Faces (23 page)

Now, riding by herself, she wished she really felt the confidence she had tried so hard to project. Because once again lives relied on her good judgment—and all of her judgment for the past few months seemed to have been bad, leading only to death and destruction.

What if I'm wrong this time?
she wondered.

Then more people will die
.
And I'll be one step closer to matching the Lady's tally of pain and fire.

She pulled her hood closer around her face against the chill of the air and her thoughts, and rode on, Whiteblaze trotting beside her horse.

L
ATE THE NEXT MORNING,
Mara left the camp and rode alone to the town of Silverthorne.

She spotted the smoke from the town half an hour before she saw any buildings. Knowing it was home to a mine, she had wondered if Silverthorne would look like the mining camp she had just destroyed with the Lady's power, but in fact, she discovered when she rode over the low ridge that had hidden the town from sight until she was almost upon it, it looked nothing like it at all.

Silverthorne nestled up against a cliff face that was pierced with many dark openings, giving it the look more of the Secret City than the labor camp. As she watched, a cart laden with ore and pulled by a small donkey emerged from one of those openings, and trundled along a road covered with crushed stone to the building whose smoke she had been watching rise into the sky for so long. Smaller buildings surrounded that big smoking one, and a fence surrounded all of them.

Behind the big building, a waterfall poured down the cliff. Mara thought the big building must be the smelter, where the silver was extracted from its ore and shaped into ingots to be shipped south to Tamita. A strange deep-throated wheezing came from the building, as though it were alive and breathing through giant lungs, a sound as unnerving in its own way as the constant rumble of the now-destroyed waterwheel in the mining camp.

The town itself, however, appeared completely ordinary: a main street with a few larger buildings (presumably containing shops, stables, and the like), houses spreading out along side streets branching out from the main one, and at the head of that street, a large stone building which she thought must be the Watchers' barracks and town hall.

No cropland or rangeland surrounded Silverthorne. Although she could see some gardens and chicken coops, clearly the town couldn't feed itself. Which must mean regular shipments of food from farther south. Silverthorne existed solely for the production of silver.

The material used for the Masks of the Child Guard.

She rode into the town along the main road. Only a handful of people were about, but they all turned to look at her. She had done her best to look as young, and nondescript, as possible. She had her hair tied back in a ponytail, and had even gone so far as to uncomfortably bind her breasts to reduce her “roundness.” The horse wore an old leather saddle that had seen hard use. She did carry a dagger in her boot and a bow slung over her back—no one would ride the Wild without
some
sort of protection—but again, both were as plain as could be.

Of course, Whiteblaze was rather . . . distinctive.

She smiled openly at the people who looked at her, getting an occasional tentative smile in return . . . a smile that often faded into alarm as they got a closer look at the wolf. But she let her smile fall away—because that was what people did—when she neared the center of town and a Watcher stepped off the boardwalk, hand raised. “Hold, girl,” he said in a deep voice. His eyes behind the Mask were dark brown, but wrinkles at their corners, caught by the sun, indicated he was older rather than younger. Mara hoped he had a daughter and she reminded him of her.

“Yes, sir,” she said, reining the horse to a halt.

The Watcher's eyes flicked to Whiteblaze, then back again. “Name and age?”

“Frina,” she said. “Fourteen.”

“You're tall for fourteen.”

“Fifteen next month,” Mara said. “That's why I'm here. To see the Maskmaker.”

“Haven't seen you in Silverthorne before,” the Watcher said.

“We've just taken up ranching . . . back there,” Mara said, gesturing vaguely behind her. “We were all going to come in, but Mom took ill and Dad thought he should stay with her. So he said I had to come to town alone because we're getting too close to my Masking not to get the Maskmaker working.”

The Watcher grunted. “Dangerous,” he said. “Bandits in these woods.”

Mara allowed herself to look alarmed. “Bandits? The man who sold my father the ranch didn't say anything about bandits.”

“Probably why he sold it,” the Watcher said. He stepped back. “Go on. Maskmaker's at the end of the road, just by the town hall, left side. Got a guest room or two for people like you who come in from out of town to arrange Maskings.” He looked past her down the road. “When you go back, I'll send a couple of men with you. They can make sure you get home all right, and check on your parents.”

Mara groaned inwardly. But out loud all she said was, “Thank you very much.”

“Don't mention it. On your way.” He watched her as she trotted the horse on up the street. She was glad he couldn't see the trickle of sweat making its way down her back beneath her clothes.

The Maskmaker's shop was clearly marked by a wooden sign carved in the shape of a Mask, painted white, with rather garish wide blue eyes looking out through the eyeholes and lips an unnatural shade of red behind the mouth opening. Mara tethered her horse to the rail in front of the building, and glanced back up the street. The Watcher, true to his calling, was still watching. She gave him what she hoped looked like a cheery wave, told Whiteblaze, “Stay,” in a low voice, and then went through the door into the shop.

Her father, as Master Maskmaker, had never really had a shop. He hadn't needed one, because everyone Gifted
had
to come to him, even from out here: any child born in Silverthorne who proved to have the Gift would be sent to Tamita for Masking.

Though not by my father anymore
, Mara thought bitterly. She realized she didn't even know who had taken her father's place as Master Maskmaker. Once, she had hoped it would be her. No longer. But if things went as she hoped, she might soon be making Masks after all . . . and Masks of a kind, and for a purpose, of which her father would surely have approved.

A half-dozen sample Masks were lined up on a ledge at the front of the counter. None were colored, of course, since only the Gifted wore Masks of color, but their white or beige or, in one case, rather daringly dark brown (a little too close to Watcher black, she would have thought, but since the Mask was on display, clearly it had triggered no concern from the Watchers themselves) were inset with decorations that made Mara's eyes widen. The delicate use of filigree and jewel was on a par with her father's, much as it pained her to think it. The Maskmaker in Silverthorne was clearly more talented than she'd had any reason to hope.
He's certain to have the tools I need
, she thought. Then she looked up and saw the woman standing in the curtained door behind the counter.
Or she.

Wearing a simple gray dress and, despite the artistry of the Masks before Mara, a simple Mask of beaten copper marked only by a single red jewel—a far cry from the ornate Mask her father had made for her (and made to fail . . . she still ached for that beauty lost)—the Maskmaker stared at her. “Do I know you?” she said. Her voice was remarkably deep for a woman's. “You look familiar.”

“No,” Mara said hastily. “I'm . . . we . . . my family just arrived. We're ranchers. I'm fourteen. But I'll be fifteen soon. So I need a Mask.”

You're babbling,
she thought, but the woman's question had startled her . . . and worried her.

“No, that's not it.” The woman came closer, stared into Mara's face from the other side of the counter. “It will come to me . . .
oh!
” The last word exploded out of her. She came around the end of the corner in a rush, closed the door, pulled the shade, and only then turned to Mara. “You're Mara Holdfast,” she whispered. “Charlton Holdfast's daughter.
Why are you here?
”

Mara's heart had leaped into her throat. Her first instinct was to grab magic—she could feel it in the other room, in the workshop, no doubt waiting in an urn like her father's—and silence the woman, to strike her down before she gave the alarm. But she did not.

And when
, she wondered,
did violence become my first instinct?

“How do you know my father?” she asked instead.

“I trained with him,” the Maskmaker said. “Four years ago. I met you. You were just a little girl.” Mara saw the Maskmaker lick her lips behind the mouth opening of her copper Mask. “But your father is dead. And I heard you failed your Masking.” Her eyes flicked to Mara's face. “Though I see no scars . . .”

“My Mask failed,” Mara said. “My father made it fail. To protect me. To keep me from the clutches of the Autarch.”

The Maskmaker took a step back. Her hands went to the unmarked cheeks of her Mask. “I can't listen to this.”

“You have to,” Mara said. “Because there is an army of the unMasked. We have destroyed the Autarch's mines of magic. And we're going to destroy the Autarch.”
Or at least I am
, she thought.
If he doesn't destroy me first.

“An army . . .” The Maskmaker's hands fell to her sides again. “The unMasked Army is
real?
”

“It's real,” Mara said. “My father arranged for them to rescue me. They wanted me to make Masks for them. But I didn't know how.” She spread her hands. “Now, I do.”

“No . . .” The Maskmaker's gaze flicked over Mara's shoulder to glance at the door. “You can't make fake Masks. It can't be done.”

“It can if you have the right Gift.”

“You had the same Gift as your father. I was told that by—”

“That was a lie. A lie I told. I don't have the same Gift as Father.” Mara took a deep breath. “I have the same Gift as the Autarch . . . the same Gift as the Lady of Pain and Fire. I can see and use all kinds of magic. The Lady taught me how to make Masks, Masks that aren't tied to the Autarch, so they won't break if you betray him. Masks the Watchers can't detect as fake. Masks that I can use to infiltrate the Palace and remove the Autarch from power once and for all.” She regarded the Maskmaker steadily. “Don't you want that?”

“I—” The Maskmaker hesitated. And in the moment of that hesitation, her Mask, with a sound like a thunderclap, broke neatly down the middle and fell away from her face: a kind, middle-aged face that instantly turned white. The Maskmaker's hand flew to her mouth, and her dark brown eyes widened in terror. “What have you done to me?”

“I didn't do anything,” Mara said. “Except force you to take a side.”

The Maskmaker dropped to her knees behind the counter. Mara walked around the end of it to see her kneeling there, holding the two halves of her broken Mask together as if she could fix it just by wishing it whole. “You've murdered me!” she whispered. “When the Watchers find out . . .”

“They won't find out if you help me,” Mara said. She knelt beside the woman and took the broken Mask away from her. “I can restore your Mask. I can make it so that it will never break or reveal your secrets to the Watchers, no matter what you think about them or the Autarch.”

The woman stared at her. “If you're wrong . . .”

“I'm not,” Mara said, with more confidence than she felt, but she let none of her own self-doubt show in her face. She wanted this woman's help—wanted it given voluntarily, so she did not have to do what she had been fully prepared to do when she rode into town, and use magic to coerce that help. If she had to do that, it would be one more step down the road followed by the Lady of Pain and Fire, and every time she could choose to not take another of those steps, she wanted to do so.

“You have left me with no choice,” the Maskmaker said bitterly. She took back the pieces of her broken Mask, and stood. “My name is Herella. Tell me what you need.” She swept open the curtain into her workroom, and went inside.

Mara got to her feet and followed her.

The workroom was very different from her father's cozy retreat in their house. Unlike the dark wooden paneling he favored, this room had brightly painted walls: blue and green and yellow and red. Instead of a long work counter along one wall, Herella had a round table in the middle of the room. And rather than standing alone, her basin of magic, shipped from Tamita, was built into that table, so that no matter where around its circumference she worked, she had only to reach out for the magic she needed.

Her tools hung on the red-painted wall. The green wall was centered by the archway that led into the front of the shop. Shelves on either side of that arch held the raw materials of the Maskmaker's trade. Large bins filled with clay lined the bottom shelves, while the higher ones held the components of various glazes and decoration. The blue wall, to Mara's left, was mostly taken up by large windows which Herella was hastily shuttering, though they opened into a walled courtyard and there was no one to see.

The back wall, painted yellow, held more shelves, with Masks in various stages of completion. A wooden door, standing open, showed a short cobblestoned path to a small stone building with a chimney from which smoke rose in a steady stream.
The kiln
, Mara thought. All of the Masks Herella normally made began as ordinary clay. Beyond the back wall of the courtyard, she could see far greater clouds of smoke rising from the silver smelter.