Faces (27 page)

I wonder if there are answers in those scrolls the Lady guarded so jealously
, she thought suddenly.
If we survive this, and I can get back north, I must have those.

She put the thought aside. The possibility of it coming to pass seemed remote.

She and Keltan talked about inconsequential things, mostly, laughing about memories of the weeks they'd lived in the Secret City before Mara's ill-fated journey to meet her father, the journey that had ultimately led to his death and the Secret City's destruction. They wondered what Chell's homeland of Korellia was like and how it fared in its war against Stonefell. They wondered if the Lady's villagers had reached the pass . . . and what trouble some of the unMasked from the mine might be causing them. “They weren't all innocents like you and the other girls we rescued,” Keltan said. “Some of them were as bad as Grute. Or worse.”

“Believe me, I know,” Mara said.

They camped that evening in a side fold of the valley they were following. “We're nearing more densely populated country,” Edrik said that night, speaking to the whole camp. “Scouts, keep hidden and keep your eyes open. If you see anyone, report at once. If they see you first . . . we can't allow word of our presence to get to Tamita ahead of us.”

Mara winced. It was too easy to imagine some innocent hunter in the wrong place at the wrong time paying the ultimate price. And what if they came across a farm?

She found out the next day. A scout galloped up to the column, horse lathered. “Farm ahead,” he panted. “Just out of sight around the next bend.”

Edrik swore. “I was afraid of that. More and more settlers have been spreading out from the Heartsblood in this direction. Anyone at home?”

“Woman hanging laundry in the yard,” the scout said. “Two kids playing with a dog. Farmer and an older boy out seeding.”

“We'll have to lock them up,” Edrik said. “Means losing a couple of men to guard them.”

“For how long?” Mara demanded.

“Until we succeed . . . or fail,” Edrik said. “So that's up to you.”

She sighed. “Right.”

Edrik turned in his saddle, shouted commands. A dozen men galloped away. The rest of the army followed at its usual pace.

As they rode up to the farmyard, Mara heard children crying. She spotted them a moment later, sitting against the wall of the log-cabin farmhouse, a boy about four, a girl about six, their mother between them, comforting them. Mara could not see her expression behind her plain gray Mask, but her eyes were wide with fear and bright with tears.

And then she saw the farmer, kneeling, weeping, beside his son, who must have been younger than fifteen, since he was still unMasked. He lay on blood-soaked ground gasping for breath, left arm deformed: a sword-blow had gashed his shoulder and broken his collarbone. He stared up at her, eyes wide and terrified in his white, sweat-beaded face.

An unMasked soldier turned to Edrik. She recognized him—she recognized them all, having lived in the Secret City for weeks. “I'm sorry, sir,” he said, looking stricken. “He came at me with a pitchfork, I just meant to knock it aside, I don't know how it—”

“It's all right, Pippik,” Edrik said heavily. He looked down at the farmer. “My apologies,” he said. “We didn't want to—”

“Out of my way,” Mara said, pushing him aside. She dropped to her knees beside the wounded boy. “Whiteblaze!” she called. The wolf trotted to her side. She closed her eyes, and pulled magic from him. He whined a little. Then she turned the magic blue, and poured the healing power into the boy. The body knew how it was supposed to be constructed, and that knowledge was encoded in the magic every living thing generated. With encouragement, and the power she was providing, the body could put
itself
back together.

And so it did. Under her touch, the shattered bone knit, the flesh re-formed, the skin closed. In a moment only his torn, blood-soaked tunic showed the boy had been wounded at all.

He gasped, and blinked, and tried to lift his head to look, but then moaned and flopped back again. “Easy,” Mara said. “You've lost a lot of blood. Your body needs time to replace it.”

The father gaped at her, mouth and eyes wide behind his brown Mask. “But . . . you're not a Healer. You're unMasked.” He looked up at Edrik. “You're
all
unMasked. Who are you? What's going on?”

“We're the unMasked Army,” Edrik said. “We are marching south to Tamita. We're going to overthrow the Autarch and put an end to Masks forever.”

“You're mad!”

“Quite possibly,” Edrik agreed. “I'm sorry, but I am going to have to leave you under guard to ensure you don't warn anyone. We may be deluding ourselves, but we'd like to think it's still a secret this far south.” He smiled. “Clearly
you
weren't expecting us.”

“You're not going to just . . . kill us?” the farmer's wife said. She hugged her smaller children closer. “Any of us?”

“We aren't killers,” Edrik said. “Not unless it's necessary.”

Disturbingly aware of just how often it
had
been necessary, and how much of the killing she herself had done, Mara said nothing. But as she looked down at the boy, just a little younger than herself, who was already starting to get more color in his face, she thought,
That felt good
.
Magic isn't all about death and destruction
.
I have to remember that.

But she suspected death and destruction would still figure far more prominently in her future than Healing, at least anytime soon.

Dealing with the farm cost them more than an hour, but before noon they were on their way again. The farmer had told them he was the only settler he knew of who had yet come this far east. “Mostly the new settlers go west, toward the sea,” he said. “Terrain is friendlier there and there are more roads and villages, so you can get supplies easier. It's a day's ride to the nearest village for me,” he gestured at the western hills of the valley, “over that ridge and another three or four hours beyond that.”

“What brought you out here?” Mara asked.

“Less crowded,” the farmer said. “And fewer Watchers.” He turned to Edrik. “If you can do what you say, you'll have my support. And many others'.”

“We can do what we say,” Mara said, and the farmer looked her way in surprise. She didn't blame him. Edrik had said she was in command, but it would be hard to convince anyone else of that.

When they made camp that night, Edrik called Mara to his tent. Chell was there, too. Mara hadn't seen much of him the last few days: he'd been sticking with the sailors. She suspected their morale wasn't the greatest—the only reason they were part of this force was because the Lady had coerced them. She was half-surprised some hadn't deserted, but then, where would they go? Without Masks, they could only live as bandits, and if they abandoned their fellows, they would also abandon all hope of ever returning home. “We're roughly east of where you spent the night in the farmhouse,” Edrik said. “Half a day's journey, though. And you'll have to find it yourself. That means traveling by day, which is dangerous.”

“I'm not the only one who might be able to pass as unMasked,” Mara said. “Keltan is the same age I am. He's gotten rather annoyingly tall, but he might still pass as a fourteen-year-old. He can come with me to the farmhouse. They met him, too. And he probably has a better idea of how to find it than I do.”

“My thought exactly,” Edrik said. He hesitated. “You don't think it's time to try your fake Masks, yet? As you say, Keltan
might
pass as too young to be Masked . . . but he might not. If the local Watchers are at all suspicious. . . .”

Mara shook her head. “No,” she said. “We can't use the Masks here. We'd have to disguise Keltan as a Watcher, and a lone Watcher leading a young girl would probably attract more attention from any Watchers we're unlucky enough to cross paths with than would two unMasked youngsters traveling from village to village. Watchers wouldn't have to question Keltan very long before they'd realized he's not really one of them.”

Edrik still looked unconvinced, but he shrugged all the same. “Your call. First light, then?”

Mara nodded.

“I'll send scouts out behind you for as far as they can go safely. They'll watch for your return . . . or for the Watchers that will be heading our way if you're captured.”

Mara nodded again.

“Be careful,” Chell said, the first time he'd spoken. Mara gave him a brief smile of thanks, then pushed out through the tent flap.

She found Keltan waiting in front of her tent, sitting cross-legged, idly drawing in the dirt with a broken twig by the light of the nearby cooking fires. This night they were quite close to the center of the camp. He scrambled to his feet as she approached. “What did he want? Was it what you expected?”

She nodded. “We're a few hours' ride from the farm, he figures. I'm heading to it tomorrow, first light.” She paused. He stood still, waiting, eyes fixed on her, and her mouth quirked. “And you can stop the puppy-dog eyes. Yes, you're coming with me.” She grinned. “For one thing, I couldn't find the farm on my own if my life depended on it.” Her smile faded. “Which, I guess, it does.”

“Good,” Keltan said. He held out his hand. “Then let's get something to eat.”

She let him take her hand to lead her to the fire.

It astonished her just how good that felt.

F
IRST LIGHT,
Mara reflected as she heaved her sore, tired body into the saddle the next morning, sounded way more romantic in stories than it felt in real life. And of course “first light” was getting earlier and earlier as the days lengthened toward summer, though the solstice was still some weeks away.
Why couldn't we leave at second light? Or even third?

Nobody answered her, since she was just talking to herself, so she straightened and sighed and glanced at Keltan who, like her, had just achieved upright status in his saddle.
Even the horses look sleepy and grumpy,
she thought.

“All right,” he said. “Ready?”

“Ready,” she said.

Edrik watched from nearby. “I'll give you today and tonight,” he said. “Tomorrow morning, we move on. If you are not here, you will have to catch up to us. If you don't . . . we will assume the worst.”

Mara nodded her understanding and agreement. Then she raised a hand in farewell and, with Keltan at her side and Whiteblaze ranging ahead of them, set off west.

They picked their way up the valley slope, winding through trees whose trunks had turned gold in the light of the rising sun behind them. At the top of the ridge Mara reined to a halt, then twisted in her saddle to look behind them. “Anyone could see that camp,” she said. “Tamita may already have been warned.”

“Then you'd better be right about the Autarch being too fearful to send his forces out of the city,” Keltan said.

Mara pulled her horse around and sent him trotting downhill. “Well,” she said, “It's not like there's anything we can do about it even if I'm wrong.”

She'd been thinking that a lot recently. But it was true. There was very little she could do about any of the imponderables she and the Lady had set in motion. Events now had a momentum of their own, and even deflecting them from their course would be difficult. The Watchers' main force was in the northwest of Aygrima because she had clumsily betrayed the Secret City to Stanik, the late Guardian of Security. The remnants of the unMasked Army and Chell's crews were where they were because the Lady had found another pass into the Autarchy. The Autarch did not yet know his ancient adversary was dead . . . or that Mara, the girl who had caused him so much trouble, still lived. Even if he learned of the presence of the unMasked Army, heard of the destruction of his mine of magic, he would not know that Mara still lived or the Lady was dead. He would almost certainly still be focused on the Lady as the real threat.

Which was what Mara was counting on. If she could find her way into Tamita and infiltrate the Child Guard as she planned, the Autarch might be so focused on the army that had just appeared outside his walls, thinking the Lady must be with it, that he would be less likely to notice the snake in the grass at his feet.

She frowned. She'd just called herself a snake.

Well
, she thought,
maybe it's not such a bad thing to be. Small, slithery, hard to see . . . and deadly.

Not that she would be very deadly if things went awry at the farm. She'd just be dead.

They rode down the western side of the hills, crossed another valley, crested another ridge. By that time it was almost noon, and the sun, high overhead, flooded the broad valley in front of them with light. Winding back and forth in great shining loops, the Heartsblood River flowed south toward Tamita. Farms spread out on both shores and far up the valley slopes. Directly ahead of them, a village nestled on both sides of the riverbank. Keltan nodded with satisfaction. “We're in exactly the right place. That's the village closest to the farm. Which means the farm itself is on the other side of the river . . . probably the other side of those woods over there.” He pointed. “We were riding through trees just before we happened upon it.”

“Technically, I think it happened upon us,” Mara said. “Or at least Stafin happened upon me.”

“Stafin?”

“The dog. What was the village's name again?”

“Yellowgrass,” Keltan said. “And we'll have to go through it.”

“What?” Mara shot him a startled look. “Why?”

“The farm is on the other side of the river,” Keltan said patiently. “The only bridge is in the village.”

Mara felt stupid. “Oh.”

“Kind of wish I hadn't grown so much recently,” Keltan said. He looked at her. “Can I really pass for fourteen?”

“I've seen fourteen-year-olds as big as you,” Mara said stoutly.
Just not very many
, she added silently.

“Well, I think
you're
still all right,” Keltan said, looking her up and down. “But not for much longer.” Mara raised an eyebrow, and Keltan suddenly raised his eyes and turned away. “Better keep moving,” he said. The tips of his ears were red. Laughing a little to herself, she followed him.

But her amusement died as she thought about what he'd said. She had to pass, not just for a fourteen-year-old-girl, but eventually for a teenaged
boy
, for her plan to work.

How much has Greff grown since I saw him?
she wondered.

Nothing I can do about it
, she thought yet again, and sighed.

They reached Yellowgrass in midafternoon, earning a few curious looks from Masked passersby on its main street as they clip-clopped down it after crossing the bridge. Yellowgrass was about the size of Silverthorne, Mara judged, and so of course it had Watchers. Though their black-Masked faces also turned to watch as she and Keltan rode casually through, no one shouted at them or tried to stop them. In fact, the villagers seemed far more interested in Whiteblaze than in his human companions.

Still, she didn't breathe easily until they had left Yellowgrass behind and were riding south. “I don't think we should follow the road,” Keltan said once a bend in it had put the village out of sight behind them. “We were riding closer to the river, in among the trees, when we found the farm . . . or it found you,” he added with a quick grin.

Mara nodded her agreement. They rode off the road and toward the river, and then, leaving it to their left, continued their trek.

An hour later, Keltan suddenly halted as they entered a clearing. He rose in his stirrups and looked around. The river glinted silver through the branches of a thick hedge of willows to their left. “This is where we camped until we could come get you,” he said. “I know exactly where we are now.” He pointed ahead. “The farm is only a half a mile ahead, just over that low rise.” He looked at Mara. “What are you going to say?”

“For once,” Mara said, “I'm going to tell the truth . . . or at least part of it.” She dug her heels into her horse's flanks and rode ahead, leaving Keltan to play catch-up. Which he did, of course, so that they were side-by-side as they rode into the farmyard.

Mara had fully expected Stafin, the big black dog, to rush out at them, and worried what that would mean with Whiteblaze at her side. But no barking greeted them. The little farmhouse looked unchanged, but for a horrible moment she thought it was deserted, that Filia and Jess, the couple who lived there, had abandoned it, or were away on some journey of their own. She hadn't even considered that possibility until this moment. What would she do if they weren't there?

But then the door opened, and the short round farmwoman she remembered, wearing a white Mask, stepped into the farmyard. She looked at Mara and Keltan, and her eyes widened. “Well, I never . . . ! Prella? Is that you?”

Right
, Mara thought.
I'd almost forgotten I borrowed Prella's name last time
. “Hi, Filia. Yes, it's me.”

“And your brother, too. My, how you've both grown.”

Mara felt an unexpected lump in her throat. Nobody had measured her since the week before her Masking, when her mother had stood her against a whitewashed beam in the kitchen and marked her height with a stroke of charcoal from the fire. “Kids do that,” she said.

Filia laughed. “They certainly do. Greff . . .” Her voice trailed off. “Well, anyway,” she said. “What a pleasant surprise!” Then her face grew confused. “But . . . why aren't you Masked? You said you were only a couple of months away from your fifteenth birthday . . .”

“I lied,” Mara said, telling the truth for just an instant before lying again. “I was afraid I'd get in trouble if you knew how young I really was. I'm sorry.”

“Oh, pish-tush,” Filia said. “Water under the bridge. Well, come in, come in. Jess is down by the river.”

Mara slid from her saddle. There was a pile of hay and a water trough, and a handy hitching post, in one corner of the courtyard: she led the beast over there and looped the reins around the post, and he bent his head to eat. While Keltan followed suit, she returned to Filia. “Is Stafin with Jess?” she said. She dropped a hand to Whiteblaze's head. “I was worried about what would happen when he got a look at my Whiteblaze.”

Filia's face fell. “Stafin died just before spring,” she said sadly. “We need to get a new dog, but we haven't had the heart yet.”

“Died how?” Mara said.

“I don't like to say . . .” Filia looked around, as if someone would overhear, then said in a low voice, “. . . but if you must know . . . it was a Watcher.”

“A Watcher?” Keltan had rejoined Mara.

“Came into the yard just like you did that winter morning. Bit later, though—the sun was almost up. Well, you know what Stafin was like. He came bounding out barking his fool head off. We thought it was a good thing to have a dog like that. Bandits don't come down here very often, but there was a farm burned out west of here just a year ago . . . well. The Watcher's horse reared, almost threw him. And the Watcher ordered us to tie Stafin up . . . and then he shot the poor dog with his crossbow.” Though her Mask hid her expression, her voice was strained. “Nothing we could do, of course. You don't cross Watchers. 'Specially not that lot in Yellowgrass. They like to flex their muscle a bit too much, if you know what I mean.”

“I know exactly what you mean,” Mara said, and Keltan shot her a glance, as if he were wondering if she were talking about her own experience with Watchers . . . or her own power.
Or maybe he's not thinking anything of the sort
, she chided herself. You're
the one that's thinking it.

Sometimes she thought she did too much thinking.

“I'm so sorry,” she added.

“Well,” said Filia. “Nothing to be done about it.” She stepped to one side. “Won't you come in?”

They followed her into the farm kitchen. Mara looked around, remembering the night they had brought her into it to tend her wounds after she'd fallen from her horse. Filia took off her Mask and set it casually aside, then put a kettle on the fire. “I have some lovely herbal tea a lady in Yellowgrass blends for me . . . will you have a cup?”

While they waited for the water to boil, she brought out a plate of molasses cookies, and Keltan and Mara sat there and nibbled them (Mara thought they were excellent, though of course not as good as her mother used to make), and Mara very carefully did not say what she had come to say. Not yet.

“Now, then,” Filia said. “How old are you really? Don't lie, this time.” She smiled as she said it to take the sting from her words. “Masking must really be close, now, isn't it?”

I won't get a better opening than that,
Mara thought. “Well, Filia,” she said carefully, “despite what I said in the yard, the truth is we
aren't
younger than I claimed last time . . . we're actually older.”

Filia blinked. “What? But that would mean you're . . .” Her voice trailed off.

“Exactly,” Mara said. “We'll both be sixteen this fall. Keltan has never been Masked. And my Masking failed.” She took another bite of the cookie. “These are really very good.”

Filia stared at her, wide-eyed. Then she burst out laughing. “You're joking! I admit, you had me going for a minute.”

“No,” Mara said steadily. “I'm not joking. Nor am I lying. For once, I'm telling you the truth.”

Filia's face turned white and she stumbled to her feet. “Get out,” she whispered. “You have to get out!” She shot a horrified glance at her Mask. “It could shatter—”

“No,” Mara said. “It won't.” She'd been planning for this since the moment they'd sat down. She got up and went over to Filia's Mask. This time the work was easier than it had been with Herella's Mask. Drawing a modicum of magic from Whiteblaze, she had no trouble seeing Herella's soulprint glowing through the clay of the simple Mask. She froze it as it was. No matter what Herella thought or did now, that soulprint would not change. Her Mask could no longer betray her.

Mara straightened and took a deep breath. “It's done,” she said.