Shadows (10 page)

He rewarded her, if that was the word, with a grunt. “It's true,” he said. “She's been in the night streets before. That's why I recognized her.”

The higher-ranking Watcher regarded her for a moment. “You've clearly got a story to tell,” he said at last, slowly. “Whether it's a true story or not isn't for me to judge.” He turned to the others. “You two get back on patrol,” he said. “I'm taking her to Lord Stanik.”

Mara's breath caught. Lord Stanik was the Guardian of Security, a member of the Autarch's Circle. He was also her father's boss. If she was being delivered to
him
, then they were taking her tale seriously indeed.

Whether she should respond to that with hope or despair, she didn't know.

She tried in vain to sense the magic in the Watchers' bodies, or the magic the Watcher who had flicked purple at her obviously carried with him in his cloak. Surely they also kept a store of magic within the guardhouse. But she could feel nothing. She was still blocked.

She'd had no idea the Watchers had that power. What
other
powers did they have? Could they force her to tell the truth? Force her to reveal what she knew about the unMasked Army and the Secret City?

The Watchers who had captured her nodded and went back out the way they had come in. Their commander grabbed her arm, jerked her to her feet, and propelled her toward the other door. He unlocked it with a big brass key from a ring at his belt, pulled her through, closed and locked the door behind them, and then turned left down a passage open to the sky above but hemmed in on both sides by high walls. After fifty feet or so it ended, and Mara and her captor stepped into the open.

Mara stared around in wonder. She had never been inside the Palace walls before. But her father had been, many times, and had told her something of it. This had to be what they called the Great Courtyard, which surrounded the Palace proper. Paved with massive flat slabs of white stone, each as wide as her outstretched arms, lit by lamps on posts all around its perimeter, it was large enough to accommodate a crowd of thousands. Light glowed through the doors and windows of numerous buildings constructed along the inside of the curtain wall: stables and smithies and storerooms, Mara guessed. In the center of the courtyard, water plashed endlessly down the sides of a large tiered fountain, from basin to basin, four in all, each progressively larger, at the bottom spouting through the mouths of carved mountain cats into a walled pool. Atop the fountain glowed an enormous glass ball, yellow and gold, lit from within: the sun symbol of the Autarch.
Amazing how someone so foul can be represented by something so pure,
Mara thought bitterly.

To her left she could see a long line of lamps, leading down a broad path to the main gate, closed this time of night. But her captor led her straight across the courtyard, the sound of their footsteps echoing back from the walls all around them.

As they drew nearer to the Palace, Mara stared up at it. Though the curtain wall made the Palace look like a fortress—and since it was built atop Fortress Hill, presumably it had once served as one—from here, the Palace looked more like a mansion than a place of protection. Surely a building constructed primarily for defense would not have such enormous glass windows. Their panes, the largest and clearest she had ever seen, gleamed with lamplight from within, all around the lowest story.

On the second story and higher the windows had diamond panes, and were much smaller, but despite the lateness of the hour they still glowed with the lights she had seen from far away, where Edrik still waited in the camp to which she would never return. Mara wondered if anyone were really still awake behind those arched windows or if the light were meant as a message for the city below:
The Autarch is always watchful. The Autarch is always alert. The Autarch never sleeps.

What if he really
is
awake?
Mara thought then, as she stared up—and up!—at the Palace, four towering stories in all, topped with turreted spires on all four corners that climbed another two, and centered by one enormous tower four stories taller than that.
He has the same Gift I do, or something like it. He can sense the magic in others. Can he sense mine? Does he know I've arrived? Is he tossing and turning in his bed, aware that someone potentially as powerful as he has just entered the Palace grounds?

She snorted at her own folly. As powerful as the Autarch? Maybe in potential, if Ethelda were to be believed, but right now she had no power at all. The strange magic of the Watcher had seen to that.

The Palace awed her with its sheer size. As they drew nearer, and she could see the intricate carvings in the shape of twining vines in the stone around those windows, the fluted columns, the silken surface of the polished white stone, her awe only increased. She had never seen anything so beautiful: and yet at the heart of all this beauty, she knew, lurked the Autarch, a venomous spider sucking the life from his people to feed his insatiable need for magic.

A need she was in danger of coming to share. Every time she drew magic from others, Ethelda had warned her, however much it burned her, she would strengthen her desire for its taste. Do it too often, and she might never find her way back, might give in to her need and rip it forcibly from anyone who crossed her, leaving them broken in her wake. “You might even come to love the nightmares,” Ethelda had warned her in one of their sessions. “You might lose the shame and horror they engender now, see them only as a sign of your power, as bloody trophies of your hunt for more and more of that power.”

If the Watcher hadn't blocked me
, she thought,
I might have given in to temptation back at the bridge. I might have escaped . . . but at what cost?

That thought was almost enough to make her welcome the Watcher's magic that had temporarily robbed her of her Gift. But if . . .
when
 . . . she regained the ability to draw on the magic that would surround her within the Palace, would she be able to resist the temptation to use it . . . especially when it might be the only way to avoid execution, or the betrayal of the unMasked Army?

And if she gave in to that temptation, what then? How would the Autarch react?

And what would it do to
her
?

The Watcher pulled her onward even as all those thoughts spun through her head, and took her up a flight of steps onto a porch on the side of the Palace and through a bronze door into a long hallway, paved with glistening marble, paneled in rich red wood, bright-lit by golden chandeliers that hung from beams carved like tree branches, the ceiling between painted and hung with leaves of green cloth to give the illusion of a forest canopy.

She only had a moment to gape at the almost ridiculous beauty of it all before the Watcher opened another door and took her down yet another hallway. The tall windows she had seen from outside were now on their left, the view through their giant panes of glass astonishingly clear and undistorted, almost as though the glass wasn't there at all. Lamps blazed all along the hallway, showing doors on their right. Rich tapestries hung above those doors, and a series of larger-than-life sculptures, mostly of the heroically nude variety, stood between those doors.
No Masks
, Mara thought, glancing at one of those stern stone visages as they passed it; a reminder that the Autarchy had not always relied on that controlling magic to maintain order.

At the end of the hall, the Watcher took her through another bronze door, this one opening into a stairwell whose steps spiraled up into one of the towers. Up those steps they climbed, Mara in front. On the fourth landing, they left the tower, though she was so turned around by the climbing she wasn't sure in which direction, and entered another hallway, paneled in more of the red wood, the floor an intricate mosaic of small white-and-gold tiles. The hall had three thin windows, like the ones cut through the stone cliff in which the Secret City nestled; but unlike those, which let in the free, fresh air, these were barred by horizontal rods of iron and blocked with red-stained glass that allowed no view from inside or out.

Wooden benches of that same red wood ran down both sides of the hall, interrupted halfway down the side opposite the windows by an imposing black door with lamps burning on either side of it. The Watcher shoved Mara down onto the bench next to the door, then knocked. He waited a long moment, then knocked again.

The door opened a crack. “Do you know what time it is?” said a peevish voice from the darkness beyond. “This had better be important.”

“It is,” said the Watcher. “Wake Guardian Stanik. Tell him . . .” He glanced down at Mara. “Tell him we have captured someone who witnessed what happened in the mining camp. Tell him we have Mara Holdfast.”

A moment's silence. “Wait here,” the voice said, and the door closed again.

The Watcher sat down next to Mara on the bench. He said nothing.

Heart beating fast, Mara stared at the floor and waited to learn her fate.

The Examination

T
EN MINUTES PASSED, then fifteen, with no change: Mara waited, the Watcher watched, the door stayed closed. The minutes crept by with such excruciating slowness that the opening of the door at last came as a relief, no matter what might follow after, simply because it broke the suspense.

A thin man wearing a belted night robe of deep purple velvet, his face hidden in a white Mask marked with golden links of chain on the forehead and cheeks, turned sideways and gestured them in. “Please step into the parlor,” he said. “Guardian Stanik will join you momentarily.”

The Watcher stood, unlocked Mara's manacles, and then propelled her through the door into the hallway beyond. Dark wood sheathed the walls. A round black table embossed with a gold-and-silver sun emblem stood in the precise center of the black-and-white-tiled floor. Doors opened to left and right, and the hall ended, after perhaps twenty feet, in another door. The white-Masked man opened the door to their left and ushered them into a room perhaps thirty feet wide and twenty deep. To Mara's left, it extended to a tall, diamond-paned window through which she could see the windblown, city-lit clouds. To her right, sideboards bearing decanters and flagons of silver, crystal, and gold flanked another door. Directly across from her, in a large brick hearth, a fire crackled cheerily, clearly recently laid, for the logs were just beginning to char.

Arranged around that fire were three chairs and a small couch just wide enough for two grown-ups (perhaps three of Mara's size), all made of black wood, their cushions of scarlet velvet. The Watcher pointed her silently to one of the chairs. He remained standing, going to the window and staring out. Mara sat obediently and looked around her, taking in the thick red carpet underfoot and the wooden beams overhead that were intricately carved into the shapes of twining vines. She was studying the painting over the hearth, which showed the Autarch, resplendent in his golden Mask, driving an army from a battlefield with streaming rays of magic that made him strongly resemble the sun come to Earth, when the door behind her opened.

Mara turned.

A tall, thin man stepped inside, pulling the door closed behind him. Gray hair, beginning to thin but carefully combed to hide that fact as much as possible, showed above a gleaming silver Mask. A gray beard and a hint of mustache partially covered the thin lips visible through the Mask's mouth opening. Though from their greeter's comments Mara suspected Stanik had been roused from bed, he wore a snow-white tunic and perfectly pressed trousers, the gold stripe down the outsides of the trousers and the golden sleeves of the tunic, though made of woven cloth, somehow catching the light exactly like the actual gold of the buttons down his chest.

“Captain Daneli,” said Stanik, “I understand you have a matter of some urgency to discuss with me.”
It had
better
be urgent
, his tone implied, and she shivered. She wouldn't want to be the one who woke Stanik from a sound sleep without a good reason. Her father, though hardly in a position to criticize, had mentioned Stanik once or twice. “An . . . intimidating man,” he had said. “And a hard one. He is well suited to the task the Autarch has set him.”

His task, Mara knew, was the keeping of order and the squelching of dissent. Those naked corpses outside Traitors' Gate had been sent there by Stanik. She could still join them, if she did not convince the Guardian of Security she deserved leniency.

Captain Daneli turned and saluted, placing a clenched fist on his heart. “Guardian Stanik,” he said as he lowered his arm and relaxed his hand. “Earlier this evening two Night Watchers discovered this girl trying to sneak out of the city through the river passage via a crude walkway, since destroyed. One of them recognized her as Mara Holdfast, daughter of the Master Maskmaker.” He indicated Mara. “She says she witnessed the events that occurred in the mining camp, which she fled during the confusion. She claims she returned to Tamita to turn herself in, in the hope that what she can tell us about what happened might earn her mercy.” Captain Daneli glanced at Mara. “But the strangest thing of all, Guardian, is that her Gift survives. She has been placed under a temporary block.” He turned back to Stanik. “I apologize for disturbing you so late . . . or so early . . . but I believed that you would not want me to treat her as an ordinary unMasked, and that you would want to be informed about her apprehension at once.”

“You judged correctly,” Stanik said softly. “Good work.” He came around the end of the couch and stared at Mara with disconcerting intensity, his blue eyes cold as the mountain snows. “Thank you, Captain,” he said without shifting his gaze from Mara. “You are dismissed.”

“Yes, sir,” said Daneli. He saluted again and went out. The white-Masked man who had greeted them, who stood in the hallway outside, closed the door softly behind him. It shut with a subdued click.

Stanik stared at Mara for another long moment, then sat down in another of the chairs, facing her. “I'm astounded to see you here, Mara,” he said. “The last time I saw you, in the kitchen of your home, you were barefoot and in pigtails and begging your mother for an extra helping of mashed redroots.” Through his Mask's mouth opening, she saw his lips curve into a slight smile.

Mara didn't know how to respond. She remembered that day; her father had been nervous about Stanik coming to their house, but Stanik had insisted on trying on his new silver Mask—the very Mask he wore now—in private in her father's workshop before taking it back to the Palace. No doubt the Guardian of Security had had other matters to discuss with the Master Maskmaker while he was there, for he and Mara's father had been cloistered in his workshop for a long time, and had descended to the kitchen just as, as Stanik said, Mara had been begging for a third helping of her favorite food. She had been . . . what? Nine? Ten?

And he remembered?

“I was shocked to hear you had failed your Masking,” Stanik went on. “Of course we had no choice but to send you into exile: the law is the law. Regrettable, but I confess I thought no more about it at the time, except to urge those who know about such things to redouble their efforts to discover why so many of our youth are failing their Maskings—especially so many of the Gifted. The Autarch himself has expressed his concern, since several failings of the Gifted have occurred when he was in attendance at the ceremony.”

Mara stared at him. Stanik's voice betrayed nothing, but Mara didn't believe for a moment that Stanik didn't know
exactly
why so many Maskings were failing: because the Masks had been changed to feed more magic to the Autarch, and to rob the newly Masked of even more of their ability to think and act for themselves.

As for why so many Gifted were failing their Maskings, with the Autarch himself in attendance . . . well, that was because the Autarch was so eager to seize the Gifted's magic for himself that occasionally he tugged too hard and suddenly, shattering the Mask in the process. Mara knew that. Ethelda knew that. Her father knew that. Stanik
must
know it.

But if he did, he gave no sign of it. He continued, “Then came word of the bandit attack on the wagons taking the latest unMasked to the labor camp, word that you were among the missing . . . and then word that you had been found and returned to the camp by one of the magic-harvesters. I wondered then if I should have you brought back to Tamita for questioning, but the Warden insisted he could question you more effectively there. And then came the strangest news of all: that you, alone of all the Gifted whose Masks have failed, retained your Gift.” He glanced at the closed door. “Poor Captain Daneli no doubt intended to startle me with that revelation. I fear I disappointed him.”

He looked back at her. “The Warden asked permission to make use of your miraculously surviving Gift to prove out what he hoped was a substantial find of magic-bearing black lodestone, and we granted it: he had often asked for young Gifted to be sent to him before for that task, but since it seemed a dangerous and uncertain proposal, and Gifted are precious, we had always rejected it.” His voice betrayed nothing more of his inner thoughts than his Mask did, but Mara suspected there had been more to it than that; that the Warden, for whatever reason, had made enemies in the Palace who had
wanted
him to fail and so had found reasons not to grant his request, which surely wasn't as outrageous as all that.

“We had no reports from the camp for some time after that,” Stanik went on. “When we did get another . . .” He cocked his head to one side. “When we did,” he continued softly, “it was almost impossible to believe. It was not the Warden who sent it, but the captain of the camp guard. He told us the events of that strange day began when you returned alone from the expedition to the possible new mine site, pounding on the gate and demanding to be let in, claiming bandits had attacked the geologists and Watchers who had accompanied you to the potential new mine, and that only you had escaped.

“That night, fire broke out in the stables, and at the same time, bandits were seen inside the walls, breaking into the Warden's house. One was killed. The others escaped. But down by the stables . . . down there, another Watcher died, his chest blown apart in what could only be a magical attack. And then the fire spread to the hut housing the explosives known as rockbreakers. Had they all detonated, the camp would have been leveled.

“But something very, very strange happened instead. Everyone aboveground in the camp blacked out . . . and when they woke up, feeling drained and weak, they discovered the rockbreaker hut had vanished, replaced instead by a pit lined with black glass: and far overhead and to the east, an enormous black cloud of smoke drifted slowly away.

“Of the Warden, there was no sign. You, too, had vanished, as had Katia, another young unMasked with whom you had worked in the mines. We had a dead bandit, a dead Watcher, a missing Warden, two missing girls, a hole in the ground, and a mysterious bout of unconsciousness, and no good explanation for any of it.

“Now here you are, turning up in Tamita as strangely as you turned up at the camp, once more, metaphorically at least, pounding on the gate.” He leaned forward. “
What happened in the camp?
” His voice was soft. It was also terrifying, like the quiet hiss of a venomous snake.

Mara opened her mouth to speak; closed it again. She looked down at her fingers, twisting them together in her lap.

“Need I remind you, Mara Holdfast, that your life is forfeit?” Stanik said in that same soft voice. “You may still look like a child, you may be only scant weeks past the time when you
were
a child, but you are an adult in the eyes of the law, and that law demands your death. But I am the Guardian of Security, and I am the one who enforces that law. If I decree it, you will live. Do you want to live, Mara?”

Mara nodded. “Ye . . . yes,” she said, through a throat that tried to close on her words. “But . . . I'm afraid.”

“As you should be,” said Stanik. He smiled behind the Mask, the red light from the fire turning his teeth bloody and kindling small flames in his eyes. “Unless you have me as an ally, rather than your judge.”

“It's . . . it's just what I told the Watcher,” Mara said. “I was there, when the . . . when whatever it was happened. There was a . . . an explosion, but it didn't destroy the camp. It just went . . . straight up, into the clouds, as though something had . . . contained it.”

“And how is it you were running free in the grounds of the camp to see it?” Stanik said. “Why weren't you locked up like the rest of the prisoners?”

“When . . . when the bandits entered the house, they broke in all the doors, including mine,” Mara said. “I . . . I was frightened. It was the same bunch . . . the same ones who'd attacked the wagons, who attacked the Watchers and the geologists. I recognized the leader . . . a . . . a tall man, a big man, with a scar, maybe a sword scar, across his face, like this.” Mara made a slashing movement across her face and prayed her tongue was not weaving a net of lies that would ensnare her later. “I hid under the bed, they didn't find me, but they left my door open. When they went down the hall, I scrambled up and I ran. They heard me, they came after me, so I ran toward the fire, where all the Watchers were. That's how I saw what happened. Everyone down by the gate was lying on the ground by the time I got there, after the explosion. I thought they were dead.”

“This . . . contained explosion,” Stanik said. “This interests me. Your Gift survives. Did you see magic?”

She nodded. “A lot of it. But I don't know where it came from.”

He cocked his head to one side. “Go on.”

“I . . . I thought the bandits were still after me. I wanted to escape. I wanted to escape them . . .” She decided a little bit of honesty couldn't hurt. “And I really wanted to escape the camp,” she said in a low voice.