Shadows (11 page)

Stanik shrugged his shoulders. “You need hardly apologize for that. Perfectly understandable. The late Warden was not overly solicitous of his charges.” He regarded her another long moment. “And what of Katia, the girl with whom you worked in the mine, and who shared the room with you that night? You have not mentioned her. Did she hide, too? Did she escape?”

Mara's mind raced. “She . . . she didn't want to go anywhere near the Watchers. After . . . she'd been in the barracks . . .” She let that unfinished thought lie there for a moment, then said, “So she wouldn't go toward the gate. She ran off somewhere else. I don't know what happened to her. Maybe the bandits took her.”

“Maybe,” Stanik said, his voice noncommittal. “Let us return to you, then. You escaped, you say. Into the wild. And you came here how . . . ?”

“I just kept heading south. I sneaked onto farms, slept in barns. A couple of times I pretended to be a child who was lost, and people helped me. Somewhere along the way I realized I couldn't keep hiding forever. Sooner or later, I wouldn't be able to pass as a child. And I knew . . . what I had seen . . . I knew someone in the Palace must want to know what had happened at the camp. So that's when I decided to come all the way back to Tamita. I knew I could get into the city through that walkway kids had built along the river. I'd found it a long time ago, on one of those nights when I used to sneak out of my house after curfew. I thought I'd wait until morning. I thought I'd go home, talk to my father, and he'd take me to the Palace. But I'd barely come into the city when the Night Watchers saw me, and they chased me, and I panicked again and . . .” She let her voice trail away. “And that's how I came to you.”

Stanik said nothing for a moment. “An interesting tale,” he said at last. He studied her for another long moment. “There is much to consider in it. But what intrigues me most . . . and what will intrigue the Autarch most . . . is the strange matter of your Gift surviving the failure of your Mask.
That
intrigues me a great deal.”

Mara felt sick to her stomach. If Stanik discovered her father had deliberately made her Mask fail . . .

Stanik stood. “My secretary will escort you to one of my guest rooms for the remainder of the night. In the morning, we will discuss things further . . . and I will decide what is to be done with you.” He went to the door and stepped out into the hall. Mara heard a low murmur of voices, then Stanik walked down the hall and the secretary entered.

“This way,” he said, standing aside and gesturing her out into the hall. He led her to the door at its end, through which Stanik must have just passed. There was no sight of the Guardian beyond: just another corridor, much longer and more utilitarian than the foyer, studded with half a dozen doors, two on the left and four on the right. He took her to the last door on the right, unlocked it with a key he took from his belt, and, much to her astonishment, showed her not into the grim cell she'd half-expected, but rather into the most beautiful room she had ever seen: paneled in richly grained golden wood, thickly carpeted in blue, the window curtained with gold. The bed boasted four massive posts, carved like twining grapevines, supporting a canopy of blue-and-gold brocade. Two white chairs faced a glowing hearth, another table and chair of white stood in the corner by the window, and just beyond a massive wardrobe of the same golden wood as the walls another door, standing open, revealed gleaming marble and gold . . . a bathroom?

She blinked, then glanced back at the secretary. “Sleep well,” he said, and closed the door.

The snick of the lock as he turned the key reminded her that, no matter how palatial her surroundings might be, she was still a prisoner: trapped in the Palace with no prospect of ever leaving it, unless it were through Traitors' Gate.

But as she soaked in the bath she filled from golden taps that provided both hot and cold water, washed her hair and body with lavender-scented soap (she was pleased to find it stung only slightly in the mostly-healed cut on her back), pulled on a thick white dressing gown, ate some of the bread and cheese she found under a domed dish on the table by the window and drank chilled juice from a silver flagon, then finally took off the gown and crawled between clean sheets into the most comfortable bed she had ever known, even that grim thought could not lessen her pleasure. She fell asleep at once . . .

...and woke screaming from a dream of the Watcher Chell had killed along the road south. But tonight, there was no one to comfort her.

Where is Keltan?
she wondered as she stared up into the darkness, breathing hard, waiting for her heart to slow.
Where is Chell? What will Edrik do?

And what will happen to me tomorrow?

She had no answers, and despite the comfortable bed, more sleep eluded her for a very long time.

Eventually, of course, fatigue won out; but it seemed she had barely closed her eyes before she woke to daylight and a knock on her door. She climbed out of bed, pulled on the dressing gown, and padded barefoot across the thick blue rug. “Yes?” she said.

“I have your breakfast,” said the voice of the secretary. “May I come in?”

Mara cinched the dressing gown tighter, then stepped back. “All right.”

The door opened, and the secretary entered bearing a tray that he took to the table, placing there a steaming bowl of porridge, a small loaf of white bread, a silver bowl of butter, another of some kind of purple jam, a white plate with strips of bacon, and a moisture-beaded glass of juice. He nodded to her and went out without another word, closing and locking the door behind her.

Mara ate, and wondered what would happen next . . . and wondered, too, what Keltan and Edrik were doing this morning, out on the ridge overlooking Tamita.
What
can
they do?

And then another thought struck her, so hard the bacon she had been contentedly munching turned suddenly to sawdust in her mouth. Keltan, she knew, had gotten out through the wall. But when Chell had returned to the bridge—he would have found the walkway gone. He was trapped as surely as she, unMasked in the daylight—and unlike Keltan or her, he had no hope of being taken for a child. The Watchers would arrest him, if they hadn't already.

She knew
she
would not betray the Secret City and the unMasked Army. But she couldn't be as certain about him.

Can I even be sure about myself?
she thought uneasily, once again wondering if the Gifted of the Palace had some method of using magic to extract the truth.

Her own Gift remained blunted. She had felt nothing of the magic within the secretary's body that morning. It was like a part of her had been amputated. It felt
wrong
.

Whatever that Watcher did, it won't last forever
, she thought.

But the block was still there some two hours later when, as she paced the room, once more dressed in her own clothes, filthy with mud and grass stains and horse sweat and who-knew-what-else, a Watcher suddenly opened the door. “Come with me,” he growled, and Mara, after a moment's start, followed, her heart racing.

The secretary moved into the room behind them as they left. Mara glanced back to see him already pulling at the sheets of the rumpled bed. She had the sinking feeling she wouldn't be spending a second night in luxury.

The Watcher took her out of Stanik's apartment and back down the stairs to the Palace's main floor. Again she walked down the long hallway beneath the high, glass-paned windows, showing blue sky this morning, the wind having blown the clouds away overnight, but they went only a short distance before they turned onto a side passage. A moment later they passed through a double set of ironbound doors into the smaller central courtyard enclosed within the Palace's four tall wings.

The Great Courtyard outside the Palace was paved in stone; the Garden Courtyard was grass-covered, though the grass was brown and sere now, so soon after Midwinter. Winding pathways of white stone led between flowering bushes now wrapped in sackcloth as protection against winter blight. But even without their blooms, even with the many flower beds lying fallow and bare, the Garden Courtyard made Mara gasp. Her attention flitted from wonder to wonder: evergreens cleverly carved into the shapes of animals and people, fountains of marble and glass and gold and silver, statues of astonishing artistry.

Here and there people moved among the walkways. Almost all of their Masks bore at least a hint of color, marking them as Gifted. Almost all of those Masks turned toward her as she crossed the courtyard, then immediately turned away again, as if their owners knew better than to look too closely at any prisoner a Watcher brought among them.

To her left, an arched passageway led through the Palace's west wing, the sharp spikes of portcullises showing above it at both ends. Beyond that passage she saw the path down to the main gate of the Palace's curtain wall. Standing open, it offered a breathtaking view down Fortress Hill to the city's main gate and beyond it the brown fields of the wintry farmlands.
Keltan and Edrik are out there somewhere
, Mara thought.

And then she thought,
Keltan can still pass for a child. He could come into the city if he found another way in. He might be in the city now. If I could just escape . . .

She thought about making a break for it, turning and running away from the Watcher as fast as she could, pictured herself dashing down the path to the main gate, down the boulevard, ducking into an alleyway, twisting and turning through the streets, losing herself in the city's bustle . . .

But that foolish fantasy died as she spotted the Watchers standing guard at the far end of the archway, and others by the main gate.
Even if Keltan's out there
, she thought dully,
it won't do me the slightest bit of good.

She looked right. There, at its western end, the Garden Courtyard culminated in a broad flight of stairs, leading up to a massive portico supported by four three-story-tall pillars of white marble. Behind the pillars rose golden doors, wide as a house, tall as a tower, bearing the sun emblem of the Autarch. Behind those doors, which faced the rising sun, lived the Autarch. There the Circle met and deliberated. There dwelt the Child Guard, always in close proximity to the ruler, always at hand to provide the magic he needed to stave off the ravages of advancing age, no matter what the cost to themselves. It was beautiful and awe-inspiring—and the abode of a monster.

A monster like I have the potential to become
, she thought. She stared up at the tall windows above the portico. Was the Autarch even now looking down into the courtyard, watching with narrowed eyes as she crossed his garden? She felt cold. And if he were, could he sense her magic, so rare and powerful, so akin to his own? Did he see her as a threat? The Autarch dealt severely with those he saw as threats, as Traitors' Gate attested.

My magic is blocked
, she thought.
Maybe he can't sense it. Maybe he doesn't know what he's got in his hands . . . not yet.

Not yet. But for how long?

She turned her eyes forward again, following the Watcher to a plain black door recessed into the southern wing of the Palace, through it, and then down stairs whose worn stone steps had nothing of luxury about them, stairs that led her into the great warren of tunnels and chambers that honeycombed Fortress Hill beneath the Palace, and where she had been once before: on the day her Mask failed and she was sent into exile.

No one knew everything that was down there, deep beneath the city; or rather, those who knew did not talk of it. Rumors abounded. One thing everyone agreed on was that there were dungeons. Everyone had heard of someone vanishing into the Palace one day never to be seen again, not even as a corpse outside Traitors' Gate.

Like me?
she thought.

However, the hallway they entered at the bottom of the stairs, though utilitarian, at least did not look like she'd always imagined the Autarch's dungeons would look. It was simple white stone, like the tunnel beneath the Maskery. Doors punctuated it at irregular intervals. After perhaps forty feet it ended in a T-intersection. They went right a short distance to another door, somewhat grander than the others they had passed. The Watcher knocked.

The door opened. A man in a yellow Mask, dressed in a long yellow robe sashed with gold, looked out. Mara gasped and glanced down. Sure enough, she saw gold-painted toenails on feet resting in golden sandals. She flicked her eyes back up. A Masker. Perhaps even
the
Masker, the one who had presided over her Mask's failure.
Unless they
all
paint their toenails
, she thought.

“Ah,” said the Masker. “Mara, is it?”

“I'll wait here,” said the Watcher. “Outside the door. In case of trouble.”

“I hardly think—” began the Masker, but the Watcher cut him off.

“Orders,” he said. He pushed Mara through the door, then reached in and tugged it closed.

Mara looked at the Masker. He looked at her. When he didn't say anything for a moment, she looked around the room instead.

There seemed to be nothing special about it except its shape. Like the Maskery, it was round. Unlike the Maskery, it did not have an artificial moat, water pouring from the mouths of snarling cats carved in stone, or an enormous representation of the Autarch's Mask, complete with glowing eyes. It
did
have a circular white dais at its center, but unlike the Maskery, this dais bore, not a table for the Masks of the candidates, but a black stone basin, covered with a wooden lid.

Mara's breath caught.
Magic!
That basin must be full of magic—normal magic, magic filtered through black lodestone, not ripped directly from the living. Once this block fades, maybe, just maybe, I can . . .

She thought of the Watcher outside.
What? Escape?