by E. C. Blake
“He’s not . . . sick, is he?” she asked softly, her voice breaking a little. Afraid of the answer, she hadn’t dared ask the question before. But with her Masking so close . . .
But to her relief, her mother turned at once and came to her. She wiped her palms on her yellow apron, then took Mara’s hands in her own. “No, darling! No, it’s nothing like that. It’s just work. That’s all.”
“Are you sure?” Mara felt her lip trembling. “It’s just . . . I’ve hardly seen him in weeks. And my Masking is coming. He . . .”
Her mother pulled her into a tight, encompassing hug. “It’s all right, Mara,” she murmured, stroking her hair. “He’s not ill. And he misses you, too. He’s just busy.” She released her, stepped back. “All right?”
Mara, biting her lip, looked into her mother’s eyes. She thought, after almost fifteen years, that she would know if her mother were simply telling her a comforting lie. She saw no sign of it.
Of course, her mother could read her face as well as she could read her mother’s. “There’s something else bothering you, isn’t there?”
Mara nodded. “I saw Sala today.”
“Did you?” Her mother indicated the table. “Go on, sit down. Your dinner is getting cold.”
Mara pulled out her chair and sat down. Back at the counter, her mother spooned mashed redroots onto a plate, poured gravy over them, laid a slice of ham alongside, and turned to the table. “And how is Masked life treating Sala?” She put the steaming plate down on the polished brown wood of the table and went back to the counter for a tumbler of water and a knife and fork. “Is she enjoying her apprenticeship to the glassmaker?”
“She seemed well,” Mara said reluctantly, picking up the utensils. “And she said Esterella is an excellent mentor. But she was . . . different.”
“Well, she’s a grown-up now, Mara.”
“It’s not just that, it was . . .” Mara hesitated. “Mother, the Mask doesn’t change you, does it?”
Her mother, who had just turned around with her own dinner, stopped in surprise. “Mara, you know the answer to that. You’re a Maskmaker’s daughter, for stars’ sake! You’ve made Masks yourself!”
“Only the outside,” Mara said. “I haven’t put in the magic.” She poked at the ham as her mother sat down opposite her. “I know what I’ve been told, Mother, but . . .”
“Told by your father, Mara,” her mother reminded her. “I hope you’re not suggesting that he hasn’t been telling you the truth!”
“No, of course not, I just . . .” I just I wish I could talk to him about it, she thought, falling silent again. She took a bite of ham and chewed mechanically, hardly tasting it. True, “The Masks don’t change you,” her father had told her back when he was still talking to her. And yet . . .
Sala had changed.
It couldn’t have been the Mask, Mara tried to reassure herself. Mother’s right. It’s just that Sala is working now, she’s an apprentice, she has grown-up things to worry about. She could be married and pregnant by this time two years from now!
And so could I, she realized suddenly, but that was such a strange and scary thought that she hurriedly pushed it aside. It’s only . . . I miss my friend. And it feels like the Mask took her away.
Maybe I’ll get her back when I’m wearing a Mask, too, she thought; as she would be, in just a few days—well, whenever she was in the street, anyway. And no more sneaking out in short tunics, she reminded herself. From now on it’s going to be proper dresses and proper cloaks and proper shoes and proper manners.
Only a week left to be a child. And after that . . . an adult. A new school, new classes with other newly Masked Gifted, in which one of the powerful magicians from the Palace would teach them about the permissible and impermissible uses of their Gifts, the laws restricting magic to the service of the Autarch, and more. At least I’ll be fully apprenticed. I’ll learn the final secrets of making Masks. Daddy and I will be working side by side again . . .
Provided I really do have the right Gift . . .
That fear never really left her; it hadn’t really left her for two years, and it was returning fourfold now that the day of her Masking was so near.
The next time she looked at magic, what would she see?
I could find out. There’s magic in Daddy’s workshop. Daddy’s at the Palace. I know where he hides the spare key. I could sneak in and . . .
The thought shocked her. She couldn’t believe she’d had it. Sneak into her father’s workshop, when he’d ordered her to stay out of it? Uncover the basin of magic, which he had always refused to open in her presence, explaining that it was expressly forbidden for the unMasked Gifted to even be in the presence of uncovered magic except during their Tests?
It was wrong.
But it was also tempting.
It wouldn’t hurt anything. How could it hurt anything? I wouldn’t do anything with the magic. I’d just look. No one will ever know.
She could picture the magic basin clearly in her mind: a bowl of thick black stone, as wide across as her forearm was long, atop a three-legged stand of bronze, its contents hidden by a heavy stone lid. It would be a simple matter to push that lid to one side, not too far, and get a glimpse of the magic within . . .
...see what color it was . . .
She found herself, without being aware she had decided to do so, getting up from the kitchen table, the chair legs squawking on the stone floor. “Excuse me,” she muttered. Her face felt hot, and she was certain her mother would figure out what she was up to. But her mother just said, “Of course,” and kept washing dishes without looking up.
Mara hurried up the smooth-polished stairs of dark brown wood to the closed door of her father’s workshop at the first landing. She knelt down in front of it. There was a loose floorboard, up against the wall where no one would tread on it accidentally, with a thin crescent of wood missing along one side, remnant of a knot in the original tree. She stuck a fingernail into that small opening, lifted the floorboard, and from its underside unhooked a big brass key. She’d seen her father take it out of there one very late night when she’d woken to hear a noise downstairs and had crept out of her room to peer into the darkness below. Her father had been at some function in the Palace at which, she guessed, a great deal of wine had been served, and although he had probably thought he was being quiet, in fact he’d been stumbling and banging and grunting enough to wake the dead. Mara doubted he even remembered coming home that night. He certainly had no idea she’d been watching.
But she had, and now the key he had inadvertently revealed to her slipped easily into the lock. She turned it, and it made a snicking sound that caused her heart to leap to her throat; but her mother continued clattering dishes in the kitchen and after a moment of frozen terror she took a deep breath, turned the brass doorknob, pushed the door open, and stepped into her father’s workshop.
Ordinarily the yellow light of the oil lanterns hung from the rafters gleamed off the racks of unfinished Masks, spools of gold and silver wire, pots of clay and glaze, the giant kiln in the corner, and the array of tiny blades and hammers and pliers placed neatly above the long workbench of smooth golden wood. But tonight the only light was a faint, faint glow through the window at the far end of the narrow room . . .
...and a glimmer, almost invisible, but definitely present, from the basin of magic in the middle of the workshop.
If she had never been in the workshop before, Mara would have hesitated to step into that darkness, afraid of banging her shins or sending something crashing to the floor, alerting her mother to her transgression. But Mara had spent many, many hours in the workshop watching her father craft Masks, learning, in fact, all there was to know about them except for the secret of imbuing them with magic. She knew exactly where everything was, even in the dark. And so she stepped forward, cautiously but without terror, and made her way to
the faintly gleaming basin.
The lid sealed it as tightly as always. The faint glow came from the stone of the basin itself, as though it were covered with a thin film of luminescent oil.
Taking a deep breath, Mara reached out with both hands and slid the heavy stone disk away from the edge of the basin.
She looked down, and caught her breath in delight, with dismay close on its heels.
Magic seethed inside the basin. To Mara it looked like a liquid, a liquid heavy as quicksilver, an endlessly shifting mass of twisting, twining color . . .
...but still, all colors: none stronger than the others. Her Gift still had not settled. She still could not be certain she would have the ability required to craft Masks like her father.
And her Masking was only days away.
But as she stared down into the magic, her dismay faded, while the delight remained. It’s so beautiful! Her heart ached at the thought that someday all that beauty would vanish forever, replaced by only one or two colors instead of the endless variety before her now.
Then her dismay returned full-force: not because of what she saw in the magic, but because of what she heard downstairs—the sound of the door opening, and her father’s voice, “Karissa?”
“In here, sweetheart,” her mother said.
Mara whispered a word she’d heard on the street but never dared to use in her own house before, and quickly pulled the stone lid back over the basin. She hurried to the door . . . then froze. She could tell by the sound of his voice that her father was at the base of the stairs. He’d hear her for sure if she opened the door now.
“Where’s Mara?” he said.
“Upstairs in her room,” her mother said. A pause. “She misses you,” her mother continued, so softly Mara could barely hear her through the door. “She doesn’t understand why you won’t talk to her.” Another pause. “I miss you, too.” Yet another pause. “I don’t understand, either.”
“I told you,” her father said. He sounds worn out, Mara thought, her breath catching in her throat. As if he’s at the end of his strength. Maybe he really is sick! “I’m busy. Working on her Mask. I can’t—”
“You’re always working on a Mask,” her mother interrupted. “I don’t see why this one should be—”
“I don’t want to discuss it,” her father snapped. “Is there anything to eat?”
A very long silence followed. “Bread. Cheese,” her mother said. “Nothing hot.”
“Fine.” And then, to her relief, Mara heard her father’s steps move away from the base of the stairs. Quick as a frightened mouse, she nipped out, closed the door of the workshop silently behind her, locked it, put the key back in its hiding place, and fled: up the stairs, down the upper hallway, then up a final flight of stairs as steep as a ladder and through a trapdoor into her own room.
She closed the trap behind her and sat down on her narrow bed, beneath the thick black beams that supported the roof, sloping down sharply to her right. Head in her hands, elbows on her knees, she stared at the tiny blue flame flickering inside the glass tube of the gas lamp in the corner. The pilot light illuminated nothing but itself, but she left the lamp turned down, content to sit in the deepening dark, leavened only by the fading glow through the skylight window over her bed.
Warning bells rang in the streets, deep, slow, ominous: curfew for the children of Tamita, and a warning to the Masked that they must hasten home or else make their way to the well-lit boulevards lined with shops, restaurants, and theaters that were the only streets in the city where even the Masked could congregate after dark.
The Night Watchers not only patrolled the boulevards, they patrolled everywhere else, ensuring that no one lurked or lingered in the darkened alleys and winding lesser streets. The Watchers’ black cloaks, Masks, and clothing made them almost invisible in the darkness. Some said they carried magic that could really make them invisible, but Mara had watched the Watchers patrolling the shadowy streets too many nights to believe they had mystical powers: not only the night she and Sala were caught skinny-dipping, but many other nights when they weren’t.
Of course, all Watchers supposedly had enough of the Gift to read Masks, but Mara wondered if that were true. She remembered what Tutor Ancilla had told them. “There are maybe twenty thousand people in Tamita,” she’d said. “An enormous number. But at any given time there are no more than two hundred who have the Gift. Only half of those have it in great enough measure to actually use magic. And fewer than half of those can use it to any great purpose.”
“Aren’t you special,” Sala had whispered to Mara, who had stuck out her tongue at her.
Of course, the ability to read Masks might not require enough Gift to actually manipulate magic like that gathered in the basin in her father’s workshop. But even so, there were hundreds of Watchers. They served as police, army, and bodyguards. They could not possibly all have the Gift, even in small amount.
The trouble was, Mara had once overheard one adult mutter to another after a Watcher had passed by, casting the customary chill on conversation, you could never be sure whether the one staring at your Mask had it or not.
Still, Gifted or not, the Watchers couldn’t be everywhere, especially at night. And so sneaking out into the night—at least as long as she was still unMasked—held no terror for Mara.
Quite the opposite, in fact.
She rose, turned, and stepped up onto her bed, which sagged alarmingly under her weight in a way it hadn’t just a year previously. Another peril of growing up, she thought. Reaching overhead, she took hold of the wooden frame of the skylight window and pushed it sharply to the left. On the other hand, that’s a lot easier than it used to be. The window shifted, there was a click, and then the heavy wood-framed glass came loose in her hands. Mara tugged it free of the skylight, bent over to set it carefully onto her bed, then straightened again and took a deep breath of the cool evening air flowing down from above. But before she went out . . .
She jumped down off the bed, pulled off her skirt and blouse, tossed them on the floor, rummaged in the trunk at the foot of her bed for a tunic like the one she’d worn that afternoon—only even shorter, she discovered as she pulled it on—then stepped back up onto the mattress. A jump, a wriggle, a scramble, and she was crouched on the rounded green tiles of the roof. Careful not to dislodge them and send them skittering to noisy destruction, she crept down to the eaves. From there it was an easy step to the top of the wall that ran past the house on that side, closed off the backyard, and stretched a full fifty yards farther along the alley past other houses and yards.
Bare feet sure and steady on the familiar stones, she ran the length of the wall, swung into and down from a handy tree at its end, and then paused, barely even breathing hard, in the shadowed alley. She looked both ways for Night Watchers, saw none, and started running.
She didn’t have a destination. She just wanted to run, to be free, to be a child, to take deep breaths of air unblocked by the Mask that would soon cover her face whenever she went out, marking her as a grown-up, marking her as a full-fledged citizen . . .
...marking her, if she did not conform, did not obey, did not do everything a responsible member of the community was expected to do, as someone to be watched, someone not to be trusted . . . someone the Watchers might decide at any moment to remove from the community for good.
All her life she’d looked forward to her Masking. Or thought she had. But now that it was so close . . . now, it felt more like an impending prison sentence, as if she were enjoying her final few days of freedom before bars of propriety, harder and colder than any steel, imprisoned her forever.
And so she ran with nowhere to run to, cautious enough to keep an eye out for Watchers, not cautious enough to worry about exactly where she was . . . until she suddenly turned a corner into a dead end, three tall blank walls towering in front of her . . .
...
and heard echoing behind her, in the street she had just left, the unmistakable sound of boots on the cobblestones.
Mara swore. Her mother would never forgive her if she were dragged home by the Night Watchers this close to her Masking. Last time she’d had to scrub every floor in the house on her hands and knees . . . twice. This time . . . her imagination failed her, which was probably just as well: whatever her mother came up with was likely to be far worse.
She looked wildly around, and saw a door—a trapdoor, really. Square, about three feet on a side, set waist-high, black as the wall all around it, it obviously opened into someone’s coal chute.
Praying it wasn’t locked, she ran over to it and shoved at it with the palms of her hands. It didn’t move.
The footsteps echoed closer. The Night Watchers would turn the corner any second . . .
She rammed her shoulder into the door. Wood splintered, and it swung inward. She held it open against the force of the spring trying to close it. Staring at the pitch-black square leading who-knew-where, she hesitated; then she heard a man’s voice from the street say, “Did you hear something?” and in sudden terror threw herself headfirst through the opening.
The door banged shut behind her. In absolute darkness she slid down a metal chute, arms outstretched and legs spread to try to slow her descent.
She shot out of the chute and fear wrenched a scream from her as she fell—
—not, fortunately, very far; but all the same, coal really wasn’t the softest thing in the world to land on. She tumbled over and over in a welter of rock and finally came to rest on a hard stone floor, bruised, breathless, no doubt filthy, but not seriously hurt. Making good use of several more interesting words she’d learned on the street, she sat up.
Then she yelped in terror as a voice out of the darkness said, “Who’s there?”
FOUR
The Boy in the Basement
