Masks

by E. C. Blake

  A woman just a little younger than Hayka, but a lot thinner and uglier, with deep red scars slashing across her face, grabbed Mara by the upper arms. “I’ll make her welcome.” Her callused hands flicked all over Mara’s body, as though looking for something to steal, but the pockets of Mara’s new clothes were as empty as her stomach. “Dammit, she’s got nothing.” The woman poked at Mara’s rather flat chest and laughed. “Nothing at all.”

  “Don’t think that’ll save you,” said a third woman, a little younger, with a face that might once have been pretty but now had the hard-edged look of something carved out of ice.

  Mara looked around at the other women. Some openly sneered at her, but a few, the youngest, the ones closest to her own age, wouldn’t meet her eyes at all. One girl, sitting cross-legged on the floor with her hands on her ankles, rocked back and forth, eyes closed, humming a tune Mara recognized as a lullaby . . .

  A lullaby Mara’s mother used to sing to her when she couldn’t sleep.

  She swallowed a sudden lump in her throat, then was jerked around to face Hayka again. “You take the bunk down there.” She pointed to the far end of the long building, where there was another door. “Farthest from the fire, so it’s coldest. Closest to the latrine—through that door—so it smells. You want a better bunk, you earn it.” She pointed to herself. “By keeping me happy. We get meat once a week. Say you gave me your meat portion for a month. I might be able to find you a bed closer to the fire. Maybe you hear something, somebody saying something against me. You let me know so I can deal with it. Could earn you an extra blanket. You get the idea?”

  Mara got it, all right. Like Grute, Hayka was somehow broken inside, and the Mask had known it when she was just fifteen. This is what most of those whose Masks failed used to be like, she thought. But now . . .

  She looked at the others. They couldn’t all be like Hayka and Grute. She remembered what Catilla had told her, how some of those whose Maskings failed had simply been . . . different. And then there were the youngest, the ones within a year or so of her age. Some of them must be like her, torn away from their parents on the biggest day of their lives, utterly shocked, utterly devastated, utterly bewildered by the failure of their Masks, not knowing why, not knowing the Masks had changed.

  The rocking girl’s endlessly repeating lullaby hummed in her ears.

  She wanted to tell Hayka to take a flying leap into the latrine, but instead she bit her lip and swallowed her pride and said, “I get it.”

  “Good.” Hayka straightened. “Then let me give you the rest of the grand tour.”

  There wasn’t much to the tour and what there was was hard to see. The only light came from one smoke-blackened lantern by the door, another by the latrine door, and the fire, which had barely been showing flames when she entered and had now burned down to glowing embers, plunging most of the building into gloom. A long, shallow basin, with the spout and handle of a water pump at one end, stretched along the wall to the south of the fire pit. The latrine, lit by the tiniest of lanterns, smelled as bad as promised. It had two wooden benches, one on either side, with three holes apiece, and it was ice cold, since there was a hole in the roof to bring in fresh air and let out some of the stink. Mara grimaced, but when you had to go, you had to go, and she had to go. Fortunately she was left alone, shivering, to do it.

  When she came out, Hayka had disappeared back into her own cozy room, and the women and girls who had been gathered by the fire pit were getting into their bunks. They didn’t get undressed first, and considering she was already chilled to the bone, Mara understood why.

  She lingered by the fire pit, trying to warm herself, but the older woman who had poked at her earlier grabbed her arm and spun her around. “Get to bed,” she snapped. “Lights out in two minutes. A Watcher checks. If anybody’s out of bed, we all get punished. Go!”

  Startled, Mara hurried down to her bunk and climbed in. There was no pillow, and the thin, threadbare blanket promised little comfort. She’d barely pulled it up to her chin when the door banged open. While Hayka stood in the doorway, a Watcher carrying a lantern strolled down the middle of the longhouse, and Mara realized there was another reason besides warmth not to undress for bed as he pulled back blankets one by one, though what he was checking for, she couldn’t imagine. He reached her end of the longhouse, but ignored her for a moment, first pulling open the door to the latrine. He took a quick look, made a gagging sound, and slammed the door shut.

  Then he looked down at her. He reached out and pulled the blanket off her as he had the others, looked into her bunk, and tossed the blanket back. He started to turn away, but then stopped, turned back, and leaned closer, holding the lamp so near she could feel the heat from its flickering oil flame. His eyes glittered behind the black, blank Mask. “A new one,” he said. “And a pretty one, not a scar to be seen. I think we’ll all want to get to know you better, baby girl. A lot better.” He stared another long moment, then straightened, turned away, and strode back toward Hayka, taking the light with him. A moment later Hayka’s door swung shut, plunging the longhouse into darkness.

  Mara wished she were Prella, naïve enough to have to ask, “What did he mean?” but she knew exactly what he had meant.

  Her heart fluttered in her chest and despite the cold, her palms felt sweaty.

  Keltan, she thought. Hyram. Edrik. Where are you?

  No rescuers suddenly burst through the door. Instead, there was only the fading red glow of the fire pit, the creak of beds as women rolled over, and the slowly growing, ever-more-horrifying realization that she might not be rescued before . . .

  Before.

  Shuddering, she pulled the blanket over her head and tried to shut out the low grumble of the water wheel, tried hard to imagine she was in her own attic room, cuddling with Stoofy, hearing the murmur of her parents’ voices downstairs, waiting to drift off to sleep knowing she was safe and warm and loved . . .

  But although she’d always been told she had a good imagination, imagining that proved to be beyond her.

  THIRTEEN

  Descent into Darkness

  THE ONLY GOOD THING about absolute exhaustion was that, despite everything, Mara fell asleep shortly after the Watcher left the longhouse. She woke to the smell of smoke. Rolling over, she saw a dark figure crouched by the fire pit, urging another small fire to life. She closed her eyes again, but had no time to drift back to sleep before Hayka’s door crashed open, though it wasn’t Hayka who yelled, “Up, slugs. Breakfast in half an hour. Shift change in an hour.”

  Mara blinked up at the rough wooden underside of the bunk over her head. It wasn’t until she tried to sit up that she realized just how stiff and sore she was from the previous day’s mule ride, not to mention the long, cold night in the hard little bed. It took all her strength and a lot of teeth-gritting just to swing her legs over the side. She rubbed her hands on her gray trousers, and looked around.

  The other girls and women were also getting out of bed, and a line had already formed at the latrine, stretching past her bunk. Mara joined it, and found herself standing next to a girl just a little bit older. The girl looked sideways at her. A pale ghost of a smile flicked briefly over her face. “Hi,” she said. “I’m Katia.”

  Mara managed to smile back. “Hi,” she said. “I’m Mara.”

  Katia lowered her voice. “Is it true? Someone attacked the wagon? You got out?”

  “It’s true,” Mara said. Bitterness crept into her voice as she added, “But I didn’t get out to stay.”

  “I’m sorry,” Katia said. She shook her head. “This place is terrible. The mines are—” She fell silent as, from out of nowhere, Hayka appeared, shoving her way through the women who had joined the line behind Mara and Katia.

  “Get into the latrine,” Hayka said to Mara, ignoring Katia. “I’m supposed to take you to the Warden before breakfast.”

  Heart
fluttering, Mara pushed to the head of the line, keeping her head down to avoid the accusing glares. Hayka was waiting for her when she came out and dragged her out of the longhouse by her arm. Skriva, the trustee who had rousted the women out of their bunks, sat at the table eating steaming porridge from a wooden bowl. She glanced up. “You’ll have to chivvy them to the mess hall,” Hayka told her.

  Skriva just grunted, and went back to shoveling porridge into her mouth.

  Hayka took Mara outside into a cold, cloudy morning, the sky just beginning to gray. A chill wind from the towering mountains to the north swept swirling dust through the camp. Mara shivered and wondered if she’d ever be warm again. Hayka had said she wouldn’t get a coat until after the first snow. Mara looked up at the clouds hopefully, but they remained stubbornly precipitation-free.

  Hayka led her up the crushed-rock path toward the big stone house, whose glazed windows glowed with light and from whose many chimneys issued tendrils of smoke, blown sideways and shredded by the wind. They passed over the low arch of the stone bridge that crossed the stream, and Mara glanced right at the top of the giant water wheel, turning in the constant flow of water. What’s it for? she wondered. Some sort of mill? What do they mine here, anyway?

  She glanced at Hayka’s scowling face and decided not to ask.

  On the far side of the bridge they passed the other wooden structures, larger and squarer than the longhouses, which had been dark the night before. From one came the smell of baking bread, and Mara’s mouth watered. The dining hall, presumably. She hoped whatever the Warden wanted, he’d let her eat soon.

  And what does he want? she thought uneasily. Surely not . . . that. Not yet. He wouldn’t, would he?

  He might. She was only fifteen, but she’d lived her life in the largest city of the Autarchy, mingling with children from all walks of life on the streets. She knew very well what went on behind some closed doors in the city, knew there were men who liked to prey on the young: knew that the Masks didn’t seem to care about that, though there were laws against it. If the Warden were one of that sort . . .

  If he were, there was nothing she could do about it.

  Unless he’s got a basin of magic in his room, she thought with a flare of defiance, remembering Grute.

  Hayka led her up the broad stone steps onto the porch. A brass knocker hung from the shining black door. Hayka rapped sharply, and the door opened almost at once to reveal the impassive Mask of a towering Watcher. “Mara,” Hayka said. “Warden wants her.”

  The Watcher nodded and moved to one side. Hayka left without a word as Mara stepped into the entry hall. Gold and silver sparkled at her from bright flecks in the white stone floor, reflecting the light from the oil-lamp chandelier hanging overhead. Broad stairs straight ahead led up to the second floor; on either side of the stairs, hallways led deeper into the house, doors to right and left and at the far end of each. The butter-yellow walls were crowded with paintings large and small, mostly of mountains and waterfalls and trees. They had an amateurish quality about them. Warden probably painted them himself, Mara thought.

  Though chilly, the hallway was far warmer than the longhouse, and the dark-paneled room to the right into which the Watcher took her was warmer yet, thanks to the fire blazing in a red-tiled hearth beneath a mantelpiece made of the same gold-flecked stone as the floor. Mara hurried over to it to crouch and warm herself, while the Watcher remained in the doorway. She straightened and turned as she heard someone come in, and saw the Warden, today dressed in thick blue trousers and a thigh-length blue tunic, snowy linen showing at neck and wrists. From a chain of gold around his neck dangled a golden disk, inset with a red spiral that matched the ones on the cheeks of his black Mask. Above the Mask, his silver hair picked up highlights of yellow and red from the lamps and the fire. “Mara, good,” he said brusquely. He seated himself in the big leather armchair behind the desk. Two white-upholstered chairs faced the desk, but he made no offer to her to sit.

  A single piece of paper lay in the center of the desk’s shining stone surface, otherwise bare apart from a pen and an inkwell inside a small wooden tray. The Warden looked down at it. “Mara,” he said. “Daughter of Charlton Holdfast.” He looked up at her. “I am astonished to see you here.”

  Mara said nothing, unsure how to respond.

  The Warden pulled the sheet of paper toward him. “The failure of your Mask was considered unusual enough that I was asked to question you about it when you arrived.” He perused the paper. “The Healer Ethelda attended your Masking?”

  Mara nodded. “Yes,” she said. “My mother expected the Autarch himself to be there, but . . .”

  “No doubt he had more pressing matters to attend to.” The Warden lifted his head again to meet her eyes. “Fortunately for you. Your face is unmarked, thanks to Ethelda’s ministrations.”

  Mara swallowed. “I know. I’m . . . very lucky.”

  The Warden folded his hands on top of the piece of paper. “Mara,” he said. “As Warden, I am in a position to make your life here much more comfortable than it might otherwise be. But I need your . . . cooperation.”

  Mara’s heart fluttered in her chest like a caged bird. “I don’t understand.”

  “It’s very simple,” said the Warden. “I need to know what happened to the wagon.”

  “I–I told you. Wild men attacked us. I ran away. I’d be dead if I hadn’t found the hut with the magic—” she bit that off. She didn’t want to talk about what had happened in the hut.

  The Warden stared at her a long moment. “Yes,” he said at last. “You told me. The problem is, I don’t believe you.”

  Mara’s face felt frozen as a Mask. She didn’t dare say anything. She just stood, still as a statue.

  “It’s the clothes you were wearing, you see,” the Warden continued. “You said you were sent out from the warehouse wearing them. You said the fat man wanted you to wear them while he drew you. But the fat man in the warehouse wouldn’t draw you wearing those. He’d more likely draw you nude. I should know: I have several of his better pieces in my collection.” He leaned forward. “This is the cooperation I need,” he said softly. “I want you to tell me everything—everything—that happened on that trip here. I want you to tell me the truth. I want to know who attacked you. I want to know why. What were they after? You? The unmarked, unMasked daughter of the Master Maskmaker of Tamita? Or perhaps one of the other children? What do you know about them?”

  “Nothing! We barely talked—”

  “Really? Over four days? It must have been a very silent journey.”

  “I’m telling the truth!” Mara said desperately. “About the clothes, about everything! Please, you’ve got to—”

  “Believe you? Well, no, I don’t.” The Warden leaned back, picked up the pen, dipped it in the inkwell, and scribbled something on the paper. “You’re going down into the mines today,” he said. “Everyone starts in the mines. But not everyone has to stay in the mines.” He dipped and wrote again. “If you remembered something else about what happened to the wagon, about the unMasked who were in it, or the people who attacked—the people who gave you those clothes—I might be able to find a place for you aboveground.” More ink, more scribbling. “Think about it.” He put down the pen, raised his head, and called, “Watcher Stanlis!”

  The door swung open at once and Mara’s escort re-entered, took her by the arm, and led her out. The sick twisting in her stomach grew worse as he led her down the steps of the colonnaded porch. The mines? Underground?

  How bad can it be? she told herself with false bravado.

  She soon found out.

  The constant grumbling of the water wheel grew louder as the Watcher took her toward its giant framework. They crossed the stone arch of the bridge, then turned left, parallel to the water wheel and the endlessly cascading water, walking on a boardwalk alongside the deep trench in which the water
wheel was set. Mara looked down. Past the water wheel, the stream foamed on over a rocky bed, but almost at once was directed away into a dark opening in the trench wall, presumably leading to a channel that would empty somewhere outside the walls. The trench itself continued toward a structure at the far end that, when she’d glimpsed it the night before, Mara had thought an ordinary shed. Instead, she now saw that it was actually the tallest building in the camp, four stories high—but most of it was below ground level, inside the trench.

  Running down the middle of that trench was a long wooden beam, attached off center to the water wheel at one end so that the wheel’s constant turning first pushed it forward, then pulled it back. The beam stretched across a series of posts driven into the ground. At each post the beam was attached to a shorter, vertical beam that swiveled back and forth with the horizontal beam’s motion. Each vertical beam was attached at the bottom to another horizontal beam, as massive as the one attached to the wheel. As the top beam thrust forward, the motion pushed the tops of the vertical beams in that direction and their bottoms back toward the wheel, drawing the second horizontal beam with them. Then the top beam drew back and the bottom beam was thrust forward. Over and over the motion repeated, one beam swinging forward, the other back. Both beams disappeared at their far end into the wooden building.

  Men, women, boys, and girls were shuffling into that building at ground level. The shed only looked large enough to hold about twenty people, but the line of people, which stretched out of sight between the nearest longhouse and the wall, kept moving forward, regular as clockwork. Mara could see nobody coming out, although, when she glanced back over her shoulder, she spotted tired, dirty-looking workers in a different line on the opposite side of the camp, shuffling into the building she had identified as the mess hall.

  When she and the Watcher reached the line—there were still at least thirty people in it, Mara saw, glancing right—the Watcher shoved the other workers aside and pulled her through the door into the building’s dim, cavernous interior. An open skylight in the heavy-beamed ceiling provided the only light, and the constant rumble and crash of wood on wood beat on her ears. Mara, looking down as the Watcher elbowed open their path down the long flight of stairs from ground level to the building’s floor, saw that the two massive horizontal beams that ran along the trench were here attached to the ends of one cross-piece of a massive X-shape. The ends of the other cross-piece were attached to long vertical beams that, seesawing up and down, disappeared into a gaping hole in the shed’s floor. Two wooden platforms, one on each vertical beam, appeared and disappeared in a regular, alternating rhythm. A worker would step onto the platform as it appeared, then disappear into the Earth with the next stroke . . . and not reappear.