Mask of Shadows (Untitled #1)(7)

Erlend’s lords realized their mistake too late but not too late to save themselves and ruin Nacea.

I dreamed of a family I couldn’t recognize in death, of neighbors’ faces stitched into a patchwork of skin. There’d been no help, no aid, and no memorials. We’d been forgotten.

I would make Erlend remember.

“Lady, help me.” I tilted my head to the sunny sky, looking to where The Lady’s stars would be tonight.

There was no room for gods in a world of monsters and monstrous men, but tradition endured.

“She’s helping herself.” My neighbor in the carriage waved a freshly calloused hand toward the horizon. He was new to hunger, clinging to the family crest around his neck that would fetch plenty if he sold it. Runes decorated his arms. An old out-of-work mage. “A shadow on Erlend’s rising sun.”

An Erlend mage who thought I was speaking of Our Queen.

I scowled. The wagon I was taking to Willowknot collected people at each turn, and my seat was more knees and elbows than wood. Grell’s hand, wrapped in three old sacks and perfumed linen, was wedged under my thighs. I’d no space to stretch and no patience for asses.

“Did you see the shadows?” I asked. Our Queen’s palace was built over the ruins of the old mages’ keep on the defunct border between Erlend and Alona. They were one nation now and had no reason for the school with magic gone. She’d been Head Priestess of the Mind before the war. The other two head priests had created the shadows. She’d tried them as war criminals after Rodolfo was done with them, but the gallows were a faster death than they’d deserved.

I liked Rodolfo’s methods more—a taste of their own treatment and no Erlends left who could spread the knowledge of shadow creation. He’d died to save us all from the threat of shadows ever returning.

“Lies.” The old mage spat out of the carriage. “People afraid of their own damned shadows, afraid of going to war, afraid of protecting what we’d built. And look at the trash that rose from our ruin.”

I clucked my tongue. Wooden spires loomed over the roofs and battlements, and sunlight sparkled in the stained glass windows circling the towers. Walls of glass dyed blue and gold glinted with each jerk of the wagon. The new Igna flag fluttered over every peak.

“And look at the trash Our Queen hasn’t claimed,” I said as I lurched to my feet and yanked my bag from the floor, whacking him with Grell’s hand. “When will her Left Hand reach for you?”

He paled. As the carriage came to a halt, I rushed away from him and laughed the rest of my walk to Willowknot.

A collection of guards shuffled through travel papers and checked bags at the city gates. I unwound the linen from Grell’s hand. Might as well be upfront with it.

The line of people scattered. Grell’s hand reeked, flowers and perfume barely clinging to his rotten fingers.

“How do I declare this?” I asked, holding it up.

“Drop it.” A guard, pink cheeks fading to pale green, leveled his spear at my chest. “Tell me your name.”

“No, it’ll splatter. My name’s Sal.” I held my arms out as far as I could and flipped back my hood, dirty strands of black hair falling across my eyes. Should’ve sheared it again before I left. “It’s my invitation.”

“Take a break, Hackett. They’re here for the Left Hand auditions.” Another guard nudged the spear away from me and prodded Grell’s hand with a gloved finger, chuckling the entire time. “You got an actual invitation or just the hand?”

“Just the hand.” I shrugged. “Poster said invitation or proof of skill.”

Grell’s warrant included a handprint taken when he’d been arrested a few years back, all his identifiable scars immortalized in ink on the posters. They even listed the tattoos around his knuckles.

The too-small signet ring on his middle finger wasn’t on the posters, but he’d gotten it after the arrest and had never been able to slide it over his knuckle again. If the handprints and posters weren’t enough, it was.

“Who’s this then?” the guard asked, shoving Hackett aside before he could vomit on our boots. “Most folks bring heads.”

“Grell da Sousa from Kursk. I wasn’t going to travel for days with a rotting head, and his warrant description includes his hands.”

“Gang leaders fetch a pretty pearl, but Ruby’s been rough with the uninvited this year. There’s more of you than usual, and they already got eight invitees. You got anything else?” He tossed a handkerchief to Hackett and rapped hard on the gate. “Another one for the auditions!”

“Only knives and the hand.” I pulled on my old mask and yanked my hood back onto my head.

The guard beckoned me through a short door in the gate, steps leading down into a well-worn tunnel beneath the city. No room for thieves and killers on the public streets of our new capital. “You travel light.”

I’d given up everything else. It would’ve only dragged me down.





Five


Ruby’s face was a beacon of red among the black-clothed auditioners. His mask glowed in the sunlight and cast flickers of red across the ground. He’d no visible eyes or nose, only a single smiling slit that split his cheeks from ear to ear. The gap was dark with metal mesh.

I knew there were eyeholes—he had to see somehow—but when his eyeless face turned to me, I shuddered.