Shadows (12 page)

It seemed a ludicrous hope.

So what?
she thought defiantly.
Before I stopped that explosion, I would have thought
that
was impossible.

Without a word to her, the Masker went to the basin. He turned to face her, his eyes sparkling behind his yellow Mask with the reflected light of the lamps hung at regular intervals around the circular room. He locked those eyes on her face. Then he reached out and lifted the lid of the basin . . .

Mara gasped, her throat closing on the sound so that it came out as a strangled sob: for she saw nothing.
Nothing
. Not a glimmer of light, not a gleam of color: only blank, black stone.

The Masker nodded once, and replaced the lid. “You saw no magic,” he said. “I could see it in your eyes. The Watcher's block continues to work.”

“I didn't even know you
could
block the Gift,” Mara said. Her voice sounded sullen and defeated in her own ears. There was magic in that basin, magic she could use without fear of becoming a monster . . . and she could no more see or shape it than . . . than Keltan could.

“It is not something that is widely known,” said the Masker. “But it is, obviously, an important ability for a Watcher to have, since they must occasionally arrest those who have some measure of the Gift.” He studied her. “I think you had better sit down for this next bit.” He indicated one of a row of four chairs set haphazardly against the wall, as though they had been hastily pushed out of the way. She sat where she was told. “You may feel dizzy,” he said, as he turned back to the basin. He removed the lid once more, reached in with both hands, and turned and came back to her with his hands outstretched. To Mara, they looked bare, though she knew they must be coated with magic.
So
this
is what it means to be unGifted.
She didn't like it. And then she thought of Prella and Alita, who had also been Gifted, but whose Gifts had died when their Masks shattered, and felt ashamed of how little sympathy she had had for them.
I didn't understand
, she thought.
I didn't understand how horrible that would be . . .

And then what the Masker had said registered. “Dizzy?” she said. “Why should I—”

He reached out and took hold of her head, placing his hands on her temples. Pain ripped through her skull, the room whirled around her, and then everything went black.

When she came to, she was sitting on the floor and leaning up against the wall, the Masker standing over her. The chair she had been sitting in lay on its side. Her left elbow hurt. The Masker's Mask had the same expression as always, of course, but his voice, when he spoke, was shaken. “Are you all right?”

“What . . .” Mara's throat was dry. She swallowed hard a couple of times, and finally managed to croak out, “What happened?”

“I've never seen that reaction before,” said the Masker. “Your Gift . . . it's strong. Very strong.” He hesitated for a moment. “I think . . .” He turned and went to the door. Opening it, he said to the Watcher outside, “Fetch the Mistress of Magic.”

“My orders are to stand guard here—”

“Do as I say,” the Masker snapped. “I'll take responsibility for the change in your orders. Fetch the Mistress of Magic. Fetch her
now
!”

A pause. “Very well,” growled the Watcher, then strode away.

The Masker came back to Mara, who still felt no inclination to get up, what with the room spinning slowly around her. It took most of her willpower just to keep from throwing up.
I threw up at the Masker's feet the day of my Masking
, she thought distantly.
He'd hate me if I did it again . . .

The Masker righted the chair she had fallen from and sat in it, leaning over her. “Listen to me,” he said swiftly, voice low and sharp. “We have only minutes before the Mistress of Magic arrives, and your life may hang in the balance. You have a powerful Gift, a rare Gift, the ability to see and use all colors of magic . . . but you are unMasked. And you escaped the mining camp. The Autarch will order you executed unless you can convince him you will use your Gift in his service. And that means you must first convince the Mistress of Magic.” He touched his yellow Mask, whose calm smile belied the urgency of the words spoken through the hole of its mouth. “You must swear to serve the Autarch. Swear it with all your heart. Swear it and mean it when you swear it. If the Mistress of Magic has any doubt . . . then you will leave the Palace the same way you came in: Traitors' Gate. But you will not go far.” He leaned close and spoke in a voice barely above a whisper. “But remember this: the magic of the Masks has already rejected you . . . and that means the Mistress of Magic cannot use magic to determine if you swear true. The magic of truth-testing and the magic of the Mask are one and the same, and you are immune to both.”

Mara stared at him. “What? But . . . why are you telling me this? Your Mask . . .”

“
I am telling you to serve the Autarch
,” said the Masker, low and fast and hard. “Why should the Mask question that? As for the other . . . you can thank your father for that.”

“My . . . father?”

“He is the Master Maskmaker. We have worked closely together for many years. I count him as a friend. I would not see his only daughter hanging outside Traitors' Gate.”

Mara struggled to sit up—and winced; more than just her elbow, the whole left side of her body felt bruised after the fall from the chair. “Please,” she said urgently. “Please . . . don't tell my father I'm here. Don't tell him I'm a prisoner in the Palace. I don't . . . he shouldn't have to go through that. He can't do anything, and he's already lost me once.”

The Masker studied her for a moment. “I will not tell him,” he said at last. “But I do not know what the Mistress of Magic or the Autarch might do.”

“I understand,” Mara said. She swallowed, her gorge rising. “I . . . excuse me . . .” She turned her head, and threw up all over the white stones.

When she had brought up everything that was left of that wonderful breakfast she'd been served by Stanik's secretary, she leaned her head back against the cold stone and closed her eyes. “Sorry,” she mumbled. “Sorry for the mess . . .”

“You are not the first to vomit in this chamber,” said the Masker. “Nor will you be the last. I'll summon a servant.”

She didn't open her eyes, so she didn't see how he did it, but a few minutes later a young girl, not yet Masked, bustled in and silently cleaned up the mess with rags, mop, and pail. Mara gave her a weak smile. “Sorry,” she said again.

The girl looked frightened at being spoken to. She put her head down and finished the job at breakneck speed, then scurried out without a word. The Masker shut the door behind her. Mara closed her eyes again and waited for the Mistress of Magic to arrive.

She must have slipped back into semiconsciousness, for no time at all seemed to have passed before someone else stood over her. She blinked at more painted nails, these a glimmering green and belonging to far more slender toes than the rather blocky appendages of the Masker, and then looked up past the hem of a green robe to a Mask of a kind she had never seen before, though her father might well have made it: it appeared to have been carved intact from a giant crystal, so that its glittering surface was all sharp angles that cast back the lamplight in glimmering rainbows. She squinted: she found it strangely hard to look at, hard to even see it as a face. “I must Test her myself,” said a feminine voice, hard and sharp as the crystal of the Mask from which it issued.

“Mistress,” said the Masker, “I object. I am fully confident in the results of my—”

“I said I will Test her myself,” the woman snapped. “Get her up.”

The Masker shook his head. “Best to let her stay there,” he said, his own voice cold with disapproval. “She passed out when I Tested her the first time. Again, and so soon—I cannot be responsible.”

“I can,” said the woman. “Uncover the basin.”

Mara watched, feeling oddly detached, as the Masker removed the wooden lid from the basin. The Mistress of Magic plunged her hands into the black stone bowl, then turned back toward Mara. Once again, she could see nothing. But as the crystal-Masked woman approached her with hands outstretched, she suddenly realized what was about to happen, and tried to struggle up. “No!” she gasped. “No, please—”

The Mistress of Magic came inexorably on. She touched the sides of Mara's head. And Mara, who had once blown apart the head of a boy trying to rape her, discovered, as near as made no difference, what it was like to be on the receiving end of such magic. White fire flashed and agony shredded her thoughts. She felt her back arch, felt her mouth stretch achingly wide in a scream that could not escape from lungs frozen in the act of taking breath, felt her arms and legs and fingers snap rigid as iron rods, felt the back of her head crack against the stone wall . . .

...and then, blessedly, felt nothing at all, as she fell into oblivion.

Before the Sun Throne

M
ARA WOKE, and was rather surprised by that fact as she remembered what had plunged her into unconsciousness.
I'm so glad I'm Gifted
, she thought as she scraped sandpaper-lined lids open over itching eyeballs.
Every day brings another wonderful new experience.

At first her eyes wouldn't focus, and were so gummy anyway that everything around her seemed shrouded in a gray fog. She blinked hard, blinked again, and finally managed to clear her vision enough to make out a dark-beamed plaster ceiling that she didn't recognize. She looked right, and saw two empty beds between her and a white plaster wall; looked left, and saw three more. She looked down the length of the blue blanket that covered her past the lump of her toes to a closed door of simple wooden planks.

Beneath the blanket (she lifted it to check) she wore only a thin white shift.
Great
, she thought.
Who undressed me
this
time? The Masker? The Watcher?

She shuddered and took another look around. There were small tables between the beds, and on the bed to her left, clothes were spread . . . for her, she hoped, though they weren't the ones she'd been wearing. And at the end of the hall she saw a young woman seated in a chair, reading a book bound in blue leather. “Hello?” she croaked.

The woman's head came up sharply. She wore the blue Mask of a Gifted Healer. “Well, hello!” she said cheerfully. “I
thought
you'd wake up this afternoon. Nothing really wrong with you, after all. Just simple magic shock.” She put down her book and came to Mara's bedside, sitting on the next bed over. “How are you feeling?”

Mara considered that question. “Um . . . all right. I guess.” At least her head didn't hurt any more. “What did you call it? Magic shock?”

“Kind of an all-purpose description,” the Healer said. “Too much magic running through your brain . . . not good. Even when you're Gifted. Worse when you're not. And probably worst of all when you're Gifted, and under a Watcher's block.” She shook her head. “Don't know what they were thinking of, putting you through that
twice
,” she said. “Lucky they didn't kill you. But, here you are!”

Lucky
, Mara thought.
That's me. So lucky . . .
“So . . . what happens next?”

“What happens next,” said the Healer, “is you drink the restorative I've had ready for you for the last four hours, waiting for you to wake up. And then you sleep. After that . . .” She shrugged. “After that, I tell the Masker and the Mistress of Magic that you can be released. And then you are no longer my concern.”

Mara licked dry lips and nodded.

The restorative, she was pretty sure from its dark-green appearance, was the same brewed first by Grelda and later by Ethelda back at the Secret City, the first time she had ended up in a Healer's Hall suffering from . . . well, Grelda hadn't called it “magic shock,” she had called it “a surfeit of magic,” but clearly it was the same thing. She had drunk the potion many times since.

But there was a difference this time. Before, her Gift had been operating. Now . . .

Now, she was clearly still blocked, because the restorative, which always before had smelled heavenly to her, now smelled like . . . well, Grelda had compared it to the sickroom chamber pot after a week's run of sourbelly, and though Mara had no personal experience of what that smelled like, she suspected that might well understate the awfulness of the aroma. She gagged as the Healer held out a full cup.

“Drink it,” the Healer said severely. “
All
of it. I know it may not seem appetizing, but the effect is the same, no matter what it smells . . . or tastes . . . like.”

“Tastes?” Mara said in despair, but she had faced worse trials in the past few months and so she took a deep breath (to one side, to avoid smelling the concoction too closely), and then drained the cup.

She choked with disgust, and for a moment thought the contents would be coming right back up again, but suddenly a sense of well-being flooded her. She sighed, a huge sigh of relief, and grinned at the Healer. “Thanks,” she said.

“My pleasure,” said the Healer. “Now, sleep.” She frowned. “Hopefully without screaming this time?”

Mara couldn't promise that, and the reminder of what might await her in sleep did nothing to ease her into rest, but the restorative did. She slept within moments.

If she screamed, the Healer did not tell her about it when she woke. Of course, when she woke, she almost screamed anyway, because the Mistress of Magic's crystalline Mask was only inches from her face. She gasped and jerked her head back deeper into the pillow.

The Mistress of Magic straightened. Beside her stood the Masker. He held a wooden tray in both hands, bearing a small object covered with blue cloth. “No need to shake her awake after all, I think,” he said dryly.

The Mistress of Magic laughed, a pleasant sound that surprised Mara, who had been thinking of her as more a cold-blooded reptile than an actual person. “I think you're right.” The laughter died. “The Watcher's block will wear off soon. Best get it done.”

The Masker nodded. He put the tray down on the table beside Mara's bed. Mara followed it with her eyes. He pulled away the cloth, and she gasped. The object on the tray was a Mask, but not a Mask such as she had ever seen before. It appeared to be made of dark iron, a material she had never seen her father use, and it was only a half-Mask, one that would cover the eyes and the bridge of the nose and leave all else exposed: which meant it wasn't a true Mask at all, but something else.

Something clearly meant for her. The Masker lifted it and brought it toward her face. She shrank back, but of course had nowhere to go; she jerked her face away, but the Mistress of Magic simply came around to the other side of her bed and forced her head around again.

The iron Mask descended, touched her skin. She held her breath, waiting for that horrible squirming sensation she had felt from the real Mask her father had made for her—made so that it would fail and she would be forced into exile—but this Mask did not move. It simply . . . clung. Cold at first, it warmed quickly.

The Mistress of Magic released Mara's head. She flung it to one side, instinctively, trying to throw the strange iron Mask from her face, but it did not budge. One thing, at least, it shared with a real Mask: it felt light as a second skin on her face, despite being made of metal.

“Peace, girl,” said the Mistress of Magic sternly. “You cannot be rid of it that way. In fact, you cannot be rid of it at all. It can only be removed by someone who is Gifted
and
has the knowledge of how to do it.”

“I don't understand!” Mara raised a hand to touch the pitted iron. “What's it for?”

The Masker responded. “You cannot remain under the Watcher's block forever; it wears off within a day or so, as your Gift finds a way to work around it . . . rather like a wound healing. This . . .” He touched the half-Mask himself. “This is a more permanent solution. As long as you wear this, you cannot use your Gift.”

“I've never heard of such a Mask!” Mara said, horrified.

“Really?” said the Mistress of Magic coolly. “How odd. Especially since they are made for us by your father.”

Mara stared at her. The Mistress of Magic gazed steadily back, eyes glittering as though they were simply two more facets of her crystalline Mask.

“Unlike regular Masks,” the Masker said, with a glance at the Mistress of Magic, “these are not specific to the person wearing them. They work on all Gifted. We keep a supply of them to suppress the Gifts of anyone arrested by the Watchers. The Watchers use their temporary block, then we restrain them more permanently with one of these, until their case is . . . dealt with.”

Mara thought again of the corpses hanging outside Traitors' Gate. How many of those had been Gifted? How many had gone to their death wearing nothing but one of these iron half-Masks, to keep their Gift suppressed until they were dead?

How many had gone to their deaths wearing the very Mask now clinging to her face . . .
a Mask made by her father
?

She felt sick.

“Get up, and get dressed,” the Mistress of Magic said. “You are coming with me.”

“Why?” Mara said. “Where are we going?”

The Mistress of Magic cocked her head slightly to the right. Mara could not see her face, but the tone of sardonic amusement in her voice was unmistakable. “Why, to see the Autarch, of course.”

The Masker excused himself. The Mistress of Magic waited and watched as Mara got out of bed, pulled off the white shift, and put on the clothes provided: soft white underwear, a long white dress, supple boots made of pale leather, a yellow belt.

“Much better,” said the Mistress of Magic. “You can't meet the Autarch in clothes covered with stains and patches. Now come with me.” She led Mara to the door and out into the hallway beyond, where a waiting Watcher fell in with them.

The hallway ran the length of the south wing of the Palace: the windows along the wall opposite the door through which they had emerged looked out over the Garden Courtyard. They were on the top floor, it appeared.

At the end of the hallway, they passed not through a doorway but through a splendid arch, gilded and carved in the shapes of birds and animals. Mara found herself facing a giant mirror in a golden frame, and saw herself for the first time in days.

Her hair, which she normally wore in a neat ponytail, fell in gnarled, tangled waves around her shoulders. Her brown eyes gazed at her from behind the cruel-looking iron Mask, like the eyes of an animal in a cage, and beneath it her lips had a bruised, frail look in the sickly pale skin of her face. She stared at herself for a moment, amazed and horrified to be standing in this place at this time. Then the Watcher and the Mistress of Magic turned her left, away from the mirror, and took her a short distance to a flight of stairs that wound down four flights to the main floor of the west wing.

At the bottom of the stairwell they emerged into the grandest corridor she had yet seen, all gold-and-white marble, although it did not run the entire length of the wing, being interrupted by a wall behind which, Mara supposed, must be the main entranceway through the golden gates she had seen from the Garden Courtyard. They turned left down a slightly narrower but still grand hallway, which some distance along emerged into a vast entryway with a broad staircase climbing up to high windows and splitting into two more staircases that climbed still higher. Various Palace functionaries scurried through the space on unknown errands they clearly felt were of vital import. Most wore the white, gray, or beige Masks of the unGifted, their particular skills indicated by inlayed patterns: a black scroll, golden fruit, and in one notable instance radiating starbursts of diamonds. Mara took special note of that one, because the woman who wore it turned her head sharply as they entered the foyer, took one look at Mara's iron prisoner's Mask, and then hurried away as though Mara had a fatal illness.

Which I might, if the Autarch decrees it
.

They climbed the staircase, turned, and then climbed some more, coming eventually to a broad landing where two massive golden doors stood wide open: and then, at last, Mara was escorted into the presence of the Autarch.

The throne room was two stories tall, with a high, vaulted roof whose golden beams were supported by twin rows of fluted pillars carved of white marble. The floor, too, shone white, while the walls to Mara's right and left, like the beams overhead, gleamed golden.

On a golden throne atop a raised white dais sat the Autarch himself, wearing the golden Mask Mara had last seen from the wall of the city several years before, as the Autarch rode through the Outside Market. Nothing of the man beneath the Mask could be seen: though the Mask had a mouth opening, golden mesh screened it. The Autarch wore white robes belted with gold, white gloves, white boots. A white hood hid his hair . . . if he had any.

Above the Sun Throne, the Autarch's Mask was repeated on a grand scale, the eyes glowing yellow, lit from behind by the enormous window that made up most of the throne room's eastern wall. Sunburst rays of gold, each ten feet long or more, spread out from the giant Mask. Close to the throne, within easy reach of the Autarch, a large basin of black stone stood on a golden pillar: no doubt filled with magic, though it looked empty to Mara while she wore the iron Mask.

Arranged around the Autarch, seated on cushions spread on the steps of the dais, were the twelve members of the Child Guard. Each sat absolutely still, knees together, hands clasped. Like the Autarch, they wore white, but their Masks were silver. Their loose robes and their Masks made it impossible to tell which were boys and which were girls.

Mara wondered what she would feel in the room if she were not imprisoned behind the iron Mask. Would she sense the magic the Autarch drew from the living bodies of those boys and girls, the magic Ethelda believed he needed to ward off the ravages of advancing age; the magic to which he was addicted, as surely as a drunk was addicted to the bottle?