Unmasked (Rise of the Masks Book 1)

by Kaplan, EM

  Jonas saw them standing apart, getting ready to take their leave. "Stay and make camp with us," he said, a little too forcefully, a little too demandingly. "Treyna!" he hissed at her. Her head, which had been resting on her skirted knees, snapped up at his command. She started to get up, to try to play hostess in their makeshift camp without anything to offer them. Dutiful daughter, Ott thought. Jonas glared at her, and she hastily stood up, shaking out her skirts, smoothing them. She placed a tentative hand on Ott's sleeve.

  "Please stay with us," she said in a low, compelling plea. She lifted her eyes to his. Dark gray eyes that turned sapphire in the camp light. Her cloak had fallen open at the neck, exposing a beaded string. Lutra, Ott's family's goddess. Ease. Sociability. Family. Treyna was very beautiful, but Ott felt nothing for her. Did Jonas think they owed him something? He seemed to expect that they would join his camp, to be entertained by his daughter. These people’s future was uncertain in the camp, Ott realized. Three small children, a young woman, and an old man. Someone would take advantage of them, as cold as it was, as desperate as they all were. Rob pulled Ott’s other sleeve, a short jerk that made him frown. Treyna's coaxing smile faltered.

  "We'll go look for food," Ott said to her haltingly, his lie sounding flat. His exhaustion made him weave on his feet. He couldn't remember the last time he'd eaten and the frozen air robbed their bodies of moisture—the thirst alone should have made him restless. Yet it didn’t. Perhaps he should have worried about his lack of appetite and thirst, but he couldn't muster up more than a passing notice of it.

  "Bring some to share at our fire," said Jonas, not quite disguising his frustrated scowl. They had no fire. They hardly had space to call their own in the communal tent.

  "We'll let you know if we find any," Ott told Treyna, as he backed away, though it was not much of a promise. The sooner he was away from them, the better. Her sad, desperate eyes made him want to run. He cast a parting glance at the little ones. Light from other people’s fires cast shadows on their faces, relaxed in slumber, lips red and stung by wind and frost. They could be cast in ice and never know to wake up, the three of them together frozen in one piece, held together by one thin blanket. They were probably too tired to eat, but perhaps they could be coaxed to wake for some warm milk.

  Rob was waiting for him already some distance ahead talking softly with a man, one of the ones who had arrived at the tent city with them. Ott caught up to him. He gave a final glance behind him to find Treyna watching them. Rob cuffed Ott on the shoulder. "Idiot," he said gruffly. He walked on without waiting.

  "What do you think happened to their mother?" Ott asked him, catching up. “All those children without a mother.” They walked shoulder to shoulder through the tents toward some fires and a communal eating area around which others gathered.

  Rob squinted at him and said somewhat harshly, "She's their mother."

  "What? Do you really think so?" Ott stopped in his tracks. He blinked, not comprehending. The edges of his mind had already shut down from exhaustion. Only the very core of his brain—the only part still warm—propelled him, with the single driving instinct that at the end of all these footsteps would be a warm bed, somewhere dry and out of the wind.

  Rob, a couple steps ahead, stopped walking. "Who knows? Perhaps Treyna is their mother, whether natural or by foster, if they are foundlings. Didn’t you see the markings on their wagon? She deals in the potions and salves, the manipulation of aches and pains. She puts her hands on the limbs and bodies of others for medicinal reasons, or even, perhaps for pleasure as well."

  Ott stared at him, not sure which stunned him more, that he had been taken in by her act of innocence or his next thought. "And Jonas allows her to make a wage this way? That’s no way to treat a daughter." She was just a girl, younger than him. He could feel his eyes narrowing, his jaw tightening up.

  Rob shrugged. "Or common-law wife. Not sure what she is to him."

  They resumed walking, though Ott was silent in thought. He shook his head. He had been away from civilization too long when something like this could take him by surprise. Every village had a manipulator or two . . . or more. He wasn't a complete innocent about their business, often touted as medicinal, though he preferred touch given and exchanged freely, and usually had luck in procuring it. But he never thought about it so close to home. And in a setup like that. A traveling wagon with children packed along for the ride.

  What kind of life was that? What would happen to those children? Would they, too, become part of the trade when they were old enough? Then he said, "You knew this when you stopped for them, but you still helped them?"

  Rob looked at him. "What would you have done if you had known? Ott, they’re my people." Rob looked at him for a second longer, and then shrugged it off tiredly when Ott didn't answer. Ott didn't honestly know what he would have done. At this level of exhaustion and absolute road weariness, he was amazed at his friend's capacity for considering himself responsible for these people who lived off his father's land.

  Would Ott have stopped to help? He wasn't sure. And the uncertainty made him wonder what kind of person he was. Was he worthy of his luck, not to have grown up in a traveling wagon, not to have frozen to death in a frigid land outside the gates of a richer man? Was he worthy of finding a woman who loved him and of discovering exactly what his capacity was? Was he deserving of a life, the winding together of threads of luck, opportunity, and whatever fiber in him that might make him a better man than Jonas?

  Rob broke into his scattered, exhaustion-riddled anxiety and said, less gruffly, "You need to go home to Jenny before the snow piles on." Ott nodded, tiredness numbing him more. Above them, the snow was swirling, falling between the gaps in the massive tent city. It would weigh down the roofs soon. The refugees would need more than their body warmth to keep themselves alive out here. Just a few hundred more steps and he would be home. Across the farm lands, through a small wooded area, and then onto his family land, a small, secluded plot, barely enough to be bothered with. His land now, nonetheless, not that he would ever take it from Jenny.

  "Where are you going?" Ott asked Rob though he knew. Rob's pack came into his line of vision again, the shape of the jar that had the head floating inside of it. Rob was going to have to go through the gates to the house and present the head to his father. That seemed like a harder journey home than Ott's. He did not envy Rob, having to face that hardened old tyrant, especially now that a tent city of people had sprung up at his gates as if he were a feudal lord.

  Rob ran a hand across his bearded, travel-worn face. Truth be known, Ott had put his friend through more than was necessary. It should have been easier than Ott had made it. They'd traveled together for months, every day waking up across a campfire from this man, his best friend—Ott felt strange parting with him now. But the big man was pulled by higher duties, more pressing responsibility than coming home with Ott to Jenny and putting off his troubles till the morning.

  "Food first," Rob said gesturing tiredly to a cluster of cooking fires behind him. "To take to Jonas."

  Chapter 18

  Ott knocked softly on the front door of his childhood home. Everything looked the same to him. Worn, but well-cared for. His sister Jenny hadn't let a thing go by the wayside while he was gone. Gate hung straight and locked tightly. Wood stacked on the front porch. Windows tightly shuttered. Roof snug-looking and intact. A little bit of smoke snaking up from the chimney. He took a cursory inventory and relaxed. In the morning, he would reassess properly if there was a break in the weather. The house was dark and quiet as far as he could tell in the wind, so he knocked again softly, wrapping his scarf a little tighter when a gust breathed wet flakes down the back of his neck. The door was suddenly thrown open, and the muzzle of a pipe gun connected his nose down in a straight line to the wide eyes of his younger sister.

  Jenny stared at him, taking him in. Her gaze passed over his face, her eyes narrowing then widening as recognition set it. She leaped on him, gra
bbing the back of his neck with her hand, pulling him inside the house in a tight embrace, her thin arms locked around him. He shut the door behind him.

  "You stupid mutt," she said fiercely, pulling away and glaring at him. "I nearly killed you." Then she hugged him again. He held her tightly, and she suddenly burst into tears, hiding her face in his shoulder.

  "It's OK now," he said gently, patting her on the back. She cried for a minute longer, then stepped back and wiped her tears on the back of her sleeve, her black hair escaping in strands from the tight tail she kept it in.

  "As a matter of fact, it has not been OK," she said. She balled her left hand into a fist and punched him on the shoulder once, hard enough to sting. "It's been somewhat horrible. Is Rob with you?" Her eyes, black as coal, flicked to the door behind him.

  "He's at the house," said Ott. She would know what he meant. There was only one house that counted in this country above the snowline. And it was near palatial.

  "Then you've seen the masses of people, I take it."

  "Hard to miss them," he acknowledged as he moved farther into the house and began unwrapping his layers. The room was warm and dry. It was small and worn, but crowded with soft, padded chairs. And it smelled like home: years of indoor cooking, a little bit of dust, and the sweat of kids, himself included, who had played hard, confined to the indoors by harsh weather. "How long have they been here?"

  Jenny sighed and leaned her gun against the wall by the door. It was a homemade gun that he'd made from hammered metal water piping. It had a valve and worked with pump action and a pocket of compressed air. Big enough to blast a root vegetable at an intruder. Strong enough to bruise but not kill. Unless she had shot him at close range in the nose as she'd been aiming to. They'd used to shoot hard packed snow balls at each other when they were kids. She was a better shot than he. He took too many risks and didn't take as much time to aim as she did.

  "The attacks on the mines started maybe a few weeks ago," she said. "Lots of lives lost. We don't know how many except to count the missing." She glanced at him. "They don't leave the dead. We don't know what they do with them."

  The news that they'd been attacked at the Keep suddenly seemed stale and useless. Ott imagined that Rob's father probably had a row of gruesome souvenirs on the mantle above his fireplace already. Ott did not envy his friend having to face his father. Their long absence, it seemed, had resulted in a gain of exactly nothing against these creatures.

  "Have you been hurt at all, Jenny? Are you and the kids all right?" he said, frozen in place until she answered. Then he sank into a chair limply at her curt nod. He'd been carrying the weight of worry since he'd come out of his haze of grief for his lost girl. He pulled off his boots and started to roll down the slush-soaked stockings that had molded to his feet, sticking between his toes, which were frozen and painfully regaining some warmth.

  "Someone ran off with one of the goats and broke into the root cellar," she said ruefully. "We've had to trade some things for our winter stash. But we'll do OK. The kids didn't know about it," she added quickly. The fire was dying, but she didn't make a move to build it up again. He wasn't sure if he should offer to do it, but then, he wasn't sure if his legs would obey him if he tried to move.

  "The kids are all right?" he asked again, needing to be reassured though he’d heard her the first time.

  "They're fine. Jack has grown about three inches since you've been gone." Then she saw his face. "You look terrible yourself. You're a hair shy of filthy and I near didn't recognize you with that scruff on your face." She examined him. He didn't hide from her, just lay back in his favorite chair and closed his eyes. He’d had dreams about this chair. He heard her moving around.

  "It's good to be home," he murmured.

  "Will you eat something or are you too tired? You're very thin. Too thin," she said, nearing him again, but his eyelids refused to open when he thought about looking at her. He felt her finger on the underside of his chin. "Have you been ill?" she asked.

  He wasn't sure how to answer, so he shook his head, feeling himself drifting. He felt the small gust of air from a blanket brushing over him. He was home. Then he was asleep.

  And when he slept, he dreamed about Mel. In his dream, she was alive. She wasn't lost. She was in his arms telling him it was all right.

  Were they in heaven? "Is this the cealo?" he asked her.

  She hushed him with fingers to his lips. Small, soft, velvety fingertips. They were lying together in a field of grass and sweet clover, green-leaved trees around them with the warm sun shining around her. A halo. A heavenly presence. So much warmth.

  Surely this was the afterlife.

  Though he wasn't certain what he had done to deserve the reward. She rose above him and as she smiled down at him, she looked golden.

  Part 3

  Mask

  Chapter 19

  The day Mel took the Mask, she thought about Ott. She indulged in her memories, for perhaps the last time, bringing out the images of him and laying them in the front parts of her mind. The speckled green of his eyes. The creases in the corners of his eyes when he smiled at her. His hands skimming along the second skin of her silken costume that night. The scar under his chin. His voice, low and melodic.

  She spent that last morning alone, sitting at her desk in the library at her mother's house. She traced her finger on the wood grain of her desktop. It had been only a few months and now the smell of him was gone, faded from her memory. She tried and failed to conjure it up again from the two short times that they had met. She could only play mental alchemy and imagine the lost scent as some combination of cinnamon, pine, earth, sweat, and something else warm. It had been so intense those few weeks after losing him that she thought it would never stop ambushing her at unexpected times and in her dreams. She had woken up many nights clutching at the sheets gasping, as much for air as for trying to breathe in more of the smell before it faded completely.

  She traced her finger over a knot in the wood, around and around, a swirling eddy. He was lost, or he had moved on. How long had she been in the village by the Keep recovering from shock? Wouldn't he have come if he were alive? Wouldn't he have looked for her? The silence in her soul told her the answer that she had been denying. She felt nothing. There was no connection. No thread of connection to him in the living world.

  She dropped her chin on the desk and closed her eyes. The truth hurt.

  And the truth was that she was a woman who had met a man. They met each other twice. A horrific event separated them, a rift that was completely external to whatever short time they'd had together, and they had not had a chance to part naturally. Any other summer couple would have broken apart amicably, gone their separate ways after realizing that the summer was over. But the truth was, she felt more than that.

  It didn't matter that she didn't know anything about him, where he was from, how old he was, who his people were. It didn't matter whether he ate meat, worshipped one god or many or none at all. In her lowest self, she didn't care whether he was cruel to animals or other people. Whether he lived in a house or slept on the bare ground. Whether he had a wife and children already—her chest tightened with that admission. He could be home, wherever that was. Happy, in front of a warm hearth, his children playing on the rug at his feet. If he were alive. It didn't matter. None of it mattered. Not even whether he thought about her, if he were even alive or not.

  Then, in a burst, the scent came back to her in a rush so dizzying that she pressed her cheek against the desk and splayed her fingers out, fingertips pressed white. She gasped and struggled for air, for control of herself and the rush of panic at the loss of him. It washed over her like a tidal wave, spinning her head, filling her nose and throat. She was drowning. Unable to fight, to resist, to push it away, tears rolled sideways across the bridge of her nose and onto the desk. She let go of herself. She was lost to grief.

  Sometime later, Mel stood up from her desk. The worst of it was over. She could move o
n now, so she moved sedately. She was ready to take her oath.

  Impartiality. Diligence. Fair-mindedness.

  She was ready to slide the thick woven cloak over her head, adjust the cowl and netting over her face, more comfortable than rumor had it. More than comforting in its anonymity. The hammered metal medallion that both identified and protected her would slip over her head and lock with the clasp around her neck. She would stand coolly, emptied and alert, between her parents aboard the riverboat headed north, ready for her task.

  Her task was the labor dispute that she had been studying for weeks—land owner versus laborers. The only viable option was dispute resolution to avoid loss of time and loss of life. She had absorbed the facts, the history of the land and people. The climate. Their lack of alternatives. She could recite dates of area settlement. Major edifices in the area. Religious preferences of the people. But she could not muster any feeling for them. She patently did not care a whiff about any of it. And now, she was ready to help them.

  Without having to look at the mirror on the wall as she passed it, she knew that the gold was gone, and her skin had returned to its normal color.

  At mid-afternoon, the Masks gathered once again in the meeting hall. Mel spoke her oath in front of rows of cloaked witnesses. Her mother and father were among them somewhere, she knew. The oath was one she'd heard many times since childhood and had no need of memorizing now. It was very short. Its brevity spoke of infallible single-mindedness, the lack of room for interpretation. The disdain for alternative meaning. Her spoken words were the only ones in the room.

  I am the faceless arbitrator who gives myself up so that I may be of use to others.