The Facefaker's Game

by Chandler J. Birch

  The errant detail clicked. The Ivorish girl was wearing trousers. Was that allowed?

  “I’m Ashes. S’good to meet you.” She didn’t look that smart. Maybe she just knew lots of big words, the way Blimey did. “Jack’s mentioned you a bit.”

  The girl rolled her eyes. “He does that. He showed you the watch, too, didn’t he?”

  Ashes nodded.

  “Ugh.” She flopped indelicately onto the bench, pulling a wearied face. “He does that to everyone, I hope you know. I don’t think a single person in the entire Guild hasn’t seen that thing. He just likes showing off, that’s all.”

  “It was pretty good,” Ashes said. He could admit that, at least.

  “Thank you,” said the girl swiftly, like it was a reflex. “It took much longer to make than I wanted it to. And my cousin helped me through half of it. He was actually the one who thought of rebuilding the watch so the dancer would rotate.”

  Ashes frowned. “What?”

  “My cousin. He was a bit of a—”

  “You rebuilt the watch?”

  Synder smiled. “Michael did. He thought you could bind something to a rotating gear so it could move on its own. He took it apart, told me what needed to go where, Anchored it for me. All I did was the Weaving.” She moved the hair out of her eyes and blew out a breath. “Jack’s very fond of telling all his peers about how I don’t even have my Stars yet and I’m already more brilliant than half the Guild. I can’t stand it.”

  Ashes smirked. “Does he know it weren’t your idea?”

  “I told him that when I applied. He’d die before he’d admit it to the Guild, though. I don’t think he could abide his star student being anything less than perfect.”

  Ashes peered at her. He’d thought she was nearly sixteen, but now he could tell she was hardly any older than fourteen—perhaps not even that.

  The girl nodded toward the ugly face on the table. “Is this your first time?” She gave a reserved smile. “I remember when he had me do it. Are you a Weaver?”

  “Neh,” Ashes said, feeling an inexplicable wash of shame. “Stitcher.” And not even a half-decent one.

  “Oh!” Synder said, nodding swiftly. “That’s brilliant! Everybody needs a Stitcher. I’m rubbish at Stitching. Do you want any help with this?”

  “What?”

  “Help. With making the face.” She gestured once again at the lamp. “It can be really difficult if you aren’t born with it. Has Jack showed you anything?”

  “Don’t want no help. I can figure it out myself.”

  Synder raised her eyebrows. “You’re sure?”

  Ashes clenched his jaw, recalling William’s scathing comments. “I don’t need any help.”

  “If you say so.” Synder squirmed on the bench, moving with a weird sort of stiltedness. She wasn’t gangling, but she wouldn’t be graceful for a few years yet. Her body was still growing into itself, arms and legs longer than they ought to have been. The motion drew Ashes’s attention once more to the scandalous attire on her legs.

  “You wear trousers,” he said, and immediately regretted it. Ivory-blooded folk were tetchy about their clothes; Ivory-blooded women doubly so.

  The girl laughed. “I do,” she said proudly. She smiled, and there was not the slightest tint of shame about her. “You can imagine what my parents said the first time. I considered keeping a few Anchors with me that could imitate petticoats and all that nonsense, but then I decided, you know what? That’s stupid. I like trousers. I wear trousers. I’m going to wear trousers and nobody’s going to tell me any different.”

  “How’s that gone for you?”

  Synder rolled her eyes. “Poorly, for the most part. You’d be stunned at how some people react when they see something they don’t understand. Stunned.”

  Ashes smirked. “I doubt it, miss.”

  “Don’t call me miss. That’s silly. You can’t be more than a year younger than me.”

  Ashes shrugged. “Couldn’t say.”

  She looked at him curiously. “I’m fourteen.”

  “That’s nice.”

  She gave him a look, one that made clear how unimpressed she was with his quip. “How old are you?”

  “Told you, didn’t I? I dunno.” Ashes sat as well.

  “How can someone not know their age? When’s your birthday?”

  “Haven’t one,” he replied, curling his fist beneath the lamp. He could almost feel the light, just at the edge of his perceptions, but he hadn’t managed even to tug raw light in the last three weeks. “I’m rasa. Never really got a birthday.”

  The girl blushed, looking flustered for the first time. “I’m so sorry. I didn’t realize. Is that why you . . . speak the way you do?”

  “Burroughside, bred and buttered,” Ashes said with a winning smile. He dredged through his memory to find an accent that nearly matched hers. “Of course, it’s all just a matter of how you talk, wouldn’t you say?” He added the Ivorish trill out of instinct. The girl’s eyes lit up. “Sometimes I’m from Lyonshire. Sometimes Boreas. Depends what’ll get me the littlest number of troubles. Where’re you from?”

  “East Lyonshire.” She seemed almost apologetic now. “My father’s a shopkeeper. Mother keeps his books.”

  “Oh, aye?” Ashes grimaced as the word smashed against his teeth and abandoned the Lyonshire accent. “She knows rhythm-ticks?” He felt a warm glow in his chest. Blimey would have been proud to see him using that word.

  “Mhm. Father’s no good at maths—positively abysmal at them, actually. Mother’s much better. It’s kind of a joke in my family now, because if the world had any sense, Mother would run the shop entirely, and Father would just sit in the study and paint all day.”

  “Your da’s a painter?” Ashes stopped himself from laughing just in time. “That’s . . . Don’t think I’ve ever heard that one before.”

  “He never has time for it. Not with maintaining the shop. But that’s what he would do, if he could.” The girl dragged her fingers across the table, and Ashes couldn’t help noticing the light congealing around them. Jealousy flashed through him. “Probably where I get all my Weaving from, honestly. Mother would never go for something so impractical.”

  “You been doing it a long time? The Weaving?” Ashes looked at her fingers again, and imitated her under the table. No droplets gathered to his skin.

  “A few years. I showed signs of Artifice when I was very young—grabbing light, changing little details of my face, that sort of thing. It took my mother a while to admit it, though. I don’t think she could handle the idea of me being so much like Father. They probably wouldn’t have let me apply to study with Jack’s company if not for my cousin being a Stitcher. We applied together.”

  “Your cousin studies here?”

  Synder’s face changed in an instant, like a door being shut. “Not anymore.” She hesitated, visibly looking for a change of subject. “Why are you called Ashes?”

  “S’my name.”

  “Jack didn’t tell you to go by it?”

  “What? No.”

  “You’re sure? It seems like the sort of joke he’d like.”

  “They called me that when they found me,” Ashes said. “I was in Lyonshire-Low, where the factories are. Had it over my face and all.”

  “Like a disguise?” Synder smiled. “That’s delightful! Facefaking right from the start. How did Jack find you? I mean, if you’re from Burroughside, how are you paying for the apprenticeship?”

  Ashes paused. The girl had to know about Jack’s—what had the Weaver called them? “Extralegal services”? If she didn’t, though, Ashes couldn’t confess the secret. Jack would dismiss him on the spot, favors or no favors. “Jack’s got me doing odd jobs for him, paying my way.”

  Her eyes went wide. “You must be an incredible Stitcher to be here on a scholarship,” she said.

  Ashes blinked, then said, “I guess.”

  “What did you make for your application?” She seemed to be vibrating
with excitement. “It had to be some kind of Anchoring system, didn’t it? Jack loves clever Anchoring. Or—did you make something very intricate? Most Weavers can’t really do fine details, Stitchers are better for that.”

  Ashes’s mind raced. What lie would be plausible here?

  He waited half a second too long. The girl looked at him curiously. “You didn’t make anything for an application, did you?”

  Ashes gave her a sheepish grin, one that he hoped would dampen her curiosity a little. “No. Sorry.”

  The girl’s eyebrows lifted. “You must have something very special about you. I can’t wait to find out what it is.” She stood abruptly and thrust out one hand. Uncertainly, he took it. “It’s been very nice meeting you, Ashes,” she said, giving his hand one firm shake. “I look forward to working together.”

  “Eh,” he replied. “Same to you, I think.”

  She whirled around and disappeared through one of the walls.

  Ashes sat back and exhaled. Jack’s genius pupil . . . she seemed sharp, certainly. Ashes didn’t know if he would say she was smarter than him, though.

  He turned back to his mangled construct and stretched out a hand, willing the shape to change. Nothing occurred.

  “Bastard bit of stupid bloody magic,” he muttered. He glanced at the wall.

  What a strange girl that had been. He’d seen girls wear trousers: Burroughside didn’t have much room for propriety. But young Ivorish ladies wouldn’t dare. It would be scandalous, which in Ivorish circles was more or less the same thing as plague-ridden.

  And she did seem clever. He had to give her that.

  He stared back at the construct, pursed his lips, and leapt off the bench.

  “Oi!” he called, hurrying to the wall where Synder had disappeared. “Oi!”

  Her face erupted out of the wall, looking eager. “Yes? Something you need?”

  Ashes swallowed. “My faces are bloody awful today. Would you— D’you think you could help me? Maybe?” The stuttering tone of his own voice stunned and annoyed him. This was absurd. He could hold an entire crowd of Ysonne captive with nothing but his voice and charm. Now he felt out of place, like a child wearing his father’s clothes.

  The girl didn’t seem to care about the awkward stammer. “Of course! I’d be delighted.”

  She moved to the mangled construct with an almost frightening enthusiasm. In half a moment she was bent over it, inspecting it with a critical eye. She passed her fingers through it, made a face, and repeated the motion. Without looking, she snatched a glass lens off the table and held it close to her eye.

  “Well,” she said after several minutes, “this is . . . not . . . bad . . .”

  Ashes gave her a flat look, the twin of the one she’d given him earlier.

  “All right,” she admitted. “It’s actually quite good, if you were trying to make a gargoyle.” She smiled broadly. “How quickly can you reconstitute this?”

  “Erm—”

  “Never mind,” she said, flapping her hands in a way very reminiscent of Jack when he was getting impatient. “It’ll be faster if we use mine.” She slid a phial out of her pocket and set it on the table; Ashes recognized the distinctive shifting hues of liquid light. It moved very slowly, probably from a high aether concentration.

  Synder clapped her hands together. “Right! Give me your hand. Your good hand, mind.”

  Ashes offered his left. She took it in both of hers and placed it beneath the table lamp, then rested her palm underneath his.

  “Before we get you making masks for yourself, you need to know how your body works with the light,” she said. “Jack’s played Distract Me with you already, right?”

  Ashes nodded.

  “Focus is the Weaver’s most important muscle.” She closed her eyes, and Ashes felt something on the underside of his hand tugging at him, as if pulled by a sort of gravity. “Focus lets us shape light, keeps our aether from setting too quickly. You’ll never make anything if you can’t focus.”

  Ashes nodded again. That made sense.

  “Don’t imagine a face,” Synder said. “That’s the first mistake you can make, just thinking face. There won’t be any proper detail. You need to develop each portion individually and then put them all together. But don’t think of it as a face. It’s a collection of unique features.”

  She cracked open one eye. “Close your eyes! How are you supposed to focus on something if you’re looking somewhere else?”

  Ashes obeyed, and began thinking of details. He tried starting with the nose, but it felt wrong to him. Better, he decided, to begin with the eyes. The girl he’d found running away from Saintly—she’d had brilliant, fierce eyes.

  “Hold that first detail in your head,” Synder ordered. “Pick another. Eyes, ears, cheekbones, teeth, freckles. Find something real, but don’t think generically. They’re not big ears, they’re three inches high, and they’re thinner than you’d expect, and the right one has a mole on the lobe. Something like that. Detail, detail, detail.”

  She walked him through each detail, ordering him to hold every one in readiness until he could put them together. After three minutes, he had imagined every one, and he was sweating again.

  “Don’t open your eyes,” she ordered. “Just keep all those details there. Don’t let them blur together.”

  He nodded. He was juggling seven different features in his head, forcing them to stay separate and unique, just as he’d imagined them. It felt like having his mind split into pieces.

  “All right,” Synder said after a second. “Put them together. Focus on that image. You can see it, right?”

  The face didn’t fit together, not quite. But the features were mostly pure, he thought.

  Something fell into his hand. The details became fuzzy and blurred, but only briefly. Synder’s voice snatched him back.

  “Don’t think about what you’re touching,” she ordered. “The details. Keep them steady.”

  The liquid light in his palm roiled. With an effort, he turned his thoughts away, back to the face. He brought all the force of his will against it, forcing it to stay the same.

  “Steady,” Synder urged. “Very steady, now. Keep holding it right there.”

  His fingers trembled. Sweat dribbled down his face, slid along his eyebrows like a snail—

  The face wobbled, briefly overtaken by the image of a slug. He ground his teeth together and snapped the image back in place.

  “Steady,” Synder whispered. “Ten more seconds, Ashes, just hold it there.”

  He felt the light quivering, and dismissed the sensation. There was nothing in the entire universe except the face he held in his mind. He pulled in a breath and held it.

  “Done,” Synder said. “You can open your eyes now, Ashes.”

  He opened his eyes. “Furies and Kindness.”

  In the bowl of his left hand was a lifeless, motionless face, with eyes like chips of precious stones. Its nose was overlong, its cheeks fleshy and dusted with dark freckles. The skin was blotchy, but recognizably Ivorish in complexion. The chin dropped too low and one eyebrow rested higher than the other, and now that he looked closely he noticed a dozen other little flaws: differently sized nostrils, one front tooth that was sharp like a cat’s, the left ear smaller than the right.

  But the face was there. It looked recognizably human, maybe even convincingly so.

  “Furies and Kindness,” he said again.

  “Not a bad job,” she said, and sounded honest this time. “I think you could wear that in public and not even need to feel ashamed.”

  “This is amazing,” he said.

  “I wouldn’t go that far, maybe,” she said with a grin. “But you’ve certainly got room to reach amazing.”

  He bound the face to a thin golden ring and let out a heavy breath. “Faces.” He couldn’t think of anything else to say.

  Synder glanced at the monstrous face Ashes had made earlier, and visibly shuddered. “You might want to reconstitute that, b
efore you make Juliana drop dead of fright,” she said, standing. “Plus it’ll be handy to have some liquid light with you, in case you run into an emergency. It’s good to have in a pinch.”

  Ashes nodded, trying to make sure he didn’t forget anything. His heart was pounding, and he was weary all the way to his bones. He’d need to rest, and maybe eat something, before he and Jack went anywhere.

  Synder was leaving again. Ashes felt something tug at him, noticing something absent. Had he forgotten— Oh.

  “Synder!” he said, leaping from the bench and following her. She turned, looking vaguely amused. “Um. Thanks.” He thrust out his hand. Synder shook it just as firmly as before.

  “Of course,” she said. “Got to look out for my Stitcher.”

  He saw something in her eyes before her face closed: something vulnerable and frightened. The image was gone in a flicker, but not quickly enough.

  “I’ve got to get going,” Synder said, reclaiming her bright exterior. “Assignment to finish. I’ll see you at supper tonight, then.” She smiled again, as if no shadow had passed over her face. Ashes returned the smile.

  The monstrous face waited for him back on the table. He could let the reconstituting wait; it would take at least half an hour, and his head was buzzing. He Anchored it to an unused wooden ring and put the ring in his pocket, deciding to take care of it later.

  He picked the golden ring up off the table, ran his fingers over the metal. He felt the thrum of energy within it, and smiled.

  Magic. Real magic.

  ASHES was cheating at cards, and he was becoming increasingly confident that the Wisp sitting across from him was not going to figure it out.

  “Prial of Delight.” Ashes smiled a wide smile as he laid his cards down, revealing the Faces of Delight, Hope, and Delirium.

  William stared. He blinked. He set his cards carefully on the table and said, flatly, “This defies rational sense.”

  “I’m a lucky bloke.”

  “He’s not wrong,” Jack, who was setting the dishes away, chimed in from the next room.

  It was just after supper, and Ashes felt simultaneously satisfied and faintly ashamed. Satisfied for the obvious reasons—Juliana’s delicious, rich, fattening Ivorish food—and ashamed for the obvious ones, too. Blimey was at Batty Annie’s table just now, having eaten something unseemly, and wondering if Ashes was all right. Ashes was trying very hard not to think about that, and playing cards against his Stitching teacher helped him forget that very well indeed. Besides that, he and Jack would be going out tonight, and he had told Synder he’d stay for supper. He owed her that much, surely.