by Kaplan, EM
So close. So intensely frustrating.
He cursed and nearly growled. The edges of his vision became tinted with red, though he didn't know why the battle lust was coming now. He didn't care—he just wanted to find her.
He reached the east wing guest quarters and slammed open the heavy wooden door without so much as a warning knock or shout. He skidded to a halt, a trickle of sweat dripping down his face in front of his ear. He froze, realizing belatedly that the door had been locked. Solidly barred. And he had broken through it without a second thought. Staring back at the door, he saw the solid iron latch destroyed in its setting, wrenched apart by one push of his hand. Five faces stared at him. Scratch that. Make it three Masks, another man, and Rob, looking grim and tight-jawed. Three heads swathed in smooth black cloth. Blank like a godless death. All turned toward him.
Blood drained from his head, and the red abruptly receded from his vision. Masks here in this room standing not more than a few steps away. They were the stuff of spooky tales that made children quake in their beds at night. Except Masks walked about during the day, looking surreal, casually standing about on the muted, tasteful colors of the woven rug in the otherwise cozy sitting room. Three wraiths come for tea . . . It was the beginning of a joke that fell short of funny. They were soulless judges, drifting, floating almost above ground in their ghostly cloaks, coming when called. Summoned like evil spirits on a curse. Inhuman. Faceless. His mouth dried up.
Rob cursed finally, invoking the conniving snake god of his father and breaking the silence, "Colubrid swallow it. What are you doing here, Ott?"
Ott knuckled back a rivulet of sweat from his jaw, floundered, and said, "H . . . hello."
Three hoods empty of all but darkness met his gaze. Dizziness swept over him as his red sight receded further, leaving black spots in his vision, threatening to take his consciousness. He hadn’t eaten or slept well in days, maybe weeks. What a kick in the pride it would be to faint in front of them. To leave himself vulnerable in the face of . . . he faltered. Why had it been so important to find them? His mind drained to an utter blank.
Rob cursed again and rounded on him. He grabbed him by his arm and yanked him out of the room. "Whatever it is, man, we'll deal with it. But later," the big man said. He guided Ott back out to the hallway, a big hand clamped under Ott's elbow, and then suddenly spun him around and hooked an arm around Ott's neck and pulled him close and leaned into Ott so they were forehead to forehead. Like when they were kids. "Please," Rob said. "Let me do this. I need to do this. For all our sakes."
Ott frowned, confused. Whatever business Rob had with the Masks, Ott wasn't aware of it. But he'd never sensed a greater need than now in his friend. The big man's face was suffused with color as he ground his teeth together. Lutra knew Rob had stood by patiently enough all those days after they left the Keep, on the road when Ott was barely able to step one foot in front of the other.
Pull it together, you hopeless imbecile.
Inconstant, yet always buffered by the sweet shelter of seemingly endless good luck—that was Ott. When had he ever let fate roll toward his friend Rob? Rob, who had more than his share of downright bad luck and dealing with the fallout from Ott's thoughtless behavior their entire lives. Well, his friend needed him now. Uncertain and still unsteady, Ott nodded once, then twice.
Rob let out a breath. "Wait in my room. Have a soak. Get some food. You need to eat. Drink. Whatever you need, as always. Just wait. It might be a while." With a final squeeze of his large hand on the back of Ott's neck, not unlike an embrace, Rob abruptly turned and re-entered the room with the awaiting, awful visitors. In the chamber, they loomed, cloaked and silent, judging.
Chapter 33
Mel froze.
Behind her Mask, she was hidden, but the sight of Ott, the much-longed-for, spiced aroma of him staggered her. The heavy draping clung to her nose as she inhaled sharply. Confronted with the sight of Ott after so long, this close, and as exposed to emotion as she was, she was struck still like stone. She was immobile and mute, unable to do anything but breathe as she stood there.
When she finally reconnected her mind with her legs, she stepped forward. Only to find a strong hand on her arm. She tried to shake it off, instantly angry with her father. But when she looked up, it was Guyse. And he was frowning, his dark, angry eyebrows pulled down with a startling comprehension. He knew what she was feeling? It shouldn't have been that much of a shock—she was broadcasting her emotions broadly enough for all of them to know. But it was a surprise, an invasive and humiliating experience that they all knew her inner turmoil was overcoming her; it made her weak in their eyes.
"Not now," Guyse said tersely, his deep voice a rough growl. He stared at her, assessing and cold, his menace barely in check. Mel knew suddenly, he was there not to protect them all, not to guard them, but to watch her. To keep eyes specifically on her. They didn't trust her. It was enough to make her stomach drop. How did they know? She was briefly cowed by the thought. She wasn't halted by his arm for long, but long enough for Rob to take Ott out of the room and disappear. But he was here. Ott was here.
She took another step forward, ready to throw off Guyse's grip. His large fingers dug into her arm, and she turned toward him, ready to . . . what? Yell. Attack. Howl?
"Stop," Guyse hissed into her ear. "Not for yourself. But for the lives of others."
Her head snapped up as she took him in with wide, shocked eyes behind her Mask.
"If you cannot think of the consequences of your actions for yourself, think at least of the people outside these walls. They will die if we do not help them reach some sort of agreement." His large fingers on her arm loosened, and his voice softened, at odds with his rough appearance. "Please, Ley'Amelan," he said using her proper name, formally, softly and yet with a strange familiarity that brought a crease to her brow. "See this through," he murmured.
Under her Mask, she flushed up through her neck to her ears in further humiliation. She stilled herself only with the promise that she would find Ott as soon as she was done here. She calmed herself. She set her shoulders. "Of course," she said stiffly to Guyse, willing control to color her voice. Determination to follow through with the commitment. Yes, she would serve these people. Just as her parents were. Just as generations of Masks had done before her. Overall, she was insignificant in herself, but whole and infinite in her service. Individually, she was a failure as a Mask. She fought tears and allowed Guyse to lead her after the others to the seclusion of the adjoining room.
Chapter 34
In Rob’s quarters, Ott tried to eat but settled for drinking half a mug of dark ale off the tray that had been brought to him. It calmed him enough to turn the crank above the stone bath that would signal a fire downstairs and eventually allow hot water to flow through the pipe and fill it. He sat in an oversized chair by the fire, elbows on his knees, head in his hands while he tried to think. Three Masks, a guard, and Rob. But where was Mel? He rubbed his temple and followed the line of scruff down the side of his face to his chin. He was insane. She wasn't here. What had he been thinking? Just him and his crazed, hopeful mind standing out in the cold sunshine hammering away, wishing she were here. His chest contracted. He didn't know which thoughts to try to banish. Either she was here, but he wasn’t able to find her. Or he was hallucinating. In the bathing room, the water had started to flow into the basin.
He downed the rest of his tankard and wiped his mouth with the back of his grime-covered hand. Sweat, snow muck, and sawdust mixed together. His fingers smelled like metal from the construction nails, his fingernails cracked and uneven, but he ran them through his hair anyway and rubbed his gritty scalp. He cursed in disgust at himself and caught his reflection in a mirror across the room. He was thin. Gaunt. Hollow in the face with deep shadows under the slashes of his cheekbones. His shirt was hanging off him in a strange way like he wasn't so much a living, breathing person as an excuse to hang some dirty clothes out to air. He stood and stripped the
m off, discarding them in a pile on the floor, watching his wretched reflection in the glass in a detached manner. Shadowed collar bones. Jutting elbows. Pronounced ribs. Hip bones that he'd never seen before. Lutra take a walk in winter. When had he last eaten? He remembered the smell of fresh bread at his sister's house. But had he eaten any of it? Who had been guiding him, moving his body around, while he had been away inside of himself? No one, apparently.
He poured himself another pint from the pitcher, already feeling the effects of the first on his empty stomach. He took the dark ale with him, walking barefoot. He stepped over the tub’s smooth edge and lowered himself into the steaming bath, cringing and slowing as the water reached his thighs until he became accustomed enough sink all the way in. The last water dripped in from the pipe, the exact right amount to pour for a bath having been measured out decades ago. Somewhere in the house, he knew servants observed the water temperature and pressure, making sure that everything flowed smoothly. He had traversed the bowels of the house with Rob when they were children, when Rob particularly wanted not to be found. With Ott his constant companion. The brother that he'd never had. More than a brother. A friend. Always.
He pictured Rob in that room alone facing off with the three Masks and their guard. As if they needed a guard. The thought of the Masks made his stomach lurch a little. Inhuman. Gods among men, some thought, yet cruelly detached. He'd heard stories of them heartlessly judging others, making decisions that gave lands from one family and destroyed another. If there were any true justice or law in the land, his sister wouldn't be living in near poverty. His family would be thriving and not at the end of its course. He would have a place in the world instead of drifting away. He could feel himself even now slipping away a little and struggled to raise himself before the ale stupor took him completely out of his body. He grabbed the coarse brown soap and scrubbed himself all over including his scalp. Then he slid under the steaming water and rinsed off, almost losing the air in his lungs as the hot water hit his face and went over his head. He stayed under a little too long and rose up like a whaleri out of the ocean, gasping for breath. Then he leaned back propped against the sloping stone, eyelids slumping down, and thought fleetingly about scraping a razor over his face before he gave up and went limp, his body sagging and his mind floating.
Sometime later Ott heard Rob come into the room. The water in the bath was still warm. He wasn't sure how long he'd been asleep, but he was deadly thirsty.
Funny how you could die of thirst in a hot bath.
The outer door closed, and Ott heard footsteps trail across the room and stop at the entrance to the bathing room behind him. "I'm awake," he said without bothering to turn, and sounding gruffer than he intended, words a little more slurred than he thought they might be. His throat had dried up and it took two tries to get a sound out. "Haven't drowned yet." Though he was parched from the heat and the alcohol.
Footsteps came into the room and approached the side of the tub into Ott's line of sight, but they sounded wrong. They were too light, too hesitant. Ott opened his eyes, suddenly on alert, red flaring up on the edges of his vision. He saw the robes first. Long black cloth draping to the floor. The dark cloth swept against the stone, muffling the steps. Disbelief reigned as he tracked upward. He uttered a curse and cowered against the side of the tub, scrambling without success for something to use as a weapon. The water sloshed over the edge of the tub as he raised his eyes thinking he would again meet that faceless hood.
And he blinked, stunned again.
Instead of the ghastly veil, he saw Mel's face. Or what looked like Mel. Because it couldn't be her. Could it? Whatever hovered above that ghastly black apparition was a damned nightmare, a disembodied head adhered to a Mask. Dried blood led down the left side of her face in ribbons from a knot of swollen flesh on her forehead. Her hair was dark brown, darker than he remembered. She was pale, very pale. Her mouth was drawn in a straight, tense slash. And her dark eyes held . . . fear.
"What have you done to her?" he demanded, gravelly throat disguising the quake of fear in his voice, alcohol and exhaustion confusing his thoughts.
Had they killed her? They’ve killed her! And now one of them wore her head as its face.
He grabbed a towel and wrapped it around his waist as he propelled himself out of the tub, unable to bear crouching below the thing any longer as it levitated above him. Confusion crossed its face. The face looked down at the cloaked body, and then her eyebrows shot up.
"Wait," it said. Then, "Please. Wait," again, more frantically.
Even his alcohol-addled brain recognized that it was Mel's voice, though more ragged than he'd thought possible. Thin, pale fingers swam out from the cloak's arms and clawed at the throat of the cloak. They wrenched at the Mask's medallion and undid the clasp till it dropped on the floor with a thunk. Pale fingers connected to arms that undid the ties of the cloak and ripped at it frantically. When the ties were undone, the hands pulled the sides of the cloth, parted it until it too went to the floor. Slim neck. Deep crevice the size of his thumbprint at the base of her throat. Smooth skin to a slender torso under a sleeveless tunic. Long pants that hung low on hips and flowed downward over the curves of long legs. It was a woman under the Mask. It was a body that he'd once held in his arms.
Mel.
He stood shocked and dripping water on the floor as seconds ticked by. His mind churned as he struggled to connect the facts and failing. She'd used a Mask as a disguise to come to him? She was their prisoner and had escaped? No, that didn't make sense. She had been taken by the trogs during the attack on the Keep? That didn't work either. She was here. Real and standing in front of him now. Alive. And real.
He didn't intend to lunge at her; he was soaking wet. At first, he simply snaked the fingers of his free hand toward her. He spidered them toward her shoulder and then grasped her, her slender bones and smooth skin. Where they touched, his skin tingled, flooding prickles up his arm and into his chest. Finding her as real and solid as he hoped but still couldn't quite believe, he swore again, half curse, half prayer. His vision blurred for a second and he had to close his eyes. Then he swooped, wrapped both arms tightly around her and tucked her close into his hollow chest against his dripping wet skin.
Chapter 35
Mel had stared at Ott’s face hungrily while he lay covered by murky bath water. She had been longing to see his face for so many months, and now here he was. He was thin and wretched-looking; his eyes were closed as he dozed in the bath, the blue stone of the bath turning the water blue, making his skin look more bloodless and corpselike. He looked half-dead, his scruff-covered face gaunt and lined with exhaustion.
That in itself was alarming, but more than that, she was afraid that he would resent her for not finding him during all the time they'd been separated, for not telling him she was alive—though she hadn’t known where to find him. And she was afraid he would hate her for not telling him the truth about herself, that she was a Mask. But then he shot straight up, covered himself with a towel and after a minute, had pulled her into his arms. Her hands wrapped around his back, feeling bones and sinew.
"I'm sorry. So sorry," was all she could say against the bare skin of his chest. She inhaled his aroma, trying to drink it in as they held each other, but her arms were not tight enough to dispel the disbelief of being with him again. Her mouth opened against his skin as she apologized again, thinking he hadn't heard her. Bath water soaked the fabric of her shirt. He rested his chin on the top of her head and made soft shushing noises as he stroked her hair with his damp palm.
"It's you," he kept repeating, his hand lightly touching her hair, the back of her neck, her shoulder. When he pulled back to look at her face with a puzzled expression, the towel between them started to slip. He realized it, made a grab for it, and flushed profusely up through his neck and grizzled face as he caught it with one hand. His other hand locked with hers, fingers twined together, and he refused to let go, letting one hand do the task of
covering himself with the towel instead. She felt a half smile lift her cheek. When had she last smiled? The muscles of her face found the gesture foreign, forgotten. She leaned into him, pressed her lips gently into the deep seam that ran down the length of him from sternum to navel and watched the shiver pass through him. She felt herself flush with heat all the way up to the throbbing wound on her forehead.
His fingers on her cheek lifted her gaze to him. He said, "What did they do to you?" His eyes were on her forehead, focused on the bloody wound that her father had refused to let her heal. She was embarrassed by it and wished she had remembered to fix it before she stumbled into the room.
She shook her head. "It's nothing."
His eyebrows came down. "It's not nothing."
She was frowning more about him than herself. He was so thin, just the bones of the person he'd been a few months ago. She ducked her head, tentatively reaching her free hand toward the sore spot on her head where the stone had hit her. She risked a glance upward at him. She had seen his reaction to her Mask. He could still hate her when he realized what she was. She faltered, wondering if there were a way to avoid telling him. But his scent in her nostrils, that savory scent, the touch of his fingers in hers, and the steady, green, agamite-colored eyes so focused on her demanded that she tell him the truth.
His fingers twisted a strand of her hair around his finger. He was staring at it with a puzzled expression, as if not trusting his own memory. She knew what he was thinking. It was not the color hair that he remembered. She owed it to him. The truth. This is going to upset you . . . The thing is . . . I'm a Mask . . . She attempted, then rejected several beginnings silently.
