by E. C. Blake
“Your mother is beautiful,” Kirika said unexpectedly.
Simona gave her a surprised look; Hyram laughed yet again. “Thanks,” he said. “Too bad I don’t take after her.”
Mara, who had found it hard to keep her eyes from his finely honed features from the moment he had come over to them, opened her mouth to protest, then closed it again with a snap. If Hyram noticed, he gave no sign, instead just indicating the cave entrance again. “Follow me!”
He led them to the opening, half as tall as the Tamita city wall and as wide as the Market Gate—three wagon breadths, at least. “We call this the Broad Way,” Hyram said as he led them into the cavern beyond, and Mara could see why: the wide cave mouth became an equally wide tunnel that extended into darkness. Lanterns hung on the stone walls cast periodic pools of yellow light. Here and there other tunnels joined the Broad Way. After a hundred yards or so it sloped down and out of sight.
“Storerooms and our water supply are all down there,” Hyram said, pointing toward the Broad Way’s hidden end. “Baths, too.” He glanced at them and his mouth quirked. “I, um . . . sense . . . that you could all use them sometime in the not-too-distant future.”
Mara took a sniff, and decided not to take that personally.
But that sniff also brought far more appealing smells to her attention. Woodsmoke, of course, and a general sort of people smell; but also the really, really good smells of baking bread and roasting meat. Her mouth watered and her stomach rumbled.
Hyram glanced at her. He heard, she thought, face growing hot. “Food in a few minutes,” he said. “But first, let me show you where you’ll be sleeping.”
He led them, not down the Broad Way, but into the first tunnel on the left. Clearly man-made, cut out of the rock, it changed almost at once from tunnel to staircase. They climbed up rough-hewn steps, past two lit oil lamps and one that had burned out, emerging into one end of another tunnel stretching away into the rock. Hyram, however, took them directly across that tunnel to a wooden door that he pushed open, revealing a good-sized chamber beyond. Thick black timbers shored up the roof and walls. A slit of a window, hewn through at least four feet of rock, let in cool salt air and the sound of surf. Shutters hung on the inside could close it off if need be. Half a dozen beds, the frames made of whitewashed wood, the mattresses covered with warm-looking woolen blankets of blue and green, lined the walls. Each had a side table; lanterns burning on three of them filled the room with a cozy yellow glow. An unlit hearth was cut into the inside wall. “Girls’ room,” Hyram said.
Mara went over to one of the beds and poked at the mattress. It rustled and released the unmistakable smell of hay. She sat, then lay down. A week before she would have thought it unbearably prickly and lumpy. But after one night in the iron cage in the warehouse, four nights in the cold cells of the way stations, and two nights on the ground—all of those nights far too short—it felt like heaven. She felt her eyes closing and jerked upright again. Looking around, she saw that the other girls had picked out beds and were testing them, as well.
“Well?” Hyram said. “What do you think?”
“Better than I had at home,” said Alita.
“A lot better,” muttered Kirika.
“Not as good as I had at home,” said Simona. She touched the thin scars lining her face. “But I’m not about to complain.”
“I think it’s perfect,” Prella piped up.
Mara saw Keltan and Hyram both looking at her, as if only her verdict really mattered. “It’ll do,” she said, and both boys relaxed—and then gave each other a strange look she didn’t know how to interpret.
“What about Grute?” asked Prella. “Where will he sleep?”
“Grute?” Hyram gave her a puzzled look.
“The sack of dung on a leash,” Alita clarified.
“One of the old kind of unMasked,” said Keltan. He told Hyram about Grute’s attempt to hit Tishka with a rock, and Hyram’s face stiffened. And he doesn’t even know what happened in the wagon, Mara thought. Or the warehouse.
“You should execute him,” Kirika said, voice cold and flat. “He’s a waste of space. Not worth feeding.”
Mara hated and feared Grute, but even so, Kirika’s matter-of-fact bloodthirstiness shocked her.
“Not up to me,” Hyram said shortly, but it sounded as if he rather liked the idea. He looked around at the girls. “There’s one other thing you need to see up here. This way.” He took them back out into the tunnel that ran in the same direction as the Broad Way a level below. A couple of other tunnels opened off of it left and right, along with several doors, but it ended in a chamber whose entrance was hung with a curtain of gray cloth, currently pushed aside to reveal, inside, a wooden seat with a hole in it, over an opening in the rock from which came the distant sound of rushing water. “Toilet,” Hyram said succinctly.
Alita looked into the hole. “I hope that’s not our water supply down there.”
Hyram’s smile vanished. “Of course not,” he snapped. “All waste goes into the underground river downstream from where we draw our water, and the river empties straight into the ocean. We’re not fools, you know.”
Alita raised an eyebrow at him, expression cool, and Hyram flushed. “Sorry,” he said. “I know it’s all rustic, compared to Tamita. But we’ve been here a long time, and we’ve not only survived, we’ve thrived—free of the Autarch, and his Watchers . . . and his Masks.”
Alita said nothing.
Hyram took a deep breath and turned away from her. “Speaking of water,” he said, “now I think it’s time I showed you the baths.”
He took them back down the stairs into the Broad Way and down it, the main entrance disappearing behind them as they went deeper underground. After those first hundred yards, no more tunnels opened off the Broad Way, which suggested to Mara that the Secret City existed only near the surface of the rock face. Understandable; the amount of work required to create even what she had seen was mind-boggling, even if, as Hyram had suggested, some of it had been here for centuries. Anyway, who would want to live any farther inside the rock than they had to? She could almost feel the vast mass of stone above her pressing down.
The Broad Way became progressively less broad as they walked, until it was only a couple of arm-spans wide. Then, with no warning, it opened up again into a huge chamber. A dozen lamps on wooden poles struggled to light the space, their feeble illumination failing to reach the far wall, some unguessed distance away in the darkness, but their glimmer still revealed enough to make Mara and the others gasp.
They stood on the shore of an enormous underground lake, its water smooth as glass. Curtains and daggers of stone festooned the high stone ceiling, the lamplight waking tiny sparkles of golden light even in the deepest shadows: the whole cave, in fact, glittered as if studded with diamonds. Through the crystal-clear water Mara could see the bottom of the lake sloping gently away into dark depths.
“We get our water from the springs over there,” Hyram said, pointing left, and Mara turned to see clear water tumbling down from a crack in the rock, splashing into a small pool that then overflowed into the lake, the flowing water mimicked by the flowing shapes of the sparkling stone over which it poured. “The stream you heard under the toilet empties out of the lake over there,” he pointed farther to the left, toward a dark opening.
“We bathe in the lake itself. Girls over here . . .” He led them along the right side, around an outthrust shoulder of rock, to where an arm of the lake extended into a horseshoe cove. He turned and pointed back at the smooth surface of the lake, disappearing into darkness. “No one can see in, so modesty is preserved.”
Mara knelt by the lake and put her hand into the water. “It’s warm,” she said, in surprise.
“Hot springs well up into the lake,” Hyram said.
Mara stood and looked around, spotting gray lumps of soap in a natu
ral depression in the rock. No towels, but she supposed there must be something in their room. “All the comforts of home,” she said, trying to sound cheerful, though in fact she had suddenly been struck by a wave of homesickness so great she thought for a horrible moment she would burst into tears.
She wanted her own room, her own home, their enameled bathtub, her mother’s cooking, her father’s laughter . . . not this horrible place of stone and strangers, darkness and displacement. But she couldn’t have it. She could never have it again.
Because of the Masks. Because of the Autarch. Because . . .
...because.
She realized that both Hyram and Keltan were watching her—again—and managed to dredge up a smile. It felt horribly false—like the smile of a Mask, she thought—but she held it in place. “Now how about something to eat?” she said. “I’m starving.” She glanced around at the others. “Aren’t you?”
Amid a general murmur of consent, they made their way back up the Broad Way, the smells of cooking growing stronger as they approached. “Big feast tonight to welcome everyone back,” Hyram said. “In the Great Chamber.” He led them to the opposite side of the Broad Way from the stairs they had climbed to the girls’ room, and into a room that would have been breathtaking in size if they hadn’t just seen the underground lake. As it was, it was merely impressive.
Wooden tables dotted its smooth gray floor. At hearths around the perimeter Mara could see cooks stirring and turning and seasoning and tasting sizzling sides of meat and the bubbling contents of countless cauldrons. As she watched, a baker pulled a long platter covered with loaves of bread out of a clay oven. Her stomach growled again and she thought she might drown in her own saliva.
“Let’s find a table,” Hyram said, but as she started to follow him, someone touched her arm. She turned to see Edrik.
“The Commander wants to see you,” he said.
“But—” Mara looked longingly toward the food. “Couldn’t it wait until . . . ?”
“I’m sure she won’t keep you long.”
She? Mara blinked.
Hyram and the others had stopped and glanced back when they realized she wasn’t with them. Hyram took a step toward her, but Edrik shook his head, and his son stopped.
No rescue, Mara thought. Resigned, she turned her back on the good smells of the Great Chamber, and followed Edrik back into the Broad Way. He turned right, as though taking her to the underground lake, but only went a short distance before turning right again down a side tunnel, one that ran straight and flat, uninterrupted, for a very long way. It ended in a closed door, painted white.
Edrik rapped on the smooth surface with his knuckles. After a moment, a voice said, “Come in.” Edrik lifted the latch and pushed opened the door, and Mara stepped through.
She felt as if she had somehow stepped out of the caverns into a luxurious tent. Heavy tapestries, colors muted by age, hid the walls of the chamber, about the same size as the one the girls would share. Filmy white cloth draped the ceiling. Thick, intricately patterned rugs in red, brown, and cream covered the floor.
A slit of a window above a large white four-poster bed at the chamber’s far end showed only darkness, but let in the sound of surf, much louder here: this chamber, Mara realized, must overlook the ocean. An oval mirror above a wooden dresser to her left reflected the room back on itself; beside it stood a heavy wardrobe, taller than she was.
Lamps illuminated the room with a golden glow. A fire blazing in a hearth to Mara’s right added a hint of woodsmoke to the sea air.
Mara took it all in with a glance and an intake of breath; then her gaze riveted on the woman at the center of the unexpected luxury, seated at a round table of polished yellow wood in one of the four matching chairs that surrounded it.
Tiny, thin, snow-white hair pulled into a severe bun, face deeply etched with wrinkles, she wore a heavy black cloak pulled close around her. Fur peeked out from under the collar, though Mara found the room stifling. The woman’s hands, gnarled and knobby as old tree roots, rested on the table. But all the clues that spoke of great age were belied by eyes as bright, blue, sharp, and glittering as twin steel blades.
“Grandmother,” said Edrik. “I have brought Mara Holdfast.”
Grandmother? Mara shot a glance at Edrik, then looked back at the woman. Now that the idea had been put into her head, she could see the resemblance: something in the nose, the line of the jaw, the height of the forehead, and definitely in the bright blue eyes, shared by Edrik and Hyram alike.
“Come here, child,” said Edrik’s grandmother, her voice cracked, but with a core of strength that brooked no disobedience. Mara walked over to the table. The old woman looked past her at Edrik. “Leave us, grandson.”
Edrik bowed and went out, closing the white door behind him with a soft click.
The old woman studied Mara for a long moment, then said abruptly, “I am Catilla, Commander of the unMasked Army. And you are Mara, daughter of Charlton Holdfast, Master Maskmaker of Tamita.”
“Yes,” Mara said. “But I don’t understand how you know that.”
Catilla shrugged. “It is enough that we do.”
“And I don’t understand how all this,” Mara waved her hands, “can even exist. Why hasn’t the Autarch found you?”
Catilla’s eyes narrowed. “Why should I entrust you with our secrets? You have not yet proved yourself a friend. And you have come to us under . . . unusual circumstances.”
Mara felt a flash of anger. “You kidnapped me!” She thought of the blood-soaked ground beneath the slain Watchers and wagon drivers. “You killed to kidnap me! And now you don’t know if you can trust me?”
“It is because we ‘kidnapped’ you—” Catilla’s eyes narrowed further, “—although some might say ‘rescued’—that I cannot be sure I can trust you.” She pulled the cloak tighter. “Always before, our recruits have come to us of their own free will, fleeing their Masking.”
“Like Keltan.”
Catilla nodded. “Some few,” she continued, “very few, have come after their Masking—long after, in some cases—fleeing the gibbet, knowing their Masks are about to betray their true feelings about the Autarch’s bloody reign to the Watchers.”
Mara blinked at that. She’d never thought of someone fleeing Tamita while their Mask remained intact. But if they had, they might still be able to get back into Tamita, or at least into some of the smaller towns and villages, once or twice more before their Masks betrayed them. She shuddered, thinking of the danger involved; but it was the only way she could imagine that the unMasked Army could infiltrate Masked society, and plant the rumors of their existence they needed to maintain the flow of recruits . . . and perhaps to buy things they can’t make themselves, she thought, glancing at the dresser and mirror. But if that’s true, what does it say about this woman that she would have people risk their lives for her comfort?
“However, we have never before snatched unMasked from the very clutches of the Watchers, en route to the mining camp,” Catilla continued. “And so I find myself on uncertain ground.”
“Then why did you do it this time?” Mara demanded.
Catilla’s blue gaze did not waver. “The others are of no importance. We would never have risked discovery for ordinary unMasked, those who chose to go to their Maskings willingly rather than risk all to find us as others have. No. We did not set out to rescue them: we set out to rescue you, Mara, daughter of Charlton Holdfast.”
“But why?” Mara asked again.
“We judged the potential reward outweighed the risks.”
“What reward?” Mara cried in frustration. “I don’t understand!”
Catilla regarded her. “Well,” she said after a moment. “Perhaps I must tell you at least some of our secrets.” She gave a wintry smile. “It’s not as if we will let you escape to betray them.”
Mara wai
ted. The room was so hot, despite the open window, that a drop of sweat ran down her nose. She batted it away.
“Many years ago,” Catilla said at last, “more years than I care to remember, when I was a young woman only a little older than you are now, the old Autarch died. He died suddenly, under suspicious circumstances, and, almost immediately, rebellion erupted. The old Autarch had raised taxes to ruinous levels, thrown countless people into debtors’ prison when they could not pay, arrested those he suspected of crimes against the state—a category of wrongdoing which had a very broad definition in his mind—imprisoning or even executing them without trial, and on and on. The rebels sought to overthrow the Autarchy, to institute a new kind of government, one where rulers would be elected by the people, not born to privilege or seizing power by force.”
Mara blinked. She’d never heard of such a concept. Catilla carried on. “But though many supported the rebels, there were also many for whom the old Autarch, for all his tyranny, had represented stability. Far from suffering, many of those people had grown fat under the Autarch’s rule. They did not want change. And ultimately they prevailed.”
Catilla sighed. “The Autarch’s son, still a beardless youth, ascended to the Sun Throne upon his father’s death. Even while open rebellion still roiled in the streets and whole villages burned, he summoned Aygrima’s greatest mages and artisans. He wanted to be certain, once the rebellion was quashed, that he would never face another. He wanted a magical way to be assured, always and absolutely, of his subjects’ loyalty, a way to root out treason and sedition before it could break into open revolt. He especially did not want to die like his father had, screaming in agony as poison ate him from the inside out.
“Within two years, the rebellion had been quelled. And while the last of its fomenters still hung from the gallows outside the Palace entrance known ever since as Traitors’ Gate, the Autarch announced the solution his magic-workers had crafted: from the next New Year’s Feast onward, all adults of the Autarchy, everyone who had reached the age of fifteen, would be Masked—their faces encased, whenever they were in public, by a magical simulacrum of their features that would reveal their innermost being to a corps of Gifted warriors known as the Watchers, and betray them if they harbored rebellion in their hearts.
