Shadows (2 page)

Mara knew that down the corridor to her left, stairs led up to the “back door,” a concealed entrance through which foot patrols came and went, but she turned right and instead took the stairs down. The next two levels of the Secret City were mostly living quarters, including, on the lower of the two, the room where she slept with Kirika, Prella, Alita, and Simona. From there, the stairs led straight down to the Broad Way.

Everyone was busy with their various chores and tasks, or on patrol, and so she met no one during her descent. A young man coming up the Broad Way with a bag of grain slung over his shoulder nodded to her as he passed; a moment later an identical copy of him passed her in the other direction and did the same. “Hi,” she said to each of them in turn. She'd known them for weeks, and they'd been part of the disastrous rescue attempt at the mining camp, and she
still
couldn't tell Skrit apart from Skrat.

Skrit/Skrat turned into the Great Chamber, taking his grain to the kitchens, but she pulled on her coat, tugged on the hat and gloves she took from its pockets, and hurried out into the bright, cold afternoon.

The days had grown shorter and shorter over the past few weeks, until now, though it was only about four hours past noon, the sun was already dipping toward the horizon, casting long blue shadows on the snowdrifts, crisscrossed by trampled paths, that filled the cove. In ten days it would be Midwinter. Just a year ago she had celebrated it with her parents, their home alight with candles and hung with evergreen boughs. She could still remember how their fragrance had mingled with the delicious smells of cooking ham and baking cakes, how everything had felt beautiful and warm and safe. This year . . .

This year, there seemed little to celebrate, even if the unMasked Army marked the day. So far she'd seen no sign of it.

The ocean thundered, tall breakers racing in to batter themselves into white spray against the stony shore, the sea still unsettled from a violent storm that had blown through the night before. Mara, seeing the height of the waves, hesitated; in storms the water sometimes reached the path along the beach she meant to travel. But she decided to walk down to the water's edge at least, and once there, looking north, she saw that the path was open.
Must be low tide
, she thought, for though the water roared against the shore, only the occasional blast of spray made it as far as the cliff face.

The path looked grim, gray, cold, and lonely.

Perfect
, Mara thought, and set out along it.

Her feet crunched over the salt-rotted ice covering the sand-and-pebbles beach. Just before the curve of cliff face hid it from her, she glanced back at the Secret City. Two dark figures trudged across the open space, presumably heading to the Broad Way from the stables carved into the base of the cove's northern cliff. She recognized them instantly as Keltan and Hyram, but they had their backs to her and didn't see her . . . which suited her fine.

Ten more steps and they, and the cove, were lost to sight. Alone with her thoughts, she wended her way north along the narrow strip of land between the pounding waves to her left and the gray stone cliff to her right, past the entrance to the mine from which the Secret City drew the gold it occasionally used to purchase goods in the villages via children too young to be Masked.

I can't make the Masks Catilla wants
, she thought again as she walked. Spray touched her face. She licked salt from her lips, but lowered her head and trudged on, her breath forming white clouds, the crunch of her footsteps echoing from the cliff to her right.
I don't know how. I need to talk to someone who knows more. I need to talk to . . .

Her thoughts and her feet stumbled. She caught herself with a hand on an ice-coated outcropping of gray stone.

I need to talk to my father.

Her father had deliberately sent her into exile. At great risk to himself—uncertain if his own Mask, modified though it was, might reveal his betrayal to the Watchers—he had crafted her Mask to fail at her Masking on her fifteenth birthday . . . and then had sent word to the unMasked Army that someone with the ability to make Masks would be in the next wagonload of unMasked children sent north from Tamita to the mining camp.

Father must have known I couldn't really make counterfeit Masks
, Mara thought.
Which means he lied to the unMasked Army, tricking Catilla into saving me.

But now that lie was unraveling. With the stolen Maskmaker's clay all but gone, she could hide the truth no longer. She would have to tell Catilla that she could not provide her with the counterfeit Masks she needed.

Unless Mara could talk to her father.

She wanted that; wanted it so much that she wondered for a moment if she had subconsciously
made
her Masks fail.
Of course not
, she told herself: but having wondered it herself, even for a moment, she knew there was little doubt Catilla would ask her about it point-blank.

No
, she thought.
I did everything I could. I
did.
I just don't have the knowledge . . . or the magic. Catilla will have to see that. She'll
have
to. And then she'll have to figure out some way for me to go back to Tamita . . . some way for me to see my father again. She'll
have
to.

Won't she?

Mara stopped her northward wandering and wiped water from her cheeks. She told herself it was spray from the sea . . . but it was warm.

She looked around. She'd gone past the narrow defile in the cliff that, providing the only access up from the beach for horses, led to the Secret City's grain fields and pastures. She'd never walked any farther. The cliff curved out to sea in front of her, and the beach narrowed, so that at the tip of the headland the waves appeared to be crashing across it.
Time to head back
, she thought.
Time to face Catilla
.

She tugged her rabbit-skin hat tighter onto her head, shrugged her coat more firmly into place, started to turn . . .

...and then froze as a stranger came around the shoulder of the cliff.

Chell

M
ARA'S FIRST INSTINCT was to flee. But then an extra-large wave rolled in from the sea, doused the stranger in spray as it smashed into the rocks, and washed around his feet as it receded. He stumbled and fell, splashing into the water . . . and didn't get up. She hesitated, torn between fear and compassion.

Compassion won.

She hurried forward, not quite daring to run on the ice-slicked beach. As she got closer, she saw the stranger try to get to his hands and knees, but he collapsed forward, head turned, his cheek pressed against the stones.

His
unMasked
cheek, she realized with a thrill.

Another wave splashed over him, and receded.

Just because he wasn't wearing a Mask didn't necessarily mean he was
really
unMasked, of course. Like the Watcher who had found her in the magic-collection hut the morning after she had slain her kidnapper and would-be rapist, Grute, with magic—blowing off his head in a gruesome fashion that continued to haunt her dreams—this young man might merely have removed his Mask while he wandered the Wild, intending to don it again whenever he got back to civilization.

But she didn't really think so. The young man wasn't carrying anything with him, and anyone Masked would keep his Mask close at hand at all times: the Masks would crack and crumble if they were abandoned and that would be a death sentence should the wearer encounter a Watcher.

The stranger wore dark blue trousers, a heavy leather coat, and black boots, all soaked through. His pale hair—Mara had never before seen anyone young with such pale hair, so blond as to almost be white—was plastered to his head in lank, dripping strands. At his side he wore a sword with a strange, basket-shaped hilt.

She took all that in as she ran up to him. As she reached his side, she was able to see around the shoulder of the cliff for the first time. Debris lay scattered along the shore, bits and pieces of planking and rigging, clearly the remains of a wrecked boat. Debris . . .

...and corpses. Her breath caught. She counted five, all dressed in nondescript clothing like the young man at her feet. She didn't have to go close to them to know they were dead: her Gift told her. When living people were near, she could always—always—feel the magic within them, the magic she sometimes had to fight not to draw on. She could feel no magic from those sprawled, wave-tossed bodies.

But she could feel it in the young man. She could do nothing for the others, but him, she might still be able to save.

She knelt, the icy pebbles digging painfully into her knees. The stranger's face was white as the ice all around, his lips the color of a bruise. His eyes fluttered open, startlingly blue in his white face, framed by that astonishing pale-gold hair. “Help . . .” he whispered.

“I will,” Mara assured him.
But how?
her mind whispered, as panic fluttered in her chest. If she ran for help, he might freeze to death before she returned. She had nothing with which to make a fire.

Magic
, she thought.
If only I had magic
 . . .

But she had none, except for what she sensed in the shivering frame of the frozen youth, and if she drew on that, she'd likely kill him.

Not to mention what it might do to her.

“I'll help you,” she said again, “but you have to help me do it. You have to walk.”

“Don't know . . . if I can,” he said. His words were oddly shaped, vowels elongated, consonants clipped.

“You have to,” Mara repeated firmly. “You can lean on me.”

A brief smile flickered across his white face. “I'll t-t-t-try,” he said through chattering teeth.

She helped him to a sitting position, then slipped his arm over her shoulder. “We'll stand together,” she said. “On three. One . . . two . . . three!”

She struggled to rise and he struggled to rise with her. Mara's foot slipped on an icy rock and they both collapsed back into a heap, Mara on top of the youth, who grunted at the impact. “Sorry!” she said, and they tried again. This time they managed it. Another tall wave doused them both with spray and sluiced freezing water around their ankles, almost tugging them down again, but Mara held on, though she was now so thoroughly soaked that her teeth, too, were chattering. “Hold on t-t-to me,” she gasped out.

“Right . . .” he mumbled.

Together, they began struggling back toward the Secret City. The young man . . .
he can't be more than twenty
, Mara thought, glancing sideways at his smooth-shaven, unlined face,
maybe younger
 . . . was a head taller than her, but thin enough that she was able to support him without trouble.

Even as she thought it, his feet slipped on the ice and he fell, dragging her down with him so that she sprawled across him once again, this time over his back. Her knees had both cracked hard against the ground as she fell, and she sat up and rubbed them. “Ow,” she said.

The youth rolled over. “S-s-s-sorry,” he said.

“It's all right,” Mara said. “We're alm-m-m-ost th-there.”

“Where?” the youth said as she helped him stand again.

“The Se-secret Ci-city,” Mara said, then clamped shut her chattering teeth, wondering if she'd said more than she should.

Well, he's going to see it for himself soon enough, isn't he?

“What's your n-name?” she said as they struggled along, the going a little easier now they were past the defile leading up to the pastures. “I'm Ma-ma-mara Holdfast.”

“Chell,” he said. “Royal Korellian Navy.” The chatter of his teeth had stopped, but his speech was slurred. “At your service. May I have this dance?” He blinked sleepily at her. “Actually, rather tired. Think I need a nap. Dance later.”

The name was outlandish, the rest gibberish; clearly the cold was making him delirious.
Catilla will have to figure this one out
, Mara thought.

The youth leaned harder and harder against her, his weight dragging at her, and then, with the cove still a hundred yards away, slipped away from her entirely. She clutched at him and managed to slow his fall, but when he hit the ground he lay motionless, eyes closed, cheek pressed against the icy stone.

Mara straightened and ran for the Secret City, slipping and sliding and shouting for help.

As bad luck would have it, there was no one in the drifted space between the cliffs, but when she dashed into the Broad Way she saw Hyram and Keltan coming toward her, hair wet, faces shining, carrying towels; they'd obviously just come from bathing in the underground lake. “Hi, Mara!” Keltan said cheerfully, and then his eyes widened as he took in her soaked clothing and red face. “What's wrong?”

“Stranger,” Mara gasped out with what little breath she had. At least the exertion had stopped her teeth from chattering. “On the beach . . . freezing . . . hurry!”

The two boys exchanged startled glances, then dropped their towels on the floor and ran after her into the cold. The Broad Way was cold enough that they wore proper boots and light jackets, despite having just come from the baths, and they followed her across the snow-covered space between the cove, then outdistanced her and ran ahead, leaving her to pant along in their wake, when they spotted the strange golden-haired youth's dark form on the beach.

Within minutes they had carried him inside and up the stairs to the chambers of healing, where Mara had spent far too much time herself. Asteria, granddaughter of Grelda, the Secret City's nonmagical Healer, looked up from chopping herbs as Hyram and Keltan carried the unconscious stranger into the whitewashed chamber. Lanterns and firelight provided the only illumination, since the shutters over the narrow window slits had been closed to keep out the chill. “Go get your grandmother, and Ethelda,” Hyram shouted at her. “And my father and great-grandmother!”

Asteria said nothing—a rare occurrence—and dashed out. Hyram and Keltan carried the stranger through a red curtain into a chamber beyond with four beds, all empty, and placed the youth on the same bed in which Prella had been laid when she had been brought in with the terrible wound, inflicted by Kirika, that Mara had healed with magic.

I healed Prella, I could heal the stranger
, Mara thought.
I know I could.
There was magic in Keltan, magic in Hyram. She could draw on it, use it to warm the cold body of the unconscious youth.
I wouldn't need much. They'd hardly . . .

She clenched her fists against that insidious desire.
No!

Hyram was kneeling by the boy, pulling off his boots; Keltan was tugging at his coat. “Mara, blankets,” Hyram snapped without looking at her, and Mara, startled, shook herself and went out into the main room. There were stacks of thick blankets in a tall wooden cabinet; she grabbed two and went back into the other room.

Hyram and Keltan had finished stripping the stranger, and were just covering his pale, naked body with the blanket already on the bed. Mara held out the extra blankets to them, painfully aware her ears were flaming with embarrassment. “Here,” she said.

“Thanks,” Hyram said. He spread the additional blankets on the youth, while Keltan went to the fire and put on a new log.

The red curtain swirled aside and Grelda came in, followed by Ethelda. The former had been one of the handful of people who had originally fled to the Secret City, then a smaller warren of caves left by some long-gone tribe of ancients, sixty years ago when the rebellion against the Autarchy had failed. The latter had been Chief Healer of Aygrima—and a secret ally of Mara's father—until she had been kidnapped by the unMasked Army to heal Mara . . . and, hopefully, tutor her in the use of her powerful Gift.

The two Healers had come to an uneasy truce. Grelda did not have the Gift, and so her Healing was based on her knowledge of the body and its ills, and the uses of herbs and potions. Ethelda had the Gift, but in the Secret City she had no magic to work with. She was not without knowledge of the other kind of Healing, however. “I've learned a lot from her, but she's learned a lot from me, too,” Ethelda had told Mara. “And we're both better Healers for it.” She'd grimaced. “If you can call it Healing when no magic is involved. The body does whatever healing takes place. All you can do without magic is try to keep the body alive long enough for it to heal itself.”

“Let me see him,” Grelda said now as she entered. Mara stepped back into the corner as Grelda pulled back the blankets and examined the youth. She could feel herself blushing again, but she didn't look away.

The youth was thin, but not emaciated: his muscles stood out like thick cords beneath his skin.
Wiry
, she guessed was the word that would apply to him best. He showed no signs of having been wounded. The only mark on his skin was a curious tattoo on his left breast, just above his heart: a circle, a crescent, and a star all in a line, in red, green, and blue, respectively. His limbs trembled visibly as shivers racked his body.

Grelda pulled the blanket back over him, felt the pulse in his neck. “Nothing wrong with him that warming up won't fix,” she said. “He's shivering; that's a good sign.”

“It is?” Mara said, startled into speaking.

Grelda ignored her, but Ethelda gave her a quick smile. “Shivering is the body's way of trying to stay warm,” she said. “When the shivering stops, death is very near.”

Grelda had turned to Asteria. “Bladders of hot water,” she said. “Three of them. One to his groin, one under each armpit.”

Asteria nodded and hurried out, almost colliding with the tall man just hurrying in: Edrik, Hyram's father, second-in-command of the unMasked Army behind his grandmother Catilla. He stopped in the doorway. “It's true?” he said. “A stranger from the sea?”

“Yes,” Mara said. “I found him. Just past the horse path. There's a wrecked boat. And . . . bodies.”

“Other survivors?”

Mara shook her head. “No.”

Edrik stared at her, eyes narrowed. “You're sure?”

“I'm sure.” She didn't want to say it was because of her Gift, but he took her meaning.

He grunted. “I'll send a retrieval party. Give them a proper burial. And see if that wreckage can tell us anything more about where they came from . . . and who
this
is.” He stared down at the shivering youth.

“Look at this, Father,” Hyram said. He had been examining the stranger's trousers; now he held them out. “Look at the button.”

Edrik took the pants and examined the fly, frowning. “It's embossed with letters . . . R . . . K . . . N?”

“Royal Korellian Navy,” Mara said.

Everyone turned to look at her.

“He introduced himself,” she explained. “Just before he passed out. He said his name is Chell, and then he said ‘Royal Korellian Navy.'” They all stared, and for some reason she added, “And then he asked me to dance.”