Masks

by E. C. Blake

  Mara nodded. She pulled on the backpack, tightened the straps. “I just wish I knew how to use it,” she whispered. If we get out of this . . .

  “Clear,” Tishka said.

  “Then go,” Edrik said, and Tishka dashed out into the night, Illina close behind—and, to Mara’s surprise, Katia right behind her. Mara hurried after Katia, Keltan’s backpack bouncing on her back; Keltan followed her, and Edrik brought up the rear.

  Deep moonshadow cloaked the back of the house—but not deep enough. Mara heard a strange hissing sound and a solid “thunk!” A crossbow bolt sprouted from a timber by her head. She gasped.

  “Run!” Edrik shouted. They abandoned all pretense of secrecy and dashed full-tilt through the gardens, frost-blighted plants crunching beneath their feet. Mara expected Watchers to boil out of the back doors of the barracks like termites from a rotten log, but none appeared. From the orange glow she glimpsed off to her right and the distant shouts of men, mingled with the terrified screams of horses, she suspected the stable fire had been a more successful diversion than Edrik had dared hope.

  Bolts hissed past them like enormous angry insects. Ahead, the magic extraction building loomed, a black bulk hung with four lanterns, two framing the closed double doors through which the wagons full of ore from the mine entered the facility, the other two bordering a smaller door, at the top of a narrow wooden porch with four steps.

  Edrik dashed past her toward that porch, sword ready. “Tishka, Illina, with me!” he shouted. Tishka matched his speed.

  We’re going to make it, Mara thought. We’re going to make it . . .

  Then Illina made a strange gasping noise and fell, limbs loose like a marionette whose strings had been cut. She tumbled bonelessly across the weed-covered ground. Too close behind her to stop, Mara and Katia tripped over her body. Mara hit the ground hard, rolled twice, and came up spitting dirt. Edrik and Tishka ran on, oblivious.

  “No!” Mara cried. She crawled on her hands and knees back toward Illina. “Illina!”

  The young woman lay on her back, gasping, staring up at the cloud-streaked sky. “Tell . . . my little sister . . .” she choked out, but whatever she wanted Mara to tell her sister remained unsaid; she gave a sighing cough, blood gushed from her mouth, she shuddered, and then her labored breathing ceased. Her eyes, already glazing over, remained open.

  “No!” Mara sobbed. Keltan reached for her arms, tried to pull her up. She resisted.

  “Mara!” he whispered urgently. “Crossbows—”

  “The building shields us from the watchtower,” Katia said. “She almost made it.” She picked up Illina’s fallen sword. At first it glinted silver in the moonlight, but as she turned toward Mara it caught the red glow from the stable fire and turned, for a moment, the color of blood. “But now she’s dead—like the Warden will be when I find him.”

  And then, to Mara’s horror, she dashed away—not toward the building, but toward the fire.

  “Katia!” Mara screamed.

  Keltan dragged her to her feet. “Let her go!” he shouted. He glanced at the extraction building. Mara followed his gaze and saw Edrik and Tishka standing on either side of the smaller door, peering back, trying to see what had happened through eyes dazzled by the lanterns. “Come on!” He tugged at her arm.

  But Mara threw him off. “I’m not letting Katia get herself killed,” she said fiercely. “Not after Illina . . .” Her throat closed in sudden grief. “Do what you want,” she managed to choke out. And then, though everything in her screamed that she was being an idiot—everything except for the fierce, insistent voice that told her she had to do this, and drowned out all else—she ran after Katia: away from the gate that would take them out of the camp, away from the unMasked who had risked everything to rescue her, away from her only real hope of safety, and toward the flickering red light of the fire . . .

  . . . and all the Watchers in the camp.

  TWENTY-TWO

  The Edge of Destruction

  KATIA, A SHADOW in the flame- and moonlit night, ran down the hard dirt path from the extraction building to the mine, right under the eastern wall of the palisade. The path crossed a bridge that took it directly into the building at the minehead, but Katia didn’t follow it that far: instead, she darted off to the right, disappearing around one of the Watchers’ barracks that flanked the Warden’s house. Mara followed. She heard Keltan chasing her, but she didn’t look back, and the sound of his pursuit faded as she outran him; she was slowed slightly by her sore leg, but he was weighed down with sword and ring-studded leather armor.

  As she rounded the barracks and pounded onto the main boulevard, the crushed rock covering it crunching beneath her feet, she saw Katia cross the main bridge by the rumbling water wheel. The other girl ran as though possessed, and she had longer legs: Mara couldn’t catch her. And then, suddenly, Katia darted to the left, behind the longhouse closest to the main gate, closest to the burning stables.

  The main gate stood open. Swirling smoke shrouded everything, alternately hiding and revealing scenes of men running with buckets of water, men fighting with terrified, rearing horses, one man half-dragging another away from the stables. The air, thick with the smell of burning hay and wood, rang with the shouts of Watchers and the terrified neighing of horses. Thankful for the smoke and confusion, Mara ran into the shadows of the longhouse in pursuit of Katia, and saw her at once at the building’s far end, peering around the corner. Inside the longhouse she could hear women shouting questions, shouting to be let out, their voices so muffled by the thick log walls that no one who wasn’t standing right next to the longhouse could possibly have heard them.

  “Katia!” Mara dared call. “Wait!”

  Much to her surprise, Katia stayed put. She had been crouched, looking around the corner; but now she straightened, as suddenly as though stung. The sword drooped in her hand. Mara ran up beside her, limping and gasping. “Katia, you can’t—”

  “We’re all dead,” Katia said. “All of us.”

  “What?” Mara stared at her.

  Katia was no longer looking at the burning stables, off to the right. Instead, her eyes were locked onto a low hut right in front of them, its walls of thick stone, its roof of slate. Mara followed her gaze. The hut looked like it should have been fireproof: but by chance one of Skrit’s and Skrat’s fire arrows had found a chink in its armor, and Mara could see a thin line of fire licking across the peak of the roof, burning the main beam that supported it. A smooth packed trail led from the hut along the palisade toward the minehead. “What is that building?” Mara whispered.

  “It’s full of rockbreakers.” Katia turned eyes that were black, flame-flecked pools in Mara’s direction. “Do you understand?”

  “Rockbreakers? I don’t—”

  “How do you think they expand the mine? Even working the unMasked to death, they could never dig those levels by hand. They use what’s in that building.” She pointed with the sword. “Rockbreakers. They’re sticks of something, I don’t know what, but they shove them into holes in the rocks, they light a fuse, and then the sticks explode. They shatter the rock. One stick can shatter a chunk of rock the size of a house. That building contains thousands of sticks. When the fire reaches them, there won’t be a camp anymore. There won’t be anything anymore. Not for any of us.” She shoved the sword into the ground so hard it stuck there, quivering, and then began to laugh, a horrible, croaking sound that had no amusement in it. “I came down here to find the Warden and kill him, and he’s already dead. We’re all dead. This camp is about to become one big hole in the ground. We’re all going to hell together.”

  “We have to tell the Watchers! They can—”

  “No,” Katia said. “They can’t stop it. There’s no time.” Her laughter dried up as suddenly as it had begun and her voice turned sharp as the sword. “Even if there were, I wouldn’t warn them. Better this whole camp
be blasted to oblivion, better everyone in it die, than the things that have gone on here for years, for decades, continue. When the next wagon carrying girls and boys from the city arrives, let them find nothing but a smoking hole in the ground, soaked in the blood of Masked and unMasked alike!”

  Mara stared at that growing line of fire. “There has to be something we can do!”

  “There’s nothing anyone can do!” Katia, face the color of blood in the firelight, stared up at the burning roof with a look of fierce reverence, as though worshipping at some strange altar.

  And Mara suddenly remembered what she carried.

  She shrugged out of Keltan’s backpack, dropped it to the ground, and flung herself on her knees beside it. The magic urn tumbled out. She pried the lid off, and stared down at the beautiful, swirling colors, untouched by the red tinge the fire gave everything else. But I don’t know how to use it! she cried to herself.

  “Any minute now,” Katia breathed behind her, and, desperately, Mara plunged first one hand and then the other into the wide-mouthed urn, drew them out again sheathed in glistening gloves. She raised her trembling fingers before her face, feeling the tingling power of the magic, took a deep breath, prepared to stand and turn to face the burning hut . . .

  Then, at the end of the longhouse, she saw Keltan appear, sword in hand. He paused, panting, staring around—and suddenly a Watcher burst into sight behind him, grabbed him, and threw him to the ground. His sword flew from his hand as he thudded to the earth. The Watcher straddled him, drew his own sword—

  Mara lunged to her feet. “No!” she screamed, and dashed forward.

  The Watcher’s head snapped around.

  Keltan rolled over, tried to scramble away. The Watcher’s head turned back to his prisoner. He shoved his booted foot into Keltan’s back, hard. Then he placed the point of his sword at the base of Keltan’s skull and turned his head to face Mara again. “One more step and I sever his spine,” the Watcher snarled.

  Mara skidded to a stop. “Get off him!” she shouted . . .

  . . . and the magic responded.

  It leaped from her hands like a bolt of lightning. She screamed with the agony of it, as searing as though she had plunged her hands into the coals of a fireplace.

  The Watcher didn’t scream. He had no time. The magic struck him in the middle of his chest. A gray mist erupted all around him, blowing away in an instant in the cold wind. Mara had one horrifying glimpse of the perfectly round hole that passed through his body, the white ends of severed ribs and spine gleaming within it, then the Watcher crumpled without a sound. Keltan, soaked in the sudden gush of blood from the horrific wound, frantically rolled to one side to avoid being crushed.

  Mara, feeling sick, held out her still-burning hand. Keltan grabbed it, making her gasp with pain, but she gritted her teeth and pulled him upright. He stared down at the Watcher, then at her. “Thanks,” he said. He sounded awed. His gaze fell on his sword, and he snatched it up from where it had fallen. “Where’s Katia?”

  “Down there,” Mara said, pointing. “Keltan, the fire—”

  “They’ve almost got it under control,” he said. “We’ve got to—”

  “No, not that fire!” Mara glanced toward the stables. The roof had collapsed, but long lines of men continued to pour water on the burning ruins, bucket after bucket drawn from the well by the open gate. “There’s a building, where I left Katia, she says it’s full of something called rockbreakers, she says—”

  “Rockbreakers? And it’s on fire?” Even in the uncertain light Mara saw Keltan’s face go slack with shock. He spun to look at the bucket brigade. “We’ve got to—”

  “Katia says there’s no time! I was going to try to use magic, that’s why I had it on my hands, but then I saw you—”

  “Come on!” Keltan cried. He ran past her, into the space between the longhouses, and she dashed after him.

  Katia still crouched where Mara had left her, watching the flames lick along the roof-peak of the rockbreaker hut. Keltan took one look and spun back to Mara. “We can’t stop it,” he gasped out. “We’ve got to get the rockbreakers out of there before the roof collapses. We’ve got to tell the Watchers—”

  Katia lunged upright and back, her body slamming into Keltan, flinging him toward Mara. They both went down in a heap, Keltan’s sword again flying from his hand. Mara and Keltan struggled to untangle themselves. But Keltan suddenly stopped moving. Mara rolled off him, turned her face toward him—and also froze. Katia had Illina’s sword in her hand once more. The gleaming point kissed the boy’s throat. “Nobody tells the Watchers,” she snarled. “We let it blow.”

  “We’ll all be killed!” Keltan cried.

  “Good,” Katia said. Her voice sounded thick, strange, strangled, as though she were squeezing out the word past some obstruction. “Good! I want them dead, and I’m glad to die with them!”

  “But we don’t want to die!” Mara said, pleading. “Katia, I’m your friend—”

  “Friend?” Katia gave her a flat, hard look. “You’re just a girl I was thrown into the mine with. Shimma was my friend. We grew up together in Tamita. We arrived on the same wagon. We worked that tunnel for months before the cave-in got her. You thought you could take her place? You were down there two days! And then you conveniently got yourself hurt, and I got blamed, and I’m the one who ended up in the barracks. And then you made me a hostage. Friend? A meddling fool who doesn’t understand anything . . . anything . . .”

  “Katia—” Keltan pleaded.

  For a moment, Mara couldn’t speak. The ice-cold hand had once more plunged into her chest and gripped her heart, so hard and tight it could hardly beat. But the fire continued to lick the roof behind Katia’s head, and somehow, she found her voice. “Katia, I came back for you. That’s the only reason I’m here. You don’t have to die. We don’t have to die. Nobody has to die.”

  “Everybody has to die,” Katia spat. “Too bad you were fool enough to come back here to do it.”

  “Katia—”

  Mara choked off her cry as she heard voices rise above the general hubbub. Booted feet ran toward them. Two men appeared behind Katia, but they weren’t looking at the three in the shadows: they were staring up at the roof of the rockbreaker hut. One was the Warden. With him was a trustee she thought she’d seen at the desk in the minehead.

  The Warden cursed. “Get the Watchers!” he shouted at the trustee. “Now! We have to get the rockbreakers out of here or we’ll all be blown to paste!”

  The trustee dashed away. The Warden went to the door of the hut, pulled keys from his belt, fumbled with the lock . . .

  And Katia jerked the blade away from Keltan’s throat, spun, and dashed toward the Warden, sword raised.

  The Warden, who had just gotten the door open, must have glimpsed Katia from the corner of his eye; he glanced right, yelped, and darted inside the hut. Katia reached him just as he tried to slam the door shut. Her sword thrust into the crack, stopping it from closing, and the Warden cried out again, this time in pain. Katia shoved at the door. The Warden shoved from the other direction. The sword kept the door from closing.

  Impasse.

  Keltan seemed oblivious. Still on his back, he stared at the roof of the hut. Tendrils of flame now ran all over it, and the wood beneath the slates glowed, limning the black rectangles of stone in lines of bright red. “If you’ve got any more magic,” he said, voice trembling, “now’s the time.”

  Mara scrambled on hands and knees over to the urn. It still glowed, but faintly. She’d used so much already.

  She heard an ominous creaking from the hut. She grabbed the urn, scrambled to her feet, and ran toward the hut. But as she emerged from behind the longhouse, she heard shouts from her right and turned her head to see a half-dozen Watchers and three trustees, big men with soot-stained, angry faces, running toward her.

 
The roof creaked again—and sagged. The Watchers and trustees skidded to a halt, mouths wide in horror, then turned and ran the other way, falling over each other in their haste. Keltan shouted, “We’re out of time!” Frantically, Mara plunged her hand into what remained of the magic, drew it out, but there was so little of it, so little—

  The roof gave another alarming sigh and sagged even more. The Warden shrieked in horror and flung the door wide. Without hesitation, Katia lunged forward, sword outstretched. The blade slid into the Warden’s exposed throat and burst out the back of his neck. Blood gushed, covering Katia’s hand and arm and chest, giving her, in that final instant, a red Mask, her bared teeth a white, savage, skull-like grin in the middle of it. She crashed into the Warden’s falling body, knocked him backward into the hut, fell on top of him . . .

  . . . and the roof caved in.

  For Mara, time stopped. Everything went still and silent. She had thrust out her magic-covered hand, and her will, driven by the horror of what Katia had just done, the terror of what would happen if the rockbreakers exploded, the shock of Katia’s last words to her, hurled the magic into the hut, her only thought to stop the explosion, to prevent the deaths of all those unMasked locked in the longhouses all around them, the unMasked in the mine who would be trapped there if the man-engine collapsed into the shaft, even the Watchers and the trustees.

  The last bit of magic from the urn tried to carry out her will, but it was too little, far too little . . .

  So, as had happened to her in the ravine when she had drawn magic out of the tunnel to destroy her attacker, she drew magic from . . . elsewhere.

  The magic in the mine was too far away and too shielded by stone. The magic in the extraction building, if there was any, was likewise too distant.

  And yet she found magic. All around her. In the longhouses. Down by the burning stables. She pulled it toward her. It resisted, but she pulled harder and harder. And then, as though she had ripped it free from some anchor, it flooded into her, and she had all she needed, and more.