Faces (10 page)

“You're following Catilla's orders,” Mara said. “I heard her telling you something. I heard you say, ‘I will.' She's using you, Keltan. Using you to get to me, because I'm the one she really wants to use. She wants my power under her command.” Mara poked him in the chest. “But I'm not going to be used anymore by anyone, Keltan. I'm my own mistress. And I have decided—
of my own free will
—to help the Lady. Together we're going to destroy the Autarch. We're going to make him pay for all the deaths. For my father. For Tishka. For Ethelda. For Simona. For all those unMasked children sentenced to the mines. And you can either help us, or you can stay out of my sight.” She poked him again, harder. “Or both.”

She could feel his own anger now, feel it in the magic within him. “You're wrong, Mara,” he said. “Yes, Catilla asked me to warn you about Arilla. But I would have done it anyway. Because I love you.” His voice turned bitter. “I thought the feeling was mutual.” He pushed past her and strode away toward the tents of the unMasked Army. Just for an instant she was so furious at him that she wanted to reach out and yank on the magic inside him, force him to come back and apologize.

But instead she let him go.
And that
proves
he's wrong
, she thought furiously.
I
can
control this. The Lady has taught me how.

And then she realized what he'd said.
I love you.
Had he meant it?

She wanted to believe him. A part of her wanted to shout after him, “Of course I love you!” But she said nothing, instead watching him go without speaking, holding her fists clenched at her sides. Because she couldn't be sure. And the reason she couldn't be sure was the memory of that murmur from Catilla, telling him to do
something
 . . . something he had agreed to do. Did he really love her, or was he just doing what Catilla had told him to do, trying to turn her from the Lady, trying to return her to Catilla's control?

Keltan still wants to portray the Lady as a monster—because that's what Catilla wants. She's jockeying for power, hoping to seize control of Aygrima herself once Arilla has destroyed the Autarch. She's hoping to turn me against the Lady. She probably thinks she can outmaneuver me more easily than she can Arilla.

But she's wrong.
She turned and looked south along the village wall, toward the towering peaks of the mountains, still capped with deep snow, which separated them from the Autarchy. Keltan had accomplished the exact opposite of what Catilla wanted. She had her own doubts about the Lady's methods, but none whatsoever about Arilla's burning desire to destroy the Autarch: a desire Mara shared with every fiber of her being.

She headed toward the gate. She would return to the palace, and resume her training, and when the time came, she would do what the Lady needed done to allow them to enter Aygrima and throw down its ruler.

Nobody is ever manipulating me again,
she thought
. I make my own choice.

And I choose the side of the Lady.

A
WEEK LATER
Mara and the Lady stood together in a workshop achingly like her father's, looking down at the plain white Mask Mara had just crafted. It was the fifth in a row she had made successfully. She already knew the skills of decorating the Masks—she had learned that from her father before her failed Masking—and so knew she could make a Mask
visually
indistinguishable from those made by true Maskmakers. But although the Lady said these would also stand up to the scrutiny of a Watcher, it would be terrifying to trust someone's life—or her own—to that untested ability. She hoped the Lady's plan would not require it . . . not that the Lady had told her what her plan was. “Well done,” the Lady said now. “You have made great progress in the few weeks you have been here, Mara. I think we can move as soon as we want.”

“Move?” Mara said.

“Into Aygrima,” the Lady said. “As soon as the passes are cleared, we march south. I will invite Catilla and Chell to dinner this very evening.” She smiled. “Tonight, at long last . . . we make plans to destroy the Autarch.”

Now it was Mara's turn to smile. “I can't wait.”

But of course she still had to. Messages needed to be sent to Catilla and Chell, and it was hours until suppertime. Mara spent the time practicing with ordinary magic and with Whiteblaze.

The sun touched the horizon at last, and Mara, accompanied by Whiteblaze, went down to the lift chamber to welcome the arrivals. The Lady would not be there. She had tasked Mara with the chore because, she said, they would be anxious to see her and far less anxious to see the Lady. “I have it on good authority,” Arilla had said, “that I can be intimidating.”

Mara had laughed. “Just a little.”

But the truth was, Mara was the one feeling a little intimidated as she stood by the creaking lift, awaiting the imminent arrival of the delegation from below. She took a deep breath. She wasn't the frightened and confused girl who had arrived at the Secret City half a year before. She had seen and done terrible things. She had grown in power and, more importantly, in control of that power. She no longer feared she was a monster. She was strong. She was brave. She was . . .

She was breathing way too fast and her heart was racing. Whiteblaze looked up at her and whined, and she put her left hand on his furry head. He made a soft “woof” of contentment, and her heart slowed. She could do this.

With her right hand she pushed aside a strand of hair that had escaped the rather elaborate bun Valia had created that was held in place with jeweled pins. Then she smoothed the front of her blue-gray dress, bound round with a belt of broad silver links, likewise smoothed her expression, and, left hand on Whiteblaze's head, waited.

Heads appeared. For the first time in weeks, Mara saw the people who had once seemed so central to her life. Accompanied by a guard, they stepped off the still-moving platform into the fortress, just as Mara had weeks earlier.

Catilla, who wore a black cape over a black dress and carried a cane of pale blond wood, saw Mara at once. Her eyes blazed as brightly as ever. She looked far stronger than the last time Mara had seen her, when her body had still been recovering from the ravages of the cancer that Ethelda had Healed. What she didn't look was any friendlier. Her brows knit together in a ferocious frown.

With her was Edrik, wearing simple brown pants and a red-brown deerskin jacket showing the rabbit fur that lined it at throat and cuff. His face was unreadable as he looked at Mara, though he inclined his head slightly in greeting, after a momentary pause when he first spotted Whiteblaze.

The third individual was Captain March, commander of the two-ship flotilla that had brought Chell and his countrymen to Aygrima. He wore his Korellian naval uniform, though it now had patches on the elbows. He did not acknowledge Mara at all.

Finally, there was Prince Chell, dressed in similar fashion to Edrik. Like Edrik, his eyes widened at the sight of the wolf. They narrowed again as he looked to Mara.

She clasped the black-lodestone amulet at her breast without thinking about it, realized what she had done, and released it again. “Catilla. Edrik. Captain March. Prince Chell.”

“It's good to see you, Mara,” Chell said. “You look . . . different.”
Better
, his voice implied. She remembered again what had a good companion he had been on the journey north, how gentle he had been when she had . . .

Don't think about that
, she ordered herself.

“You look the same,” she said, doing her best to squeeze all emotion from her voice. “Please follow me. The Lady is waiting in the Great Hall.”

She led them, Whiteblaze at her side, to the stairs, moving slowly to allow Catilla to keep up. The old woman toiled up the steps one at a time, face set, but made no complaint.

The Great Hall nestled at the very center of the fortress. They entered it by way of a passage at one end separated from the hall itself by an intricately carved wooden screen. Arched over with dark beams carved in the shapes of bears and snow leopards and eagles and wolves, warmed by a central hearth where a giant fire blazed, the smoke rising through a vent high overhead, the hall could not have been more different from the refined rooms of the Autarch's Palace in Tamita. Even by the standards of the Secret City it looked rather barbaric, an impression heightened by the imposing presence of the Lady. Seated on a high-backed golden chair on the dais at the far end of the hall, wrapped in wolf fur, her hair a silver cloud around her head, tinged blood-red by the light of the fire and the torches lining the walls, she did not look like a great lady of Tamita. Not at all.

And that was even before you took in the five wolves around her feet this evening.

A small table with six chairs, one at each end and two on each side, had been erected at the bottom of the dais. Off to the right, where a door led to the kitchens, servants waited.

Whiteblaze trotted ahead to greet his fellows. Mara followed him. “Lady Arilla,” she said as she reached the dais. “Our guests have arrived.”

“They are welcome,” Arilla said. She got up from the throne-like chair and descended the dais. “Please, be seated and we will dine together.” She indicated the chairs around the table, took her own place at the head, and one by one they all sat down.

Catilla very deliberately took the chair at the far end of the table from the Lady. Mara sat at the Lady's right hand. Chell sat next to her. Edrik took his place at the right hand of his grandmother, and Captain March sat down opposite Mara.

She didn't look at Chell, keeping all her attention on the Lady.

“We have much to discuss,” Arilla said. “But we will not discuss it until we have dined.”

“Arilla—” Catilla began icily.

“Not yet, Catilla,” the Lady said firmly. “Dine. Enjoy. And
then
we will make our plans.”

“Our plans for what, Lady?” said Chell.

“All in good time, Your Highness,” the Lady said. She clapped her hands, and the servants sprang to life, bringing silver plates and goblets and utensils, plates of warm bread and bowls of butter, and flagons of wine. There were no fresh vegetables—even the Lady's magic couldn't conjure up
those
this far north at the tail end of winter—but the roast tubers in cheese sauce, the beef, freshly killed so no spices were needed beyond salt and pepper to make it delectable, and the rich dessert of candied blueberries and nuts, baked in pastry and drenched in cream, were as delicious as Mara had become accustomed to finding her meals over the past two weeks—and as the others evidently had not, since after the first bite or two they mostly ate in silence broken only by sounds of contentment.

Had the food not been as good as it was, the silence would soon have seemed oppressive. The Lady did not speak again until the last plate had been whisked away by the attentive servants. Then she folded her hands on her laps and said to Catilla, “I trust everything is well in your camp? The villagers have helped you settle?”

“Well enough,” Catilla said. “No one is starving, and if we aren't as warm as we were accustomed to in the Secret City, I cannot fault you for that.” She did not look at Mara, but Mara thought she could hear an unspoken, “But I can fault
you
,” directed at her. “But the tents will not take us through the full brunt of another winter.”

“Nor will they need to,” Arilla said. “We will build new houses through the summer. By winter's descent, everyone should be under a proper roof and warmed by a proper hearth, just as I have made sure you are already.”

Catilla inclined her head stiffly, as if her neck hurt. “I thank you for that.”

The Lady glanced at Chell and Captain March. “And your men? How do they fare?”

“They are healthy enough,” Chell said. “But they chafe against their confinement. They want to return to the ships and commence repairs.”

“Repairs?” Arilla looked amused. “You really think you can repair those broken hulks?”

“We have excellent shipwrights among our crew,” Captain March growled. “It would take many weeks of work, but from the wreckage of both ships I believe we could craft one that could be ready to sail by fall . . .
if
we were allowed to work on it.”

Arilla shook her head. “I'm afraid my answer is still no,” she said. “As I told you, I may need your men to overthrow the Autarch.”

“This is not our fight,” Captain March said. “You have no right—”

“You invaded my territory,” the Lady said softly. “I have every right.”

“I don't—”

“Quiet, Captain March,” Chell ordered. His voice was soft, but carried a tone of command Mara had only heard once or twice, and which never failed to get results.

Captain March pressed his lips closed and jerked a nod.

“Then tell me, Lady,” Chell said, smoothly picking up the thread of conversation, “how do you plan to achieve this overthrow? And if my men fight for you, will you assure me of your help in my own conflict? You know what I seek: magic and the Gifted to wield it in battle against Stonefell.” He glanced at Mara. She saw it out of the corner of her eye but didn't turn her head an iota.

“Your men
will
fight,” the Lady said. “Whether I agree to aid you or not. They have no choice.” But then she softened the harsh words with a small smile. “But I promise you, Prince Chell, that once the Autarch is overthrown and I rule Aygrima, I will look favorably upon your request and will provide what aid I can.”

For some reason Chell glanced at Mara again before saying, “I take you at your word.”

“As you should.”

“
You
will rule, Arilla?” said Catilla.

“Benevolently,” said Arilla.

“As you do here.”

“Indeed.”

Catilla pressed her lips together, but she said nothing more.

“Then perhaps,” Edrik said, “you will tell us exactly how you plan to achieve this miraculous outcome. That
is
presumably why you called us here, rather than just to show off the skill of your cooks.”

“Quite right,” the Lady said. “It is time. So . . .”

She raised her hands. Mara, alone among those in the room, saw the magic sheathing them, white light streaming to her from the wolves. Arilla flicked one finger, and the torches went out, doused by flecks of magic that darted to each like an arrow from a bow. She flicked another, and a splash of magic dimmed the fire to glowing coals.

Then she folded her hands together for a moment, concentrated, and spread them wide.

The air above the table shivered and glowed, and from the gasps of the others at the table Mara knew that they, too, could see
this
manifestation of magic: a representation of the mountains that formed Aygrima's northern border, in brilliant color and detail. “When I fled the Autarch's attack as a girl little older than Mara here, it was through a pass whose existence had been previously unexpected, because it can only be accessed by a network of caverns which—to my great good fortune—emptied into the very ravine where I made my final stand.” She flicked a finger, and a winding trail of green appeared among the miniature mountains, leading to a not-to-scale representation of the redoubt in which they were even then seated. “Those caverns are now sealed, of course, collapsed by the Autarch's final attack, but shifting a few tons of stone is a trivial problem. Either I or Mara could easily reopen the path.”

Out of the corner of her eye Mara saw the others glance at her, but she kept her own focus squarely and resolutely on the Lady.

“However, it is there, I am certain, and along the shore, that the Autarch will concentrate his forces against our potential return to Aygrima—because he does not believe there are any other routes through the mountains. Which is just what I want.” Arilla smiled. “For while examining the mountains from
this
side, I discovered . . . this.” Another flick of magic from her finger, and a blue trail appeared, far to the east of the green one, emerging right where the northern mountain range blended into the eastern one that likewise formed one of Aygrima's borders. “A
second
pass . . . well, a
potential
pass . . . far from the path along which I fled, and one that leads into Aygrima in a place where there will be no defenses. It's completely uninhabited. Our forces can move freely in Aygrima for days before the Autarch is even aware of our presence.”