The mask of mirrors, p.48
The Mask of Mirrors, page 48
She lifted the lightstone to the wall, studying it. A faint hint of putrid violet shimmered back at her, and she touched it with one hesitant fingertip.
An instant later she doubled over, retching, flailing her hand in the shallow, filthy water as if that would cleanse it and her mind both. “Fucking hell,” she gasped. “On the walls—don’t touch them!”
Sedge crouched next to her. “What is it?”
“Zlyzen blood,” she said. “Making us afraid. Keeping people away—rats and spiders, too.” She forced her head upward, looking deeper into the blackness. “We’re headed in the right direction.”
“Zlyzen? I thought those were just part of the hallucination.” Sedge scrubbed his hands on his thighs, even though he hadn’t come into contact with the blood. When he spoke, his voice was as high as it’d been when he was still a boy. “Fuck. I bet it was zlyzen. Vargo’s gonna lose his shit.”
His words didn’t help dilute her fear. “What was zlyzen?”
“Huh?” Sedge’s darting gaze settled on her. “Fuck. Forget you heard any of this. We… we lost somebody to ash. All clawed up—by something in the dream, I guess. The one it happened to, he broke out of my hold like it was nothing, dislocating his own shoulder. Died before anyone could do anything.” He scrubbed his hands over his face. “Leave it to fucking Ondrakja to make friends with zlyzen—like she weren’t nightmare enough on her own. C’mon. Stay close.” He sloshed past, his slower pace having nothing to do with the water that had risen to their calves.
They were well under the Point now, the stone above their heads natural rather than blocks held together with crumbling mortar. The niches continued at regular intervals—and then Ren’s wavering light caught a change.
Iron bars across their mouths.
Sedge swore. “That lunatic’s been keeping zlyzen caged?”
Ren edged past him, lifting the stone to light each niche in turn. The gates were open and the holes all empty now—thank the Faces—but in one she found a small lump of rags. Sedge’s breath hissed between his teeth when she reached between the bars to pick it up.
The rags were tied in the vague shape of a human. A doll, not much different from the one Ren had made when Tess first joined the Fingers.
“No,” Ren whispered dully. “This is where she kept the children.”
And in the silence that followed she heard a voice, rising in a croaking parody of song.
“Find them in your pockets,
Find them in your coat;
If you aren’t careful,
You’ll find them on your throat…”
In the deepest shadows, something stirred. The paltry gleam of Ren’s lightstone caught the edges and angles of limbs as withered and bent as dried branches, the sag of torn and filthy clothes not even fit for a rag heap, the brittle swampgrass hair and skin-draped skull of an old woman who might have stepped out of the darkest fire tale.
Gammer Lindworm. No wonder the street kids called her that.
And yet in the bones of her face, in the long red nails that clacked along the wall and the smear of purple across her lips like paint, Ren could see the ruined shreds of Ondrakja.
Sedge made a choking, terrified noise.
“What have you found, my little friends?” Ondrakja creaked. Her eyes seemed too large for her face, as though they might fall out of their sockets. When the light from Ren’s stone caught them, they gleamed like a cat’s at night. “Come closer, come closer, where I can see.”
Ren couldn’t have moved even if she’d wanted to. It was a nightmare come to life, and not because of the zlyzen blood on the walls. “You’re supposed to be dead. I killed you.”
Pointed teeth flashed in reply. “You didn’t kill me enough, little Renyi. And it seems I didn’t kill Sedge enough. We’re all failed murderers here.” Her voice might be broken, but the words sounded just like Ondrakja. Her creaking shivered into a ghastly laugh. “Or maybe not. I killed your friend, after all. You shouldn’t have run. It’s always better to stay and take your punishment, rather than let other people get hurt.”
Leato. Ren’s gorge rose.
Ondrakja crept closer, easing into the light as though testing to make sure she wouldn’t burn. She kept talking—she’d always loved the sound of her own voice. “I could have saved him, if I wanted. Like I saved myself. Fed him the blood.” Her nails came away from the wall dripping viscous purple, and Ondrakja licked them clean. “Or fed him little dreams and let my friends feast. They grow fat on it, fat with nightmares, then bleed those nightmares out to feed others.”
She was only a few arm’s lengths away now, close enough for Ren to smell her stink, even over the rot and mildew of the catacombs.
“Then there’s you. Little Renyi.” Ondrakja’s voice hardened. “Little traitorous bitch, turning against your own knot. Do you still dream of that night? Is that a sweet dream for you? They prefer the sweeter dreams. Food and family and warmth. The sweeter the dream, the more bitter the nightmare that follows.”
Ren felt Sedge tense behind her. It was the confrontation they’d never had five years ago: Sedge against Ondrakja, pitting his growing size and strength against her viciousness and experience, and the years of habitual obedience. By the time she stopped to cut his charm, casting him out of the knot—by the time he realized she meant to kill him—he’d been too broken to fight back.
He wasn’t broken now.
“But where’s the other one?” Ondrakja said, her ruined voice suddenly warming to a parody of friendliness. She pressed her clawed hands to her breast. “There were always three of you. Where’s little Tess?” From under her rags she drew the Acrenix medallion she’d torn from Ren’s neck in the nightmare, inscribed with three Tricats. “We must do things in threes. Isn’t that why you gave me this? I can’t punish you properly without all three.”
In the cellar of the old lodging house there was a small room where Ondrakja used to lock misbehaving Fingers, alone in the dark and the damp, saying the zlyzen would come for them soon. But Ren and Sedge weren’t the children they’d been, cowering in fear of Ondrakja’s rage.
“You don’t fucking touch my sisters,” Sedge growled—and lunged.
He was bigger now, and stronger, and she was a withered husk of her former self. He drew two knives as he hurled himself forward—
—and with one negligent hand, Ondrakja slammed him against the iron bars of a cage.
“Now, now,” she said, in a singsong tone. “Doesn’t matter if you’re a pinkie or a fist—you don’t threaten your knot’s boss. There’s only room for one traitor here.”
“You en’t my boss no more.” Sedge lurched to his feet, one dagger still in his left hand, but Ondrakja caught his arm and twisted it. Even through his cry of pain, Ren could hear the snap as his wrist broke.
She couldn’t stand frozen while Ondrakja killed him again.
Drawing her own knife, she ran at Ondrakja. Rather than matching herself against the woman’s unholy strength, she ducked under the swipe of Ondrakja’s free hand and stabbed upward, trying to catch her in the soft pit between ribs and arm. But the hag twitched back, fast as a snake, and the only good thing was that she let go of Sedge. He pulled out another knife with his good hand and threw it, but Ondrakja avoided the blade with ease, retreating a step.
“Such rebellious little children,” she sighed. “Don’t you want your mother back?”
“You are not our mother,” Ren spat. That was one mask Ondrakja had never tried to wear: She was their knot leader, but never tried to call herself family. I would have poisoned her years earlier if she had.
Ondrakja pouted. “Is it because I look like this?” She plucked at her robes, at the spotted parchment skin of her arms. “Don’t worry. I’ll be better soon—he promised. Then we can be a family at last. You don’t want it now, but that’s no trouble.” Her teeth gleamed in the faint light. “I can make you want it.”
Her certainty was even more unnerving than her words. “Like hell you fucking will,” Sedge hissed through his pain, but Ondrakja just clicked her tongue.
“You’ll see. I’ll come for you. All three of you, and then I’ll punish you like you deserve. Like a good mother should.”
At first Ren thought the light from the stone she carried was fading. But no, it held steady; Ondrakja was the one fading, wisping into nothingness like she was made of smoke.
Ren made one last, desperate lunge, but her knife passed through the empty air where Ondrakja had been. As though the woman had been nothing more than another nightmare.
18
Aža’s Call
Eastbridge, Whitesail, and Duskgate: Cyprilun 29
Vargo’s repertoire of curses would have impressed even Tess. “Just the two of you. Alone in the Depths. With the floods already starting. You have an excuse for not understanding how dangerous that is, but Sedge…” His glower promised retribution.
She’d told him almost all of it, after stopping at the townhouse long enough to change disguises and hand Sedge over to Tess for bone-setting. The zlyzen blood, the children’s cages, the unnatural strength, even Ondrakja vanishing into thin air—everything but Ondrakja swearing to punish Ren for her betrayal.
“Blame me, not your man,” she hurried to say. “I told him that if he didn’t guide me, I’d go on my own. A rashness I heartily regret now. We’re lucky he suffered nothing worse than a broken wrist.”
“And he’s lucky you came to no harm. Forget the floods; you’re still recovering. Don’t you know how much filth is down there? You could have gotten sick.” Vargo shifted back as though to protect himself with distance.
“I scrubbed thoroughly afterward.”
That didn’t seem to reassure him. “I suspected Indestor was behind the ash production, but it’s some madwoman in the Depths using stolen children and… monsters? How?”
“The zlyzen were feasting, she said. Growing fat.”
His fingers drummed on the arm of his chair, which Master Peabody seemed to take as a cue to peek out from his collar. A row of four bead-bright eyes fixed on Renata. Vargo said, “The walls—they were covered in zlyzen blood?” Setting Peabody on the table, he rose and retrieved a sheaf of loosely bound papers and spread them in front of her. “The blood on the walls… could some of it have been numinata? Anything that looked like this?”
Vargo’s “this” wasn’t much. Sketches of unconnected lines; notes in a much neater hand than Tanaquis’s saying things like vesica piscis and acute enough to be Ninat? and who the fuck uses Ekhrd to estimate regression??? Even when he set them in a grid to show the whole figure, there was more missing than present.
The pulsing dread had made it difficult to even look at the blood, but she’d seen enough to be confident in shaking her head. “It was just splashes—nothing precise. As I understand it, numinatria requires concentration and a steady hand; I doubt that madwoman is capable of anything of the sort.” Renata looked up from the papers. “Why? What is this?”
Sighing, Vargo gathered up the sheets and tapped them against the table to straighten them. “Found the remains of an operation in Froghole. This was what was left.” He cocked his head. “Was it iridescent, the blood? Like dreamweaver feathers, but putrefied?”
“More violet than a dreamweaver’s feathers. But yes, it had something of a shimmer.” She rubbed her thumb against the tip of her finger, as if the residue were still there.
“We found something like that, too. Disgusting, but it didn’t have any unusual effect. So she’s dosing the children with aža, letting the zlyzen feed on their dreams, then taking the zlyzen blood and transmuting it into ash with a numinat. You said she disappeared—could she have gone into the realm of mind?”
“I think she must have. We know it’s possible; that’s what happened to all of us at the Accords. But it looked like she could control it at will. We don’t know where she is… or when she’ll appear.”
Vargo gave her a sour look. “Thank you for tonight’s nightmares, Alta Renata. You didn’t grow up with tales of zlyzen eating your brain while you slept.”
If he was the Rook, he knew she had grown up with such tales. But in his shoes, she would have said the same thing, to throw her off the scent. I’m going to go mad, trying to guess whether he knows.
Vargo’s thoughts had moved on. “Indestor’s got an inscriptor capable of doing what this Gammer Lindworm hag can’t. And you say she made it sound like they’re working together.” He absently riffled the edge of his notes. “But why?”
Renata leaned back in her chair. That night in Mettore’s office, when he’d asked for another dose, saying he needed to test something—had he meant ash, intending it solely for her? If Ondrakja had then poisoned all the wine, that explained the double dose she had received.
“Someone’s selling it on the streets,” she said slowly. “Gammer Lindworm? Or that inscriptor of his. But Indestor must want it for some other purpose.” Something magical, if that pattern spoke true. “What would happen if you drew a numinat with ash?”
Vargo fell silent, contemplating her question. She watched the minute twitches of his jaw and lips. He talks to himself sometimes, Sedge had said.
“Nothing, I think,” he finally replied. “The powder form is inert unless ingested. I could try… but I’d rather not.”
“Don’t.” It came out more vehemently than she intended.
Vargo scooped Peabody up and tucked him under his collar. “Don’t worry, Renata. I’m not the sort to take unnecessary risks.”
That fleeting touch of familiarity, Vargo using her unadorned name, stayed with Ren as she left his townhouse and went to share what she’d learned with Tanaquis. She couldn’t tell whether it was deliberate, or so accidental he hadn’t even noticed the slip.
It’s Vargo. I don’t think he blinks accidentally.
But that didn’t stop her from thinking about it all the way to Whitesail.
Tanaquis’s frown was enough to drive such thoughts from her mind. “You said nothing about seeing the Depths in your nightmare.”
“I know, and I can’t apologize enough.” Renata twisted her fingers around each other. “That portion… I was searching for my true father. But I didn’t feel I could say that, even in a private report. I should have, I know—but all I can do now is share what I held back. I assure you, that is everything.” Another lie, but if she needed to tell Tanaquis anything else—like what she’d felt in the Charterhouse with the statues—she could always claim she’d learned it from the pattern cards.
The astrologer had her write down her account, which Renata dutifully did, making sure to work Ondrakja into it. Then she gritted her teeth, squared her shoulders, and went to the Aerie.
She didn’t expect Captain Serrado to be standing quite so close when he opened the door to his office. Nor did he, in only shirtsleeves and a waistcoat, seem to be expecting visitors. “Alta Renata,” he said, surprised. “Can I help you?”
“I need to report something,” she said. “Concerning your investigation with the sleepless children.”
His head jerked back, surprise deepening. “And you came here? You could have summoned me to your house.”
The thought hadn’t even crossed her mind, and she cursed inwardly.
Serrado backed up a half step. “Please, come in. I apologize for the cramped conditions.”
She soon realized why he’d been pressed so close. If it weren’t for the window, she would have suspected his “office” was a repurposed broom closet. A stack of ledgers behind the door prevented it from opening all the way, and more occupied the seat of the one visitor’s chair. When Serrado made an abortive move toward them, she said, “Don’t trouble yourself; I can stand. I went looking for that old woman—the one we spoke of before.”
He stilled. “You went wandering around the Lower Bank?”
At this rate Alta Renata was going to get a reputation for being mad, but… “No, I went wandering around the place you call the Depths.”
A pile of papers cascaded to the floor.
Save for that one twitch, he stood utterly still as she gave her account for a third time. When she was done, he planted his fists on his desk and struggled against what she suspected was language inappropriate for an alta to hear. He should have heard Vargo earlier. “You said Vargo’s man knows the way?”
“Yes, although his wrist is broken.” Not that it would stop Sedge.
“I’ll assemble my people.” Yanking his patrol coat off a hook, Serrado shrugged it on. “If he’s well enough—and Vargo allows it—he can show us the way. If not…” He eyed her surcoat, fern green in honor of the spring and embroidered with a motif of silver reeds and herons. “Perhaps you could draw me a map.”
“We left chalk marks on the walls, and if all else fails, just go directly toward your sense of dread,” she said darkly. “But, Captain… if the old woman truly can slip into what you call Ažerais’s Dream, how can you possibly catch her?”
That stopped him short. Deflated, he leaned against his desk and rubbed his eyes. He looked like he’d barely slept more than she had after the Night of Hells.
“That’s an annoyingly logical point. The elders might know a way. Or Szorsa Mevieny.” He shook his head, sighing. “With the floods coming, the main thing is to ensure she can’t use that place to trap any more victims, rather than wait and hope we can catch her.”
He shifted, and Renata realized he couldn’t leave with her blocking the way. As she started to open the door, though, he caught its edge and eased it shut again. “Alta,” he said, his voice too soft to be heard in the corridor. “You should know… back when I was first investigating Gammer Lindworm—Ondrakja—I found that someone had torn her arrest record out of the ledger. Like they wanted to hide that she’d ever been here. Not many people have access to our archives. It could have been one of my fellow officers…”
“But you don’t think it was,” she murmured.
His eyes were bleak. “I reported what you told me about the old woman you saw, and her claim that she’d poisoned everyone. Eret Indestor accepted the theory a little too readily for a man who shouldn’t have had any idea who she was.”
