Masks

by E. C. Blake

  “Up and about, I see,” he said. He glanced over his shoulder and nodded at the Watcher in the hall behind him. The Watcher closed the door, leaving them alone.

  “Ethelda healed my arm well,” Mara said. She held it up, wriggling the fingers.

  “And your head?” the Warden asked.

  “A slight ache. But I’m thinking more clearly.” At least, I hope I am. She deliberately looked away from the Warden as she reached for her glass of juice. Considering what I’m about to attempt.

  “Good.” The Warden sat on the end of the bed, facing her, and his smile slipped away into a neutral expression. His eyes were unreadable. He twitched the corner of his cloak out from under his rear end, then leaned forward, gloved hands clasped, elbows resting on his knees. “As I told you in the hospital,” he said, “I have need for someone young, like you, someone slim, like you, someone with the Gift, like you. I have asked the Palace several times for such a person.”

  Mara, remembering she was supposed to know none of this, kept her face carefully expressionless.

  “The Palace has always refused.” His lips compressed. “‘Those with the Gift in sufficient measure to do what I require are rare and precious,’” he said, as if reciting something he’d been told. “The Palace is reluctant to risk a Masked citizen in the performance of the task I need done. You, however . . .” He shrugged.

  I might be rare but I’m certainly not precious, Mara interpreted that to mean.

  “So,” the Warden continued, “the survival of your Gift is incredibly propitious.” He studied her. “If you truly have the Gift,” he said softly, “you know what we mine here.”

  “Magic,” she said. “I saw it in the rocks.” She remembered she was only supposed to be able to see one color of magic. “Red-gold, like liquid copper.”

  “But not much of it, I’ll wager.”

  “No. Barely a glimmer.”

  “Once, the rocks in the mine glowed in the vision of the Gifted as bright as the full moon. Now—as you saw.” He sighed. “You know Magic is only found in black lodestone?”

  Mara nodded.

  “Unfortunately, it is not found in all black lodestone. Too often we have dug new shafts or new levels, only to discover there is no magic in the stone we exposed. There is a cost to such failures, in both money and lives.”

  The lives of the unMasked, Mara thought. Not that you really care about those.

  “We have men—like Cantic, who brought you to us—who have a small measure of the Gift, enough to enable them to see and collect magic from the rare and precious magical wells, like the one in the hut where you were found. But they are stretched to the limit, and their Gifts are so slight that they cannot see the tiny traces of magic in the black lodestone we mine. But you, you are young, and your Test found you to have the Gift in measure sufficient enough that you were to become a Maskmaker like your father. That means you can see magic where someone with a lesser Gift might not.”

  Mara decided he had told her enough for her to make the obvious leap to his conclusion. “You want to use me to find new sources of magic. Your mine is playing out.”

  The Warden inclined his head. “You are a clever girl. Yes, that is exactly the use to which I intend to put you.” He nodded toward the window, where the snowy peaks showed against a sky of pale blue. “Black lodestone is found only in these mountains. We send out prospectors regularly to look for it. For years they have had little success . . . until recently. A promising deposit, but how rich in magic, if it contains any at all, is yet to be determined. If it is very rich, we might begin a new mine, and eventually move this camp. This mine . . .” He spread his hands. “We keep mining it, of course, since we must have something for the unMasked to do. But the amount of magic taken from it has dwindled to almost nothing. Most of the magic we ship to the city now comes from the magic-wells, not the mine.”

  Mara felt shock, followed by surging anger. The amount of magic taken from the mine had dwindled to almost nothing, and yet the Warden continued to send the unMasked into its deadly depths, just to give them something to do?

  The unMasked aren’t really people to him—to any of them, she reminded herself fiercely. At best we’re tools—beasts of burden—ambulatory engines. She thought of Katia. Playthings!

  And however softly I’m being treated now, I’m nothing different: a particularly valuable piece of livestock. A prize cow!

  “What will I have to do?” she said, to avoid saying something else.

  The Warden shrugged. “Accompany a party of prospectors into the mountains, to this recently discovered deposit of black lodestone. There is a natural opening which will allow you to penetrate it deeply.”

  “You haven’t sent anyone in to look already?”

  “The opening,” the Warden said, “is very small.”

  Mara felt a chill. “You want me to crawl, alone, into a crack in the side of a mountain, to see if there is magic inside?”

  “You will be roped,” he said. “If there is a problem, we will simply pull you out.”

  Unless the mountain falls on me, she thought. She shuddered, remembering the tunnel deep in the mine she had had to crawl through to get to the rock face she and Katia had been working. And then she had known what lay ahead. In a Wilderness cave anything might lurk in the darkness. There might be a precipice. A wild animal. Poisonous gas. Or some hazard she’d never even dreamed of.

  Monsters? she thought, trying to scorn herself out of her own fear. It didn’t really work. For all she knew of the Wild, there really might be monsters.

  But whatever might lurk in the cave, something else might also be lurking in the Wilderness outside the camp, something the Warden knew nothing about (she hoped): the unMasked Army.

  Maybe all they’re waiting for is for me to get out from behind these walls.

  “I’ll help you,” she said at last.

  The Warden chuckled. “Yes, you will. What made you think you had a choice?”

  Mara had not been, by nature, a rebellious child. Her parents had made it clear from the moment she was aware of their guidance that she was to treat all grown-ups with respect. That was not only polite, her father had emphasized, it was also good practice for when she would be Masked and under the constant eye of the Watchers. And, he’d added honestly, it was good for business, too, since there were other Maskmakers to whom customers—at least of the unGifted variety—could turn: Maskmakers without rude children.

  But Mara was not the polite, well-brought-up child she had been weeks before, and the smug certainty of the Warden that she would do exactly as he said, that all her efforts to avoid doing so were nothing more than the playacting of a silly little girl, fanned the spark in her soul lit by her early morning thoughts of Katia. Something inside her ignited and burst into a hot little fire of rage. She stood up, face flushed, and if she had had magic close at hand the Warden might have suffered Grute’s messy fate and decorated the walls of her chamber with the contents of his skull. “Because I am my own person!” she snarled. “I can choose whether to use my Gift for you or refuse. If I refuse, you can punish me, you can torture me, you can give me to your Watchers to rape and beat, you can send me underground and keep me there forever, you can do everything in your power to break me to your will, and maybe you will succeed: but that will not change the fact that I have the choice now to help you or not. And even if you break me, I will still have the power to choose whether or not to tell you the truth about what I see or don’t see. And since you have admitted you have no one else with a Gift the equal of mine, you will never know what that deposit holds—not until you have wasted more money and more lives and more time, while all the while the Palace grows more and more unhappy about the way you perform your duties. And if that happens, Master Warden, sir, how long will it be before you are down in the mines yourself. And how long do you think you will stay alive down there
with those you treat like animals now?”

  She stopped, out of words though not out of anger. She felt astonished, amazed, at her own vehemence and eloquence. It had almost felt as though she had stood outside herself, watching what she was doing, wondering who that incredibly brave girl was. It couldn’t be little Mara the Maskmaker’s daughter, could it?

  Apparently it could. The feeling vanished. She was right there inside her own head where she was supposed to be, and the Warden’s mouth was set in a furious scowl, his eyes ablaze behind his Mask. “How dare—”

  “You already know how I dare! And I already know all your threats, and I’ve already told you how little I care for them.” She took a deep breath, trying to slow her racing heart. “So let’s discuss my conditions for helping you.”

  “Conditions?” She didn’t think it was possible to splutter through a Mask, but the Warden came close.

  “Yes!” But then she hesitated. How much could she ask for?

  I’m valuable to him, she thought. I’m not invaluable. It may be hard to find someone else to do what he needs done, but it isn’t impossible. He won’t close down the camp just to win my cooperation, he won’t stop sending girls to the Watchers, he won’t ease conditions in the mines. But maybe, just maybe . . .

  “There’s a girl,” she said at last. “A friend. Her name is Katia. My partner in the mine.”

  The Warden’s eyes narrowed. “The one who broke your arm?”

  “Yes.”

  “What do you care about her?”

  “I care about her. That’s all you need to know.”

  The Warden regarded her. “What do you want me to do?”

  Mara took a step toward the Warden, keeping her eyes on his. “Release her from the barracks,” she said. “Never send her there again. And don’t send her back to the mines. Bring her here. Let her work in this house as a trustee. Unmolested.”

  The Warden cocked his head to one side. He pursed his lips, then said, “And if I do that, you will do as I ask, and report back truthfully what you see?”

  Mara nodded. “I promise.”

  The Warden looked at her for another long moment, then abruptly said, “Done!”

  “I want to see her here, alive and well, before I help you,” Mara warned.

  The Warden waved his hand as though flicking away an insect. “Of course, of course,” he said. “The prospecting party cannot depart before tomorrow at the earliest anyway. I’ll have her brought here immediately, directly to your room.” He walked to the door, but stopped there and turned back. “But understand this, young miss,” he said, his voice soft and silky, his lips curved in a sinister smile. “Her continued safety depends on you. You are very brave when it comes to your own well-being. How brave are you when it comes to hers?” With that, he strode out. The Watcher in the hall slammed the door shut behind him.

  Mara suddenly found her legs didn’t want her to be standing up anymore. She sank back into the chair beside her half-finished breakfast, and took a long, shaking drink of her redcherry juice. Then she wiped her chin and stared at the closed door.

  I just made Katia a hostage, she thought. I wonder if she’ll thank me for it?

  True to the Warden’s word, a Watcher brought Katia to Mara’s door within the hour. The other girl looked frail: as if she would blow away in a strong wind, as if she would break if she tripped. The Watcher pushed her into Mara’s room. “We’ll miss you, Katia,” he said, and though his Mask could not leer, his voice more than made up for it.

  Then he slammed the door on them both.

  Katia stood with her head down, not looking at Mara.

  Mara didn’t know what to say. Almost convulsively, she turned and went to the breakfast table. Some redcherry juice remained in her goblet. She held it out to Katia.

  Katia ignored it. She brushed past Mara and sat on the end of the bed, where the Warden had been just an hour before. Hands loose on her lap, she stared at the floor. “Why did they bring me here?” she said in a hoarse whisper. “Why bring me to you?”

  Mara looked down at the unwanted juice. She turned and placed it back down on the table, then walked over to Katia and sat beside her on the bed. “Because I asked the Warden,” she said.

  Katia looked up, her startled look at least an improvement on the dead expression of a moment before. “What? Why would he do that for you? Why would he do anything for you?” She looked around as if really noticing the room for the first time. “And why are you here?”

  “I’m not who I said I was,” Mara said. And then she told Katia at least some of the truth—not about the unMasked Army, but about her Gift, about the magic clinging to the black stone the unMasked were scratching out of the mine, and about what the Warden wanted with her.

  And the bargain she had struck with him.

  Katia listened without speaking, her face gradually falling back into impassivity. “So if you fail,” she said, after Mara’s final words tumbled into silence, and after the silence had stretched to an uncomfortable length, “it will not be you who pays the price. It will be me.”

  “It will be both of us,” Mara said.

  “It will be me,” Katia repeated. “You will still have some value.” She stood up. “I was already less than nothing. Now you have made me less than that.” Her dead expression suddenly contorted into fury. “What gives you the right to involve me in this?”

  Mara’s own temper flashed and she jumped to her feet. “If I hadn’t, you would be spending another night in the barracks! And another after that, and another after that. Instead, you will spend tonight here, unmolested . . . and another after that, and another after that!”

  “Until you fail to please the Warden,” Katia spat. “And then I will be sent back to the barracks, and it will be worse because I temporarily escaped. And that will be the end of me, Mara. For the day I am sent back to the barracks is the day I kill myself. And my blood will be on your hands as much as on the hands of the Warden or Watchers.” She strode to the door and banged on it with both fists. The Watcher outside opened it at once. “Get me out of here,” Katia said. “Take me wherever I’m going next.”

  The Watcher glanced over Katia’s shoulder at Mara, then shrugged, grabbed Katia’s arm, and pulled her from the room.

  As the door closed and the lock snicked shut, Mara, shaking as much as she had after the conversation with the Warden, sat down hard on the bed.

  She’s still better off, she told herself. She’ll realize it, in time.

  But Katia’s final words seemed to echo in her ears: “My blood will be on your hands as much as on the hands of the Warden or Watchers.”

  She could not deny their truth. If she failed . . .

  And then the full horror of what she had done struck her like a mailed fist to the stomach.

  Not just if she failed . . . if she were rescued.

  If I’m saved, Katia dies! What have I done?

  Her stomach heaved, and she barely made it into the privy before spewing up the porridge and honeyed bread she had eaten two hours before, the sticky mess richly dyed with redcherry juice . . .

  ...dyed, she thought as she clung miserably to the wooden seat, the color of blood.

  SEVENTEEN

  Death on the Mountain

  AT FIRST LIGHT the next day, Mara found herself on muleback once more, riding down the central boulevard toward the gate through which she had entered the camp as a prisoner just a little over a week before. She had more company this time—not one man, but four: two Watchers, and two other men whose Masks, white, with four black diamonds across the forehead and another on each cheek, gave no hint as to their profession to Mara, who had never seen that design before.

  She also had warmer clothes: she’d been provided with new, lined boots, red woolen trousers, a rather nice blue, long-sleeved tunic, a woolen vest, a brown sheepskin coat to wear ov
er that, and a fur-lined cloak to wear over that. Plus leather gloves and a warm-but-ugly hat, both lined with rabbit fur.

  Watching her breath and her mule’s emerging in white clouds as she rode toward the gate, she felt grateful. Every day the snow crept lower down the slopes beneath the ice-covered peaks to the north. “Winter’s just around the corner,” the trustee servant had told Mara as she laid out the clothes. “Snow could come to stay any day. You’ll need this and more, if you’re out in the mountains for long.” It was the most pleasant thing the trustee had said to her since she’d arrived in the Warden’s house, and Mara, staring at her, had suddenly realized the reason for her previous surliness. She was afraid I would take her place, she thought. She was afraid she’d end up back in the mine or the barracks.

  Mara had donned the new clothes gratefully, but just before they reached the gate, they rode past four unMasked women, shivering in their thin gray smocks, and Mara’s thankfulness for being warm soured into guilt.

  Once through the gate, the white-Masked men took the lead, while the Watchers brought up the rear. One of them led a pack mule, twin to the one Mara rode. As they set out, the two Watchers exchanged ribaldries that embarrassed and disgusted Mara, who could not help thinking of Katia as she listened to their crude jokes.

  Then one of the white-Masked men dropped back to ride beside her. “Hello, Mara,” he said. “My name is Pixot. My colleague,” he nodded forward at the stiff back of the other white-Masked man, “is Turpit.” He lowered his voice. “I’m afraid Turpit believes it is bad luck to talk to the unMasked; he’s afraid it will cause his Mask to crack, or something. Personally, I think he’s afraid if he so much as smiles it will cause his Mask to crack. Or possibly his face. He’s the single most boring human being I have ever run across, but he certainly knows his rocks. I think he identifies with them.”

  Mara couldn’t help smiling at that, and Pixot sat back. “Excellent,” he said. “You’re much prettier when you smile.”