The Ruling Mask

by Neil McGarry

  Pete smiled. “Of course.” He settled back into his chair once more, gesturing with a pudgy hand. “Go on.”

  “We both know that the reasons you gave me for buying my mark and for spreading those rumors were false. The Levering job was a way of explaining everything while explaining nothing. If I’m to take the fall for you and Julius both, I want to know the truth.”

  Pete smiled sadly. “I’m afraid I don’t know what you’re talking about.” Duchess gazed at him with no change in expression. “And clearly there is nothing I can say that will convince you otherwise.” He sighed. “I’m afraid we’re at an impasse, and as such, shall have to deal with things as they are.” He shrugged his expansive shoulders.

  She knew she was being dismissed, but what more could she do? Pete the Pearl could take such a failure on the chin, but for the likes of her and Julius? She’d ended up in a worse place than she’d started and with nothing to show for it. Between the rumors Pete had started and her failure on the Coast Road, her career on the Grey was, for all intents and purposes, over. Her mark would have no value, and no one would bother to frune with her. She had nothing left.

  She bit her lip and slipped her hands into her pockets, preparing to leave, when her fingers touched on the coin she always kept there. The brass mark that had started all of this.

  Uncle Cornelius had once told her a tale of a secret leader of the Grey whose symbol was a snake devouring its own tail. If there were any mark Pete the Pearl would honor, it was this one.

  Before she could change her mind, she plucked the coin marked with a P out of her pocket and placed it on his desk. “In that case, I’m afraid I need to call in a favor.”

  Pete’s smile died, and he looked at the coin for a long time. Then he pushed out of his chair, stepped to the wall behind his desk, and with pudgy fingers tapped out a rhythm. Tap, tap-tap-tap, tap, tap. After a pause the pattern repeated itself from the other side of the wall. Then there was a shifting sound, followed by what might have been muffled footsteps, then silence.

  “Minette may prefer that her walls have ears,” Pete said, resuming his seat, “but what we speak of must remain between the two of us.”

  Pete had no issue with discussing lying to the Grey in front of his hidden guards, but what he was about to say was somehow more secret than even that? A chill ran down her spine as she realized she was about to learn what could frighten the likes of even Pete the Pearl.

  Pete settled back into his chair. “First of all, there is Minette. When she told you that I had purchased your mark, she was clearly deciding that her advantage lay in siding with you over me. An interesting conclusion on her part, but one that now makes sense.”

  Duchess had thought about that ever since their conversation in the wine cellar. “Minette always has her reasons.”

  “Allow me to give you a piece of advice: Minette is no one’s friend but her own. For every secret she reveals there are three more she keeps hidden behind that powdered face. She’s moving her own pieces into place, and no matter what favor she may show you, ultimately you’re nothing more than another tile on the board.”

  “I’ve always known that.” Even as she said it, she couldn’t help thinking that Minette had known for years she was Marina Kell and had said nothing, but simply watched and waited. For eight years. Minette always played the long game.

  “I’m glad we understand each other.” He glanced again at the coin. “As to your favor—let us say that our situation has changed.” He looked her in the eye. “If you agree to take the blame for what happened on the Coast Road, I will give you the truth you seek. Are we agreed?”

  She looked down at the coin. What had just happened? She nodded.

  Pete smiled slightly. “To pay the price you’ve demanded, you’ll have to understand me better than...perhaps anyone ever has before.” Pete shifted in his seat, suddenly uncomfortable. “Before coming to the Oyster for the first time, you asked around about me in an attempt to catch my attention. What did you learn?”

  She shrugged. “You’re a subtle player of the game, perhaps the best of this generation.” She stated the latter without flattery, which she guessed Pete would not appreciate. “You started with a few small games in the Shallows that did unexpectedly well, and you bought up others. You came up quickly, using the games you held in the lower city to skillfully outmaneuver your rivals until you achieved...” She gestured to the office about them. “This.”

  Pete nodded, seemingly lost in his thoughts. “They don’t talk about the specifics, I’m sure, because I never fruned them.” He sighed. “As I was instructed.”

  Duchess blinked. “What do you mean?”

  Pete laughed softly, bitterly. “The best in a generation, they say. I wonder how far back it goes. How many ‘best in their generations’ there are. And how many are like me.” He grimaced. “Frauds.” He spoke the word as if it were ash in his mouth.

  She shook her head. What in all of Mayu’s hells was he saying? “How can you be a fraud? What we’ve both said is the truth.”

  Pete laughed again and there was something sad in it. “Oh, the facts are true. Every move I made was the right one. Every coup and subtle feint, every alliance and betrayal. Each one calculated to reach a precise outcome.” He sighed and looked away. “All planned by another.”

  Duchess tried to encompass it. Pete the Pearl, lord of the Oyster, player of the game, feared and respected by all and sundry along the Highway, was a cat’s-paw? “Who...?” she said, so certain of the answer that she choked on the rest of the question.

  Pete reached into a pocket of his voluminous robe and with the skill of a croupier withdrew a round bit of brass that he held between two sausage-like fingers. Duchess recognized the motion from a thousand games, but, more importantly, she recognized the ancient coin, marked with a P and a snake devouring its own tail. Her eyes flicked to the twin she’d laid on the desk.

  “Yours is not the first I have encountered.” He held the coin up to the light and ran a finger around the edge, from the snake’s head and along its sinuous body, then back again. “We don’t speak of them much, on the Highway. I certainly don’t.” He placed the coin on the desk near hers. “For obvious reasons.”

  She gaped at him. “P is the reason you climbed the Highway so quickly?”

  He nodded. “I was a young man when this arrived.” He poked at the coin as if it were poisonous. “At the time I had already donned my cloak and achieved some small notoriety.” He looked up, defiant. “I was something at the start, and I earned my cloak on my own.”

  She did not reply. It was more than she could say for herself.

  “With the coin came a letter, written in an unknown hand. It contained information, terribly useful information, so much so that I could not ignore it, nor question its provenance. It won me my first great victory. Those were the halcyon days, when I was foolish enough to believe that such miracles came without a price.”

  “There’s always a cost, isn’t there?”

  Pete smiled ruefully. “Would that I had been so wise at your age. I am older now, and have learned enough not to ask how you came by your own coin. Some things are better not known.”

  She was starting to see his point. “There were more letters.”

  “There were, over the years. They always seemed to appear when I most needed them, but were always unsigned and, despite my elevated status on the Grey, untraceable. I began to fear that I was becoming dependent upon them, and the information they contained, but the lure was too great. Such certainty, always knowing the answer, the right way through, and nothing had been asked in return. I told myself that only a fool would reject such gifts.”

  “When did P begin to ask for things in return?”

  Pete’s smile was sad. “Not long after, when he was certain I understood how...important...his continued favor was. It started small, as all things do, and stayed so, if I’m honest. Buy this shop or that warehouse. Get this sellsword a post with the blackarm
s and that butcher’s son a job on a merchant vessel. It seems to me that I’ve gotten the better end of the bargain.”

  She thought of her own letter, the one that had pointed her at Hector and the Grey. What had P gained from that? “I think that’s how...he...works, honestly.” Pete looked up and she shrugged. “From my own experience, his motives are...inscrutable. To say the least.”

  Pete looked at her as if seeing something for the first time. “You’ve had letters as well.” Pete nodded. “Inscrutable is an excellent description. His latest request was, certainly.”

  Oh gods. “You mean...”

  “It was simple enough, hardly worthy of the likes of me to spread harmful rumors about a certain young member of the Highway. I’ve performed character assassinations in my time, but in this instance I was instructed not to destroy a reputation but to damage it. Nothing more. I could have done it through an intermediary; started at the lowest end of the Grey and let it work its way upwards.” He coughed, his eyes shifting away from hers. “But I got greedy.”

  Duchess could guess the rest. “You learned Minette had one of my marks, and you thought you could buy it at a discount when my stock on the Grey fell. You’d do P’s bidding and further your own interests at the same time. Hitting two birds with one stone, as they say.”

  The Pearl grimaced. “I had no way of knowing that Minette would tell you I’d gotten hold of your mark.” He glanced down at the two coins on the desk. “Though I begin to understand why.”

  Duchess half-wondered if there were more to it. With Minette, there always was. “Have you learned anything at all? Of your...” Best to be honest. “Of our benefactor?”

  Pete’s eyes widened at her confession, then nodded. “Enough to worry.” Pete picked up his coin and returned it to his pocket. “I’ve been careful, but I’ve managed to learn a little. The coins themselves are ancient, of course, and Domae-made. I thought at first that was just a bit of trickery. A way of giving them a gravitas their owner did not deserve.” He sighed. “I’ve since revised that opinion. As best I can determine, the coins, and possibly the letters, have been around as long as anyone on the Highway can remember. But there seems to be no source.”

  Duchess felt a chill. “The Highway is full of stories, and not all of them are true.”

  Pete nodded slowly. “Just so. I made more discreet inquiries, outside of the Grey, always being careful to keep my hands clean. I eventually tracked down certain...written sources. The Grey is, of course, a mercurial thing and, perhaps more importantly, a verbal tradition. Fruning is meant to be untraceable, transient. Anything written is generally destroyed.”

  She nodded, remembering that her own letter from P had contained instructions to burn it.

  Pete smiled. “There are, though, those who don’t know well enough. Those who break the rules. Over the years.”

  “How many years?” she whispered.

  Pete shivered. “Too many. Far too many for any one man.”

  Even as the hairs on the back of her neck tingled, Duchess felt certainty settle into her bones. It was one thing to wonder and guess at the force behind the marks. To suspect that the subtle pressure that made itself known in the patterns of chaos and order that ran as an undercurrent through Rodaas’ entire history was a real thing. Confirmation of its reality, she was realizing, was quite another.

  Pete had wondered how many like him there had been. Had Naria of the Dark seen a figure in her dreams? Had One-Penny Will?

  Vassilus called it a genius loci. The Domae spoke of He Who Devours. The Grey had rumors of a secret leader. Yet it seemed they were all one.

  Pete rubbed his arms as if to warm them. “P wields influence in every district of Rodaas. You may think Minette well informed, yet not a bird in Garden ruffles its feathers nor a Shallows rat twitches its nose but he knows of it. And over the many, long years—passing out of living memory—his marks have taken on a...talismanic quality. They command instant obedience.” Duchess thought of Nurse Gelda pressing her eight-year-old self into Noam’s arms, muttering Now we’re quits. She found herself shivering as well. “They have certainly commanded mine.” He sighed tiredly, slowly stood, and crossed to the door. “I believe I have given you what you have asked for.”

  Duchess swept up her coin and stood as well. No wonder Pete hadn’t taken the mark—he had too many of his own. “I will live up to my end of the bargain,” she said, meaning it. “The Grey will know that it was my fault that the Levering job went sour.” Given the damage her reputation was about to sustain, it might well be the last time anyone on the Grey paid attention to anything she had to say.

  Pete opened the door, and as she passed, placed a pudgy hand on her shoulder. “Before you go, from one beneficiary to another,” he whispered, reaching into another pocket. He handed over a small black-lacquered wooden tile with a luminous white dot—a pearl—at its center. His mark. “After today half the Grey may be laughing at you,” he whispered into her ear. “But there are those who know better. There are those who know facts and truth are very often different things.”

  He closed the door behind her and she stood silent for a long moment, uncertain which of the two marks in her pockets frightened her the more.

  * * *

  “You want me to what?” Lysander asked. They sat in her office, drinking the wine she’d picked up on the way back from the Oyster. She’d known they’d both need it.

  Duchess shrugged, savoring the warmth of wine in her belly. “I’ll repeat: I want you to run the dice game. It’s not that complicated, really.” She was glad of the change of topic. Though Lysander had demanded the story of what had happened along the Coast Road, he’d quickly realized why she’d been so evasive and had allowed her to gloss over the details. Toby and Lidda’s deaths had become just two small notes in a sour song, which made her sad and angry at the same time, so instead she spoke more of Pete the Pearl’s confession, and her takeover of Julius’ dice game.

  His eyes narrowed. “Are you doing this to keep me out of the shop? Or out of pity? Because if you are—”

  She cut him off. “It’s a smart business decision. You say I never listen to you, so here I’ll prove you wrong. You’ve played every game from the harbor to the hilltop, and you’ve won at most. You know every con and every cheat conceived by man. I need someone like you to run this game—no, I need you.”

  He grinned. “Good, because I was about to say that if you’re doing this out of pity, that’s fine with me. I just wanted to know.” He poured himself more wine. “There’ll be a lot to do, but I think I could handle it. I’d need some muscle, though, and I don’t trust the man Julius used. Is Castor available? For whatever?” He raised a wicked eyebrow.

  “Castor’s got other things to do,” she replied, her business demeanor collapsing in the face of his lecherous banter. No one could bring a smile to her face like Lysander, and today she needed it. “Though I’m sure Aaron would be happy to help you with whatever.”

  He groaned. “You were serious about taking him on? He was tedious when he was a boy, and I can’t imagine manhood has improved him.” She shrugged and he threw up his hands. “All right, but next time you save a sellsword, please pick a better-looking one.” They sat in silence for some time, but Duchess sensed he had more to say. She didn’t prompt him, keeping to her wine, and sure enough, he came out with it.

  “That story Pete told, about this P...how much of it do you believe?”

  She looked at him nakedly. “All of it, I think. It fits everything I’ve seen, everything I’ve been told. Just as one of those coins brought Pete to where he is, another brought me to Hector’s door and to the Grey. Whoever P is, those coins are the means by which his bidding is done.”

  “The first coin saved you at the end of the War of the Quills,” he mused. “The second sent you to Hector and the Grey.”

  Duchess nodded, feeling tears spring up behind her eyes. In Rodaas it wasn’t common for men to believe women, but Lysander had done s
o without demanding proof. Her intuition was enough for the both of them.

  She shook her head. “It makes no sense. He thought me important enough to save me once, and thought enough of me to give me a chance at power.” She sighed. “And now the hand that’s moved me thinks I’ve gone far enough. It makes no sense. Why help me, point me at the Grey, and then try to stop me now?”

  Lysander frowned, staring into his cup.

  “What?” she asked, not certain she wanted to know.

  He looked up, seeming to come to some decision. “Did I ever tell you about the Lane of Ash? In the Deeps?”

  Lysander almost never talked about the childhood he spent in the worst part of the city, and she wasn’t about to dissuade him. She shook her head and said nothing.

  “This was ages ago, long before I met you, when I was still running with the Tenth Bell Boys. We’d only just taken the Belfry for our own.” Duchess was not familiar with the Deeps, but she’d heard of the rickety building that the Tenth Bell Boys called home. “We’d hardly fixed it up. It was in a terrible state: holes in the ceiling, rats in the walls, and floorboards just waiting to break under you. We were proud of it, though, and always ready to protect it from one gang or another. We started each morning wondering if this was the day we’d lose the Belfry.” Under his insouciance she could tell how difficult this was for him to talk about. For all she’d had to endure as a child, she could not imagine the horrors of growing up in the Deeps. “We almost did lose it, but not to a gang.” He glanced up. “Do you remember the Great Fire?”

  Everyone remembered the Great Fire. As a child she had watched the blaze from the window of her father’s study. From there, all that was visible was an ominous orange glow from the bottom of the hill, but it was frightening enough. “They say it started in the Narrows,” she ventured, “but I never heard exactly how.”

  He shrugged. “Some say it was set deliberately, and others say it was just a lantern fallen over. Whatever started the fire, it didn’t take long to spread.” She could well imagine the speed at which a blaze would race through that warren of wooden dwellings built almost on top of one another, nestled in the heart of the Deeps. “Half the Narrows had gone up like kindling by mid-morning, before anyone realized how bad it was. The fire was moving outward, towards the Shallows in the north and the city walls in the south.” He paused. “It was moving so fast that people just started running, not thinking where they’d go after they reached Broken Gate. Some of them got around to the east or west, but others...” He sighed. “I wasn’t there, but they say that the fire trapped them there. They tried to escape the fire by climbing the gate or the walls. The lucky ones died from the fall. The rest...” His voice shook and he drank the rest of his wine in a single gulp. Duchess felt cold at the thought of men, women and children, huddled between the high, sheer walls and the advancing flames, pounding at Broken Gate, which hadn’t been usable for as long as anyone could remember. They would have had nowhere to go and nothing to do but die.