The Masked City

by Genevieve Cogman

  And there were no people anywhere. None.

  ‘A very baroque, convoluted method of entry,’ Vale said in tones of dissatisfaction.

  Irene was thinking this through. ‘Perhaps,’ she said slowly, ‘the only entrance or exit to this place, for Fae at least, is through this stairwell. The iron steps would weaken any Fae trying to get in - or out. After all, it wouldn’t be much of a prison if they could travel between worlds and just emerge within this space, as they normally would if they were powerful enough.’

  Vale nodded. ‘Well, we will have to hope that it is not proof against dragons or Librarians. They must be restraining Strongrock somehow. But if they can restrain a dragon, we’ll just have to hope we can remove the restraint.’

  Irene sighed. She took off her mask, enjoying the feeling of cool air on her face after the climb. ‘I’m afraid that I’d need a library to open an exit myself, or at least a good collection of books - and that would be assuming it worked here, when it didn’t work in Venice proper.’

  ‘Ah well,’ Vale said. He gave her one of his rare smiles. ‘You did extremely well with that iron plating, when the guards were questioning us. My compliments.’

  Irene smiled back. ‘We make a good team.’ It was unusual enough to have him actually compliment her, rather than simply accept her proficiency. But she didn’t want to get too emotional and embarrass him.

  ‘We do,’ Vale agreed. He turned to the ironwork bridge and started to walk across. It was wide enough for two to walk abreast. Fortunately there were rails on either side, but even so it was a worryingly fragile construction - no, Irene corrected herself mentally, it was solid enough. It just seemed flimsy when compared to the sheer scale of everything around her.

  Vale halted again once they stepped off the bridge onto the stone paving beyond, looking around thoughtfully. ‘The area to be searched is unfeasibly large. However, the guards escorting Strongrock must have passed this way within the last couple of days. If we can find their traces—’

  ‘Actually, I have another idea,’ Irene said. ‘I tried it below in Venice, but there was too much ambient chaos interfering with it. Since this area is supposed to be a prison for Fae, it may work better here. Give me a moment, please.’

  Vale nodded and stepped back to watch.

  She extracted Kai’s uncle’s pendant, then looped it a couple of times round her right wrist to make sure that she didn’t drop it - wincing as the chain tugged on the fresh bruises left by Lord Guantes. It was a draconic thing. And there was - or at least, there should be - only one dragon in the area.

  Irene raised her hand so that the pendant was dangling in front of her face. ‘Like calls to like,’ she said clearly in the Language. ‘Point to the dragon who is the nephew of the dragon who owns you.’

  The pendant trembled, then swung out at an angle, pointing in a direction about forty-five degrees from where they were facing. Poised there, it tugged at her wrist.

  ‘There,’ she said, and tried not to go weak at the knees with relief. Or possibly exhaustion. This time it had worked. Focusing the pendant had drained her, and it was still draining her, like blood trickling from a small cut. ‘I think we have it.’

  ‘Well done, Winters!’ Vale exclaimed. ‘Will it last for long?’

  ‘I’m not sure,’ Irene had to confess. ‘But I can do it again, if we need to triangulate.’

  Vale nodded. ‘In that case, let us hope it’s not too far away.’

  Their footsteps echoed on the stone as they set off into the vast emptiness. It was as if they were walking across some vast stage set, with an unseen audience watching from the wings.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  They had been walking for at least half an hour before they heard any noise other than their own footsteps.

  The pendant was holding up nicely, tugging at Irene’s wrist like a dowsing pendulum, although it somewhat inconveniently pointed in a general direction, as the crow flies, rather than changing its bearing at each crossroads or staircase.

  The whole place had the quality of what Irene could only describe as deadness - the sort of deadness that had never been alive. Even where timber or rope was used amid the cold granite and marble, it had a fossilized, unyielding appearance rather than showing any signs of organic life. The enclosed lakes of water that they passed were clear and dark. Nothing swam in them, nothing moved and nothing disturbed the water. Nothing lived in that water.

  She had no background in archaeology or architecture to make sense of the stonework. A few times Vale had pointed at a lion statue, or at the curve of an arch, and muttered something about ‘Babylonian influence’ or ‘characteristic Saxon work’, but she hadn’t been able to do more than nod. She wasn’t even sure that categorizing the buildings would indicate any real history to this place. That would imply that real people had lived here, once upon a time.

  There were no helpful footprints on the road either, and no dirt or dust marks - there wasn’t even any dust. Vale had muttered about that as well, before relegating it to ‘the general impossibility of the place’.

  The only good thing was that the ache in her Library brand, triggered by Venice’s high-chaos environment, had subsided. It had reached the point where Irene had almost stopped noticing its presence, but she did notice its absence. It made a degree of sense. If this place was a prison for Fae, then it should weaken them rather than empower them.

  They were passing underneath a high bastion when they heard the first sound. It was a deep, penetrating whisper from the other side of the bastion wall. It echoed amongst the stones and set off an answering ripple from the still canal beside them. It was almost … almost comprehensible, in a way that made Irene want to stop and listen, to try and make out what was being said.

  She turned, and saw the same urge in Vale’s eyes.

  She grasped his arm and pulled him on, away from the ebbing whisper, until only their footsteps broke the silence once more. The whisper still tempted her to look back and linger, as if she’d forgotten something important, something that she should really go back and see to.

  But the pendant still led them forward. They travelled up a vast flight of stairs, over another soaring bridge, then through a sequence of angled flights of stairs, which always went to the left, but somehow didn’t result in them doubling back on themselves. As far as she could tell, anyway.

  Then a scream broke the silence. It came from a vast metal sphere - no, a spherical metal cage - which dangled over empty space. It hung from a set of cables and chains that rose to a ceiling almost out of sight above them. The noise was shocking and sudden, like an owl’s screech in the middle of a peaceful night. It was also just as inhuman, just as animal. Whatever was in that cage, Irene did not want it to get out.

  She had considered the other inhabitants earlier as potential allies. She had wondered if she and Vale could liberate some, and escape with Kai in the confusion. But the more she experienced the prison’s fundamental vastness and coldness, the less she liked the idea. This sort of prison argued for a very dangerous sort of prisoner. Ones who were so strange and insane that they even scared other Fae. So letting them out might be the sort of really bad idea that finished with a scream and a crunch.

  ‘How much further do you think it will be, Winters?’ Vale asked.

  ‘I’ve no idea,’ Irene said, shrugging. ‘I could argue that Kai wouldn’t be too far from the entrance, simply on the grounds of convenience. But they might have some form of transportation that is faster than walking.’

  Vale nodded. ‘I had hoped at least to find tracks,’ he said again, gesturing at the pristine stone paving in front of them.

  ‘I think the situation may not be quite as bad as we thought,’ she insisted.

  ‘In what way?’ Vale asked.

  ‘Some of the Fae may want a war.’ She thought over the last couple of days. ‘But Lord Guantes isn’t being treated as a particularly honoured guest here. He needed his own minions to provide security at the o
pera. He was being watched by the Ten’s secret police, too. It sounds as if the Ten are giving him only the minimum level of cooperation.’

  ‘But why would the Ten cooperate with the Guantes at all, if they’re not fully behind them?’ Vale said. ‘If they would rather rule their lands than expand their boundaries, that’s their prerogative, but why then meddle with bigger schemes?’

  ‘Because the Ten can’t not cooperate with the Guantes, if they seem to be making a major political move,’ Irene said. ‘It’d be like, oh …’ She tried to remember the political complexities of Vale’s world. ‘As if someone had pulled in a major French spy in the middle of London and announced it to all the papers. The government would have to handle the matter sternly, even if they’d rather just brush it under the carpet and send the spy back to France, or even trade him for one of their own. The Guantes’ power play has made it impossible for the Ten here to be neutral, or they’d risk losing face and power. And if the Guantes succeed … Then the Ten will certainly gain from a war, along with all the other Fae. But if the Guantes fail and embarrass themselves, the Ten will want to disassociate themselves from the Guantes, along with everyone else.’

  ‘Plausible,’ Vale said. ‘But we’re trying to breach the Ten’s private prison here, Winters. If we succeed, they’ll have every reason to want us as dead as the Guantes do, if not more so. We’re striking directly at their power base, even if we blame the Guantes for it—’

  Then he stopped and indicated for Irene to stay silent. In the far distance, barely audible despite the oppressive silence, she could just hear the sound of footsteps, carried to them by some trick of the architecture.

  Guards. Or pursuers. Or both.

  The next flight of stairs was brutal. It went up at an angle of perhaps sixty degrees, each step formed of pale slippery marble and high enough that Irene’s legs were aching before they were halfway up. Vale reached the top ahead of her and looked back - but no one was following them yet.

  Irene pulled herself up to the top step. Then, gritting her teeth, she checked the pendant again. It was finally pointing somewhere concrete - at an enormous pillar to the right of their staircase. The pillar was vast, around ninety feet across, and as far as she could make out, it ran from the floor to the ceiling of the prison. Bridges protruded from it like spurs at different heights, and it was ornamented with jutting pennants sporting incomprehensible grey-on-grey designs.

  But when they reached it, there weren’t even any obvious windows or grilles penetrating its interior. Irene walked around it, holding the pendant out hopefully, but while it indicated the pillar from every direction, it didn’t favour any particular place to start.

  ‘I could try commanding it,’ she said dubiously. ‘Telling it to open or something?’ It should work, but it might also open every other closed door within range of her voice. And she really didn’t want to meet the other prisoners here.

  ‘Let me examine it first,’ Vale snapped. He was all alertness now, tense and focused. He dropped to his knees in front of the column, leaning in till his nose was half an inch from the floor. There, he shuffled along on all fours, squinting at it mysteriously. After what seemed an age, he sprang to his feet, running his fingers up the seam between two of the blocks of stone. ‘I - yes, I believe I have it. Here.’ His voice was quiet, but as tense as a tuned violin string. He tapped at a particular point, at approximately eye level. ‘Winters, I believe there is a lock of some sort here, which would normally require a key, but under the circumstances …’

  Irene nodded. She stepped next to him and leaned in until her lips were nearly touching the stone. ‘Lock, open,’ she murmured.

  The seam in the column parted, and one of the blocks of stone swung inwards to reveal a short, dark passageway with an open space just visible beyond. It was entirely silent as they both crept inside.

  The room at the centre of the pillar was cold and dim, lit by thin shards of light, which fell from slits in the walls high above. And there Kai was at last, chained against the far wall.

  It would have been dignified to stand back and make a clever remark, but Irene was past dignity. She threw her arms around Kai, heedless of whether there might be any traps, and simply hugged him for a long moment.

  He was in shirt and trousers that had seen better days, with his waistcoat hanging loose, and bruises showed livid on his face. A heavy dark collar circled his neck, with no visible lock, and thick shackles of iron bound his wrists to the wall. He looked at Irene and Vale as if they were an impossibility, as if they might not really be here at all.

  Irene took a deep breath. Her eyes burned, and for a moment she thought she was going to sniffle embarrassingly. ‘I am very unimpressed with these lodgings,’ she said, pushing herself away from Kai with an effort. He was alive - something that she’d doubted in her darkest moments. She slipped the pendant over her head again. ‘Vale, do you think you can pick those locks?’

  Seemingly lost for words, Vale clasped Kai’s shoulder for a moment - probably the closest he could come to Irene’s own hug - and then turned to examine the iron cuffs on Kai’s wrists. ‘If they were normal locks, I am certain that I could,’ he said. ‘Unfortunately, I suspect that they have Fae enchantments on them. Can you give me any information about them, Strongrock?’

  Kai opened his mouth, then shut it, then opened it again. ‘Irene … Vale …’ His voice was rusty and dry. He looked between them desperately. ‘You are real, aren’t you? Not some sort of illusion? If I told you to pinch me, then would you pinch me?’

  ‘Yes,’ Irene said sharply. ‘I would. And I would pinch you so hard you’d wish you’d never asked. Kai, we are here - you aren’t hallucinating. We came.’ She hugged him again, trying to convince him. ‘And we’re probably running out of time. I’ll answer questions later. Do you know anything about those shackles?’

  ‘The collar’s enchanted, to keep me in this form and bind my powers,’ Kai said, then stopped, shaking his head. His voice shook. ‘I’m sorry. I still can’t … I don’t know about the others. Maybe if Irene uses the Language - how did you get here? We’re down in the far end of chaos.’

  ‘We are in the ancient prison of a particularly corrupt group of Fae, whose world bears a resemblance to a romantic seventeenth-century Venice,’ Vale said, stepping back and almost visibly withdrawing himself from emotional displays. ‘We arrived by train. Winters, you may deal with the chains. It’s impossible for me to open those locks.’

  Irene wished she could be that short on detail when reporting to Coppelia. Of course reporting to Coppelia implied that she would get out of here alive … ‘Hmm,’ she said, bending in close and staring at the chains. ‘My abilities don’t allow me to sense anything specific about these. Vale, we may want to stand back. I’ll try the collar first.’

  She thought for a moment and then, using as much precision as she could, she said, ‘Collar around the dragon’s neck, unlock and part and open.’

  Her voice sank through the air like ink into water, as the Language echoed in the room. She had meant to speak quietly, but something made the air tremble like a stifled drumbeat. She felt Vale recoil and step backwards, and Kai gasped in pain, his back arching as the collar tightened around his throat.

  Irene had a moment to think I’ve killed Kai, in a heartbeat that seemed to stretch out into eternity. ‘COLLAR, OPEN!’ she screamed, throwing all the weight and focus she could into the words.

  The collar shuddered, its surface rippling and shimmering like watered silk, and then flew apart. The fragments whirred outwards, a couple of them slicing Kai’s upstretched arms, and buried themselves into the stone walls and floor. Kai collapsed, hanging from the chains on his wrists, coughing and gasping. A fresh red band of pressure showed vividly around his throat.

  Completely drained, Irene put a hand out to balance herself against the wall, swaying as she stood there. She was conscious of Vale dashing forward to check Kai’s pulse and mutter to him, but for the moment she could
only concentrate on breathing and staying upright. There had been a purpose in that collar, and it had taken a lot of her strength to break it.

  ‘Irene?’ Kai’s voice. Ragged, but functional.

  ‘Let me take a look at those cuffs,’ she said, pulling herself together and walking over to join Vale and Kai. She hoped it didn’t look too much like a stagger.

  ‘Let’s hope they were meant to hold Fae,’ Vale observed. ‘If so, they should be less effective at holding Strongrock.’

  ‘For holding Fae?’ Kai said, looking at his wrists in disgust.

  ‘This is a Fae prison,’ Irene said. ‘You’re not the usual sort of inhabitant. All right. Let’s do this.’

  It was an anticlimax when the cuffs came away without drama, after a single phrase from the Language. Kai fell forward onto his knees, but quickly dragged himself up, rubbing at his wrists where the metal had cut into his skin.

  There was something else in the room now. It was linked to the growing anger in Kai’s eyes and the way he held himself. It was the same pressure that Irene had felt when Kai’s uncle had turned his full attention on her, only more raw, more dangerous and more likely to explode at any moment. They imprisoned a dragon. What happens when the dragon gets free? She thought she could hear a distant rumbling outside.