have cracked if he’d lied for me. Fact is, I’ve often wondered what he did after I left.”
“Maybe you’ll find out when this is all over.”
“Maybe.”
Shouts suddenly erupted at the main gate. A horse neighed. A moment later it came galloping up the boulevard, whipped to a frenzy by the Watcher on its back, who used the same lash on anyone who didn’t get out of his way fast enough. Mara saw an elderly woman, struck across the back of the head, cry out and fall to her knees, and anger flared inside her. Whiteblaze stood up and growled. So much magic around her. She could—
No, she told herself. You can’t.
“Rider from the Watcher army, I’ll bet,” Keltan said softly to her. “The Autarch is about to find out the unMasked Army is on the way.”
“And he’ll close the Palace,” Mara said. She jumped up, pulling off Keltan’s cloak and tossing it to him at the same time. He caught it deftly. “It’s almost time to go back to meet Prilk, isn’t it?”
“Close,” Keltan said, glancing at the sundial that shared the small plaza with the fountain. He fastened the clasp of the cloak around his neck again. “Not quite time yet.”
“Maybe Greff is early,” Mara said. “Let’s get back there.”
They made their way back up the boulevard toward the walls of the Palace. A general sense of agitation hung over the coiffed heads of the wealthy ladies in the wake of the Watcher’s turbulent passing, heads which turned sharply as a trumpet blared from the far end of the boulevard. “They’re closing the gates,” Mara said.
They reached the guardhouse. Prilk stood in the doorway. “Oh, good, you’re here,” he said. “Greff is in the back room. Something happening up in the Palace, though, so I don’t know if you’ll have your full ten minutes . . .” He stepped aside to allow them to enter his office. He glanced at Whiteblaze. “Should . . . that . . . be in here?”
“Yes,” Mara said. She gave the paper-strewn desk, wooden chairs, and round pot-bellied stove only a cursory glance. “Where . . . ?”
Prilk opened a door in the back of the office. “He’s in here.”
The three of them plus Whiteblaze crowded through the door into another room, half the size of the office. A slender youth dressed in white robes stood by the window that faced the Palace, staring at the Gate. He turned as they entered, light flashing off of his silver Mask. “They said you have a message for me,” he said, voice trembling. “Is it . . . is it my parents?” His glance fell to Whiteblaze, and his eyes widened behind the Mask. “Is that a wolf?” Then his gaze rose to Mara again, and he frowned. “Who are you?”
“Prella,” Mara said. “From Yellowgrass.”
“Who? I don’t know any Prella.”
Prilk stepped forward. “What’s going on?”
Keltan quietly closed the door to the office, positioning himself behind Prilk, hand on his dagger. They’d discussed this: if what Mara was about to attempt failed as it had with the Watcher in the farmyard, he’d be ready.
She felt the flow of Prilk’s magic. She reached into his mind with her Gift, and bolstered by the magic she drew from Whiteblaze, altered it. It seems so easy now, she thought. But is that because I’m getting better . . . or because of the Lady’s soulprint?
Keltan drew his dagger . . . but he didn’t need it. Prilk drew a deep breath, and then simply turned without a word and went out, closing the door behind him.
“What . . . ?” Greff said. “What did you . . . ?”
“Simply convinced him he didn’t need to be in here,” Mara said. “He won’t think anything more about it. Which means he won’t remember this encounter if questions are asked later.”
“Questions? What questions?”
“How a member of the Child Guard was replaced by an imposter,” Mara said. She reached up and removed her fake Mask. “One with the power to bring down the Autarchy forever.”
TWENTY-ONE
The Worm in the Apple
“MARA?” Greff breathed. Then his hand flew to his Mask. “No! I can’t—”
Mara stepped over to him. “It’s all right,” she said. She pulled his hands away, then touched his Mask herself, the silver cool beneath her fingers—and lifted it from his face. He gasped and stumbled back, but she ignored him, holding the Mask in both hands, eyes closed.
Thrice now she had modified Masks. She expected the Child Guard Mask to be harder to reach inside, but in fact it was easier, and she frowned as she realized why: it was designed to allow more magic to flow through it, so the Autarch could more easily draw the power he needed from the enslaved children with whom he had surrounded himself. She concentrated, closing off the pathway to the Autarch, then freezing the soulprint so that, as with the Masks of Herella and Filia and Jess, any Watcher would see only an obedient citizen.
She opened her eyes.
Greff stared at her, brown eyes wide in his pale face. Though he had to be older than Keltan, he looked younger. The hood of his white robe had fallen back, revealing smoothly oiled black hair. “What have you done?” he breathed.
“Freed you,” she said. Now she examined his Mask with her eyes open. She had left hers smooth, but Greff’s real Mask had decorative patterns etched into it. She turned and put it down on the table, unslung her backpack, and drew out the one she had made. Studying them carefully side-by-side, she drew magic from Whiteblaze. This was where the careful control she had practiced right here in the Palace with Shelra, the Mistress of Magic, came into its own. A red line of magic traced the pattern from Greff’s Mask onto the plain silver of her own. When she was satisfied, she released it. The silver glowed white hot for a moment, there was an acrid smell, and then her Mask looked just like Greff’s . . . almost.
Another moment of concentration, and she had copied Greff’s soulprint, and his face, onto the new Mask. It twisted and bent, looked almost liquid for a moment, and then froze into its new shape.
Two identical silver Masks bearing Greff’s face stared blankly up from the table.
She handed his original Mask back to him. “Now I need your clothes,” she said. “Don’t worry, you can have mine.”
“You’re going to get us all killed!” Greff said.
“I may get myself killed,” Mara said, “but you should be all right. Ride my horse to the Gate. There’s no way they’ll stop a Child Guard who tells them he’s under orders from the Autarch to head out on the road, not if your Mask doesn’t belie it—which it won’t.”
“And go where?” Greff demanded.
“Home,” Mara said simply. “Your parents are waiting for you.”
Greff blinked. “Home? To my parents? You talked to them?” His face paled. “The Watchers will—”
“The Watchers won’t,” Mara corrected. “I’ve given them unbreakable Masks, like yours is now. The moment you rejoin them, you will all flee north. Whatever happens in Tamita, there is freedom beyond the mountains.” For now, she thought. If she failed, the Autarch would crush the Lady’s hidden hideaway as surely as he had crushed the Secret City.
And it will be my fault again.
No guilt!
It was getting harder and harder to uphold that mantra.
“And what are you going to do?” Greff demanded.
“Take your place,” Mara said. “And kill the Autarch in his own throne room.”
“You’re mad,” Greff breathed. “He’ll know the moment you enter—”
“Not if I’ve made this Mask right.” Mara touched the copy of Greff’s Mask. “Not if you quit talking and take off your clothes.”
“I hope you don’t say that to a lot of boys,” Keltan said dryly.
“You haven’t left me any choice,” Greff said. He pulled off his robe. Beneath it he wore a white tunic which he likewise stripped off, revealing a body thin to the point of emaciation, ribs standing out beneath pale skin, belly sunken. He kicked off his white boots and pulled down his white pants, then tugged them over his stockinged feet. His thighs and calves were every bit as scrawny-looking. He stripped off the socks and then, naked except for his drawers, wrapped his arms around himself. “Hurry up, it’s freezing.”