Faces (31 page)

On the heels of the lamplighter came a Watcher, who went into the tower Mara had pointed out to Keltan and filled and lit the lamps inside it. The top of the wall remained dark, of course, since the sentries patrolling it did not want their eyes dazzled . . . but just as in the mining camp, the sentries mostly turned their gaze inward; a fact of which she had apprised Chell. There had never been a threat to the city, and so the sentries' primary function was to watch for fires or curfew-breaking children—Mara suspected that was how she and Sala had been spotted swimming in the ornamental pool behind the Waterworkers' Hall (had that really just been last summer? it seemed a lifetime ago) and hauled home to their families in disgrace.

The lighting of the lamps began the countdown. Bells tolled every hour in Tamita to mark the passage of time, and when four hours had passed, Mara, Keltan, and Whiteblaze at last emerged from hiding. Mara looked both ways along the Great Circle Road to make sure no Watchers were in sight, took a careful look at the top of the wall for the same reason, and at last dashed across to the tower, its interior dimly lit by the flickering lamp just inside the open arch that gave access, but bright enough after their long hours in the dark.

The stairs Mara had so often trotted up as a child spiraled to their left. But the door they wanted was on ground level, in the deep shadow behind the stairs. Mara had discovered it one day when a group of Watchers had barged in just as she was coming down and she'd had to get out of their way. It was just as Mara remembered it: thick black timbers, strong iron bands, massive hinges. A steel bar held it closed, locked in place by a huge iron padlock, so rusted she doubted it could have been opened with the key even in the unlikely event someone in the city remembered where it was.

But she didn't need a key. She took magic from Whiteblaze, just a little. It sheathed her hand in glowing red. She touched the lock and released magic into it. The hasp simply broke apart, and the ancient lock dropped to the stone floor with a clatter.

With Keltan's help, she lifted the iron bar out of the brackets bolted to the door and set it to one side. “Here goes,” Keltan said. He tugged on the door. It gave an alarming groan as it opened, and Mara shot a look over her shoulder at the archway and the Great Circle Road beyond, but heard no shouts or sound of running feet.

A dark figure appeared in the doorway, face hidden in the shadows of a deep hood, eyes red sparks in the lamplight. A hand swept up, pulled back the hood, revealing Chell. “No alarm,” he said. “As you said, Mara. The sentries rarely look outside the city.” He entered the tower, and after him came the rest of the small force Edrik had assigned: first Hyram, who nodded at Mara, unsmiling, then Prescox, Danys, and Lilla, the three unMasked Army fighters, followed by the four sailors. Antril brought up the rear. He alone flashed Mara a quick grin. She felt absurdly grateful for that.

“Edrik?” Mara said to Hyram.

“We haven't seen any sign of the unMasked Army,” he said. “But my father will be where he is supposed to be, waiting out of sight of the walls. He'll attack the damaged portion of the wall at first light—just as you ordered.” His tone made it clear he resented the fact she was able to order his father to do anything.

“The Watcher Army must be close as well,” Keltan said. “Their messengers arrived yesterday.”

“And our force will be caught like a nut in a nutcracker when they do arrive,” Hyram growled. “Trapped between the Watchers and the city.”

“Then we'd better do our part,” Mara said. “Shut up, all of you, and follow me.”
Huh
, she thought, surprised at her own forcefulness.
Maybe getting walloped with the Lady of Pain and Fire's soulprint has done me
some
good.
Whether that was where that tone of authority came from or not, it worked. The men (and one woman) fell in behind her as she looked both ways along the road again, then led the force at a run across it—but not into the alley where she and Keltan had lurked earlier. Instead, they entered the alley farther down the Great Circle Road from the Market Gate, on the opposite side of the warehouse from where they had waited. There was a side door in that alley. Mara had not seen it when she was inside the warehouse after her failed Masking, but she'd seen it often enough in her years running these streets as a child.

It was bolted from the inside, of course. Mara paused long enough to remove her silver Child Guard Mask, handing it to Chell, who slipped it inside his pack without a word, then called up red magic from Whiteblaze again, and eased the bolt open. Taking a step back, she nodded to Hyram, who slipped his sword from its sheath, a motion copied by the others in the small force, pressed quietly down on the latch—and then eased the door open.

The room beyond was dark, too dark to see anything. Deep, rumbling snores proved the chamber was not empty, however. Hyram stepped inside, and a moment later the snores choked off and then turned into moans of terror.

Everyone crammed through the door, Mara last. She closed it behind her. She called up a touch more magic from Whiteblaze, just enough to cover one finger with white light, illuminating the room for her alone. Seeing the oil lamp on the wooden table next to the cold fireplace, she reached out to it. The spark of magic from her finger leaped to its wick, and yellow light filled the room.

Wide white eyes stared at her from Chell's men and the unMasked Army fighters. She ignored them. She walked over to the bed where Hyram was holding a gloved hand over the mouth of the fat man, whose eyes widened as he saw her, and widened further when he saw the wolf at her feet. “Move your hand,” she told Hyram. Then to the fat man she said. “If you shout, my wolf will tear your throat out.” She touched Whiteblaze's head. “Won't you, boy?”

Whiteblaze, his eyes never leaving the man's face, growled even as his tail thumped.

Hyram lifted his gloved hand. Sweat beaded the fat man's face and there was a dark spreading stain on the blanket between his legs. Remembering her time in the warehouse, she couldn't summon much sympathy.

In fact, she couldn't summon any at all.

“You!” the fat man moaned. Whiteblaze growled, and his voice dropped to a strained whisper. “I remember you. The one with no scars . . . I sold your picture for a pretty penny . . . but you went to the mine!”

“I came back,” Mara said. “This is the second time, actually. You may remember a large hole being blown in the wall of the city? The execution of Stanik? The slaying of several Watchers at Traitors' Gate?” She smiled. “That was me.” She let the smile slip away. “Now where are your keys?”

“Mantelpiece,” the fat man said. “Please, don't kill me!”

“Not entirely up to me,” Mara said. She went over to the mantelpiece, found the keys. “Bring him.”

Hyram hauled the fat man up. He clutched at his blanket, and Mara realized he was naked beneath it. It seemed fitting.

The inner door of the chamber opened into the warehouse proper. It was not entirely dark. As she had remembered, a couple of lamps were kept burning, presumably so the fat man could check on his charges if he needed to. Everything was as she remembered it: the two rows of cells down the sides of the warehouse, the chair where the fat man sat to draw his prisoners, the table and chests where prisoners took off their own clothes and put on the gray prison smocks.

There was stirring in the darkness as they entered the warehouse. A boy's voice cried out, “What's going on?”

Then a girl, voice shocked, said, “They're unMasked!”

“Is that a wolf?” said another girl.

All the children were locked up on the same side of the warehouse, Mara realized. She counted three girls and two boys.

More than anything else, she wanted to let them out of their cells. But if they went out into the street and the Night Watchers found them, their precious element of surprise would be squandered. Nor could they afford to leave a guard.

“Listen to me,” she said, standing in front of the very cell in which she had once been imprisoned, now occupied by a slender boy with red hair, his freckled face crisscrossed by white scars from his failed Masking. “If we succeed in what we're trying to do, tomorrow you'll be freed to go back to your families, and you'll never have to worry about Watchers or Masks again.”

“Then let us out!” cried the red-haired boy. “Let us out now.”

“I can't,” Mara said. “Not now. There's nowhere for you to go.”

“Then we'll stay in the warehouse,” the boy said. “Until things change.”

“If they don't, you'll just be locked up again.” And then a horrible thought struck her. They had destroyed the Autarch's mines of magic. There was nowhere for the unMasked to be sent where they could be useful. And before that labor camp had existed . . . those who failed their Masking had just been executed.

She
couldn't
leave them locked up. No matter what happened, they were better off trying to escape.

“Listen,” she said. “There's an open door, in the tower across the street. If you can get into it, you can get out of the city, flee into the fields and woods.”

“We'll starve out there,” a girl cried.

“I'm not telling you what to do,” Mara said. “I can't. But you're right,” she said to the boy. “I can't leave you locked up, either.”

“Mara,” Chell warned. “If they tell the Watchers—”

“None of these will tell the Watchers,” Mara said. “Of all the people in Tamita, they're the last ones who will tell the Watchers anything.”

She unlocked her old cell, and then the others. The children in their prison smocks stumbled out into the dim light. “Bring the fat man,” she told Hyram. “He can have my old cell.”

Hyram, with Keltan's help, forced the fat man to the door of the cell. He resisted, and they shoved him through so hard he stumbled, the blanket falling away as he fell to his hands and knees, revealing massive white buttocks like pale hams. He scrabbled for the blanket and pulled it around him again, then stared up at them. Now that he was away from Hyram's knife, hatred filled his face. “You'll all pay for this! You'll hang outside Traitors' Gate, every one of you, and I will draw your naked bodies and laugh while I do it.”

Mara glanced at Hyram. “Gag him.”

“With pleasure,” Hyram said. He grabbed a filthy towel, lying on the floor next to the noisome bucket half-filled with excrement, and bound it around the fat man's head, forcing it between his teeth.

“Charming gentleman,” Chell commented.

Mara turned to the red-haired boy. “Here is the key to his cell,” she said. “We're four hours from first light. I leave him in your care.”

The boy's eyes narrowed. “Oh, we'll take good care of him,” he said softly, and the fat man's red face suddenly paled again. He got up and stumbled to the cot, where he huddled in his blanket, eyes wide and white with terror as the children from the cells gathered around his door and stared in at him.

Mara turned her back on him and on the children. “This way,” she said to the others, and led them to the back of the warehouse, where it butted hard against the stone of the first tier of Fortress Hill. There was the door she remembered, rough black wood banded with rusty iron. Once again she pulled magic from Whiteblaze to unlock it, then pulled it wide.

No lamplight flickered in the tunnel beyond. She suspected it was only illuminated when there was to be a Masking ceremony, just in case it was needed in the aftermath. Chell sent two of his men back to the fat man's chamber; they returned with the lamp Mara had magically lit and two others they had found. Thus provided with illumination, they entered the tunnel, closing and locking the door behind them.

In silence they followed the tunnel up through Fortress Hill, climbing rough-hewn stairs, trudging along stone passageways, chill and damp. When gray stone gave way to polished white, Mara called a halt. “We're under the Maskery,” she whispered. The stairs down which she had been dragged by the Watchers, bleeding and in shock, led up into darkness from which came the sound of rushing water. It took little imagination for her to also hear the sound of her mother's screams. “I know these tunnels connect to the Palace, but I don't know exactly how. We have to be even more cautious from here on.”

“We weren't exactly planning to bang on the walls and sing marching songs,” Hyram growled.

Chell shot Hyram a sharp, frowning glance. “Let's keep moving. First light won't wait.”

The white hallway stretched ahead of them. Following it, where in the Palace would they emerge? Greff's instructions had been clear enough, but she had to get her bearings before she could make use of them.

At least the hallway remained deserted. There weren't even any doorways, which she took to mean they were still traversing the space between the Maskery and the Palace. They climbed another flight of stairs, and finally saw an end to the corridor: a brightly lit opening across which a figure suddenly passed right to left, an indistinct silhouette.

Mara held up a hand to stop the advance. “Just Keltan and I go ahead,” she said. “Everyone else wait here.”

Keltan had never removed his Watcher's Mask. Mara retrieved the Child Guard Mask from Chell and put it back on, knowing as she did so that she would not be removing it again until she had either succeeded or failed.

In which case . . . she wondered if the Masks she had made would likewise crumble and crack when their wearers died, or if that was only a characteristic of the Masks of the Autarch.

She turned to Whiteblaze, touched his head. “Stay,” she whispered, and he sat down heavily, with a disgruntled sigh. She scratched him behind the ears, and set off toward the light, Keltan following her.

The tunnel ended in a large chamber lit by hissing gas lamps, with corridors extending left and right and ahead: an underground crossroads. The person they had seen pass in front of the light was disappearing down the corridor to the left.
Not a Watcher
, Mara thought, though from behind she could not tell what kind of Mask the person had been wearing.