Faces (18 page)

“My lady,” growled Hamil. “You are not to speak to—”

“The longhouses,” she shouted, ignoring him. “Open them. Free the unMasked as soon as you can.”

“You will do nothing of the kind!” Hamil shouted, taking a step toward Keltan and Chell, hand on his sword hilt. “The Lady has expressly ordered that the unMasked are to remain in their longhouses until the camp is secure. We cannot be certain some of them will not fight with the Watchers.” Then he spun on Mara. “The Lady commands.
Not you
.”

Mara said nothing for a moment. She didn't need to, for when she looked past Hamil, she saw Keltan nod his head ever so slightly in her direction.

Perhaps Hamil was right, and some of the unMasked laborers in the camp, most likely the trustees who had gained their own paltry measure of lordship over their fellows, would choose to fight with the Watchers. But far fewer had prospered than had suffered.
The ones who might fight with the Watchers will be too busy trying to keep from being torn limb from limb by those whom they have abused to cause us any trouble
, she thought.
And the others will be free to fight
with
us, or simply to save themselves.

“Very well,” she said at last to Hamil, though he had no way of knowing it was not strictly in response to his last comment. “Then with your permission . . . ?” She indicated the wall.

Hamil glanced at the setting sun. “Yes,” he said. “It is time.”

Mara nodded, closed her eyes, and summoned anger.

The fury came easily, more easily than ever before.
I did this at the ravine
, she thought,
used rage-fueled magic to attack
, but she had no memory of it.

The Lady's doing. She stole those memories. She stole my magic.

She used that as additional fuel for the pyre of her anger. She could feel herself breathing harder. Her heart pounded. She knew she had become flushed. Her fists clenched. The abomination before her had terrorized, brutalized,
murdered
generations of unMasked. Today it would end. Today . . . it would fall!

With her rage at its peak, she strode into the open, calling magic to her from the open urns in the forest. It poured into her like hot oil and ignited in the flame of her anger. No one behind her had the Gift to see the white-hot magical radiance pouring through her eyes, glowing through her skin, but she knew there were those among the Watchers on the palisade wall with sufficient Gift to see it, and sudden, urgent shouts confirmed the truth of that.

Watchers.
The Watchers who had abused Katia and so many others. The Watchers who kept the Autarch's grim grip tight on Aygrima. The Watchers who had hauled her father and so many others to the gallows of Traitors' Gate.
Let them die
, she thought savagely.
Let them all die!

She raised her hands. She could have blasted the entire southern stockade wall back into the camp, every pointed stake smashing through the buildings beyond like bolts from a giant ballista—but that would certainly have killed many of the unMasked they were trying to free. And so instead she clenched her hands into fists, poured magic into the gate and wall . . . and pulled it
toward
her.

The wall creaked, cracked, trembled—and then slammed to the ground, hurling the Watchers atop it away like stones from a catapult. Their bodies thudded into the clearing, some in a spray of blood, some with the sound of breaking bones. She felt deaths and took the magic she could to replenish what she had expended on the wall, careful to pull it through the amulet around her neck. Of those Watchers who survived the fall of the wall, few could rise. Those who did slumped instantly, pin-cushioned by the arrows of the unMasked Army.

But only a score of Watchers had been on the wall. Dozens more were running from their guard posts or the barracks at the far end of the camp, swords gleaming in the light of the torches that had been lit in preparation for the coming night. Not all had armor. Some were half-dressed, some even unMasked. They closed ground in a hurry. The archers managed two more flights of arrows, bringing down another dozen of the Watchers, before they had to drop their bows and grab their swords. With a clash of steel, the two forces met.

Hamil had hurried her to the back of their lines as the Watchers rushed to defend the camp. Now he drew his sword and joined the fray. More Watchers died, and Mara took still more magic into herself. Still, she dared not hurl magic willy-nilly into the seething mass of fighters. The light was uncertain and the deadly dance of swordplay too complex: she could easily kill some of their own.

But she had another purpose in mind anyway, a private purpose of which the Lady, who had told her to stay well clear of the battle once the wall was down, only assisting if she could do so safely, knew nothing. She set off to the left, Whiteblaze at her heels, to skirt the battle and find her way into the compound beyond, staying within the shadows of the trees as much as she could. It would not do for some Watcher archer to glimpse movement and put an arrow into her on general principles.

Far from the fracas, she stepped out of the forest into the dimming twilight. The fighting had begun to subside as the outnumbered Watchers fell one by one. She and Whiteblaze darted across open ground and reached the scattered logs of the stockade undetected.

But she was not the only one hard to see in the failing light. As she slipped into the camp, a Watcher hiding from the battle lunged at her from the darkness of the doorway leading to the still-standing guard tower. His blade missed her side by a span, but not through any failure of aim: rather, he discovered in that instant just how hard it was to wield a sword with a hundred and fifty pounds of angry wolf clamped to your wrist.

A moment after that the Watcher no longer had a sword hand, and a moment after
that
he no longer had a throat.

His magic slammed into Mara so suddenly she barely managed to filter it through the amulet. She seized the fresh power eagerly, and let the near-miss feed her fury. “Enough of this,” she snarled. “Let them all die.”

She strode into the camp. She ignored the longhouses—Keltan and Chell would open those soon enough. At first she kept close to the stockade wall, trusting to the shadows to keep her hidden and Whiteblaze to warn her of any other lurking cowards, but that could only take her to the stream that split the compound down the middle. A walkway around the inside of the stockade allowed Watchers to cross it high above, but at ground level the only way across was the bridge in the center of the camp. If it were held by Watchers . . .

She felt the magic boiling inside her with the heat of her anger, and smiled.
I hope it is.

It wasn't. But it
was
held by armed men: two of the Lady's Cadre stood guard on its short span. She strode boldly out into the light of the torches burning at each end of the bridge. One of the men raised a crossbow in a startled reflex, but lowered it again immediately as he recognized her. “Where is the Lady?” she demanded.

“In the mine,” said the other man. “As planned.”

“Then I will join her.” Mara had no intention of joining the Lady immediately, but it seemed the best way of convincing the villagers to let her cross the bridge.

Instead, to her surprise, the question prompted the man with the crossbow to raise it again and the other to lift his sword. “No,” the swordsman said. “She forbids it.”

Mara's anger swelled. “
Forbids
it?”

“She does not want you to join her in the mine. She gave us strict orders.”

“The Lady commands,” the crossbowman said.

“And do you really think you can stop me?” Mara said. Her hands clenched. She could wipe them from the bridge with a single blast of magic. Behind her, Whiteblaze growled his own warning.

The swordsman looked pale. “Please. I have my orders. The Lady commands.”

Mara shoved down the murderous rage threatening to choke her.
What's wrong with me? I can't kill these men. The Lady has her reasons. She'll explain it later.

She tore her eyes away from the bridge, breathing hard, and looked north. At the end of the road stood a two-story stone building: the Warden's mansion. At the sight of it, her anger rose again.

She glanced south. The fighting outside the wall seemed to be over, but she could still hear the ringing of blades and the cries of men from inside the camp. Soon Keltan and Chell would be releasing the prisoners in the longhouses.

She looked north again at the Warden's house. The Warden she had known was long-dead, slain by Katia on the night Mara had first discovered her ability to draw magic from living things—and just how powerful that magic could be. But there would be another Warden there, a man cut from the same cloth, willing to live in luxury while all around him men, women, boys, and girls struggled and sweated and suffered and died.
He
would not be fighting with his Watchers, of that she was certain. He would be cowering in fear, wondering what was happening.

He'd find out soon enough.

“Have you been ordered to stop me from crossing the bridge?” Mara asked the villagers.

“No, lass,” said the man with the sword.

“Then let me pass,” she said. “I will not trouble the Lady. But I will most certainly trouble someone else.”

The swordsman glanced at the man with the crossbow, who nodded. They both lowered their weapons and stood aside, pressing their backs against the bridge railing as Mara crossed. Neither met her eyes. Both drew back even more as Whiteblaze passed, growling at them one more time for good measure.

She dismissed them from her mind the moment she and Whiteblaze were across the bridge. Now she could let her rage blossom inside her again, hone it into a weapon. It spilled over into Whiteblaze, so that his growling became almost constant, a counterpoint to the rumble of the waterwheel. Together they strode up the path, past the baths and the dining hall, past the empty guardhouses. There were corpses there, Watchers slain by the Lady's Cadre, no doubt, after they had entered the compound through the small corner gate and were en route to the minehead. Mara paid them no mind. She mounted the steps of the house, Whiteblaze trotting at her side. She raised her hand, magic flashed red, and the heavy door smashed open with a scream of tortured metal as the bolt sheared away.

“Stay,” she commanded Whiteblaze. He growled again, but settled onto his haunches.

She walked into the foyer.

It had changed little since she had last been there, although the amateurish paintings that had been the work of the previous Warden had been replaced with art of considerably higher quality. She took that in with a glance, then turned to her right to face the Warden's office.

Two Watchers stood guard, swords gripped tight. She could sense the magic inside them . . . and the magic, tinged with terror, of the man inside the office.

The Warden.

The Watcher to the left of the door stepped forward, sword raised, but the one to the right grabbed his arm. His eyes were wide behind his Mask. She had no idea why he had stopped the other one, but it didn't matter. Even as she saw it, she unleashed her attack.

The Warden thought himself safe behind his locked doors. But she knew that office well. She knew there was a large hearth opposite the door. And it was there that she directed her fury-fed magic.

The fire in the hearth expanded a thousand times. A wall of flame roared through the office, incinerating the Warden where he stood—she felt him die and ripped his magic into herself through the amulet. The blast blew the office door outward, smashing aside the two Watchers. Mara had been prepared for it, and neither the searing heat she had unleashed nor the burning fragments of the door touched her or Whiteblaze. She caught more magic: one of the Watchers had died in the blast. That meant the other still lived.

She exerted her will, and the flames vanished as though they had never been. She strode forward. The Watcher who had stood to the left of the door was the one she had felt die. His throat had been torn open by a dagger-like shard of wood still lodged in the wound, one end burning, the blood on it sizzling and popping. His Mask had fallen away into dust and shards, revealing a grizzled veteran of perhaps fifty years, gray-stubbled chin stained with blood from his mouth, brown eyes blank and bulging.

She turned the other way. Though the second Watcher still lived, she thought his back was broken. His breath came in shallow, agony-filled gasps. She stood over him, looked down. His blue eyes widened behind the mask. “Mmm—”

He got no farther. With a contemptuous flick of magic, she twisted his head. His neck broke with the same sound her father's had made when he died on the gallows. His Mask fell away . . .

...and Mara found herself looking down at the blank dead face of Mayson, once one of her best friends, her schoolmate, her beloved companion in childhood adventures, the boy who even as a Watcher had been kind and helpful when she had been held prisoner in the Palace.

She had just used her Gift to murder him in cold blood.

Rage vanished. Horror rushed in. Her control evaporated. And because of that, the magic pouring from Mayson slammed into her full-force, without any filtering from the amulet around her neck. The pain of the raw magic was nothing compared to the pain of what she had just done. She heard screaming and only dimly knew it was coming from her.

When she had witnessed her father's hanging, the combination of her grief and the impact of his magic had shattered the iron Mask that kept her magic bound. This time, the howling wind of horror at what she had done, melded with Mayson's magic and soulprint, tore apart the barriers the Lady had placed around her memories as if they were made of paper. In one terrible instant she remembered all she had done at the new mine, how she had casually torn magic from the unMasked to feed her anger-driven need, how she had blown one Watcher to bloody scraps, crushed another against the ravine wall like a bug, destroyed the wall and the Watchers atop it . . .