Masks (15 page)

Catilla’s knuckles turned white as her thin fingers, clutching her cloak, curled into tight little fists . . . and then those fists relaxed. She took a deep breath. And then, to Mara’s enormous surprise, she chuckled. “You have fire, little one. Good.” She relaxed back into her chair. “And indeed, you ask the pertinent question, one I have asked myself year after year. How
is
our quest to overthrow the Autarch going? And the answer, year after year, is the same.” Her mouth twisted in sudden anger. “It’s going like shit.”

Mara blinked. It wasn’t that she’d never heard—and even, when away from her parents,
used
—that particular vulgarity before. She just hadn’t expected it to come out of the mouth of the birdlike little old woman before her. But Catilla’s frank admission of failure surprised her even more.

“We have never been able to strike an effective blow against the Autarch, because the very thing we wish to overthrow, the tyranny of the Masks, prevents us from infiltrating Tamita. Those who come to us with Masks—briefly—intact, we dare send only into the smaller villages, where Watchers are scarce, less observant, and less likely to be Gifted. They spread the rumors we want spread and bring back goods we need. But to send one such as that into Tamita would be a death sentence
and
reveal our existence to the Autarch. How can you foment rebellion when the rebellious, or any they convince of the rightness of their cause, are betrayed by their own faces?” She leaned forward again. “And
that
is why you were rescued.”

Mara still felt angry. “I don’t understand what use you think I can be. All those other children deserved rescue, too, and you stood by—”

“And would do again, and
will
do again, for there are wagons sent to the camp every month, and we will
not
strike at them again,” Catilla snapped. “Once, we
may
get away with: the Watchers will, we
hope
, assume the attack was carried out by bandits and will simply redouble their efforts to track and kill them. But twice? The risks are too great. Not just for us, but for everyone.” She slapped her open hand against her chest. “No one else stands against the Autarch.
No one
. If we are destroyed, no new rebellion will arise in your lifetime.” She snorted. “Not that you are likely to have much of a lifetime, if we are destroyed.”

Even through her anger, Mara could see the sense of what Catilla said, though doing so almost made her angrier. But something still bothered her. “You said you cannot infiltrate Tamita,” she said slowly. “But you also said you had an ally there, someone who told you of me. How has he escaped detection?”

“
That
secret I will not share.” Catilla studied her. “Edrik tells me you still have the Gift.
That
comes as a surprise.”

“I’m glad something does,” Mara muttered.

Catilla snorted. “It doesn’t change anything. We have no store of magic here and no one to train you in its use if we did, and I have always heard that without training and use, the Gift withers. Yours will no doubt fade soon enough. There must have been Gifted children born here in the Secret City over the decades, but since we have had no way of either testing them or teaching them, what use have their Gifts been? None. No, what matters is not that you still have your Gift. What matters is that you can make a Mask.”

And suddenly Mara thought she understood what Catilla wanted from her . . . and it terrified her. She jumped up. “No! I can’t make a Mask. Why would you think I could make a Mask?”

“You are the daughter of Charlton Holdfast, Master Maskmaker of Tamita,” Catilla said inexorably. “Maskmaker to the Gifted. Maskmaker to the Circle, to the Autarch Himself. You were pre-apprenticed to your father. We
know
he has already taught you much of the art. Don’t deny it.”

“I don’t deny I was
going
to learn to make Masks,” Mara said hotly. “What I deny is that I
have
learned! I don’t have a clue how to put the magic into them, don’t even know how to start—”

“But,” said Catilla, “we don’t
want
Masks with magic. Masks with magic are the
last
thing we want. What we want are clever forgeries.” She pointed at the chair. “Sit down and
listen
, and I will tell you what we need, and what you will do for us.” She leaned forward again, her eyes glittering in the candlelight, cold and reptilian. “For you
will
do what I ask, Mara, daughter of Charlton Holdfast. We have risked much to save you from death—or worse. You owe us, and you
will
repay us.”

“Or what?” Mara said, defiance blazing up inside her even though she knew she was already defeated, that she would have no choice but to do what Catilla wanted.

Catilla, it seemed, knew that, too, for she smiled, the sudden warmth of it like sunshine breaking through snow clouds. “Why discuss something that will never happen? Sit, child. Sit, and listen to what I propose.” She pointed at the chair behind Mara again. “Sit!”

And Mara, feeling strangely brittle, like a dry twig that might snap at any moment, sat and listened to what the unMasked Army demanded of her. But she couldn’t help wondering what would happen if she failed.

“I’ll Need a Few Things”

A
N HOUR LATER,
Mara sat with Keltan, Alita, and Prella beside a blazing driftwood fire on the beach, watching the surf rolling in, pale lines of foam appearing in the circle of flickering illumination, pouring over the sand, flattening, and then receding. The crackling of the fire and the endless wash of water on sand surrounded them in a private cocoon. No one could hear them out here.

The food Mara had eaten in the Great Chamber immediately after the interview with Catilla sat like a lump in her stomach. The others had peppered her with questions when she’d come back, but she’d said nothing, and Hyram, whether out of kindness to her or deference to his great-grandmother, had steered the conversation in other directions. Kirika had gone off by herself shortly after Mara returned, saying nothing. Simona had left next, announcing she wanted a bath more than anything. A few minutes later Hyram had been called away by his mother, and that was when Keltan, after a stealthy glance around, had opened his strangely bulky coat to reveal the two wine bottles tucked into its interior pockets and quietly suggested they take some mugs and go out to the beach. He now sat to her left, a wine bottle stuck in the sand between them.

She’d never had wine before in her life. Was it supposed to taste like that, fruity but not sweet, warming her throat and her insides? She hadn’t much liked the first couple of swallows, but it seemed to get better the more of it you drank, and about the time she’d emptied her mug she’d found herself telling the others everything Catilla had said.

“She wants you to do
what
?” Keltan lowered his own mug to stare at her.

“You heard me. Make counterfeit Masks, so the unMasked Army can sneak into the city and do . . . something. I’m not sure what. Try to assassinate the Autarch, maybe. She wouldn’t tell me.”

“Assassinate the Autarch?” Prella, seated on her right, stared at her wide-eyed. She’d taken one swallow of the wine, made a face, and passed it down to Alita, on the other side of Keltan. “You can’t do that!”

Alita, who had drunk Prella’s mug and her own and showed not the slightest sign it had had any effect, gave Prella another silent look. Prella subsided.
I think Alita still has
some
kind of magical Gift,
Mara thought.
Or maybe that’s what comes of growing up surrounded by boys.

Alita turned back to Mara. “I doubt that’s what they have in mind. Someone else would just take over.”

“Who?” Mara asked. “The Autarch is childless.”

“So what? He must have cousins or other blood relations. The line of succession is a many-headed snake. You can’t kill it just by cutting off one head; you have to kill the whole thing.”

“Could be a lot of infighting if that happened, though,” Keltan said thoughtfully. “Maybe even civil war . . .”

He and Alita continued in that vein, speculating what would happen if—or
when
—the Autarch died. Mara poured herself more wine and sipped it, saying nothing. She didn’t know what to think. She’d grown up under the rule of the Autarch. She’d never really given it much thought until her Masking had failed so spectacularly. The Autarch just
was
, a force of nature, like the wind or the rain.
Somebody
had to be in charge, and in Tamita, that was the Autarch. If her Mask had worked, she would never have even considered the
possibility
of overthrowing the Autarch.

Of course, she wouldn’t have dared to, while she wore the Mask; and that was part of the reason for overthrowing him, wasn’t it?

Her mug was empty. She filled it again from the bottle by her side as Alita said, “Well, whatever they’re up to, why now? The unMasked Army has been out here for what? Sixty years? The Autarch is an old man. He can’t live much longer. Why act now, when they’ve done nothing for decades?”

“Good question,” Mara said. She sipped from the refilled mug.

“I wouldn’t say they’ve done
nothing
,” Keltan protested. “They’ve provided a haven for those who fled their Maskings. Like me.”

“Sure, great, wonderful—for
you
, and a handful of others,” Alita snapped. “But what about the ones who tried to flee and were caught? I’ve sneaked up to Traitors’ Gate. Haven’t you?”

“No,” Prella said in a small voice.

Alita ignored her. “Those weren’t all grown-ups hanging up there. Some were boys no older than
you
,” she pointed at Keltan. “And there weren’t any girls at all . . . which tells me something about what the Watchers use
them
for.”

Mara, mug at her lips, looked over it at Prella, half-expecting the smaller girl to say, “What?” and dreading what Alita would say in response, but for once Prella, though she still looked confused, kept her questions to herself.

“So I don’t see how the unMasked Army is an ‘army’ at all,” Alita continued. “It doesn’t fight, it hides.”

“Not anymore,” Keltan shot back. “Or you wouldn’t be here.”

Alita grunted. “Doesn’t have anything to do with
me
. They’d have left
me
and the rest of us to rot. It was
her
they wanted,” and she nodded at Mara in a way that seemed like an accusation.

Flushing, Mara drank more wine.

“Which just proves Catilla finally has a plan to fight back,” Keltan said.

“About time,” Alita said. “But why now? What’s changed?”

“The Masks,” Mara said. She lowered her mug and looked down into it: it was almost empty again, so she drained it and reached for the bottle. Keltan raised an eyebrow at her as she refilled her mug for the third time. She gave him a big smile, and took three big swallows.

When she lowered the mug, she saw the others staring at her as if expecting her to explain what she had meant, so she tried . . . although for some reason her tongue seemed to find it harder than usual to form words. “Catilla told me. The Mash . . . Masks have changed. They’re not just reflecting what people are like inside. They’re changing pleople . . . people. From the inside out. Different. Keltan noticed. Old friends not friendly anymore. Me, too. And Gifted. Gifted Masks never failed. Now they do. More and more.” She drained the mug again and reached for the wine bottle—there was still a little bit left in it—but Keltan pushed it away.

“I think that’s probably enough,” he said, and after that somehow she didn’t really notice anything else that happened until she found herself lying in her bed in the girls’ room, which was making slow circles around her. It was very strange, but after another moment she didn’t notice it any more, or anything else until morning.

She woke to Alita shaking her. “Edrik is at the door,” she said. “He wants you to come with him again.”

Mara groaned. Her head pounded, each thump of her heart was accompanied by a stab of pain behind her left eye, and her mouth tasted like . . . like
shit
, she thought, because “dung” definitely wasn’t a strong enough word. Alita looked down at her with a strange expression. “You only had three mugs of wine.”

“Three too many,” Mara said. “Take my word for it, it—”

“I had four,” Alita said, not as if she was bragging, just stating a fact. “I’ll tell Edrik you’ll join him in the Broad Way in a few minutes.” She turned and went out.

Mara sat up, the pounding in her head instantly switching from blacksmith’s-hammer intensity to something closer to a pile driver. Prella sat on the edge of her bed, pulling on a pair of soft leather boots she certainly had not had the night before, any more than she had had that pair of brown trousers or that long-sleeved white blouse. Mara looked at the foot of her bed, where she had tossed the travel-stained clothes she’d been given after they were rescued by the unMasked: they had vanished, to be replaced by a clean blouse and trousers much like Prella’s, though the trousers were dark blue and the blouse a light green. Even better: clean underwear. Particularly since at the moment she was wearing nothing at all.
Who undressed me?
she wondered. She decided she didn’t want to know. Also lying with the clothes was a brown towel and, in place of the heavy travel cloak she’d worn the night before, a light leather jacket.

Mara massaged her pounding temples. “You shouldn’t have drunk so much wine,” Prella said with a bright smile that for a moment made Mara hate her. “I didn’t have any. I didn’t like the taste.”

“I didn’t either . . . at first,” Mara muttered. She swallowed. “And I don’t much like it now, either.”

A clay pitcher full of water, a wooden basin and a wooden cup rested on a low table beside each bed. Mara got up, pulled on the underwear—drawers and an undershirt—then poured water into the basin and splashed some of it on her face: its icy bite revived her a little. She took a few big gulps to wash the awful taste out of her mouth, ran her fingers through her tangled hair, wished desperately she had a comb, sniffed, and wished even more desperately she could take a bath.

But there was something else she needed to do even
more
desperately, and so she finished dressing in her new clothes, then pulled on the boots she found at the foot of her bed—made of black, well-worn leather, they fit far better than the ill-fitting goose-greased ones she’d worn on the journey from the wagon—and made her way to the little room at the end of the corridor Hyram had shown them yesterday. Hearing the rush of water far below her, she tried hard not to think about falling in.

Finally she descended to the Broad Way, where Edrik indeed awaited her, not very patiently. The moment she appeared, he took her arm and steered her to another tunnel and up a long staircase to yet another chamber that, if she were any judge, had to be directly above the girls’ bedroom, close to the top of the cliff. As they approached its open door, she heard voices, though she couldn’t make out what they were saying: they cut off as Edrik entered with her.

Daylight streamed in through three windows, wider and taller than the slit in the girls’ room—albeit gray, not-very-bright daylight, since thick fog filled the stone horseshoe of the Secret City. Wisps of mist even drifted into the room from time to time, vanishing at once in the warmth of the fire crackling in the hearth at the far end, behind Catilla, who sat at the head of a long table of the same polished yellow wood as the one in her bedchamber.

Half a dozen others sat along either side of the table, three men on one side, a man and two women on the other. Pitchers of water, drinking cups, and scattered bits of paper gave the scene the general air of an interrupted discussion . . . or possibly argument; some of those at the table did
not
look happy.

Catilla didn’t look happy, either, but Mara suspected she never did. As Edrik left Mara’s side and took the seat at the end of the table nearest the door and farthest from his grandmother, Catilla’s sharp blue eyes locked on Mara’s face with the same disconcerting intensity as the night before, as though she were peering inside Mara’s head, and not much liking what she saw. “I trust you slept well,” she said.

The politeness of the query was so at odds with her predator-like gaze that it caught Mara off guard. “Yes, thank you for asking,” she replied, the manners her mother had drilled into her for fifteen years providing the answer without her having to think about it. Feeling off-balance, both metaphorically and, thanks to the previous night’s wine, literally, she looked around for someplace to sit, but all the seats were taken.

“I have just been telling the captains,” Catilla’s eyes flicked briefly around the room, “about our conversation last night.”

“Which part?” Mara said. Her head still hurt, no one had offered her a chair, and she didn’t really feel like being cooperative.
Mother’s not here to tell me to be polite
, she thought bitterly,
and she never will be again. So why bother?
“The part where you made excuses for not doing anything for
decades
to rescue children from failed Maskings?”

An angry murmur ran around the table, but nobody spoke except Catilla. “No,” she said without changing the inflection of her voice one bit. “The part where you told me what you need to create counterfeit Masks for us.”

Mara stared into Catilla’s icy eyes, trying for defiance, but she couldn’t hold it. She blinked and looked away and said in a much smaller voice than she had imagined herself using, “I told you. I don’t even know if I
can
make a fake Mask that will fool anyone—much less a Watcher—even at a distance. But to even make the attempt . . . I’ll need a few things.”

“Go on,” Catilla said.

Mara repeated the list she had given Catilla the night before. “Maker’s clay. A set of shaping tools. A kiln. Pigments. A mortar and pestle. Silver or gold or copper for decoration. A crucible. Maskmakers’ wax, to make the mold of the face. A . . .” She went on, listing everything she could think of, hoping they would see how impossible the whole thing was.

And at first she thought they had. “We have none of these,” pointed out one of the captains, a big, burly man with a thick black beard.

“No,” Catilla said. “But we know where to get them. Edrik?” She nodded at her grandson.