Masks (9 page)

Mara, stumbling a little in the high-heeled shoes that had seemed so beautiful and now seemed sad and ridiculous, followed him into a dim corner of the warehouse, furnished with a few chests and a table on which rested a chipped white basin and a blue pitcher full of water. A couple of rough towels lay beside the basin. “Take off your dress and shoes,” the man said, “and wash off the blood.”

Mara turned toward him, shocked. “What? Here? Now?”

“You heard me. Yes, here. Yes, now. Dress is ruined, but I might make a silver or two off the shoes.” The fat man had turned away to fling open one of the chests. He pulled out a gray smock like the one the dark-skinned girl had been wearing. “Put this on instead. Then I want to draw you.” His gaze moved over her body from head to toe. “With your clothes on, I think. It’s your
face
they’ll be interested in, not that skinny body. When you’re ready, come back to the chair.” With that the fat man turned and strode away.

Blushing furiously, Mara turned to the basin. She gripped the edges of the table for a moment and then, hoping it was too dim in the corner for the fat man or the boy she had spotted in one of the cells to see, convulsively stripped off the bloodstained green dress, letting it puddle to the ground around the silver shoes, which she stepped out of a moment later. Wearing only her drawers, naked from the waist up, she kept her back to the fat man and the cages and scrubbed the blood from her chest and belly. Then she pulled on the rough gray smock. It was slit alarmingly far down the front and too big for her. All that kept it from slipping off her shoulders were two strings at the neck that she tied tight.

Dressed—or at least half-dressed—she turned and walked barefoot across the warehouse’s flagstones to the pool of light around the wooden chair, where the fat man waited, pad of paper open to a fresh page on his lap. “Stand there.” He pointed at the patch of light. “Let the sun fall on your face.”

Mara stepped into the sunbeam, and closed her eyes for a moment. The warmth of the sun felt good on her cheeks after the damp chill of the long tunnel from the Palace and the cold-water scrubbing.

“Eyes open,” snapped the man. He stood up, dropping his pad of paper on his chair, stepped forward and, before she realized what he was about to do, had untied the neck of the smock. Then he grabbed the shoulders and tugged. Mara gasped as the smock slipped down to her waist. She snatched it just in time to keep it from falling off entirely, and pulled it back up, cheeks flaming with embarrassment. But the fat man hadn’t even looked at her body; his eyes were on her face. Holding the smock like the other girl had, her exposed shoulders cold in the warehouse’s chill, she endured the fat man’s touch as he took her chin and tilted her head this way and that. “Perfect,” he breathed. “Now stand still, or you’ll ruin everything.”

He returned to his chair and picked up his charcoal and paper. Mara, clutching the top of her smock, stared into a corner just like the dark-skinned girl had done.

The fat man kept her standing there for an hour, though he had her move twice to follow the sunbeam as it slowly slid across the floor. But finally he stopped drawing, and looked at his picture critically. “Excellent,” he said. “I can charge double for that. Maybe triple. Never had a completely unmarked face before.” He snorted. “Only thing you’ve got going for you.”

Mara lowered her head, shrugged her smock back up onto her shoulders, tied it tight, then rubbed a crick in the back of her neck. “May I see?” she said. No one had ever drawn her picture before.

“No,” the fat man snapped. “Come with me.”

He led her across the floor to an empty cell and locked her in. In the cell to her left the dark-skinned girl lay on her cot, one arm across her face, apparently asleep. In the cell to the right stood the boy, huge and muscular, almost the size of a grown man. As the door clanked shut and the fat man strode away, the boy gripped the bars and grinned at her.

Mara didn’t like the looks of the boy; wouldn’t have liked them even without the vivid red scars slashed across his cheeks and forehead. He hardly looked as if he’d been Healed at all. Ragged stubble speckled his upper lip and chin.

“What’s your name?” the boy said. His grin twisted into something more like a leer. “I’m Grute.”

“Mara.” She looked past Grute; the cell on the other side of him was empty. There were only the three of them on this side of the warehouse; the other girls were invisible in the shadows across the broad floor. “All of you failed the Masking?”

“Sometime in the last month, yeah,” Grute said. “Now we’re just waiting.”

“For what?”

“For them to take us where the unMasked go,” Grute said. “Looking forward to it, myself. I’ve heard some things. I’m gonna do all right there. Better than I ever would have in Tamita, anyway.”

He hadn’t taken his eyes off her since she’d started talking to him; she found his gaze unnerving. “What are you staring at?” she snapped.

He snorted. “Your face, of course. You don’t have these.” He lifted one hand and traced the contours of one of the scars slashing across his cheek. His smile/leer widened. “And you’re pretty, too. Or will be once you flesh out a bit.”

“I was cut up, too,” Mara said. “I just had a better Healer.”

“Yeah? Why did
you
rate?”

“Just lucky,” she said. It was the only answer she had. Why
had
Ethelda been there? Representing the Autarch, she’d said, but why? Why hadn’t the Autarch himself attended? She was the daughter of his Master Maskmaker. Why had Ethelda come in his place?

“Gifted, were you?” Grute said. “Think
that
makes you special?”

“Yes, I have the Gift,” Mara snapped. “What’s it to you?”

“
Have
it?” Grute’s voice dripped vicious glee. “
Had
it, you mean. You ain’t got it no more.”

“What?” Mara stared at him. “What do you mean?”

“I mean,” Grute said, “that when a Gifted’s Mask fails it takes her Gift away from her. You got no more Gift than I do. Or the fat man out there.” He jerked a thumb in the direction of the chair in the middle of the warehouse floor. “You ain’t no better ’n anyone else, now.”

Mara’s stomach flip-flopped. “I don’t believe you!”

“Ask
her
,” Grute said, pointing at the sleeping, dark-skinned girl. “She had the Gift, too, until a month ago when her Masking failed—right in front of the Autarch, too. She knows she ain’t got it no more. Masker flat out told her. Gift don’t survive when the Mask fails.” He jerked his head in the direction of the cells on the far side of the warehouse. “’Nother girl over there, same thing.
They
know the truth. Now you know it, too: there ain’t nothing special about you at all, not anymore.” His gaze traveled over her body, and she felt herself blush. “And I do mean
nothing
.” Then his eyes moved back to her face and his voice dropped to a low growl. “Except you got no scars.
That’s
special. That could make you
real
popular where we’re going. Men’ll probably be fighting each other over
you
.”

Mara swallowed. For the first time, she wondered if the Healer had done her a favor. “What’s with lard butt out there?” she said, wanting to change the subject. “The drawing. What’s with that?”

Grute snorted. “Don’t get out much, do you?
Big
black market for drawings of the unMasked. Girls, mostly, though there’s a market for boys, too.” He leered. “You’re just lucky he didn’t make you take
all
your clothes off. He usually does. Probably would’ve, if you had anything much to look at. But you don’t. Saw that much when your smock slipped down.” The leer became an evil grin that almost split his face. He was missing two teeth. “No, it’s your face he cares about. UnMasked and unscarred. Must be a first.”

Mara gaped at him. “That’s disgusting! I don’t believe you.”

“Ask
her
,” the boy said, again nodding at the sleeping girl. “Made her take all
her
clothes off, first day here. Couple of the other girls, too. I watched.” He leaned forward, eyes locked on Mara, and said in a thick whisper, “I didn’t find it disgusting at
all
.”

If Mara hadn’t already been on the far side of the cell from him, she would have backed away. “Leave me alone!”

Grute rattled the bars of the cage. “As if I have a choice.” He grinned again. “For now.” He mimed a huge kiss, then went to his cot and flopped down onto it, his back to her.

Mara stared at him. She looked back at the dark-skinned girl, but she remained asleep. She looked out through the bars at the fat man. He seemed to be putting the finishing touches on a drawing.
Mine?
She imagined men buying it from shadowed stalls in the city’s back alleys, and felt dirty. “How did this happen?” she whispered to herself. “
How did I end up here?
”

No one answered her.

The day wore on into evening, gloom gathering in the warehouse as the sun slipped too low to shine through the windows. She desperately needed to relieve her bladder, but there was no way she was going to do
that
, in the bucket, while there was light enough for Grute to watch her, which she was sure he would.

Not that
he
had any qualms about it. She had to avert her eyes twice during that long afternoon.

The fat man gave them each a loaf of bread and some water as the windows turned orange. When the room was all but pitch-black, Mara finally felt her way to the bucket and did what she needed to do. But when she returned to her cot, she found no rest.

It wasn’t just the lumpy mattress or the chill in the air that the thin blanket could not ward off. It was the fact that in the dark she was completely alone with herself, her thoughts . . . and her memories. The excitement of donning the green dress. The anticipation of the Masking celebration to come. Walking to the Maskery in the cool morning air. The sound of birdsong in the courtyard. The wonder of seeing the beautiful Mask her father had made for her, his love for her apparent in every beautiful bit of it . . .

...and then the tearing pain as her face split, the crunching agony as her nose broke, the blood, and, worse than all of that, her mother’s screams . . .

Now here she was, locked in a cell, unMasked, degraded, cast out, sentenced to who-knew-what fate.

I wish the Mask had worked
, she thought, as tears ran down her face onto the smelly cover of the straw-filled mattress.
Even if it really
does
change you. I wish it had worked. Because nothing could be worse than this. Even my Gift is gone. I’ll never see magic again, ever. . . .

And then her eyes, squeezed shut against the tears, flew open.

Ethelda had Healed her face with magic—and
Mara had seen it
, clinging to her hand like a glowing blue glove.
Maybe the Gift doesn’t vanish instantly when the Mask breaks
, she thought.
Maybe it fades slowly. Maybe it’s gone now.

But maybe, just maybe, it
wasn’t
.

“Be strong,” she whispered to herself, echoing Ethelda’s last words to her. “Don’t lose hope.”

Clutching the faint possibility that her Gift had not deserted her, as tightly as the night before she had clutched Stoofy, she finally found sleep.

The shouts of the jailer jolted her awake what seemed an instant later. She lay confused and frightened, heart pounding. Why was she so stiff and cold? What had happened to her bed, her cozy room, the skylight?

Then, sharp as a slap, everything that had happened the day before rushed back. She gasped, and raised her head.

The fat man strode from cell to cell, slamming a long wooden club against the iron bars. “Wagon is here,” he shouted. “Say good-bye to your luxurious accommodations, my sweets.”

Luxurious?
Mara thought with a mixture of outrage and lack-of-sleep befuddlement. Grute stood in front of his bucket, peeing. He winked at her. Mara closed her eyes.
If this is luxurious
, she wondered,
what comes next?

She found out half an hour later when, having used her own bucket as modestly as she could, scrubbed her face in cold gray water from the basin, and choked down a handful of dates, she blinked in a sudden flood of light as the big doors at one end of the warehouse crashed open.

A tall black wagon, pulled by two huge, shaggy-footed, dappled gray horses, clattered in over the flagstones. The hairs stood up on the back of Mara’s neck. It had a brutal look: thick wooden slats, rusty iron studs, tiny barred windows high above wheels that stood as tall as Mara herself.

But the worst of it was that she had seen wagons like it before, had wondered what they were for and where they were going; had seen them because she had sat on the city wall staring down at this very warehouse . . .
the warehouse that had once belonged to her mother’s father
.

She felt sick.

Two Watchers flanked the driver, a slight man wearing a dull-gray Mask, nondescript clothes, and calf-high boots of scuffed black leather. He stayed put, holding the reins of the blowing, stamping horses, while the Watchers jumped down, boots slapping against the stone, and went around to the back of the wagon. Doors swung wide, and then the Watchers moved to the first occupied cell on the far side of the warehouse. The fat jailer opened the cage door, and the Watchers escorted out a trembling girl who looked too tiny to be fifteen. They led her to the wagon. She was too short to climb up into it, so one of the Watchers grabbed her, swung her legs up, and shoved her in feet-first. The other two girls from the far side of the cell, one about Mara’s height but much more rounded, the other taller and tough-looking, were rousted out next, and climbed in under their own power.

The Watchers crossed to Mara’s side of the warehouse. They opened the cage of the brown-skinned girl. She crossed the warehouse floor with her head high, and climbed in with no difficulty.

Then it was Mara’s turn. She padded on bare feet across the cold flagstones. She, too, was able to climb up into the wagon’s dark interior without help.