Faces (17 page)

But the Lady did not join her Cadre. Mara saw her, as they set out down the valley in which they had been camped, walking at the head of the column with Edrik and Chell. Hyram and Keltan walked together some distance behind. None of them looked back as though trying to locate
her
, and her anger flashed through her again, so strong and sudden it startled her.
You never used to get angry this quickly
, she thought.

Well
, she answered herself,
if anger is a tool, the more you use it, the better you get at using it. And when we reach the mine, and the block is lifted from my Gift, I want to be very good at using it indeed.

With anger warming her soul, she strode toward the one place in Aygrima she had once thought she never wanted to see again . . . and now wanted to see very much, one last—one very,
very
final—time.

T
HE EXTENT OF
Mara's isolation became clear as the trek continued. No one but the members of the Lady's Cadre came near her, but they were with her constantly, ready, like Hamil, to stop her if she tried to wander from their midst.

That night, the villagers set up the pavilion, lit the fire at its center, and brought her food. She ate sitting cross-legged on her bedroll with Whiteblaze curled nose to tail at her side. She felt cozy and comfortable . . . and yet very, very far from
relaxed
.

The journey from the old mine to the cavern had taken only a day and a half. They could potentially reach the mine on the morrow. She wanted—
needed
—to know what would happen then.

Whiteblaze's head came up and he barked once, then the tent flap swirled open and Arilla entered, accompanied by four of her wolves, the rest presumably serving as scouts and guards as they came ever nearer to the mine and its Watchers. “Mara,” said the Lady. “How are you feeling?”

“How do you think?” Mara demanded. “I'm missing my memories
and
my magic, and I've also discovered I can neither talk to nor be approached by any of my friends. I'm a prisoner.”

The Lady sighed. “I know it is difficult,” she said. “And I know I've said this overmuch, but . . . it's for your own good. And as for your ‘friends' . . .” She shook her head. “As I told you earlier, I do not think they are as anxious to see you as you might think.” She went to her bench, opposite the fire from the tent's entrance, and sat down on it. The wolves settled around her feet. “They are ordinary people. Not even Gifted. You know how frightening our abilities can seem to those who have no grasp of the world of magic.”

“But Chell and Keltan have seen me use magic before,” Mara protested. “They have seen me
kill
before, in horrible ways.” She remembered Watchers and their horses entombed in earth suddenly become liquid, then solid again, crushed to death in an instant, as Chell looked on. “What could I have possibly done at the ravine that would have been worse?” She let some of her so-ready-to-hand anger into her voice. “You're keeping them away from me on purpose. Your human wolfpack won't let them near.”

“It's true I
told
my Cadre to do so,” the Lady said, “but in fact they have had to do nothing. Neither Chell nor Keltan nor Hyram nor Edrik nor any other member of the unMasked Army or Chell's crews have asked, or tried, to see you.” She spread her hands. “I'm sorry, Mara, but that is the truth.”

The tent flap swished aside and Mara turned, heart leaping, thinking one of her friends was about to prove the Lady wrong: but it was only one of the villagers with the Lady's supper.

Mara watched the Lady eat with her long, thin fingers, her teeth, strong and straight despite her age, delicately tearing the pale flesh from the bones of a roast fowl of some sort, hunted from the forests through which they traveled.
How does she do it?
Mara wondered.
She's of an age with Catilla, but while Catilla is spry enough, she could never have made this journey. And yet the Lady seems sometimes to find the going less strenuous than I.

Only one answer made sense.
She must be using magic to keep herself strong.
And the source of that magic had to be the villagers. As the Autarch did through Masks, the Lady did without them.

Before the journey had begun, she had tried to deny Keltan's claim that there was something odd about the way the Lady interacted with her followers. But now, since the Lady had blocked both her Gift and her memories of the events in the ravine, she was no longer certain she could trust the Lady as much as she'd once thought. Even though the Lady told her everything that had been done to her had been to keep her from harm, how could she be certain of that when she couldn't remember what had happened?

How could she be certain of anything?

The Lady set aside her plate and wiped her fingers and mouth delicately on a white cloth napkin. “Now,” she said, laying the napkin over the polished bones of her meal, “let us discuss our plans for tomorrow. Come, sit beside me.”

Mara moved to the Lady's side as the Lady moved over to make room on the red-cushioned bench. The Lady gestured, and an image of the mine appeared in thin air in front of them, perfect in every detail. Mara gasped. “How could you know what it looks like?”

“My wolves have scouted it for me many times,” the Lady said. She smiled. “I could also project what it smells like to a wolf, but I don't think you would enjoy it.”

Mara shook her head. “I didn't enjoy smelling it as a human.”

“My plan is simple,” said the Lady. “There are two gates into the mine. The main gate in the south wall,” she pointed to it, “and the smaller gate at the northern end of the east wall through which the wagons loaded with magic depart for Tamita.” She indicated that one. “We have two tasks: to destroy the Watchers, and to make sure the mine can no longer function.”

“And to free the unMasked,” Mara said.

“I have not forgotten the unMasked,” the Lady said. “But I do not think they will be fighting in defense of the mine.”

“Some might,” Mara said. “Some of the trustees—the ones who lord it over the others.”

“If they fight with the Watchers, they will die with the Watchers,” said the Lady. She indicated the main gate again. “You will use your Gift to open the front gate. The Watchers will swarm there, where our main force will be arrayed. Between your Gift and the skill of our fighters—who greatly outnumber the Watchers—the battle should be over in short order.”

“What if they have Gifted fighters among them?” Mara said. “I was outmatched when we encountered them during the battle on the beach.”

“I think it unlikely,” the Lady said. “Remember that the Autarch's forces are massed at the ravine where I was last seen, and north of the Secret City. The mines are guarded, certainly, but the Watchers are far more focused on keeping the unMasked
in
than repelling attack from
without.
Those with enough of the Gift to use magic in combat are too valuable to waste on mere prison duty.”

“And while
we
are storming the gate,” Mara said, “what will
you
be doing?” She heard the note of accusation in her voice, kin to the anger and suspicion she felt, and wondered again where both had come from.

The Lady, if she even noted it, did not take offense. “I and my Cadre—my ‘human wolfpack'—will be waiting for your attack. Once it is underway, we will simply and quietly open the corner gate . . . and I will see to it that this mine never again produces magic to serve the Autarch.”

“There'll be unMasked workers in the mine,” Mara said.

“I am aware of it,” the Lady said. “I assure you, I will take proper care of them, just as I did at the ravine.”

Mara stared at the camp and felt butterflies in her stomach—but countering the trepidation was a feeling of fierce joy.
At last
, she thought.
At last.

For Katia.

She had failed to save the only friend she had made in the mining camp . . . but maybe she could avenge her.

They reached the vicinity of the camp at noon the next day. Scouts reported that it seemed to be operating normally. The Watchers in the guard towers were, as usual, focused far more on the prisoners in the camp than the surrounding forest. The unMasked Army and Chell's men prepared for combat quietly out of sight and sound of the camp, checking armor and weapons, talking in low voices. Mara saw Chell and Keltan from a distance, talking to each other.
About what?
she wondered.

The Lady also spoke to Chell and to Edrik during those hours of waiting, before going off with her Cadre. They were getting into position for their portion of the attack, which was to commence the moment the sun dipped behind the foothills to the west.

The very last thing the Lady did before slipping away through the woods was to come to where Mara sat with her back against a tree trunk, her knees drawn up, Whiteblaze stretched out at her side, waiting for the interminable time until sunset to drag by. Mara looked up as the Lady approached, accompanied by four wolves. The rest were keeping watch all around the camp to ensure no hunter or magic-gatherer or wagonful of unMasked came near enough to spot the Lady's army and give the alarm. “It's almost time,” the Lady said. “Stand up.”

Mara clambered to her feet.

“Stand still,” the Lady commanded, and reached out her hand and touched Mara's forehead.

Instantly she felt her Gift flood back, so suddenly she gasped and staggered back against the tree trunk.

The Lady withdrew her hand. “We brought several urns of magic from the ravine,” she said. “I am leaving Hamil with you, and he will make those available for the attack. You may also draw on Whiteblaze, of course . . . and the Watchers, if you get close enough.” She shrugged. “Or, in extremity, draw from any of our fighters. It is more important that you can use your Gift than whether or not one of them can lift a sword.”

“Unless he's in combat at the time,” Mara said sharply. “Drawing on magic at the wrong moment could get someone killed.”

“Not drawing on magic at the wrong moment could get a lot of someones killed,” the Lady replied acerbically. “Including you. Do not let your overdeveloped sense of ethics interfere with the greater need of destroying the mine . . . and, ultimately, the Autarch.”

Mara pressed her lips together. “I still don't remember what happened at the ravine,” she said.

“Because I have not returned those memories to you,” the Lady replied. “They would be a distraction. Once the mine is secured . . . then, possibly.”

“Or possibly you will strip my memories of this battle, too?”

Now the Lady's mouth thinned in turn. “I will do what I think best,” she said, her voice cold. “I command. And one day soon I will rule . . . you, and all the rest of Aygrima. Remember
that
.” She turned and stalked away.

Mara stayed where she was, breathing hard, feeling her Gift coursing through her again. It felt like . . . hunger. She felt empty. She wanted—needed—to be filled. She needed magic.

And she needed, above all else, to destroy that cursed mining camp.

She could argue with the Lady about restoring her memory when they had successfully done what they had come here to do.

It is my duty to open the gates of the mining camp.

She smiled.

No. It is my pleasure.

···

As the lengthening shadow of the western hills finally finished crawling up the stockade wall of massive, unpeeled logs, Mara stepped into the clearing surrounding the mining camp. She studied the wall. No Watcher had yet seen her. A constant low rumble filled the air, grating on her ears and her nerves, the sound of the waterwheel that drove the man-engine, the terrifying arrangement of reciprocating platforms by which workers moved up and down the levels of the underground mine. In that deep growl Mara heard death, degradation, and debasement. She couldn't wait to silence it.

Just a few yards behind her were ten black lodestone urns, each filled with magic, waiting in the shadows of the trees. Beside her stood Whiteblaze, filled with his own wild magic. She had more than enough magic to do what had to be done. All she needed was the will to power it . . . and that, too, she had.

Rage. Fury. Hatred. With those emotions to drive her magic, the Lady had said, she could accomplish great things. And here was the perfect focus: the camp to which she and so many others had been exiled when their Masks failed, some of them, yes, people like Grute, the would-be rapist whom she had slain with magic, but some of them, maybe
most
in the last three years, no different than she had been: happy, excited, celebrating their fifteenth birthday and their Masking alike, looking forward to the party afterward and beginning life as an adult. Then, in a horrifying moment of pain and blood, all of that had been torn away from them. Their faces scarred, their childhoods destroyed, they had been sent on a one-way trip in a stinking wagon to a short, miserable life of exploitation
here
.

She remembered her friend Katia, for whom she had risked so much in a rescue attempt, only to fail. She remembered the nightmare nights in the longhouse, the brutal labor in the mine. She had only tasted it, had avoided the fate of so many girls taken as playthings by the Watchers, because of her Gift. She felt guilty about that now, guilty to have avoided the worst of the horrors the camp had visited upon so many other girls over the decades.
But I'm through with guilt
, she thought.
Thanks to the Lady, I am powerful. Now comes revenge.

Off to her left, Keltan and Chell appeared in the blue-and-white uniforms and silver mail shirts of the Lady's Army. Steel helmets capped their heads. Keltan, she saw, had a crossbow slung over his back. That was new, but they had been separated for weeks both before the sacking of the Secret City and since reaching the Lady's fortress, and much of that time must have been spent in training. No doubt he had learned several fighting skills she had yet to see him demonstrate. “Keltan,” she called, and saw his head jerk around.