by E. C. Blake
“Oh,” she said. “Good.” She forced a small laugh herself.
“Mara,” Edrik said, turning serious again. “I have to know. What happened to that Watcher?”
She remembered Edrik’s greedy look when she’d told him what she had done to Grute. He’s wondering how he can use me, she thought. Wondering how powerful a weapon I could be against the Autarch.
To be fair, she was wondering that herself.
“Magic,” she said.
Edrik snorted. “I know that. But where did it come from? Did you bring it out of the cavern with you?”
“No,” she said. “I had a little on my hands, but not enough to . . . it was just . . . I knew he was about to kill me, I was desperate and somehow, the magic knew. It just came to me. It leaped out of the cave like a lightning bolt. It killed him.” She remembered that searing agony, the way unconsciousness had been a relief. “It almost killed me.”
“You have that much power?” Edrik breathed. “I’ve never . . . Mara, if we could—” He cut off as the red curtain swirled, Catilla pushing it aside as she entered, Grelda close behind her.
Edrik’s grandmother hadn’t changed in the slightest since Mara had first met her, which seemed odd, since Mara had changed so much. Had it really only been . . . what? Sixteen days? Seventeen? Mara had lost track of the time since she had met Catilla in her chamber. It seemed more like seventeen years.
Catilla’s icy blue eyes, direct and penetrating as ever, met hers. “Good,” she said softly. “Awake, alert. Undamaged. Good.”
Undamaged? Mara thought. What makes you so sure?
“As soon as you are up and about,” Catilla said, “we can get you started on the Masks you have promised to make. And then—”
“Grandmother,” Edrik began. “There’s something else you should—”
“No,” Mara said.
Catilla had been staring at Edrik, eyes narrowed; now her head swung toward Mara, sudden as the darting glance of a hawk. “What?”
“I will not make Masks for you,” Mara said as firmly as she could, though her voice showed an alarming tendency to waver. “I will not do what you want me to do unless you first do something for me.”
Catilla’s eyes narrowed further. “You presume—”
“I do,” Mara said. “You must do what I ask or I will not help you, with either my skill at making Masks . . . or my skill with magic.”
“What skill with magic?” Catilla said scornfully. “Your Gift survives. I knew that.” She glanced at the Healer, “and yes, Grelda, we should have told you so you could better treat her.” Her gaze returned to Mara. “But as I told you before, we have no magic here and without use and training, the Gift withers. Even if you have it now, you won’t much longer.”
“I don’t think her Gift is withering,” Edrik said. Catilla’s cold glare switched to him, to Mara’s relief. “Mara claims,” he said, with just a slight emphasis on the word, “that she has used magic twice now to slay attackers.”
Catilla’s gaze snapped back to Mara. “Explain.”
Mara took a deep breath, and once more told the tale of Grute’s messy death, and the sudden demise of the Watcher. When she had finished, Catilla said nothing for a moment; sounding, when she finally did speak, uncertain—for the first time since Mara had met her. “I have never heard of magic that could do that, outside of the history books. ‘Magic is a powerful tool for small tasks.’” She sounded as if she were reciting something she had once been told.
“Nevertheless, it happened,” Mara replied. White dust . . . “I didn’t mean to do it. It just . . . happened. Both times.”
“But such power: to kill at a touch, to kill without a touch . . .” Catilla’s face took on the same look of avaricious calculation Edrik’s had borne when he’d first heard her tale.
“I’ve done it,” Mara said. “I would not willingly do it again.” An echo of the fiery agony that had filled her when she called the magic from the cave washed over her, a flash of Grute, naked, headless. . . . “I don’t know what it would do to me.”
“This last time put her into a coma,” Grelda said sharply to Catilla. “One I might have pulled her out of sooner had I known it was magic-related. As a Healer—”
“Non-Gifted,” said Catilla coolly.
Grelda’s lips thinned. “Non-Gifted,” she grated, “but still a Healer, my advice to Mara is to avoid using magic at all costs. She is untrained. That makes her dangerous—to others, and to herself.”
Catilla looked at Grelda as if she would like to argue, but then nodded stiffly. “Very well,” she said. “I bow to your wisdom in these matters.”
Grelda smiled thinly. “Then there really is a first time for everything.”
Mara glanced from one to the other. There’s a long history there, she thought. But are they friends, enemies, rivals, or all three? She couldn’t tell.
Catilla turned back to Mara. “Well, then,” Catilla said. “If we cannot make use of your magical Gift, at least not yet,” she gave Grelda a look, “then all this is immaterial. Let us return to your skill at Maskmaking.”
“The reason you rescued me in the first place,” Mara said.
“Precisely,” said Catilla. “What is it you insist we do before you deign to help us?”
Here it comes, Mara thought. “Edrik has convinced me,” she said, “that it is both impossible and unwise for you to destroy the mining camp.”
“Edrik is correct,” Catilla said. “When the Autarch is overthrown, the camp will cease to exist. But there is nothing to be done about it now.”
“I understand,” Mara said. Both Catilla and Edrik looked satisfied—smug, actually—but she wasn’t done yet. “I understand,” she said again, locking defiant eyes on Catilla’s, “that you cannot attack the camp and free everyone in it. But if you want my help, if you want me to make the Masks you say you so desperately need, then you will help me free one particular person from it.”
Catilla’s expression went cold and hard as a Mask. Edrik opened his mouth to protest, but Mara gave him no space in which to insert a word. “There is a girl in the Warden’s house. She has suffered in the mines. She has been abused in the barracks. Some of her suffering can be laid at my feet. She will suffer still more if I do not return. She is a hostage to my good behavior. And I will do nothing to help you if you do not help me free her.”
Now Catilla’s stony expression twisted into anger. “Child, you test my patience—”
“I am not a child!” Mara said; shouted, really, anger flooding her voice, her face turning hot. “In the eyes of the law I have not been a child since the day of my failed Masking, and whatever was left of the child I was before that died in the camp.” She held Catilla’s fierce glare with one of her own, though her heart pounded in her chest as though she had just run the length of Maskmakers’ Way. “I am the young woman who has the skill and knowledge to finally make your unMasked Army an army in fact instead of just name, to finally give you real hope of overthrowing the Autarch by giving you access to Tamita. I am the young woman whose help you need, whose help you have already killed and risked discovery to obtain, and I’m telling you now you will not get that help unless you help me free my friend Katia from the waking nightmare of that camp!”
Catilla’s face flushed. For a moment Mara thought the old woman would slap her. But then Edrik spoke, surprising her. “Grandmother,” he said, “we already had plans for rescuing Mara. Perhaps we could adapt them to free her friend?”
Thank you, Edrik, Mara thought, as Catilla’s dagger-like gaze sliced toward him. She stared at him for a long moment, but he, too, held his ground. Finally she snorted. “Very well,” she snapped. “We will attempt it.” She looked back to Mara. “But only on one condition of my own,” she added in a growl.
Uh-oh, Mara thought. “What?”
Catilla stepped closer,
her fierce gaze unwavering. “That you not only help us with the making of the Masks, you promise to serve the unMasked Army with your Gift, once you have learned to control it.”
“How can I promise that?” Mara protested. “I don’t even know that I can control my Gift.” That white-hot blaze of power, that burning agony, the hallucinations . . . She shuddered.
“Let me worry about that,” Catilla said. “Give me your word. I want an end to this talk of what ‘you’ want as opposed to what ‘we’ want. There is no ‘you’ or ‘we.’ There is only the unMasked Army, I command it, and you are part of it. You have no choice. So: if we attempt to free your friend from the camp, will you pledge your unconditional allegiance to the unMasked Army—and to me as its leader—and use your skills as I direct in our fight against the Autarch?”
Mara’s heart raced even faster. If she made this promise, she could be agreeing to anything. Who knew what uses Catilla might find for her Gift, what horrors she might be opening herself up to?
But she had already made Katia a promise. And herself, too.
And besides, she thought, anger snapping through her, anger with more than a little of the feel of the white-hot fire of magic, all of this . . . all of this . . . can be laid at the feet of the Autarch. Why wouldn’t I pledge to do whatever I can to overthrow him?
“I promise,” she said, the words firm as the rock walls around her, though her body seemed to be vibrating like a plucked fiddle string.
Catilla’s expression never changed. “Then we have a bargain.”
“We have to act quickly,” Mara said. “Katia . . . I don’t know how long the Warden will keep her unharmed.” Her throat closed on the words. We may be too late already.
“We will,” Edrik said. He looked at Grelda. “Can she travel?”
Grelda grimaced. “She’ll be weak from lying in bed. She needs to get up and eat proper food and get her strength back. I wouldn’t recommend her traveling for at least three days.”
“No,” Mara said. Now it was Grelda giving her an angry look, but after facing Catilla she could easily ignore that. “We leave as soon as you can get your people ready to go. I’m ready now.” She swung her legs over the edge of the bed and stood up. Pain stabbed her calf, the room spun around her, and for a moment her vision grayed, but she managed to stay upright, and after an instant the dizziness passed; the restorative Grelda had given her had worked wonders. “See?” she said a little breathlessly.
Edrik had taken half a step closer, hand outstretched, ready to catch her if she fell; now he let the hand drop and stepped back again. “I see.” He glanced at Grelda. “But we will not be ready to leave until the day after tomorrow, in any case. She has that long to recover.”
“Not long enough,” Grelda grumbled. “But it seems I have no say.”
Catilla looked at Mara with approval. “You have fire, child . . .” She stopped herself. “Young woman,” she amended with what might almost have been a small smile. “More than I realized when you were first brought to me.” She turned to her grandson. “Go, then, as soon as may be. Rescue this other girl if it can be done. Bring her back here.” She glanced at Mara. “And Mara, too. Keep her safe. All of this is a waste if she gets herself killed.”
“I’ll keep her safe,” Edrik promised. His mouth quirked. “I know a couple of boys who will help.”
Catilla snorted and departed without another word. Mara took a deep breath and sat down on the bed again with a feeling of relief.
Grelda stepped forward. “You endanger your health,” she said with disapproval. “But the tide is against me. See me after you are dressed. I will give you a supply of the herbs for the restorative I prepared earlier, and the recipe. Just don’t make it where anyone who doesn’t have the Gift can smell it. Unless you’re trying to ruin their appetite.” She, too, went out.
Edrik was the last to leave. He swept aside the red curtain and watched the others depart, then closed the curtain and came back to Mara’s side, face grim. “Though I agreed to it to bind you to our cause, this is a fool’s errand. You are endangering my men and women, me—and yourself, not least of all. We may already be too late to rescue this friend of yours, and my friends may die in the attempt.” He leaned closer, looming over her. “Training or no training, Mara, if there comes a point during this rescue mission where your Gift could save lives, you will use it. At whatever risk to yourself. Or I will throw you into that camp myself, to rot until the Autarch is overthrown. Am I clear?”
Mara swallowed. “Yes.”
“Good.” He exited in an angry swirl of red cloth.
Mara fell back on the bed and stared up at the whitewashed ceiling. I am doing the right thing. I know I am. Katia is my responsibility. I made her a hostage. I have to rescue her.
At any cost? another part of her whispered.
Any cost, she tried to tell herself firmly. But all her certainty seemed to have blown away in the gale-force winds of everything she had just set in motion.
She curled up on the bed, closed her eyes, and wished once more, wished more than anything in the world, that she was still the child Catilla had called her, still a little girl in her own bed in her own house in a world where everything made sense and nothing could happen that her parents couldn’t make right, wished that at any moment she would hear her mother’s voice outside her door, calling her down to breakfast.
But all she heard was the beating of her own heart and the cry of wild gulls in the chill salt air outside her window.
NINETEEN
The Return
THE NEXT AFTERNOON Mara lay on her back in the beach’s silvery sand, staring up at the pearl-white sky. A horse’s head appeared in her field of view and gazed at her quizzically. “Do you put me down here just so you can get a good look at me?” she said conversationally. “This is the third time.”
A second horse’s head appeared, this one accompanied by Hyram, who held its reins. “Don’t blame the horse,” he said severely.
“I don’t think he likes me.” Mara pushed herself up on her elbows and groaned. “I’m one big bruise. All the bruises I brought back with me from the camp, all the new ones I’ve got in the last three hours trying to learn to ride—”
“Trying to learn to stay on the horse,” Hyram corrected. “You don’t really learn to ride in one afternoon.”
“Apparently you don’t really learn to stay on a horse in one afternoon, either!” she said, and Hyram chuckled.
Keltan, leading his own horse, came over to join them.
“What about him?” she said, nodding at Keltan. “How long did he take to learn to ride?”
“Keltan knows how to stay on a horse,” Hyram said. He gave Keltan a look, half-joking, half-challenging. Keltan glared back, and Mara sighed. She had seen a lot of those kinds of looks passing back and forth between the two boys all day, since midmorning when she had emerged, limping slightly, from the sickroom, where she had spent all of the previous day recuperating. They had been waiting for her—apparently they had been forbidden to visit her—and had shadowed her ever since, making sure she got a good breakfast, taking her to the stables, showing her how to saddle her own horse, and then how to ride . . .
. . . how to stay on . . .
Oh, be honest, Mara thought grouchily. How to get used to falling off!
She looked from one boy to the other. Flattering and kind of exciting though she had to admit she found having two boys interested in her at once, it did get rather wearying. As to which one she preferred . . .
She couldn’t answer that question. Not now.
Maybe later, after we get back from the camp . . .
If we get back.
She shoved those thoughts out of her mind. One thing at a time. “I think I’m getting the hang of it,” she said, although she didn’t think any such thing. “Let me try again.”
After anothe
r couple of hours, she was sorer than ever, but she really was getting the hang of it. Even Hyram admitted it. “You’re much better,” he said as the three of them sat on their horses, looking out over the ocean at the long orange streaks of clouds streaming out from the setting sun like tongues of fire. “Don’t try anything silly and you should be fine.”
“She’d better be,” a new voice said. Mara jumped and almost fell off her horse again, then turned her head accusingly to see Edrik, on foot, standing in the sand behind the horses. “Before we see the sun again, we’ll be on our way.”
“How long before we can rescue Katia?” Mara asked him. Another day lost, she thought. A day I spent learning to ride, laughing with Keltan and Hyram. While Katia . . .
“Two and a half days to get there. A night and a day to reconnoiter. We might try it in five nights’ time . . . if I deem the risk acceptable.”
Mara jerked her head back around to stare blindly out at the burning sky. Five nights! Katia . . .
She heard Edrik’s footsteps crunch away through the sand. “It’s the best we can do,” Hyram said softly from her left.
“I know,” she said. She blinked back tears that had nothing to do with the glare of sun on water. “I just hope it’s good enough.”
They ensconced the horses in the stone stables, then made their way to the Great Chamber, taking their food—venison, tonight, with bitter greens and (Mara sighed happily) mashed redroots—to where Alita, Prella, Simona, and Kirika already sat at a shadowy table in the corner. It was the first time Mara had seen the other girls since her return from the camp, and she tried to ignore the sidelong glances they all—with the notable exception of the ever-sullen Kirika—shot at her while she sipped her soup. She knew they wanted to hear everything that had happened. She just wasn’t sure she wanted to tell them. Especially Prella, who still seemed like such a little girl.
But she’s not a little girl, she told herself. We’re all the same age. None of us have been little girls since our Masks failed. Prella . . . all of them . . . deserve to know what’s out there. They deserve to know what awaited them in the camp they luckily never got to.
