Masks (30 page)

“If you’re so fearful of discovery, why would you even risk that much?” Mara said bitterly. “Am I really that valuable?”

“I judged the risk acceptable,” Edrik said. “If all went well, it would have been put down to another raid by bandits, a follow-up to the attack on the wagon. We would have made it look like a robbery, ransacking the house for food, clothing, and gold. Hopefully, they would have thought you were taken as nothing more than an incidental prize, just because you were there. And to answer your second question, my grandmother has deemed you that valuable, so, yes. You are.” He regarded her coolly. “You should be grateful.”

Mara ignored that. “But before you could try this plan . . . ?”

“You came out. We were hiding on the ridge to the north even as you rode over it.”

“Then why didn’t you attack
then
? Or that night, when we camped?”

“You didn’t seem to be in any danger,” Edrik said. “And we were curious as to where you were riding, with two Watchers, and two others who were
not
Watchers.”

Pixot and Turpit
. Mara had completely forgotten about them. “The two who aren’t Watchers, are they dead?”

“No,” Edrik said. “Imprisoned, separately. We are still debating what to do with them.”

“Don’t hurt them,” Mara said quickly. “They’re not bad men. At least Pixot isn’t. They’re just geologists.” She thought of the camp’s gold mine along the shore. “They might even be useful.”

Edrik frowned. “Geologists?” he said carefully. “I don’t know that word.”

“Rock-men,” Mara said, remembering what the Watcher had called Pixot. “They know about rocks. That’s why they were riding with us. The Warden found out that my Gift had survived. He had a use for me. He sent me out with the others to examine a find of black lodestone.”

Edrik cocked his head. “Black lodestone?”

“Like regular lodestone attracts metal, black lodestone attracts magic,” Mara explained. “Black lodestone is what they’re mining in the camp. Or to put it another way, they’re mining magic.”

Edrik blinked. “Magic? Are you sure?”

Mara nodded. “Yes. But the mine is playing out. I saw it for myself: there’s barely a trace of magic left in the rocks down below. It must take tons of stone to get enough magic to fill a single urn. But the place where we were when you rescued me . . .” She shook her head, remembering the wondrous beauty of the cavern with the underground lake, the auroras of magic swirling across the sparkling walls. “There’s magic there, all right. More magic than fills all the store halls of the Palace. Magic to make the Autarch drool.”

Edrik leaned even closer. “And now we come to it,” he said. “What happened to the Watcher?”

“You killed one,” Mara said.

Edrik made an impatient chopping motion with his hand. “Yes, yes. We shot him from up above when he stepped into the open. Once they made you go into the cave, we feared for you and decided we could wait no longer.

“But the second Watcher was smart. He figured out where we must be and stayed out of our line of fire. I signaled Hyram and Keltan and the rest waiting at the mouth of the ravine to attack. When they reached the cave, they saw the other Watcher straddling you. He had your head pulled back, he had his knife out, he was half a second from slitting your throat, and then . . .”

Edrik paused, as if waiting for a response, but Mara said nothing. She didn’t know what to say. Edrik frowned, then continued. “And then he vanished. One instant he was there. The next—gone. Nothing but dust, swirling in a sudden, powerful whirlwind centered on
you
, flat on your back in the water, face turned into the stream, not stirring; you would have drowned if Hyram and Keltan hadn’t pulled you out. You were breathing, but that was the only sign you still lived. And you were covered in fine white dust. The whole glade was covered in dust, left behind by the whirlwind.”

Dust
, Mara thought.
Covered in dust. The dry ash that was all that remained of the Watcher, burned away in the fury of the magical fire that almost burned me away, too. The same ash that was all the magic left of Grute, in the hut . . .

She shuddered. “I hope somebody gave me a bath.”

“Hyram and Keltan both volunteered,” Edrik said, and Mara’s mouth fell open. She felt herself blushing. Edrik laughed. “Don’t worry. One of the women did it instead.”

“Oh,” she said. “Good.” She forced a small laugh herself.

“Mara,” Edrik said, turning serious again. “I have to know.
What happened to that Watcher?
”

She remembered Edrik’s greedy look when she’d told him what she had done to Grute.
He’s wondering how he can use me
, she thought.
Wondering how powerful a weapon I could be against the Autarch.

To be fair, she was wondering that herself.

“Magic,” she said.

Edrik snorted. “I know that. But where did it come from? Did you bring it out of the cavern with you?”

“No,” she said. “I had a little on my hands, but not enough to . . . it was just . . . I knew he was about to kill me, I was desperate and somehow, the magic
knew
. It just
came
to me. It leaped out of the cave like a lightning bolt. It killed him.” She remembered that searing agony, the way unconsciousness had been a relief. “It almost killed
me
.”

“You have that much power?” Edrik breathed. “I’ve never . . . Mara, if we could—” He cut off as the red curtain swirled, Catilla pushing it aside as she entered, Grelda close behind her.

Edrik’s grandmother hadn’t changed in the slightest since Mara had first met her, which seemed odd, since Mara had changed so much. Had it really only been . . . what? Sixteen days? Seventeen? Mara had lost track of the time since she had met Catilla in her chamber. It seemed more like seventeen years.

Catilla’s icy blue eyes, direct and penetrating as ever, met hers. “Good,” she said softly. “Awake, alert. Undamaged. Good.”

Undamaged?
Mara thought.
What makes you so sure?

“As soon as you are up and about,” Catilla said, “we can get you started on the Masks you have promised to make. And then—”

“Grandmother,” Edrik began. “There’s something else you should—”

“No,” Mara said.

Catilla had been staring at Edrik, eyes narrowed; now her head swung toward Mara, sudden as the darting glance of a hawk. “What?”

“I will not make Masks for you,” Mara said as firmly as she could, though her voice showed an alarming tendency to waver. “I will not do what you want me to do unless you first do something for me.”

Catilla’s eyes narrowed further. “You presume—”

“I do,” Mara said. “You must do what I ask or I will not help you, with either my skill at making Masks . . . or my skill with magic.”

“
What
skill with magic?” Catilla said scornfully. “Your Gift survives. I knew that.” She glanced at the Healer, “and yes, Grelda, we should have told you so you could better treat her.” Her gaze returned to Mara. “But as I told you before, we have no magic here and without use and training, the Gift withers. Even if you have it now, you won’t much longer.”

“I don’t think her Gift is withering,” Edrik said. Catilla’s cold glare switched to him, to Mara’s relief. “Mara
claims
,” he said, with just a slight emphasis on the word, “that she has used magic twice now to slay attackers.”

Catilla’s gaze snapped back to Mara. “Explain.”

Mara took a deep breath, and once more told the tale of Grute’s messy death, and the sudden demise of the Watcher. When she had finished, Catilla said nothing for a moment; sounding, when she finally did speak, uncertain—for the first time since Mara had met her. “I have never heard of magic that could do that, outside of the history books. ‘Magic is a powerful tool for small tasks.’” She sounded as if she were reciting something she had once been told.

“Nevertheless, it happened,” Mara replied.
White dust . . .
“I didn’t mean to do it. It just . . . happened. Both times.”

“But such power: to kill at a touch, to kill
without
a touch . . .” Catilla’s face took on the same look of avaricious calculation Edrik’s had borne when he’d first heard her tale.

“I’ve done it,” Mara said. “I would not willingly do it again.” An echo of the fiery agony that had filled her when she called the magic from the cave washed over her, a flash of
Grute, naked, headless. . . .
“I don’t know what it would do to me.”

“This last time put her into a coma,” Grelda said sharply to Catilla. “One I might have pulled her out of sooner had I known it was magic-related. As a Healer—”

“Non-Gifted,” said Catilla coolly.

Grelda’s lips thinned. “Non-Gifted,” she grated, “but still a Healer, my advice to Mara is to avoid using magic at all costs. She is untrained. That makes her dangerous—to others, and to herself.”

Catilla looked at Grelda as if she would like to argue, but then nodded stiffly. “Very well,” she said. “I bow to your wisdom in these matters.”

Grelda smiled thinly. “Then there really is a first time for everything.”

Mara glanced from one to the other.
There’s a long history there
, she thought.
But are they friends, enemies, rivals, or all three?
She couldn’t tell.

Catilla turned back to Mara. “Well, then,” Catilla said. “If we cannot make use of your magical Gift, at least not yet,” she gave Grelda a look, “then all this is immaterial. Let us return to your skill at Maskmaking.”

“The reason you rescued me in the first place,” Mara said.

“Precisely,” said Catilla. “What is it you insist we do before you
deign
to help us?”

Here it comes
, Mara thought. “Edrik has convinced me,” she said, “that it is both impossible and unwise for you to destroy the mining camp.”

“Edrik is correct,” Catilla said. “When the Autarch is overthrown, the camp will cease to exist. But there is nothing to be done about it now.”

“I understand,” Mara said. Both Catilla and Edrik looked satisfied—smug, actually—but she wasn’t done yet. “I understand,” she said again, locking defiant eyes on Catilla’s, “that you cannot attack the camp and free everyone in it. But if you want my help, if you want me to make the Masks you say you so desperately need, then you will help me free one
particular
person from it.”

Catilla’s expression went cold and hard as a Mask. Edrik opened his mouth to protest, but Mara gave him no space in which to insert a word. “There is a girl in the Warden’s house. She has suffered in the mines. She has been abused in the barracks. Some of her suffering can be laid at my feet. She will suffer still more if I do not return. She is a hostage to my good behavior. And I will do nothing to help you if you do not help me free her.”

Now Catilla’s stony expression twisted into anger. “Child, you test my patience—”

“
I am not a child!
” Mara said; shouted, really, anger flooding her voice, her face turning hot. “In the eyes of the law I have not been a child since the day of my failed Masking, and whatever was left of the child I was before that died in the camp.” She held Catilla’s fierce glare with one of her own, though her heart pounded in her chest as though she had just run the length of Maskmakers’ Way. “I am the
young woman
who has the skill and knowledge to finally make your unMasked Army an army in
fact
instead of just name, to finally give you real hope of overthrowing the Autarch by giving you access to Tamita. I am the young woman whose help you need, whose help you have already killed and risked discovery to obtain, and I’m telling you now you
will not get that help
unless you help me free my friend Katia from the waking nightmare of that camp!”

Catilla’s face flushed. For a moment Mara thought the old woman would slap her. But then Edrik spoke, surprising her. “Grandmother,” he said, “we already had plans for rescuing Mara. Perhaps we could adapt them to free her friend?”

Thank you, Edrik
, Mara thought, as Catilla’s dagger-like gaze sliced toward him. She stared at him for a long moment, but he, too, held his ground. Finally she snorted. “Very well,” she snapped. “We will attempt it.” She looked back to Mara. “But only on one condition of my own,” she added in a growl.

Uh-oh
, Mara thought. “What?”

Catilla stepped closer, her fierce gaze unwavering. “That you not only help us with the making of the Masks, you promise to serve the unMasked Army with your Gift, once you have learned to control it.”

“How can I promise that?” Mara protested. “I don’t even know that I
can
control my Gift.” That white-hot blaze of power, that burning agony, the hallucinations . . . She shuddered.

“Let me worry about that,” Catilla said. “Give me your word. I want an end to this talk of what ‘you’ want as opposed to what ‘we’ want. There is no ‘you’ or ‘we.’ There is only the unMasked Army, I command it, and you are part of it.
You have no choice
. So: if we attempt to free your friend from the camp, will you pledge your unconditional allegiance to the unMasked Army—and to
me
as its leader—and use your skills as
I
direct in our fight against the Autarch?”

Mara’s heart raced even faster. If she made this promise, she could be agreeing to
anything
. Who knew what uses Catilla might find for her Gift, what horrors she might be opening herself up to?

But she had
already
made Katia a promise. And herself, too.

And besides
, she thought, anger snapping through her, anger with more than a little of the feel of the white-hot fire of magic,
all of this . . .
all of this
 . . . can be laid at the feet of the Autarch. Why wouldn’t I pledge to do
whatever
I can to overthrow
him
?

“I promise,” she said, the words firm as the rock walls around her, though her body seemed to be vibrating like a plucked fiddle string.

Catilla’s expression never changed. “Then we have a bargain.”

“We have to act quickly,” Mara said. “Katia . . . I don’t know how long the Warden will keep her unharmed.” Her throat closed on the words.
We may be too late already
.