Masks

by E.M. Prazeman

  Chapter Six

  “Are you coming in or not?” The priest’s sharp voice cut through Mark’s shock. “You’re letting the cold in.”

  Mark walked, and then ran down the hall. As he hurried through the atrium and up the stairs, Mark’s heart pounded a frantic beat. All he could think about was the last time he’d stood on the deck beside his father. Mark had given him an apple, and his father had smiled and taken a big bite out of it before he kissed Mark’s mother goodbye. He’d kissed Mark too, on the top of the head, and told him to take care of his mother.

  Was Mairi in port?

  The street was quiet, as it had been when he’d arrived. He thought he tasted strange smoke in the air, but it could have come from someone burning something unpleasant in one of tens of thousands of hearths in the city.

  A small group of guards on horses went by, walking their horses carefully on the treacherous ground. So that was it. They wanted to close the building so that all the available guards could go to the docks and help.

  Maybe it hadn’t spread very far.

  Except he knew in his heart that Mairi was in the middle of it.

  Gutter. Please, no, don’t let this be about me.

  Mark started to trot toward the docks, slipping often in the snow. He hadn’t gone more than a half dozen blocks before he passed a group of boys with sooty faces. Their wide eyes looked strangely clean and bright. They weren’t in naval uniforms, but their rough-soled boots and oiled coats marked them as sailors.

  “No.” He couldn’t bring himself to ask them anything. He just pushed himself harder. His breath came hard and he tasted sharp blood.

  The closer he got to the docks, the more people he saw moving uphill in groups—mostly children, women and ancients. They coughed or wheezed or gasped, some of them quite winded from their haste, but otherwise most of them were strangely quiet. Bells began to clang in the distance, and a rushing sound rose above the winter’s usual gusts of wind.

  His first taste of smoke that differed from hearth fire came not from the sky but from a man so burned he had hardly any clothing. His exposed skin was black, and cracks revealed a terrible, beautiful pink. Two men carried him uphill on litter stained with soot and blood. The image kept shocking back into his mind long after he’d passed them, and that smell ....

  People are made of meat.

  Mark coughed and hurried on. Now people watched from windows, or packed their things into carts. A few hurried toward the docks with buckets. It started to snow again.

  No, it was ashes falling from the sky.

  A harsh, hot smoke blew all around him from the sea. Mark pulled his neckerchief off and wrapped it around his nose and mouth, but the smoke still choked him. An instant later it cleared, only to blow back in his face. His eyes burned.

  The fancy stone and brick houses all stood behind him now, replaced by ancient townhouses with plaster walls, some in better repair than others. The streets narrowed and ran off in odd directions, creating wedge blocks and alleys overhung by signposts. He followed several guards past a familiar landmark, and his heart jerked back to his childhood.

  The Bracken Watertower.

  Dusk and smoke created a darkness much harder to see into than the shadows usually cast by the gas lamplights, but the water tower stood out clear and bright. Its whitewashed stone walls shone as if they emitted their own light, and the smallest, longest of the city aqueducts made a dark beam like a sword thrust into its side. Icicles hung from the aqueduct’s arched supports, and liquid water gurgled beneath the wide iron grates all around its base.

  The faint roaring he’d heard in his ears all along now overshadowed the alarmed voices and the clanging bells.

  Mark brushed his hand along its side as he ran around the water tower. Then something split through the air, not a sound or color or scent, but something powerful that cleaved Mark’s mind as if an axe had split him open like wood.

  There’s nothing we can do. Ruby’s voice stung his mind’s wound.

  He clutched his ears in pain, and gasped with relief as the pain faded. He forced himself to move onward, unsteady at first but then faster and faster toward the docks.

  Turn him back, a strange voice said in his mind.

  No!

  Mark gritted his teeth. “Leave me alone.” He had no idea if the voices would respond to his plea.

  A few blocks later he finally trotted on wood planking, and his gaze flinched back from the hell before him.

  Flames turned the boiling clouds of smoke ochre and umber and burnt crimson. Masts exploded and split and cracked, blackened and warped by the heat. Men cut lines with axes and ran buckets of sea water from the fire pumps where sweating men worked desperately to keep the flow going. All the while the fire chugged and growled and surged with a voice like thousands of soldiers shouting all at once on a charge to war.

  Mark threw off his cloak and joined the men at the pumps first. He forced his weight down against the bar in rhythm with the men on the opposite side. Tears streamed from his smoke-stung eyes. The wind gusted with swirls of smoke, clear cold air, and bursts of hot ashes. Where was Mairi?

  Red line at the waterline.

  He fled the pump for his burning ship and joined a group of sailors and guards throwing buckets on her deck. If they worked hard enough they could save her.

  They had to save her.

  He sweltered inside his winter clothes, but he knew that was better than the raw heat that seared the exposed parts of his face worse than a sunburn. He didn’t care if he blistered. The flames surrounded him, flashing in from above and all sides. The men around him fought as heedlessly as he did, shouting encouragement to each other. With every bucket his muscles cried and burned with exhaustion. Steam mingled with the smoke. Just one more bucket, and one more, and one more.

  They were winning.

  Mark dashed up the gangplank onto the deck itself and two men followed. Sailors tossed him buckets and he caught them in the air. A sailor doused him in seawater. “So you don’t catch fire!”

  “Save the cabin. If the insides catch it’ll spread below and we’re done for,” Mark told him. They moved the bucket chain forward into the heat. The blackened deck seared his boots. He poured a little water into each one and kept moving. He managed to clear enough around one of the hatches to quickly open it—the handle singed his hand—and peeked below. No fire. He quickly shut the hatch. “Leave this closed. It’s safe below.”

  “Leave the hatches shut!” called the man beside him, and they spread the word. All at once the fire retreated into smoke and steam and he was surrounded by sailors.

  “I think we’ve saved her, boys!” a sailor cheered.

  Mark couldn’t cheer—the smoke had all but choked him to death—but he felt lighter as he threw bucket after bucket across her decks to cool the coals.

  Someone began calling orders and the sailors began working the ropes. “Get these masts down in the water!” the older sailor barked.

  It had been six years, but he should have recognized someone by now. “Where is Jennison?” No one heard him at first. Mark grabbed an elder sailor. “Where is Rob Jennison?”

  “Who?”

  “Jennison?” Horror rushed through him. “Isn’t this Mairi?”

  “No, m’lord. Mairi’s where it all started. She couldn’t be saved. They rowed her out.” He gestured into the bay.

  Mark clutched the hot rail to keep from falling over and looked.

  What remained of Mairi burned in half-sunken pieces that floated well over a mile out in the vast bay. So beautiful, and dark, and bright, the bones formed a moving architecture of flame and glowing coals that reflected in the water all around her. No one could hear the screams from the small boy he’d once been, the one that had played on the staircase pretending to sail through storms and battles and into the clouds among the stars ....

  Mairi’s death outshone those dreams, ending them forever.

  “They tried to save her figurehea
d, but no one could get to it.” The sailor’s voice choked with emotion. “Midge saw it but we couldn’t get any sense out of him about it.”

  Mark knew he ought to feel something more than awe as the ship lit the waves with glorious light.

  The charred figurehead pointed unnaturally toward the sky. Mark remembered singing one afternoon long ago while one of the men laid a loving coat of fresh paint over the figurehead’s flowing hair, black like the feathery designs draped from its arms. He remembered suddenly that the figurehead had a compass in one hand, and a fierce but friendly smile on its mouth. His father told him the figurehead loved to explore, like it was its own person. It had a favorite song, he’d said.

  For love of sea we go, we go

  For love of wind and love of foam

  She don’t love us, she loves to roll

  She loves our toil and trials, oh

  He didn’t realize he’d been singing it until he started coughing. The coughing turned to crushing sobs. He gripped the rail hard until the pressure brought him back. He turned away to help. Nothing else mattered anymore.

  The sailor who’d told him about Mairi began to work alongside him again. “Midge said they were inside shut in tight and he said something about a morbai dancing across the deck. Sad to say we can’t trust but a bit of what he says, but he saw something for sure.”

  “He’s a madman?” The world itself seemed mad.

  “Mostly not. Captain thinks he’s a Seer, but who can say who’s a Seer and who’s conkers, you know?”

  “I understand too well.” Where were his voices now?

  “I’m sorry, m’lord. I’m sure not a man survived who wasn’t ashore with his sweetheart.”

  He couldn’t think of anything to say. “Thank you.” Mark left him there, left the ship and started helping another bucket line. By this time most of the fires had been put out, but they still had work to do and so he worked until his hands were bloody and he couldn’t stand anymore. He sat by an idle pump in the slushy, dirty snow and rested his head on his knees.

  Hard, gloved hands pulled him up. A sacred guard. For a moment Mark thought he’d be dragged back to Argenwain’s, but the guard helped him to settle on a bench beside the harbormaster’s office. “Where are your men, my lord?” the guard asked.

  It took Mark a moment to gather his meaning. He didn’t want to lie. “I’m all right. I just need to rest a moment. Thank you for your help.”

  “You’re hurt and drenched and sooty. Forgive me but you’re in no way all right. I’ll send for a coach.”

  “I can’t pay.” Actually, he realized he could. He had two months advance on his indenture ....

  He drew the pouch from his vest. At some point he must have tucked it in. He didn’t remember doing it.

  The money felt heavy in his hand.

  He’d have to pay out the indenture even though Mairi—

  She had a hull fund, but even if that fund had enough to begin the building of a new ship, that wouldn’t bring back the dead men, or the ship he loved, or his father. And if he decided to build a new ship from what remained of that fund after the death dues were paid, the balance would fold into a larger indenture.

  The pouch was so heavy.

  “Starker!” The guard had crouched but now he stood up. “Is there any hope of a coach?”

  A guard came over. “That’s Lord Argenwain’s boy. Keep a good watch over him. I’ll find someone to take him home.”

  Mark forced himself up. “No. Thank you both, but I have business to attend to.” Mark shoved the purse back into his vest. “Thank you for your help.”

  “Are you sure?” The words barely grazed Mark’s back as he hunted for his cloak. He found it near one of the pumps, a mashed pile of dirty, soaked wool that had once been soft and fine. He twisted it a few times, looped it around the bar on the pump and pulled to wring it out before he slung it over his shoulders. Bent like an old man, Mark made his way off the docks and up the hill.

  An old memory came back to him, this time not of his father but of Gutter. Mark had just been settled into his new room and he sat and everything felt heavy and dark around him. Gutter had taken his hand and just held it for what seemed like forever until Mark gripped back and then Mark had surged into Gutter’s arms and Gutter held him close.

  He wanted nothing more in the whole world than to be in Gutter’s arms, but Gutter was gone. He’d gone—

  —on an errand.

  No.

  Someone like Gutter, if he wanted that done would have paid someone to do it after they’d left on the journey Gutter had promised to take him on.

  But then that person would have a secret against Gutter—

  “Shut up.” He stopped and squeezed his itching, burning eyes shut and told himself that something evil had invaded his mind to lie to him.

  Except he knew that the voices hadn’t spoken. The thought had come from his own mind.

  What would Gutter do to keep me? What did he do to have me in the first place?

  “Shut up! I’m nothing!” He’d startled a woman on the street but he didn’t care. Everything reeked of smoke, and his thoughts staggered through a burning maze of ruined ships.

  I have to go home.

  Mark slogged through trampled, icy snow made gray and rough by fallen ash and focused on his pain so that he didn’t have room to think.

  A boy darted out from an alley and stopped him. “Please, m’lord. You’ve come from the docks? Have you seen my father?”

  Mark’s heart stopped for a painfully long moment. He’d gone rushing around like that too at this boy’s age, moments after his mother had died.

  Those long moments on the longest night of his life.

  Mark didn’t have to crouch like that one tall sailor had long ago to address him. The twelve year old was only a bit shorter than him. “Who’s your father, boy?”

  “Kris Wrest.”

  “I’m sorry. I don’t know him.” I don’t know anyone at the docks. That life is as dead as—“Go home. Go home. It’s dangerous and your mother will miss you. Go on. He’ll be on home soon. The fire’s almost out.” Mark set his hand on the boy’s shoulder and steered him back up the hill. “Run! Run home.”

  The boy sprang from Mark’s push and sprinted back into the alley, arms and legs pumping in awkward disarray.

  The alarms stopped clanging one at a time, until one last chime sounded and fell away. In the following quiet he could hear a woman wailing a long way down a street behind him. Had she lost a son, a father, a husband? Was it someone from Mairi?

  He had no right to mourn his father’s men. He no longer knew them. He had no right to mourn the ship either. He hated his own pain and grief—he’d lost the least of any of these people. His loss was just a dream built of memories, and he’d wept over those memories a long time ago. He should do something to ease the pain of the widows and orphans made today instead of drowning in pity with his lost hopes in the bay.

  He had trouble seeing in the grim darkness. Smoke muddied what little light came through windows, and cloaked the stars with red and orange-tinged haze overhead. The grand clock at the Messenger’s Hall rang out the hour of relief—eight o’clock, the end of the unlucky 7th hour after noon.

  Eight.

  His memory jolted him.

  Obsidian.

  Obsidian had to be at the gardens right now—

  Obsidian might know if and how everything connected. The fire. The ring. Gutter’s unexpected arrival in Seven Churches by the Sea. It shouldn’t have mattered anymore, but it did. In fact, it was the only thing that mattered. All else had died.

  Mark ran a pair of blocks before he slipped on ice and packed snow. It took all his strength to keep from taking a hard fall on the street. His breath felt sharp and rough as he tried to pace himself between a walk and a trot. The gas lamps hadn’t been lit in these parts. The only light came through windows to reflect like gold on the clean snow left untouched and piled in drifts against the
tenements. A few of the interior lights were gas, but most in this older neighborhood burned oil or candles.

  He bent eastward and ended up on the unfamiliar downhill side of the University. Young jesters-in-training laughed and chatted behind the high stone walls. Unlike the streetlamps near the docks, the huge gas lamps curving out from those walls had been lit.

  A coach. The slender, one-handed driver stood grooming the shaggy winter coat of his bay horse.

  Mark hurried toward it. “Please! Take me to the gardens.” The driver opened the door and Mark climbed in. “To the Fall Entrance.”

  “Thank you, my lord.” The coach barely rocked on its springs as the driver climbed up. He released the brake and the horse began to pull its load at a plodding, careful pace. Mark wished he could hurry them, but he knew that in this weather and light, it was the best the horse could do safely. He didn’t think he could do much better, if he could even make it to the gardens at all on foot. His feet had gone numb. He pulled his boots off, opened the door, and spilled the seawater out of them. His stockings felt heavy and muddy. He squeezed them out as best he could. His hands felt hot and the very air abraded the ragged edges of skin like sandpaper on his raw flesh.

  He ought to go home before the chill overtook him, but all the things he’d witnessed clawed behind his eyes. He needed Obsidian to tell him something, anything about Gutter’s presence here. Maybe the truth, or a too-convincing lie, would help Mark find his way home. Because he couldn’t go home like this, not-knowing if Gutter had killed those men and destroyed his dreams, not-knowing if Obsidian was alive or dead, not-knowing if what happened tonight would be the least of what he’d have to live with for the rest of his life.

  Besides, he still might beat the other jester there and let Obsidian know Gutter was back. He couldn’t be sure if that would make things better or worse, but Obsidian needed that information. Obsidian’s own future might shatter into darkness if Mark failed him now.

  Mark pulled his boots back on. He couldn’t just show up and try to stop them from dueling. If they were both there his arrival might spark an attack, and he might get himself shot on top of everything else. He had to approach quietly ....

  He could try to involve the guards, but he had a feeling he wouldn’t find any. They’d be at the docks.

  Why tonight of all nights?

  Because Gutter is here?

  He had to admit that he had another reason to go to the gardens tonight. Obsidian had known Gutter in far different circumstances than Mark, and Mark had to know.

  What am I to Gutter, really?

  Would he do something like this to me ... and why? He couldn’t seriously believe that losing Mairi would make me want to stay with him. He had to know I’d suspect him.

  Or maybe he’s testing my trust.

  Or my stupidity. My loyalty.

  My friendship.

  My love.

  That little flicker in Gutter’s eyes when Mark told him that he didn’t want to be a jester ... Mark huddled over his knees and wished he hadn’t seen that. He wished they hadn’t spoken of it at all. If he’d lied, would Mairi still be safely floating in the bay?

  The horse warmed to his task and they made it to the Fall Entrance sooner than Mark expected, but later than he’d hoped. Mark climbed out before the driver could help him and paid out of his advance. “Wait here,” Mark told him. “Just wait a half hour and I’ll pay you double.”

  “It’s pitch black in there. Will you need one of my lamps?” the driver asked.

  “No. I’ll find my way.”

  “My lord?”

  Mark wished the driver would stop talking. It was hard enough to walk into that garden without someone stretching his last nerve.

  The driver also looked like he hung from his last nerve too, but a kindness in his voice and his expression won through. “My lord, the gardens aren’t safe at night. I’ll stay if you ask, but perhaps it might be better if I found an armed escort for you.” His voice tripped over a shiver. “Or, or I might provide. I have a pistol.” He began to rise from his seat.

  “No, thank you.”

  The driver sat back heavily with a pained sigh. “As pleases you, my lord.”

  Mark winced. He couldn’t let the driver mislead himself anymore, not when things could go badly and he might stay for fear that he’d be accused of abandoning someone of importance. “I’m not a lord, or a jester. I’m just a boy.” That last bit came out without him meaning to. He’d been called Argenwain’s boy for so long—he didn’t realize he’d declare himself that to a stranger when indentured servant would have served as well, if not better. “I’m on an errand. I have to go. Wait if you can, but if—just go if you have to.”

  “Good luck.” He seemed more at ease, though he looked around the streets and to the garden gate with more obvious concern.

  “Thank you.” Mark steeled himself with a few hard breaths, and then forced himself to hurry past gates of stone and iron.