The mask of mirrors, p.64
The Mask of Mirrors, page 64
She felt its energy flowing quietly at her back. It would have been reassuring… except she posed as much danger to it as Arkady did.
And Gammer Lindworm knew it. She dropped the girl’s limp body at her feet, stained lips curling in a gap-toothed snarl. “You came back. You always do. Back after you poisoned me, back after I poisoned you, back after you ran away in the Depths, back tonight. Or is this what you came for?” Digging a long-nailed hand under her layers of rags, she pulled out the Acrenix medallion, dangling it like she was luring a cat.
The longer Ren could keep the old hag distracted, the longer the wellspring was safe. Vargo was still moving, reaching out for the pulsing Tricat painted onto the stone. But although Sedge had finally wrenched himself off the numinat, he hadn’t gotten up.
I have to keep her talking.
“I came back for the wellspring,” Ren said, her voice shaking. “For Ažerais’s Dream. For my people.”
Gammer Lindworm’s cackle shattered the air like a physical thing, ripping across the dream and into reality. “Your people? What people are those? You have no koszenie to record your kin. You have no kin.” She drew nearer step by step, dragging Arkady along almost as an afterthought. “Your mother’s people cast her out because of you. Your mother died because of you. And now? Now you’re letting your friends sacrifice themselves for you.” Her gaze flicked past Ren’s shoulder to where Sedge lay unmoving. “When we’re done, all Nadežra, all Vraszan will know you destroyed the wellspring. You’ll have nothing.”
Ren’s throat closed up. She wanted to deny it, to say it was all lies… but Gammer Lindworm—Ondrakja—had always known how to hurt the people around her. They’d stayed at her side anyway, bound by the ties of their knot, because they were too young and too vulnerable to know any better.
The old woman still wore her knot charm around her throat, tangled in the chain of the medallion. Stained and filthy, but still recognizably the symbol of the thread that bound her to the Fingers.
Threads.
The wellspring’s light surged again as Vargo broke another line. And as it did, Ren saw something flickering in the air, like motes of dust coming visible in sunlight.
Lines: not the geometric precision of the numinat, nor the curving path of the ancient labyrinth, still faintly visible in the stone where the Tyrant had chiseled it away. Lines between people. A strong one from Ren to Sedge; faint ones from Ren to the Rook, and the Rook to Arkady. Something powerful from Vargo himself, even stronger than the one from Ren to Sedge, but she couldn’t see where it went; then one from him to Ren. The silver thread he’d spun out when he pulled her spirit from the dream.
And a line from Gammer Lindworm to one of the zlyzen.
All the zlyzen were linked to each other, but the thread from Gammer Lindworm was different. And Ren had been trying so hard not to look at the creatures, she’d missed it: a knotted charm hanging around that zlyzen’s neck, the ends of the cord lengthened by a bit of rough string. She hadn’t seen that charm in five years—but she still recognized it. She remembered throwing it at Ondrakja’s feet.
They’re her knot.
The zlyzen wearing the charm pounced on Vargo’s back, flattening him to the stone, claws and teeth tearing. The Rook was too far away, locked hilt-to-hilt with Indestor; Arkady and Sedge were both limp. And Ren couldn’t fight Gammer Lindworm.
But she could lie.
“You’re right.” Ren sank to her knees, her voice breaking. “I—I have no one. Not anymore. No knot in this city will take me, not after what I did to you.” She laughed, a wild, bitter sound. “Even the Traementis will not have me. I got their son killed. I have no one.”
She looked up at Gammer Lindworm. “Ondrakja. Please. Take me back.”
Ondrakja halted in her approach, eyes slitted in suspicion. “You know you can’t lie to me. I always know when you’re lying. I can see what you want,” she said—but she took a step closer, keening faintly with each breath.
“Not a lie,” Ren whispered. “I will swear the oaths. Already you have given me ash—I am ready.”
“This won’t save your wellspring,” Ondrakja whispered, spittle flying from her lips.
But she held out her hand for Ren to swear upon.
Ren interlaced her fingers with Ondrakja’s twisted claw and met the woman’s gaze. “All our grudges are washed away. Your secrets are mine, and mine are yours. Between us there will be no debts.”
Every word of it nauseated her. But she’d made her choice, years ago: to choose her brother over her knot. And Ren would commit blasphemy again to save Sedge, to save the wellspring—to save everything.
She got a close view of Ondrakja’s sharpened teeth and a gust of foul breath as the old woman laughed and pulled Ren to her feet, dragging her close. “Yes. We will be as we were when I—”
The gloating cut short. Gammer Lindworm tried to disentangle their hands, to pull back from the embrace, as she saw too late what Ren intended.
It was true: Ren wanted to rejoin the knot. But only so she could use it.
Her fingers wrapped around the charm’s cord and tore it from Gammer Lindworm’s neck. The Acrenix medallion clanked to the stone, and Ren twisted in the hag’s grip, turning all her attention on the zlyzen tearing Vargo apart.
The zlyzen—and the thread running to it. Ren seized that thread and pulled.
The zlyzen’s head came up. Like a dog heeling its master, it leapt off Vargo’s body and slunk toward Ren. Who tore her arm free of Gammer Lindworm’s grip just long enough to fold the charm over the edge of her throwing knife and slice through its stained, filthy cords.
“I cut you out,” Ren snarled at Gammer Lindworm. “You are part of this knot no more.”
Gammer Lindworm’s arm closed down on Ren’s throat, a heartbeat too late to silence her. Ren’s vision flared white as her air and blood were choked off—but the zlyzen shuddered like waking hounds and turned their skull-dark eyes on Gammer Lindworm with feral intensity. She let go of Ren and reached for them, nails clicking like beetle wings. “My darlings, my children.”
The nearest zlyzen snapped at her when her nails brushed its flank. She snatched her hand back. “No. No, that’s not what you want. You—you’re hungry, yes? I have a child right here…”
Ren staggered clear, gasping for air. It was like watching the Fingers around Ondrakja, trying desperately to figure out how to placate her when she was in one of her rages—but in reverse. Gammer Lindworm kept babbling as the zlyzen gathered, prowling closer, abandoning Vargo and Sedge. The Rook dropped Mettore with a hilt to his temple and started to rush toward Ren, but she stopped him with an outflung hand.
Gammer Lindworm retreated farther, one hand fumbling behind her like she was trying to find Arkady. But instead her heel caught Arkady’s outthrust leg, and she fell backward, almost into the wellspring.
It was all the opening the zlyzen needed. Eerie in their silence, they mobbed her: rags and flesh and blood and bone, tearing into her with the cruel abandon of children freed from the trappings of civilization.
Ren looked away, unable to watch—and saw that Vargo wasn’t moving.
He was on the far side of the wellspring, past Gammer Lindworm and the zlyzen, just out of reach of the numinat’s last element. Desperate, Ren laid her hand on the line that connected them. Pouring herself into that thread, she cried, Finish it.
Amid the shattered lines of the numinat, Vargo stirred. Dragged himself the last few inches to the final figure… and swiped part of it away.
The poisonous light went out.
Only the wellspring blazed, pure and bright—and then fading, as the veil between the realms began to knit itself back together, restoring the waking world.
Including the stone of the stage, above their heads.
Ren leapt for Arkady, ash-fueled strength helping her throw the girl over one shoulder. Then Sedge, whose solid weight should have been far too much for her to move. The Rook grabbed Vargo’s limp and bloody form, and—after a hesitation so brief she almost missed it—Mettore Indestor.
Side by side, they scrambled up to the solid part of the floor, past the borders of the dead numinat. Just before the wellspring faded away entirely, Ren turned and hurled the broken knot charm toward the remains of Gammer Lindworm.
The zlyzen turned to look at Ren—and then they were gone.
24
The Face of Balance
The Point: Cyprilun 35
Ren hauled herself over the wall separating the lowest seats from the stage and clung to its top for a moment, wishing she could collapse. But the Rook was lifting Sedge up to her, then Vargo, then Mettore. Finally, he slung a dazed and sniffling Arkady onto his back and climbed over the wall himself.
Ren’s gaze went from her throwing knife to the unconscious Mettore. She knew all too well how often money and power kept the guilty safe in Nadežra. The edges of the knife dug into her fingers: the blade was small, but it was enough to cut a throat.
Before she could make up her mind, the Rook was there, one gloved hand coming to rest on hers. “We don’t kill,” he said softly.
Her jaw tensed beneath the lace of her mask. You don’t.
She’d killed Ondrakja. She could have pretended the first time didn’t count, because the woman had survived. But Ren had murder in her heart then, and again when she smiled and lied and begged to be tied back into the knot. I’m a murderer and a knot-cutting traitor twice over.
“I know,” she whispered. “But…”
“But how do we make certain he answers for what he’s done, and tried to do? I’ve been struggling with that question for two centuries.” His hand curled into a fist and dropped to his side. The Rook’s sigh was layered with years of regret. “If you have any suggestions, I’m happy to take them.”
Ren stared down at Mettore. She could kill him; to say she didn’t have that in herself would be a lie.
But she didn’t want to go back there. To the cold, empty place where she could commit murder and call it justice.
Justice.
Her gaze came up, searching the shadows beneath the Rook’s hood. “Give him to the Vraszenian clan leaders.”
In the moment of stillness that followed, she thought he was about to laugh at her suggestion. And he did—but it was tinged with admiration. “You wear the mask of Ažerais’s rose, but I think you’re more like Clever Natalya. Yes. I’ll take him to the elders, and we’ll let the Cinquerat try to save him from their justice.”
Gripping an arm and a leg, the Rook lifted the unconscious Mettore over his shoulder. “I’ll also make certain he doesn’t share any secrets that need to be kept.”
Ren couldn’t stop her gaze from flickering to Arkady, now curled into a tight ball in the corner of the nobles’ box, watching them with wide eyes. Arkady didn’t know Ren was Renata… but she knew Ren had been with her and vanished.
The Rook’s hood dipped, following Ren’s glance. “I think everyone here knows the value of a secret kept,” he said.
Arkady’s eyes narrowed in calculation. Ren could almost see her pulling the tattered remnants of her street bravado over the awe of a child in the presence of an old legend… and, judging by the look she gave Ren, a new one.
“Yeah, I know when to yap and when to say nothing,” she said, rising to her feet. “En’t gonna do me no good if people think I was yowling like a nipper.” She scowled in warning at Ren. “Not that I was.”
It seemed Arkady Bones had her own secrets. Ren struggled not to laugh. “Of course not,” she said.
A smile glimmered in the shadows of the Rook’s hood. “Ažerais bless you, Lady Rose. And thank you.”
She didn’t watch him go, turning to Sedge, who was groaning his way to wakefulness. Vargo was still unconscious, and torn up far worse than Ren had thought. But his pulse held steady, and when noise at the entrance to the amphitheatre heralded the arrival of a few cautious scouts coming to see what had happened, Sedge shoved vaguely at her, saying, “Go.”
Ren left the two men in Arkady’s care and faded into the shadows.
The ash seemed to be gone from her body—burned out by the numinat, maybe. The world outside was quiet and real. Once she was clear of the Point and down among the buildings of Duskgate, she pulled the mask off her face, trying to figure out where she should go and who she should be when she got there—and what to do with the disguise that had apparently come with her.
But when the mask came off, the black clothing faded like mist, leaving her dressed as Arenza once more. The only bit that remained was the lace mask itself, tatted in a pattern of roses.
Nadežra: Cyprilun 36–Fellun 7
The news that Mettore Indestor had intended to destroy the Wellspring of Ažerais and blame it on the Stadnem Anduske’s bombing—which would coincidentally bury the evidence of his numinat—nearly sent the Vraszenian population into armed rebellion.
If the Cinquerat had made their usual response, speeches and platitudes for the masses while negotiating a deal with the accused behind the scenes, the city would have burned. But the Cinquerat couldn’t negotiate with a man they didn’t have. And by the time they knew where he was, Renata Viraudax was very publicly accusing him of every crime under the sun, from kidnapping her to fomenting riot to poisoning the Cinquerat and all the others during the Night of Bells.
It was exhilarating, in a way she hadn’t been able to enjoy for weeks. A whirlwind of lies and truth—the lies mostly to cover truths she dared not reveal. Ren couldn’t admit she’d been at the amphitheatre, so instead she spun a tale of imprisonment in Indestor Manor. She’d discovered Mettore’s plan—a claim Scaperto Quientis was only too happy to back—and so Indestor sent his minion Gammer Lindworm to kidnap her before she could warn anyone else. “The Rook freed me,” she told Ghiscolo Acrenix, Sibiliat’s father, who’d been appointed by the Cinquerat as a neutral party to investigate the affair. “I know he’s an outlaw, but I must say I’m grateful; without him, I might still be trapped.”
When Gammer Lindworm’s body resurfaced in the amphitheatre, spat out by the dream, Mezzan tried to blame her for everything. To hear him tell it, Ondrakja had been the lead conspirator, controlling his father with her ability to step in and out of the dream. But if Nadežra’s elite were reluctant to admit one of their own had engaged in such flagrant crimes, they were even less willing to admit he might have been the pawn of a Lacewater criminal known for running a knot of child thieves. Especially once Tanaquis corroborated Renata’s testimony, along with Grey Serrado—and, unexpectedly, someone Ren recognized. The fair-haired woman she’d seen working for Mettore was delivered to the front step of Acrenix Manor, bound and gagged and eager to confess to whatever the authorities wanted. Ren thought at first that was the Rook’s doing, but when she mentioned it to Sedge, he simply said, “Vargo.”
And that was all he said, beyond assuring her that Vargo would live, when he showed up at the kitchen door with a rucksack and no Fog Spider charm knotted around his wrist.
Almost all. “It’s like you said,” he muttered, touching the inside of his bare wrist. “Make me choose my sister or my knot, and I’m gonna choose my sister. Every time.”
The fresh bruises on his face told Ren there was more to the story. She’d fled after betraying the Fingers, but Sedge had gone back to the Fog Spiders after abandoning Vargo in order to defend Ren at the amphitheatre. They would have punished him before letting him go—and she suspected it was only Sedge’s long service that kept it to mere bruises.
But he didn’t want to say more, not yet, so she didn’t push.
They retrieved Tess from Little Alwydd, and then Ren had to go to Traementis Manor to explain to Donaia and Giuna what had happened—and to be wept over in their relief.
Despite all the testimony against him, when word came that the Vraszenian leaders had executed Mettore, the tension almost erupted into war once again. Ren suspected the only reason the Cinquerat didn’t retaliate was because they too had been poisoned on the Night of Hells. Nadežra’s leaders might be willing to overlook Mettore’s crimes against everyone else, but his conspiracy had made them suffer, too. Much easier to make a show of rapport, and turn House Indestor into a very public scapegoat.
When they put their minds to it, the Cinquerat were astonishingly efficient. A bare eight days after the near-destruction of the amphitheatre and the wellspring, they gathered in the Charterhouse to deliver their verdicts.
It was natural irony that this happened in the same audience chamber where they’d held the Ceremony of the Accords. But this time there was no pageant, no Vraszenian presence, no wagon bringing tribute; instead the benches were filled with nearly every noble and delta scion in the city. Renata sat with Donaia and Giuna and Tanaquis, all dressed in their sober finest, to hear how the Cinquerat would address Mettore Indestor’s crimes.
The first part surprised no one. By unanimous decision, the Cinquerat posthumously stripped him of the title of Caerulet. They couldn’t address crimes of this magnitude without a full set of members. In theory, the seats were supposed to be filled by vote of the current members; in practice, they were almost always hereditary. So when they announced Eret Ghiscolo Acrenix as the new Caerulet in place of Mezzan, it was a harbinger of the fate to come.
From there, each seat addressed Indestor’s crimes. Argentet went first, and Sostira Novrus was only too happy to set the tone with vicious aplomb.
“For the crimes of spreading seditious literature and lies that resulted in inciting the populace to riot, and conspiring to destroy two of the city’s cultural treasures—the Great Amphitheatre and the Wellspring of Ažerais—Argentet affirms the guilt of Mettore Indestor, Eret Mezzan Indestor, House Indestor, and all those inscribed in that register.”
