Shadows (9 page)

They sprinted forward.

They almost made it. Keltan reached the place where the slippery path led down to the walkway under the bridge, slid down it like a child on a slide, and vanished from sight. Mara dashed after him . . . but a root she did not see in the near-darkness caught her toe. She fell headlong, thudding to the ground, unable to bite off an involuntary cry of pain.

“There!” shouted a voice behind her. Footsteps thundered along the path. “Hold!”

Mara saw Keltan's pale face, eyes wide and horrified, slip back into the sheltering darkness of the bridge. Then two Night Watchers reached her, and gloved hands seized her arms.

Taken!

“C
HECK UNDER THE BRIDGE!” shouted the Watcher who had grabbed Mara.

Mara caught her breath as the other black-Masked man cautiously picked his way down the slippery bank and knelt, holding onto one of the barren willow branches with one hand, to peer under the bridge. He grunted. “Some kind of walkway,” he said. “Made by kids, from the look of it.” He knelt even lower, and swore. “Damn thing goes right under the wall!”

“Anyone on it?”

“No.” The Watcher straightened and turned around. “Looks like she was alone.”

“We'll have to tear that out,” the Watcher said. “And make sure the river passage is properly barred again, both ends.” He shook Mara. “That's a security risk, that is.”

The Watcher by the bridge snorted. “Risk from whom? That's what the Masks are for.” But he was unsheathing his knife as he said it. He reached down under the bridge and flicked the blade once, twice. The ropes holding the walkway parted and Mara heard the splash as the nearest end dropped into the river. Several planks of wood swept into view and floated downriver. “Done for now,” the Watcher said. “Take iron bars to rip it out proper.” He sheathed his knife and scrambled back up the ridge. “Now, who have we got?”

“Another damn kid breaking curfew,” growled the Watcher holding Mara.

The other Watcher took Mara's chin in his gloved hand and forced her head up, turning it this way and that. “Pretty,” he grunted. “How close are you to your Masking, girl?”

“Close,” Mara said. Her heart was pounding and her head felt light. Keltan must have made it to the far end of the walkway before the Watcher cut it, or he would have been seen . . . but he couldn't get back in. He couldn't help her. No one could.

Once more she was in the hands of the Watchers, and this time, unlike in the mining camp, there was not even the slightest hope of rescue from the unMasked Army. And the risk wasn't just to herself, but to her father. She couldn't let them know who she was. “It's next month.”

The Watcher didn't seem to have heard her. He was peering closer at her face. “Wait a minute,” he said slowly. “I've seen you before.”

Mara's heart stopped, restarted with a painful lurch. “My name's . . . Kirika,” she said. “My father is a . . . a . . .”

“You're Mara Holdfast,” the Watcher growled, releasing her chin. “You're the daughter of Charlton Holdfast, the Master Maskmaker. I caught you and your friend swimming in the pool behind the Waterworkers' Hall.” He snorted. “I haven't just seen you, I've seen you naked. Gave you my cloak to wear.”

“No,” Mara said. “That wasn't me. I'm not—”

“Don't lie, girl.” He looked at the Watcher holding her in an unyielding grip. “And there's more,” he said. “Her Masking has come and gone . . . and she failed. Big surprise to everyone. She's not a kid. She's unMasked.” He frowned. “And I sense . . .” He drew back from her, then reached inside his cloak. When he took out his hand, she saw that his fingers were sheathed in glowing purple light.

Magic!
she thought.
If he has more, I could—

But she never finished the thought. The Watcher flicked his fingers as though flicking away water. The purple light leaped from him to Mara . . .

...and she gasped, and sagged in the clutches of the Watcher who held her, because she suddenly felt as if she had gone blind, deaf, and dumb.

Her Gift was gone. Just like that, it was gone!

The grip on her arms tightened even more. “She's Gifted?” gasped the Watcher who held her. “UnMasked, and still Gifted?”

The first Watcher nodded. “I've blocked her, for now.”

For now?
Mara thought, and though her thoughts felt strange and sluggish in her own mind, she felt a surge of relief.
Then it's not permanent!

The Watcher who had just used magic on her glanced back down the riverbank at the bridge. “She came in under the wall, obviously.” He turned back to her again, his Masked face a black void in the dim light. “The question is, why? How did she get back here from the mining camp? And why does she still have magic?”

“What do we do with her?” said the Watcher holding her.

“She's not a kid,” the other said grimly. “Out in the streets at night, unMasked? That's a death sentence, that is.”

Mara swallowed.

“But that's not our call,” the Watcher went on, and Mara felt a quick surge of probably unwarranted relief. “There's something strange about this. More than strange. And that means we kick it up the chain of command.” He looked over her head at her captor. “We take her to the Palace.”

The two Night Watchers led her up onto the Great Circle Road, and moved along it at a brisk pace, the city wall towering over them to the left, blank-faced warehouses and shuttered shops to their right. Lamps hung periodically on tall posts, though here and there they had guttered out, so that they passed from pools of light to pools of deep shadow as they made their way around the city.

High above them, at the peak of Fortress Hill, the Palace glowed orange in the light reflecting from the still-scudding clouds. Its towering curtain wall hid the lights that Mara had seen from the ridge south of the city. She wondered if they were going to go all the way around to the Palace's main gate, if the Watchers would parade her down that well-lit boulevard. This late, it would be mostly deserted, but not entirely; there would still be citizens emerging from the pubs and other establishments—and her father moved in the highest circles of Tamita society. There were many who knew her face, many who knew she had failed her Masking, many who would take note that she was in the hands of the Watchers and being taken to the Palace . . . many who would tell her father. And then what would he do? What would he risk? And at what cost?

There was nothing she could do but keep her head down in the hope no one recognized her; but in the end, the Watchers began the climb toward the Palace long before they reached the main boulevard. At first Mara felt relieved as they led her up a narrow alley that climbed steeply, long stretches of staircase followed by terraces where rather mean and run-down houses huddled together; but as they continued to climb, she realized where this path must lead, and sick terror gripped her again, for it ended, not at the grand main gate, gilded and glowing, but at a much smaller one made of unadorned, solid iron, rusted the color of blood.

Traitors' Gate.

Forbidden as a matter of course from going anywhere near it, she had, also as a matter of course, sneaked up there: less than a year ago. She had had nightmares about it; nightmares that paled in comparison to the ones generated by the horrors she had encountered since, but they had left an indelible impression on her.

And
there
was why.

She didn't want to, would have preferred to look anywhere else, but she could not climb the stairs without keeping her head up, and looking up, she could not help but see the tall wooden structures erected on both sides of the path on the last terrace beneath the Palace walls: two score in all, a dozen on each side of the road.

She was thankful for the dim light. She only wished it could be dimmer, for even in the slight glow from the clouds and those buildings still showing lights behind them there could be no mistaking what hung from those structures: corpses, the decaying remains of those deemed traitors to the Autarchy, hanged from these gallows and left to feed the crows until, picked clean, their bones were at last taken down, and, it was rumored, ground to provide fertilizer for the Palace gardens.

There were eight in all, two more than when she had sneaked up there last. Six were already little more than skeletons hung with strips of dry flesh and skin. But two . . . two were fresh. Both were naked, the final humiliation for those whom the Autarch had declared to be his enemies and therefore less than human. One was female, the other male. The woman was older, in her forties, perhaps, but the male . . . the male was only a boy, no older than Hyram. His purpled, bloated face stared at her, swollen tongue protruding from the corner of his mouth.

He had no eyes. The birds always took those first.

Swallowing hard to keep from throwing up, Mara tore her gaze away and focused grimly on Traitors' Gate itself: the gate through which traitors emerged, but never re-entered. She dreaded it opening for her now, but in fact it didn't. The Watchers, swearing under their breaths at the stench from the bodies, took her instead to a small door next to the gate. The one who had recognized her rapped sharply on it with his gloved fist. A panel slid open and a black-Masked face peered out. “What is it?” the new Watcher said. Then he saw Mara. “Who's this?”

“UnMasked,” the first Watcher said. “But I know her. Mara Holdfast.”

“Holdfast? The Master Maskmaker's daughter?” Mara could hear disbelief in the Watcher's voice. “But she—”

“Failed her Masking,” said the one on her side of the door. “Was sent to the camp. And now . . . she's back.
And
she still has her Gift. Blocked for now.”

The Watcher inside swore, then stepped back. The panel slid across the peephole again and a moment later a bolt crashed open, and then the heavy wooden door swung inward. Beyond was a short, dark tunnel through the walls, leading into a room aglow with fire- and lamplight, almost blinding to Mara after so much time in the darkness. She squinted and blinked watering eyes as the Watcher who had opened the door stepped aside so that she and her two captors could enter.

He closed and bolted the door behind them, then followed them into the room. Scattered chairs and tables gave it the look of an inn's common room, as did the huge hearth in which crackled the remnants of a once much-larger fire. Lamps hung on the walls and stood on a couple of the tables, and stairs led up from one corner. To Mara's right, another heavy, bolted door presumably opened onto to the path the condemned followed to Traitors' Gate.

“Sit her down,” said the Watcher who had let them in. Mara's captors shoved her into one of the wooden chairs at a table near the fire. She savored the warmth despite the fear and despair gripping her.

None of the Watchers sat. They stood, looming over her like the gallows loomed over the path to Traitors' Gate. “You were at the camp?” the one who had recognized her said in a low voice.

Mara hesitated. Should she tell the truth?

And then, like a ray of light breaking through the clouds, she felt a surge of hope—probably unreasonable hope, but hope nonetheless.
Everyone in the Palace must be frantic to understand what happened at the camp
.
They know magic was involved, but they don't know where it came from. And no one who was there can tell them a thing: everyone aboveground collapsed when I sucked in their magic to stop the explosion of the rockbreakers. There were no witnesses.

They
need
me. They need to question me. They won't kill me.

Not yet, anyway.

“Yes,” she said. “Yes. I saw what happened.” Her brain seemed to be fizzing, bubbling, working frantically to construct a tale that might get her taken somewhere else, anywhere else, away from the Watchers and Traitors' Gate and the horrible “fruit” hanging from the black gallows-trees outside. “The gates were open, I ran . . . I've been . . . living in the villages, passing as a child. But I know I can't keep that up. I'm getting too tall, too . . . too much older.

“So I thought . . . I thought . . . maybe if I came back, I could, I don't know, bargain. Tell what I know in exchange for not being killed. For not being sent back to that horrible camp.”

Were they believing her? The black Masks gave no clue. “And you just happened to know a way into the City?” said the one who had let them in, whom she gathered must outrank the others.

“Under the wall,” said the Watcher who had recognized her. “Along the river.”

“That walkway's been there for years,” Mara said. “A lot of kids know about it.” She suspected that was a lie, but not one they could easily check, without interviewing every child in the City.

“If you sneaked in to turn yourself in, why did you run when you were seen?” the commander said skeptically.

“I . . . I panicked. I
thought
I wanted to turn myself in, but then, when I saw the Night Watchers . . . I've always run from Night Watchers. They've . . . chased me before.”

She glanced at the one who had recognized her, the one who had said he had seen her naked the night he'd caught her and Sala swimming behind Waterworkers' Hall, and gave him a slight smile, hoping it looked like she was flirting, though she didn't really have a clue how to flirt and he was the last person she would have flirted with if she had.
But anything to make them think a little more kindly toward me . . .