Masks (27 page)

Monsters?
she thought, trying to scorn herself out of her own fear. It didn’t really work. For all she knew of the Wild, there really
might
be monsters.

But whatever might lurk in the cave, something
else
might also be lurking in the Wilderness outside the camp, something the Warden knew nothing about (she hoped): the unMasked Army.

Maybe all they’re waiting for is for me to get out from behind these walls.

“I’ll help you,” she said at last.

The Warden chuckled. “Yes, you will. What made you think you had a choice?”

Mara had not been, by nature, a rebellious child. Her parents had made it clear from the moment she was aware of their guidance that she was to treat all grown-ups with respect. That was not only polite, her father had emphasized, it was also good practice for when she would be Masked and under the constant eye of the Watchers. And, he’d added honestly, it was good for business, too, since there were other Maskmakers to whom customers—at least of the unGifted variety—could turn: Maskmakers
without
rude children.

But Mara was not the polite, well-brought-up child she had been weeks before, and the smug certainty of the Warden that she would do
exactly
as he said, that all her efforts to avoid doing so were nothing more than the playacting of a silly little girl, fanned the spark in her soul lit by her early morning thoughts of Katia. Something inside her ignited and burst into a hot little fire of rage. She stood up, face flushed, and if she had had magic close at hand the Warden might have suffered Grute’s messy fate and decorated the walls of her chamber with the contents of his skull. “
Because I am my own person!
” she snarled. “I can
choose
whether to use my Gift for you or refuse. If I refuse, you can punish me, you can torture me, you can give me to your Watchers to rape and beat, you can send me underground and keep me there forever, you can do everything in your power to break me to your will, and maybe you will succeed: but that will not change the fact that I have the choice
now
to help you or
not
.
And even if you break me
, I will still have the power to choose whether or not to tell you the truth about what I see or don’t see. And since you have admitted you have no one else with a Gift the equal of mine, you will
never
know what that deposit holds—not until you have wasted more money and more lives and more time, while all the while the Palace grows more and more unhappy about the way you perform your duties. And if
that
happens, Master Warden, sir, how long will it be before you are down in the mines yourself. And how long do you think
you
will stay alive down there with those you treat like animals now?”

She stopped, out of words though not out of anger. She felt astonished, amazed, at her own vehemence and eloquence. It had almost felt as though she had stood outside herself, watching what she was doing, wondering who that incredibly brave girl was. It couldn’t be little Mara the Maskmaker’s daughter, could it?

Apparently it could. The feeling vanished. She was right there inside her own head where she was supposed to be, and the Warden’s mouth was set in a furious scowl, his eyes ablaze behind his Mask. “How dare—”

“You already know how I dare! And I already know all your threats, and I’ve already told you how little I care for them.” She took a deep breath, trying to slow her racing heart. “So let’s discuss my conditions for helping you.”

“Conditions?” She didn’t think it was possible to splutter through a Mask, but the Warden came close.

“Yes!” But then she hesitated. How much could she ask for?

I’m valuable to him
, she thought.
I’m not
in
valuable. It may be hard to find someone else to do what he needs done, but it isn’t impossible. He won’t close down the camp just to win my cooperation, he won’t stop sending girls to the Watchers, he won’t ease conditions in the mines. But maybe, just maybe . . .

“There’s a girl,” she said at last. “A friend. Her name is Katia. My partner in the mine.”

The Warden’s eyes narrowed. “The one who broke your arm?”

“Yes.”

“What do you care about
her
?”

“I care about her. That’s all you need to know.”

The Warden regarded her. “What do you want me to do?”

Mara took a step toward the Warden, keeping her eyes on his. “Release her from the barracks,” she said. “
Never send her there again
. And don’t send her back to the mines. Bring her here. Let her work in this house as a trustee. Unmolested.”

The Warden cocked his head to one side. He pursed his lips, then said, “And if I do that, you will do as I ask, and report back truthfully what you see?”

Mara nodded. “I promise.”

The Warden looked at her for another long moment, then abruptly said, “Done!”

“I want to see her here, alive and well, before I help you,” Mara warned.

The Warden waved his hand as though flicking away an insect. “Of course, of course,” he said. “The prospecting party cannot depart before tomorrow at the earliest anyway. I’ll have her brought here immediately, directly to your room.” He walked to the door, but stopped there and turned back. “But understand this, young miss,” he said, his voice soft and silky, his lips curved in a sinister smile. “Her continued safety depends on
you
. You are very brave when it comes to your own well-being. How brave are you when it comes to
hers
?” With that, he strode out. The Watcher in the hall slammed the door shut behind him.

Mara suddenly found her legs didn’t want her to be standing up anymore. She sank back into the chair beside her half-finished breakfast, and took a long, shaking drink of her redcherry juice. Then she wiped her chin and stared at the closed door.

I just made Katia a hostage
, she thought.
I wonder if she’ll thank me for it?

True to the Warden’s word, a Watcher brought Katia to Mara’s door within the hour. The other girl looked frail: as if she would blow away in a strong wind, as if she would break if she tripped. The Watcher pushed her into Mara’s room. “We’ll miss you, Katia,” he said, and though his Mask could not leer, his voice more than made up for it.

Then he slammed the door on them both.

Katia stood with her head down, not looking at Mara.

Mara didn’t know what to say. Almost convulsively, she turned and went to the breakfast table. Some redcherry juice remained in her goblet. She held it out to Katia.

Katia ignored it. She brushed past Mara and sat on the end of the bed, where the Warden had been just an hour before. Hands loose on her lap, she stared at the floor. “Why did they bring me here?” she said in a hoarse whisper. “Why bring me to
you
?”

Mara looked down at the unwanted juice. She turned and placed it back down on the table, then walked over to Katia and sat beside her on the bed. “Because I asked the Warden,” she said.

Katia looked up, her startled look at least an improvement on the dead expression of a moment before. “What? Why would he do that for you? Why would he do
anything
for you?” She looked around as if really noticing the room for the first time. “And why are you
here
?”

“I’m not who I said I was,” Mara said. And then she told Katia at least some of the truth—not about the unMasked Army, but about her Gift, about the magic clinging to the black stone the unMasked were scratching out of the mine, and about what the Warden wanted with her.

And the bargain she had struck with him.

Katia listened without speaking, her face gradually falling back into impassivity. “So if you fail,” she said, after Mara’s final words tumbled into silence, and after the silence had stretched to an uncomfortable length, “it will not be you who pays the price. It will be me.”

“It will be both of us,” Mara said.

“It will be
me
,” Katia repeated. “
You
will still have some value.” She stood up. “I was already less than nothing. Now you have made me less than
that
.” Her dead expression suddenly contorted into fury. “
What gives you the right to involve me in this?
”

Mara’s own temper flashed and she jumped to her feet. “If I hadn’t,
you
would be spending another night in the barracks! And another after that, and another after
that
. Instead, you will spend tonight here, unmolested . . .
and
another after that, and another after
that
!”

“Until
you
fail to please the Warden,” Katia spat. “And then I will be sent back to the barracks, and it will be worse because I temporarily escaped. And that will be the end of me, Mara. For the day I am sent back to the barracks is the day I kill myself. And my blood will be on your hands as much as on the hands of the Warden or Watchers.” She strode to the door and banged on it with both fists. The Watcher outside opened it at once. “Get me out of here,” Katia said. “Take me wherever I’m going next.”

The Watcher glanced over Katia’s shoulder at Mara, then shrugged, grabbed Katia’s arm, and pulled her from the room.

As the door closed and the lock snicked shut, Mara, shaking as much as she had after the conversation with the Warden, sat down hard on the bed.

She’s still better off
, she told herself.
She’ll realize it, in time.

But Katia’s final words seemed to echo in her ears: “My blood will be on your hands as much as on the hands of the Warden or Watchers.”

She could not deny their truth. If she failed . . .

And then the full horror of what she had done struck her like a mailed fist to the stomach.

Not just if she failed . . .
if she were rescued
.

If I’m saved, Katia dies!
What have I done?

Her stomach heaved, and she barely made it into the privy before spewing up the porridge and honeyed bread she had eaten two hours before, the sticky mess richly dyed with redcherry juice . . .

...dyed, she thought as she clung miserably to the wooden seat, the color of blood.

Death on the Mountain

A
T FIRST LIGHT
the next day, Mara found herself on muleback once more, riding down the central boulevard toward the gate through which she had entered the camp as a prisoner just a little over a week before. She had more company this time—not one man, but four: two Watchers, and two other men whose Masks, white, with four black diamonds across the forehead and another on each cheek, gave no hint as to their profession to Mara, who had never seen that design before.

She also had warmer clothes: she’d been provided with new, lined boots, red woolen trousers, a rather nice blue, long-sleeved tunic, a woolen vest, a brown sheepskin coat to wear over that, and a fur-lined cloak to wear over
that
. Plus leather gloves and a warm-but-ugly hat, both lined with rabbit fur.

Watching her breath and her mule’s emerging in white clouds as she rode toward the gate, she felt grateful. Every day the snow crept lower down the slopes beneath the ice-covered peaks to the north. “Winter’s just around the corner,” the trustee servant had told Mara as she laid out the clothes. “Snow could come to stay any day. You’ll need this and more, if you’re out in the mountains for long.” It was the most pleasant thing the trustee had said to her since she’d arrived in the Warden’s house, and Mara, staring at her, had suddenly realized the reason for her previous surliness.
She was afraid I would take her place
, she thought.
She was afraid she’d end up back in the mine or the barracks.

Mara had donned the new clothes gratefully, but just before they reached the gate, they rode past four unMasked women, shivering in their thin gray smocks, and Mara’s thankfulness for being warm soured into guilt.

Once through the gate, the white-Masked men took the lead, while the Watchers brought up the rear. One of them led a pack mule, twin to the one Mara rode. As they set out, the two Watchers exchanged ribaldries that embarrassed and disgusted Mara, who could not help thinking of Katia as she listened to their crude jokes.

Then one of the white-Masked men dropped back to ride beside her. “Hello, Mara,” he said. “My name is Pixot. My colleague,” he nodded forward at the stiff back of the other white-Masked man, “is Turpit.” He lowered his voice. “I’m afraid Turpit believes it is bad luck to talk to the unMasked; he’s afraid it will cause his Mask to crack, or something. Personally, I think he’s afraid if he so much as
smiles
it will cause his Mask to crack. Or possibly his face. He’s the single most boring human being I have ever run across, but he certainly knows his rocks. I think he identifies with them.”

Mara couldn’t help smiling at that, and Pixot sat back. “Excellent,” he said. “You’re much prettier when you smile.”

That, in view of what she could still hear of the conversation between the Watchers, instantly wiped her smile away. Pixot held up a hand. “Sorry, sorry, sorry,” he said. “I know what that must have sounded like.” He glanced back at the Watchers. “But I assure you, that’s not why I am speaking to you.” He leaned close, prompting a burst of laughter from the Watchers. Pixot ignored it. “I know your father,” he murmured.

That simple phrase, which once would have been an everyday pleasantry, skewered her heart like a pick of ice, so painful she gasped out loud.

Pixot leaned even closer. “He and your mother are well,” he whispered rapidly. “When I get back, I will tell them—”

“You! Rock-man!” one of the Watchers called. “Get away from her!”

Pixot straightened. “Rock-man?” he snapped as he twisted to face the Watchers, the friendly tone he had been using with Mara instantly replaced by one as cold and haughty as a statue of the Autarch carved in ice. “I am the Autarch’s Master Geologist. In his service, I have personally discovered major new lodes of gold, silver, and copper. I am here at
his
direct request. I will speak to whom I wish,
when
I wish, and if you take issue with that, I suggest you take it up with the Autarch the next time
you
talk to him, for
I
certainly will.”

The Watcher stared at him for a long moment, then shook his head, leaned over to the other Watcher, and muttered something Mara could not catch, though she was pretty sure he was not complimenting the—what had Pixot called himself?—Master Geologist.

Pixot twisted back around in his saddle and winked at Mara. “Black-britched bastards,” he said. Mara laughed out loud, but very carefully did not look back to see if the Watchers had heard him.

Pixot lifted his Masked face to gaze up at the mountains; they had rounded the corner of the palisade to follow a trail that wound up the ridge to the north. “Strange stuff, black lodestone,” he said conversationally. “Not just the fact that it attracts magic, though, of course, that’s why we’re looking for it. Strange all the way around.”

“What do you mean?” Mara said, more to keep him talking than anything else. She hadn’t had an ordinary conversation with anyone for days; not since Hyram had shown her around the Secret City. And Pixot knew her parents. It was as close as she’d been in a very long time to being home . . .

...as close as she ever would be again. The thought fell through her mind like a lump of lead tossed into a pool.

“Its density is all wrong,” Pixot answered. “It’s not as spongy as pumice, which actually
floats
on water, but it’s only about half as dense as it looks like it should be. And it is studded with very strange crystals. It . . .” He shook his head. “Frankly, it’s like nothing else to be found in the Autarchy. And it is only found
here
, on the edge of the mountains.” He pointed behind them, at the camp. “As well, very little of it is found as loose stones. It’s mostly found in discrete masses,
enormous
masses in some cases, like the one that has been mined in the camp for decades, but still, they’re essentially giant rocks, studding the ordinary granite and gneiss and limestone and shale like currants in a bun.”

Despite everything, Mara found herself interested. “So how do you prospect for it?” Her father, who used precious metals in making Masks, had told her some of how they were found. “I know you look for copper by keeping an eye out for colored rocks. Green, blue, or red, isn’t it?”

“Very good,” Pixot said. “Black lodestone is found the same way, except all you’re looking for is black stone.”

“But there must be lots of different kinds of black stone.”

“There are. Hence the difficulty. Most black stone is not black lodestone. And the most obvious outcroppings of black lodestone have long since been identified.”

“So why has there only ever been this one mine?”

“Because most masses of black lodestone are too small to justify a mine—or too inaccessible. Instead, whatever magic they have attracted is harvested by other means. I understand you were found in the hut of one of the magic-wells?”

Mara nodded.

“There are about a dozen of those, scattered around. They are the way magic has traditionally been gathered. Most have existed for centuries. Perhaps you could mine the rock beneath some of them, but a man would be a fool to destroy such an elegant, sure source of magic in favor of the brute-force approach being used,” he jerked his head toward his right shoulder, “back there.”

“Then why . . .” Mara looked back down the slope of the ridge to the camp. Smoke from its chimneys had turned the color of gold in the rays of the sun, just clear of the ridges to the east. It looked tranquil, pastoral, like a picturesque village where jolly matrons made smelly cheese to serve on crusty bread piping hot from the oven . . .

...an oven fueled by the bodies of dead children
, Mara thought savagely, and turned her back on the camp once more.

“Why is there even
one
mine?” Pixot said. “You would have to ask our ancestors. They began it—just scratchings—two centuries ago. Large-scale mining started in the time of the Autarch’s father, before there were Masks. Once there
were
Masks—and therefore unMasked—the Autarch hit upon the idea of using those whose Masks failed as workers. Over the decades, the mine has expanded significantly, and a good thing, too; if it were not for the mine, I fear execution would automatically follow the failure of a Mask.” Mara shot him a sharp look, but of course his white Mask remained as impassive as ever. “During its lifetime, the mine has produced vast quantities of magic. At its peak, more than all the wells put together. But that peak is long past. It produces less each year—even as the Palace’s hunger for magic grows and grows.”

Since Pixot seemed so forthcoming, Mara asked a question that had been puzzling her. “
Why
does the Palace need so much magic? My father often complained that even he, Master Maskmaker of Tamita, could barely get what he needed.”

“I have no idea,” Pixot said. “The Autarch does not tell me such things.” He leaned close to her. “Despite what I told that lump of a Watcher, I am not
quite
on such intimate terms with the Autarch as all that.”

Mara laughed.

Pixot straightened again. “In any event, we have been tasked with finding a new source of magic, a place to establish a new mine. And that has meant, over the past several years, searching these mountains summer after summer—we’re not fool enough to do it in the winter!—for another mass of black lodestone as large or larger than the one beneath the mining camp.” He glanced back at the Wardens; they had fallen back and were well out of earshot. He turned his black-and-white Mask toward Mara again and leaned over. “Turpit and I believe we may have found just such a mass. But
we
do not have the Gift. And the Palace has been reluctant to send us anyone who does . . . again, for reasons that are mysterious to me.” Although there was something about the way he said that that made Mara think they perhaps weren’t as mysterious as he wanted to let on. “Which is why the, if I may use the term,
miraculous
fact you retain your Gift even after a failed Masking makes you so important to our endeavors.”

Mara said nothing for a moment, mainly because they had reached the top of the ridge and had now started to descend the other side, down a narrow, back-and-forth trail, and the change in slope had been abrupt enough to make her clutch at the mule’s reins. At least she
had
reins this time, unlike the last time, and proper stirrups, too, although since she’d never ridden an animal in her life until she’d been captured she couldn’t decide if the reins were a good thing or not. What if she did something wrong and the mule galloped off with her and jumped off a cliff?

Although, to be honest, the mule seemed pretty much impervious to anything she did, trudging along in the wake of Turpit’s horse without doing more than flicking an occasional irritated ear in her direction, as though she were an annoying insect it had no choice but to tolerate for the moment.

“The Warden said something about a small space I’ll have to squeeze into . . . ?” With the narrowing of the trail, Pixot had fallen back, so she was talking to him over her shoulder.

“Yes,” he said. “I’m afraid that’s true. We see degraded black lodestone on the surface, but when it’s as broken down as this is, it’s impossible to tell how attractive it has been for magic. Fortunately, there’s a natural opening, a narrow crevasse, which we think will provide access to the main body of the stone.”

“Couldn’t you just dig into it? Open it up?” Mara said. “Isn’t that what you would have done if I hadn’t come along?”

“Possibly,” Pixot said. “But the location is difficult. Bringing up men and equipment would be time-consuming and expensive, and the mountainside above the opening appears unstable. We fear any attempt to widen the opening might cause a major rockslide. The risk will be worth it if the deposit proves rich enough in magic: even if the rock face collapses during mining it would be cost-effective to clear it afterward. But while there is still a risk that the lodestone deposit is worthless, we’d rather avoid that.” He laughed. “Plus, I don’t want to be anywhere near it if it
does
come down!”

And yet you’re sending
me
into it?
Mara thought, temper rising. “Well, if it happens to ‘come down’ while I’m
under
it, be sure to tell my parents I died for a good cause,” she snapped. “Black rock!”

“Mara—”

Mara ignored him after that. Now that they were in single file, it was easier.

They reached the bottom of that first ridge and started up the ridge beyond. The pattern repeated itself all day, each ridge higher than the last. Late in the afternoon they splashed through a shallow river easily a hundred feet across. A couple of hours later, as the sky darkened, they were on the forested lower slopes of the first of the giant mountains, its high peak still pink from the setting sun, long since hidden from them by the hills to the west.

They made camp in a clearing near an icy stream that tumbled down from high above. Although the long canvas bundles of tents hung from some of the horses and mules, the Watchers didn’t bother pitching them, since no clouds threatened. Instead, they spread out their bedrolls on the forest litter and slept under the open sky, Mara with her feet shackled. She lay awake for a long time, staring at the stars, so much brighter and more plentiful than they were in Tamita, listening to the night wind sighing through the trees, hoping she might also hear the sound of unMasked Army scouts creeping up on the camp; but in the end she slept, only to be shaken awake, far too soon, in the bitterly cold gray predawn light, chilled, stiff, and singularly un-rescued.