Masks (13 page)

“Mara can still see magic,” Prella piped up at once.

Alita shot her a disgusted look, but Mara, reminding herself again she was doing nothing wrong, said, “Yes, I can.” She pointed at the tiny pool of color. “There.”

Edrik glanced down, but clearly saw nothing. “Really,” he said, sounding skeptical. “I don’t see anything.”

Mara felt a flash of irritation. “You don’t have the Gift.” It came out sounding much more insolent than she had intended.

Edrik raised an eyebrow. “True,” he said. “But it is also true that your Masking failed. We have been told that those Gifted whose Maskings fail lose their Gifts.”

Told by whom?
Mara wondered again, but knew she wouldn’t get an answer to
that
question.

“Why should you be any different?” Edrik continued, and Mara couldn’t answer that question for him any more than she’d been able to answer it for the others. He stared down at the stone. “So . . . assuming you’re telling the truth . . .”

“I don’t lie,” Mara snapped.

He raised a skeptical face. “Can you do anything with it?”

Mara felt a chill, her misgivings rising again. “I . . . I don’t know. I . . .” She looked at Alita and Prella. “
We
were all supposed to start our training in the use of magic as soon as we were Masked.”

“Convenient,” Kirika said, the first word she’d contributed to the conversation. Mara glanced at her, and saw that her expression was closed and hard.
What’s her problem?

But her scornful tone had stung. Pushing aside her doubts, Mara reached out and touched the magic, remembering how magic had formed a glowing blue glove when Ethelda had poured it into her palm from the vial she carried. There wasn’t enough magic in the tiny basin to cover her hand, but the instant she touched it, it transferred itself from the depression to her fingers. When she straightened again, her fingers glistened with shifting colors, like oil on water.

It didn’t feel like oil, though. It felt . . . alive, somehow; as though she were holding hands with someone . . . with her father, or . . .

...or Keltan . . .

“I still don’t see anything,” Edrik said.

“It’s on my hand,” Mara said distantly, all her attention on the strange sight and sensation.
Now what?
she thought.
How do I make it do something? And what can I make it do?

She looked at Kirika, who was staring at her fingers with a scornful expression Mara suddenly wanted to wipe off her face. Her gaze traveled down to the other girl’s cloak. At some point during the journey Kirika had caught it on something, tearing a gash about six inches long. Easy to fix, with a needle and thread or . . .

Moved by instinct as much as by conscious decision, she reached out her magic-coated fingers and touched Kirika’s cloak.

She gasped; it felt as if she had stuck her hand into a nettle bush, pain and prickling crawling across her skin. At the same time, the multiple colors of the thin sheen of magic faded away, leaving only a ruby-red glow that flowed into the cloak like a bloodstain.

Kirika jerked away. “Don’t touch me!” she snarled. Mara lowered her hand. But she kept staring at the place she had touched. Red tendrils of light writhed across the tear in the wool for an instant, then vanished . . .

...as did the tear, mended so perfectly it might never have existed.

Kirika looked down at the repaired cloak, then back at Mara. Her eyes narrowed, but all she said, in a voice hard as stone, was, “Don’t
ever
touch me without permission. Ever.” She raised her eyes to the others. “Any of you.”

Nobody was listening. They were all staring at the magically mended cloth.

“Wow,” Keltan said at last, breaking the silence.

Both of Edrik’s eyebrows were raised now. “It seems you’re telling the truth.” He glanced around. “Is there more magic here? There are other things that need mending . . .”

Mara shook her head. “I haven’t seen any more. And I used it all . . .” She paused, then leaned over the basin. Yes, she’d used all the magic collected there, but she could see more already seeping into the basin, a tiny thread, insubstantial as gossamer.

Where does it come from?
she wondered.
And why does it collect
here?

She had no answer.
Something else they were going to teach me,
she thought bitterly.

How many years had it taken that slender thread of magic to collect in the basin? And she had used it all up in an instant.

She straightened. “There’s no more,” she said.

Edrik looked thoughtful. “But if we could get more . . .” He stood silent for a moment, then shook his head. “A problem for another day.” He nodded back toward the fires. “You should eat and get to sleep. We have another long walk tomorrow.”

They walked back to the fire. Kirika took herself off and lay down, back to them. Alita’s expression remained closed and resentful. Keltan kept stealing wide-eyed glances at her. Only Prella and Simona seemed unaffected by the news that she still had her Gift. Prella prattled on about how beautiful magic was and how much she missed being able to see it. Simona prodded the smaller girl along with questions but didn’t ask Mara any. She seemed almost . . . frightened.

Mara didn’t know what to think. She still had her Gift. Wonderful. But what good was it? She might never see magic again, where they were going. All she’d accomplished, as far as she could see, was mend a torn cloak, and in the process, frighten Simona, make Alita jealous, annoy Kirika, and . . .

She glanced at Keltan, who saw her look and immediately turned his gaze back to the fire, poking at it, completely unnecessarily, with a stray stick. “I’m not going to suddenly turn you into a pig, you know,” she finally burst out. “I had the Gift when you met me the first time. I’ve had it all along. I haven’t changed.”

He started, then glanced at her a little sheepishly. “I . . . I know,” he said. “It’s just . . . I’ve never actually seen anyone
use
magic before. The way you just touched the cloak, and it knit itself up again . . .” He looked back into the fire. “It was creepy.”

She sighed. “Well,” she said, “you’ll probably never see it again. That may be the last magic I ever see.”

Keltan said nothing more about it, but at least he quit looking at her as though she’d sprouted a second head.

Despite her exhaustion—or maybe even because of it—it was a long time before Mara slept that night. It seemed she could still feel the magic, clinging to her fingers, waiting for her to use it . . . and now that she had felt it once, she found that she wanted to feel it again, and feel more of it.

What else could I do with it
?

She didn’t know; couldn’t know without more magic. But someday, she hoped she’d find out.

The next day, at the end of a long but relatively easy walk down a broad ravine, they finally arrived at the Secret City.

The Secret City

N
OT THAT MARA
even
saw
the Secret City at first glance. She had eyes only for the ocean.

The ravine ended in a sandy cove, shaped like a horseshoe, surrounded on three sides by towering walls of black stone. Directly across from the returning party, perhaps a quarter of a mile away, water began, and what amazed Mara was that
it never ended
: at least, not until it met the half-set sun on the distant horizon. The sea rolled endlessly in toward the shore, breaking in long, shadowy waves, black against the orange fire pouring across the water from the sunset. Mara gaped. She’d never imagined anything so big or so beautiful: almost as beautiful as magic. The masts of a half-dozen boats pulled up along the shore speared the red sky.

But the sun made the ocean too bright to look at for long, so she tore her gaze away and instead studied the cliffs. Thin tendrils of smoke, lit orange by the sun, rose from the cliff to her left, presumably from unseen chimneys or fissures high above. Narrow window slits punctuated the rock face at ground level and for three or four stories above that, and one large opening gave access to the cliff’s interior from the cove. Other black openings gaped at the base of the cliff on the right, though none higher than ground level, and no smoke rose from that side of the cove.

Through the window slits to her left she glimpsed glowing lamplight and flickering hearth light and dark, moving figures. Then suddenly, from the large opening at ground level, men, women, and children poured out like ants from an overturned nest.

Mara drew back instinctively as people ran toward them, until she found herself back to back with Alita, Prella, and Simona. Kirika stood apart, fists and jaw clenched, as though daring anyone to come near. Keltan, on the other hand, moved forward. He clasped hands with another boy, a head taller and perhaps two years older, and brought the youth over to the rescued girls. Thin as a broom, with a thatch of black hair, he had startlingly blue eyes and white teeth. Both flashed in the last of the sun’s light as he gave them a friendly smile.

“Mara, Alita, Prella, Kirika, Simona,” Keltan said, “I’d like you to meet Hyram, Edrik’s son.”

“Hi,” Hyram said. “Welcome to the Secret City!”

“City?” Alita said. “All I see is a bunch of caves.”

Hyram laughed. “Well, what is Tamita but a bunch of man-made caves? People lived in caves a long time before they built buildings. In fact, they lived in some of
these
caves; we’ve found their wall paintings.”

Prella shuddered. “I don’t like caves,” she said. “The one we came through on the way here was horrible. I don’t even like the
idea
of caves. In stories they’re always full of bats and snakes and bears and . . . and monsters.”

“I can honestly say,” Hyram said, smile widening, “that I have never seen a monster in the Secret City. And I’ve lived here my whole life.” He jerked his head toward the entrance. “Come on. I’ll show you.”

Mara hesitated, glancing toward Edrik. Were they allowed . . . ?

But Edrik, busy kissing the tall, black-haired woman who had her arms around his neck, seemed singularly uninterested in anything they might do.

Hyram followed her gaze, and laughed again. He’d already laughed a lot since they’d met him. She couldn’t help smiling in response. “Don’t worry,” he said. “You won’t get in trouble. Mom told me to get you settled.”

“Your mother is beautiful,” Kirika said unexpectedly.

Simona gave her a surprised look; Hyram laughed yet again. “Thanks,” he said. “Too bad I don’t take after her.”

Mara, who had found it hard to keep her eyes from his finely honed features from the moment he had come over to them, opened her mouth to protest, then closed it again with a snap. If Hyram noticed, he gave no sign, instead just indicating the cave entrance again. “Follow me!”

He led them to the opening, half as tall as the Tamita city wall and as wide as the Market Gate—three wagon breadths, at least. “We call this the Broad Way,” Hyram said as he led them into the cavern beyond, and Mara could see why: the wide cave mouth became an equally wide tunnel that extended into darkness. Lanterns hung on the stone walls cast periodic pools of yellow light. Here and there other tunnels joined the Broad Way. After a hundred yards or so it sloped down and out of sight.

“Storerooms and our water supply are all down there,” Hyram said, pointing toward the Broad Way’s hidden end. “Baths, too.” He glanced at them and his mouth quirked. “I, um . . .
sense
 . . . that you could all use them sometime in the not-too-distant future.”

Mara took a sniff, and decided not to take that personally.

But that sniff also brought far more appealing smells to her attention. Woodsmoke, of course, and a general sort of people smell; but also the really, really good smells of baking bread and roasting meat. Her mouth watered and her stomach rumbled.

Hyram glanced at her.
He heard
, she thought, face growing hot. “Food in a few minutes,” he said. “But first, let me show you where you’ll be sleeping.”

He led them, not down the Broad Way, but into the first tunnel on the left. Clearly man-made, cut out of the rock, it changed almost at once from tunnel to staircase. They climbed up rough-hewn steps, past two lit oil lamps and one that had burned out, emerging into one end of another tunnel stretching away into the rock. Hyram, however, took them directly across that tunnel to a wooden door that he pushed open, revealing a good-sized chamber beyond. Thick black timbers shored up the roof and walls. A slit of a window, hewn through at least four feet of rock, let in cool salt air and the sound of surf. Shutters hung on the inside could close it off if need be. Half a dozen beds, the frames made of whitewashed wood, the mattresses covered with warm-looking woolen blankets of blue and green, lined the walls. Each had a side table; lanterns burning on three of them filled the room with a cozy yellow glow. An unlit hearth was cut into the inside wall. “Girls’ room,” Hyram said.

Mara went over to one of the beds and poked at the mattress. It rustled and released the unmistakable smell of hay. She sat, then lay down. A week before she would have thought it unbearably prickly and lumpy. But after one night in the iron cage in the warehouse, four nights in the cold cells of the way stations, and two nights on the ground—all of those nights far too short—it felt like heaven. She felt her eyes closing and jerked upright again. Looking around, she saw that the other girls had picked out beds and were testing them, as well.

“Well?” Hyram said. “What do you think?”

“Better than I had at home,” said Alita.

“A
lot
better,” muttered Kirika.

“Not as good as
I
had at home,” said Simona. She touched the thin scars lining her face. “But I’m not about to complain.”

“I think it’s perfect,” Prella piped up.

Mara saw Keltan and Hyram both looking at her, as if only her verdict
really
mattered. “It’ll do,” she said, and both boys relaxed—and then gave each other a strange look she didn’t know how to interpret.

“What about Grute?” asked Prella. “Where will he sleep?”

“Grute?” Hyram gave her a puzzled look.

“The sack of dung on a leash,” Alita clarified.

“One of the
old
kind of unMasked,” said Keltan. He told Hyram about Grute’s attempt to hit Tishka with a rock, and Hyram’s face stiffened.
And he doesn’t even know what happened in the wagon
, Mara thought.
Or the warehouse.

“You should execute him,” Kirika said, voice cold and flat. “He’s a waste of space. Not worth feeding.”

Mara hated and feared Grute, but even so, Kirika’s matter-of-fact bloodthirstiness shocked her.

“Not up to me,” Hyram said shortly, but it sounded as if he rather liked the idea. He looked around at the girls. “There’s one other thing you need to see up here. This way.” He took them back out into the tunnel that ran in the same direction as the Broad Way a level below. A couple of other tunnels opened off of it left and right, along with several doors, but it ended in a chamber whose entrance was hung with a curtain of gray cloth, currently pushed aside to reveal, inside, a wooden seat with a hole in it, over an opening in the rock from which came the distant sound of rushing water. “Toilet,” Hyram said succinctly.

Alita looked into the hole. “I hope that’s not our water supply down there.”

Hyram’s smile vanished. “Of course not,” he snapped. “All waste goes into the underground river downstream from where we draw our water, and the river empties straight into the ocean. We’re not fools, you know.”

Alita raised an eyebrow at him, expression cool, and Hyram flushed. “Sorry,” he said. “I know it’s all rustic, compared to Tamita. But we’ve been here a long time, and we’ve not only survived, we’ve thrived—free of the Autarch, and his Watchers . . . and his Masks.”

Alita said nothing.

Hyram took a deep breath and turned away from her. “Speaking of water,” he said, “now I think it’s time I showed you the baths.”

He took them back down the stairs into the Broad Way and down it, the main entrance disappearing behind them as they went deeper underground. After those first hundred yards, no more tunnels opened off the Broad Way, which suggested to Mara that the Secret City existed only near the surface of the rock face. Understandable; the amount of work required to create even what she had seen was mind-boggling, even if, as Hyram had suggested, some of it had been here for centuries. Anyway, who would want to live any farther inside the rock than they had to? She could almost feel the vast mass of stone above her pressing down.

The Broad Way became progressively less broad as they walked, until it was only a couple of arm-spans wide. Then, with no warning, it opened up again into a huge chamber. A dozen lamps on wooden poles struggled to light the space, their feeble illumination failing to reach the far wall, some unguessed distance away in the darkness, but their glimmer still revealed enough to make Mara and the others gasp.

They stood on the shore of an enormous underground lake, its water smooth as glass. Curtains and daggers of stone festooned the high stone ceiling, the lamplight waking tiny sparkles of golden light even in the deepest shadows: the whole cave, in fact, glittered as if studded with diamonds. Through the crystal-clear water Mara could see the bottom of the lake sloping gently away into dark depths.

“We get our water from the springs over there,” Hyram said, pointing left, and Mara turned to see clear water tumbling down from a crack in the rock, splashing into a small pool that then overflowed into the lake, the flowing water mimicked by the flowing shapes of the sparkling stone over which it poured. “The stream you heard under the toilet empties out of the lake over there,” he pointed farther to the left, toward a dark opening.

“We bathe in the lake itself. Girls over here . . .” He led them along the right side, around an outthrust shoulder of rock, to where an arm of the lake extended into a horseshoe cove. He turned and pointed back at the smooth surface of the lake, disappearing into darkness. “No one can see in, so modesty is preserved.”

Mara knelt by the lake and put her hand into the water. “It’s warm,” she said, in surprise.

“Hot springs well up into the lake,” Hyram said.

Mara stood and looked around, spotting gray lumps of soap in a natural depression in the rock. No towels, but she supposed there must be something in their room. “All the comforts of home,” she said, trying to sound cheerful, though in fact she had suddenly been struck by a wave of homesickness so great she thought for a horrible moment she would burst into tears.

She wanted her
own
room, her
own
home, their enameled bathtub, her mother’s cooking, her father’s laughter . . . not this horrible place of stone and strangers, darkness and displacement. But she couldn’t have it. She could never have it again.

Because of the Masks. Because of the Autarch. Because . . .

...because.

She realized that both Hyram and Keltan were watching her—again—and managed to dredge up a smile. It felt horribly false—
like the smile of a Mask
, she thought—but she held it in place. “Now how about something to eat?” she said. “I’m starving.” She glanced around at the others. “Aren’t you?”

Amid a general murmur of consent, they made their way back up the Broad Way, the smells of cooking growing stronger as they approached. “Big feast tonight to welcome everyone back,” Hyram said. “In the Great Chamber.” He led them to the opposite side of the Broad Way from the stairs they had climbed to the girls’ room, and into a room that would have been breathtaking in size if they hadn’t just seen the underground lake. As it was, it was merely impressive.

Wooden tables dotted its smooth gray floor. At hearths around the perimeter Mara could see cooks stirring and turning and seasoning and tasting sizzling sides of meat and the bubbling contents of countless cauldrons. As she watched, a baker pulled a long platter covered with loaves of bread out of a clay oven. Her stomach growled again and she thought she might drown in her own saliva.