Shadows (8 page)

What she really wished, she realized, was that her father had treated her like a grown-up instead of like a child. The irony was, a hundred times since she had wished she could go back to being a child.

Is growing up this hard for everyone
, she wondered,
or is it just me?

At last, the sun, though unseen behind low, scudding clouds, set behind the hills to the west. Beneath the overcast, twilight faded quickly to darkness. Shadow swallowed the lands below the ridge, but the city glowed in the dark, streetlamps turning the smoke and steam from the innumerable hearths into long orange plumes rising toward the streaming clouds. White, star-bright lamps in the Palace, shining out above the walls through tower windows, seemed to float over everything else, like fireflies hovering above the city.

“You have five hours to make your rendezvous with your father,” Edrik said to her and Keltan. “We will wait here through tomorrow and tomorrow night. If you have not returned by morning on the fifteenth of Winterwhite, or if we see any sign of alarm . . .” He said nothing else, but he didn't have to.

Mara nodded to him, and then to Keltan. Without a word, the two of them began their descent.

Though neither starlight nor moonlight penetrated the clouds, the city-glow provided ample light to keep them on track. Keltan led the way, down to the river and along its western bank, the city looming ever closer until at last, an hour after they had left the ridge, they stood at the base of the towering wall, its yellow hue faded to dark gray in the dim light. The river, a hundred feet across, swept silently through a low arch. Willows grew close to the massive stones of the wall, built without mortar (but with magic). Keltan knelt and pushed aside trailing branches to reveal the nearest corner of the arch . . . and the dark space beneath it, just above the level of the rushing waters. “In here,” he whispered. Mara nodded and eased her way down the slippery bank, her feet finding rough wood at the bottom: a walkway (crawlway, really, for there was certainly no room to stand between it and the top of the arch) disappearing under the wall. She waited there for Keltan to descend, steadying him with a hand on his arm as he slid down beside her. He crouched and looked beneath the arch. “All clear,” he whispered. “Let's go.”

“Wait!” Mara grabbed his arm. “Listen!”

Keltan's head shot up, and then turned sharply as he heard what she had just heard: the crunching of footsteps through the stubble at the top of the bank.

Keltan's sword whispered from his sheath as he turned to face the sound. Mara stared up, too, willing whomever was up there to turn and walk away down the wall, but half-expecting the black-Masked face of a Watcher to suddenly appear among the willow branches.

An instant later, a face did appear: but it was unMasked, and clear enough in the dim light that Keltan lowered his sword. “Chell!” he whispered furiously.

“Found you,” Chell said cheerfully. He slid down the bank to join them on the narrow walkway, grinning.

“What are
you
doing here?” Keltan demanded.

Chell's grin instantly slipped away. “My duty,” he said. “I was sent to scout out this land. I cannot do that from a hillside two miles from the capital city.”

“Edrik would never—”

Chell shrugged. “I didn't ask him. Went to relieve myself in the woods. Didn't bother going back.”

“He'll come after you.”

“How can he?” Chell said. “He doesn't know for certain where I went, and he dare not come closer to the city. He said so himself.” He leaned over, looking past Keltan and Mara at the archway. “Shouldn't we get under this wall? You have an appointment to keep.”

Keltan didn't move. “You're unMasked. You can't pass for a child. You're risking—”

“I'm risking,” Chell said, his voice suddenly cold and hard as bared steel, “my life to do my duty. As I always have, and always will. My duty requires me to enter this city, no matter the risk; and I will do so . . . whether you approve or not.” His eyes, black pools in the dim light, looked down at Keltan. “Do you plan to try to stop me?”

Keltan's hand went to his sword. Without looking around he said, “Mara, this is your mission. What do you want me to do?”

Mara stared over Keltan's shoulder at Chell. The young man met her gaze, face impassive, jaw set.
He's so sure he's doing what he's supposed to do. No doubts, no second-guessing. He has his duty, and his way is clear. And I'm . . .

I'm making it up as I go.

“Leave him alone,” she said tiredly. “But, Chell, you cannot come to the meeting with my father. The danger is too great, for you, for us . . . and for him. Keltan,” she added, without taking her eyes off the stranger from the sea, “if he
does
try to follow us to my father's—
then
I
do
want you to stop him.”

“My pleasure,” Keltan growled, and Mara heard the dislike in his voice.

If Chell did, too, it didn't seem to bother him. His grim expression dissolved into his usual lighthearted smile. “Fair enough,” he said. “I don't really care whether I meet your father or not, though I'm sure he's a fine gentleman. I have other whales to chase.”

“We're wasting time,” Keltan said. He sheathed his sword. “I'll go first.” He got down on his hands and knees and crawled along the wooden walkway.

Mara went next, with Chell behind her.

The boards of the walkway, crudely hacked out of lumber by someone with no interest in finesse, made Mara glad she was wearing gloves; otherwise she would surely have had splinters in both hands within the first few feet. The low, curving ceiling of stone, glistening wetly even in the almost nonexistent light seeping into the tunnel from both ends, amplified the noise of the river. The water poured by not only to their left but also directly beneath them, for the walkway clung precariously to the sharply sloped wall of the arch, creaking and swaying as they made their way along it. Here and there boards had fallen away, and Mara eased her way over them, breathing hard, thinking what would happen if they fell into the ice-cold water. How far would it sweep them before they could climb the bank? Would they be
able
to climb the bank? Or would the water simply pull them under, suck heat and breath from their bodies, and spit them up as blue-skinned, bloated corpses for some farmer to find miles downstream of the city?

You're way too morbid for someone so young, you know that?
Mara told herself, and concentrated on crawling instead of worrying.

Though the city wall was only twenty feet thick, the walkway went on for more like fifty, taking them not only through the wall but then, almost before Mara realized there was open sky above her, under another, higher arch, which she realized must be South Bridge, by which the Great Circle Road that encompassed the city just inside the wall crossed the Heartsblood at that point. When at last they reached the end of the second arch, the wooden walkway likewise ended, two posts anchoring it to the muddy riverbank. Keltan crawled out into that mud, rolled over onto his back, and eased himself out from under the arch, looking up at the bridge. After a moment he flipped back onto his stomach, made a sharp “come on” gesture, and slithered out of sight. Mara followed, the mud squishing like Mask clay between her gloved fingers.

At the top of the bank Keltan scrambled to his feet and dashed across a narrow footpath and a stretch of brown grass to a cobblestoned street, and across that into a dark alley. Moments later all three of them were crouched together in its shadows, breathing hard.

“Welcome to Tamita,” Mara whispered to Chell.

“Worst place in the world,” Keltan growled.

Chell laughed lightly. “I doubt that,” he said. “I am sure I have seen far worse.”

Mara, thinking of the mining camp, had to agree.

Keltan glanced at her, his face a pale oval in the dim light reflected from the clouds. “We're going to have to hurry to make the meeting,” he said in a low voice. “And we must be very careful of the Night Watchers. We can't be certain they still follow the patterns they did when I fled the city weeks ago. And after what happened at the mine, they may also be on high alert.”

Mara nodded impatiently. “So let's go.”

“Not me,” Chell said.

“You can't wander these streets at night,” Keltan snapped. “The Night Watchers—”

“We each have our missions,” Chell said. “You be about yours . . . and I'll be about mine.” And with that he leaped to his feet and dashed away. Keltan scrambled up, hand on his sword hilt, but Mara put a restraining hand on his forearm.

“Let him go,” she said. “It's his funeral.”

“It may be ours if we're wrong and he can lead the Watchers to the Secret City,” Keltan snarled. “
Dammit
, I should have knocked him down and tied him up outside the walls.”

Mara, with great restraint, forbore pointing out that Chell was taller, older, stronger, and no doubt better trained than Keltan. “We can't do anything about him,” she said instead. “And we
cannot
miss this meeting with my father.”

Keltan swore again, but led Mara back to the cobblestoned road, turned right—the opposite direction to that taken by Chell—and took her deeper into Tamita.

Toward home
, she thought, heart beginning to beat faster than even fear and exertion could account for.

Home!

Homecoming

L
IKE WRAITHS, they slipped through the silent streets from shadow to shadow, occasionally climbing steep stairs as they moved higher up in the tiered city, ever alert for the Night Watchers. No one else would—or at least
should
—be abroad; children had a sundown curfew and even the Masked were prohibited from traveling anywhere within the city except the broad, well-lit boulevards of the entertainment district east of the Palace . . . and the less well-lit, officially frowned upon but unofficially sanctioned streets to either side of it where the entertainment was of a sort usually provided behind closed doors.

They were in luck. Though the Night Watchers were surely somewhere about, for they always were, they heard nothing except for one lonely dog howling at the clouds. They gave the sound a wide berth not just because it gave Mara the shivers, but also for fear his howls might turn to intruder-warning barks if they strayed too close. There was no law against people looking out of their windows, after all, even at night.

About half an hour after crawling under the wall, they reached streets Mara knew well. Now she took the lead, creeping along fences, crawling through bushes, dashing across streets only when it could not be avoided. At last she reached the corner of a particular brick wall where a particular tree grew. “Here,” she panted to Keltan.

He looked around, obviously puzzled. “Here what?”

Mara grinned. “Watch.” Quick as a cat, she scaled the tree and swung herself onto the top of the wall. Straddling it, she looked down at Keltan. “Can you do that?”

He snorted. “Watch me.” Sure enough, in a moment he was beside her on the wall, although he hadn't exactly been catlike about it; he swiped a hand across a bleeding scratch on his cheek. “Now what?”

“This way.” Mara stood and walked along the top of the wall, balancing easily enough in her boots, though she didn't quite dare to run along it as she had in bare feet so many times as a child, albeit on warmer nights than this. The thrill of slipping out of her warm bed and into the forbidden streets had never seemed nearly as inviting when her breath came in clouds.

The wall enclosed the back garden of two houses. The second was Mara's. She looked down into the enclosed space, barely visible in the cloud-glow. In hot summers she had practically lived there, playing and reading in the evenings, even sleeping outdoors in a hammock slung between those two trees in the corner when the heat became unbearable in her room upstairs. Now it looked alien and forbidding.

Of course, she knew well enough it hadn't changed.

She had.

The wall ran up close under the eaves of her old house. She stepped lightly off the bricks and onto the rounded green tiles, clambering up them to the skylight.
I wonder how long Father has known about this way into the house?
she thought as she reached for the glass window.
Did he know about all the times I sneaked out when I was supposed to be asleep?

It wasn't an altogether comforting thought.

Normally, when she had come back to the house, the window in the skylight was out of its frame, lying on her bed where she had placed it before escaping into the night. She wasn't sure she'd be able to remove it from this direction, not without risking dropping it into her room to possibly shatter on the floorboards; but as she drew nearer to the skylight, she realized she needn't have worried—the window was already out of its frame.

And that could mean only . . .

Her breath suddenly caught in her throat. Her heart fluttered. “Daddy?” she whispered.

“Mara!” The voice that came back from the darkness, deep, rough, warm, flooded her with so many memories of her lost childhood that she instantly burst into tears. Suddenly not caring in the slightest about stealth, she lowered herself into the darkness, ready to drop onto her bed—but she didn't have to. Strong hands took her waist and guided her down, and then she turned and flung her arms around the man she had once thought could do no wrong, the man she had loved and admired above all others . . .

...and the man who had sentenced her to pain and exile, a cold core of her soul reminded her, but she brushed that aside. All that mattered now was that she had returned to her father. All that mattered now was that she was
home
.

“There, there, Mara,” he murmured, big hand stroking her hair. “There, there.”

She heard the bed creak behind her as Keltan dropped down into the room, and felt her father stiffen. She pulled back, raised a hand to dash the tears away from her face. “It's all right, Daddy,” she said. “This is Keltan. He's my friend.”

“Keltan? That's the name of the Autarch's—”

“It's not my real name,” Keltan said.

Mara looked at her father. He had lit no lamp, and so was little more than a shadow, but she didn't need to see him clearly to know exactly what he looked like. “Where's Mother?” she said.

Her father hesitated. “Mara . . .”

“What's wrong?” Mara said. “She's not sick? She's not . . .” her throat closed on the final word.

“No, no, nothing like that,” her father said. He laid a reassuring hand on her shoulder. “No, it's just . . .” He took a deep breath that shook a little. “She left me, Mara. She went back to her old village, to the old house there. She was devastated when your Mask failed. She blamed me.” He swallowed. “And of course she was right to blame me, since I made your Mask to fail. But I couldn't tell her that, and I couldn't tell her why, or her Mask might have failed, too . . . maybe even mine, despite the way I modified it.” His voice fell to a shaken whisper. “So it's been . . . hard.”

Mara couldn't speak. By now her mother must think her as good as dead, and she could do nothing to disabuse her of that notion. Even if she could somehow get to her mother's village, far to the south, to tell her anything that had happened might risk her mother's Mask.

And Daddy did it
. The thought was bitter as curdled milk.
He not only forced me into exile, he plunged Mother into the hell of thinking I'm gone forever.

She wanted to shout at him, ask him if he really thought it had been worth it, if he really understood how much pain he had caused her and her mother . . . but there was, simply, no time.

As if her father had read her mind, he took another deep breath, then rushed on. “You must not linger. It's too dangerous. I received your message and have prepared your answer.” He turned away and picked up something from the worktable along the wall where Mara had spent many hours writing and drawing when she was a schoolgirl. “This should answer any questions you have about the making of Masks. It is a copy of
The Book of Masks
, the secret manual of Maskmaking. Ironically, it was made for you with the full approval of the Palace, for me to present to you when you became a full apprentice, after you were Masked. If things had gone as . . . as we once hoped, you would have begun learning the knowledge it holds at my side.” He held it out, and Mara took it. It felt heavy in her hand. “Now you must learn on your own. But you should find therein the knowledge you need to enable you to . . . do whatever it is you are trying to do.”

“I'm trying to make—” Mara began, but her father flung up his hand.

“No!
I must not know
. My Mask is forgiving, but I cannot be certain
how
forgiving. The less I know, the less likely I am to cross some threshold that will cause it to crack. And if it cracks . . .” His voice trailed off.

If it cracks
, Mara thought, remembering her fears of earlier in the night,
he will face the Autarch's fiercest retribution for betrayal
.

She turned and handed
The Book of Masks
to Keltan, who slipped it silently into his backpack. Then she turned back to her father.

“There's one more thing,” she said.

“Mara, there's no time—”

“This is important!” As quickly as she could, she told him about her Gift. “But I don't know how to control it,” she finished. “And the nightmares are . . . terrible. Ethelda said there might be answers in the Library. She said . . . you have access . . .”

Her father stood silent in the dark for a long moment. “I had hoped that Gift . . . that
curse
 . . . had died out,” he whispered at last. “Mara, I'm so sorry.”

Mara stared at his shadowed face. “You've heard of this?”

He nodded. “There have been a few, in my family line, with the ability to draw magic directly from others. But not for decades. I never thought it might afflict you.”

“It's not an ‘affliction,'” Mara snapped, strangely angered. “It's a Gift. It's a particularly powerful Gift. I've saved lives with it.”
And taken them
, that cold spot in her heart reminded her, but she pushed that thought away. “I just need to learn how to control it. If it's appeared before in our family . . .” Hope kindled suddenly. “Do you know how to control it?”

That little flame died as her father shook his head. “No,” he said. “I don't know if anyone does. But yes,
if
such knowledge exists, it may well be in the Library.” His voice dropped. “It will be risky for me, Mara. A close watch is kept on the Library and those who use it. But I . . . will do what I can. For you.”

Mara flung her arms around him. “Thank you, Daddy,” she whispered.

He returned the embrace. For a long moment they stood there, warm in each other's arms, and for that moment all the horrible things that had happened since Mara's Mask had failed receded into the mists, like a dimly remembered dream, and she was just a child again, safe in her father's love.

But the moment passed. Her father released her, stepped back. “Go,” he whispered. “Go now. Get out of Tamita. Get far away. I will send a message when . . . when I have something to tell you.” He glanced at Keltan. “Take care of her, son.” His voice broke. “Take care of my little girl.” And then he turned, dashing his sleeve across his face, and went out, closing the door gently behind him.

Mara's legs felt weak. She sat down on her old bed, felt a lump beneath her, reached down, and pulled out a stuffed cat, one eye missing, whiskers akimbo, striped pelt moth-eaten and bare in places. “Stoofy,” she whispered, and hugged it to her chest.

Keltan sat down beside her. “Stoofy?” he said, tone gently mocking.

“I've missed Stoofy,” she whispered.

“And your father?” he said, no longer mocking.

“And my father,” she said. She hugged Stoofy even tighter. “I may never see him again.” The lump in her throat threatened to choke her.

Keltan looked around the dim room. “If I had lived
here
,” he said, “I might not have fled to the unMasked Army.”

“I had no intention of fleeing,” Mara said. “I was forced out.” She looked at the closed door, outlined by the dim yellow light of some distant candle. “By
him
.”

Keltan sighed. “Feelings are complicated things.”

“You can say that again,” Mara said. She wiped her nose with the back of her gloved hand, then held Stoofy out to Keltan. “Put him in your backpack. I am
not
leaving him behind again.”

Keltan bowed slightly to her. “Milady.” He stuffed the cat out of sight.

She stuck her tongue out at him, then looked up at the skylight. “All right,” she said. “Homecoming's over. Time to get out of Tamita.”

Climbing out proved easier than it had been the last time she'd done it, the night she had met Keltan in the basement coal room where he had taken refuge while on the run from the Night Watchers: the ceiling seemed closer to the bed than it used to be. On the other hand, as she had noted slipping in, but hadn't really registered in the rush to meet her father, the fit was tighter, too.

From the roof, they hurried back onto the wall, down to the tree, and down into the street, retracing their steps to South Bridge. Once more they slipped through the shadows as silent as hunting cats . . .

...but even cats could be taken unawares.

They were almost free, hurrying toward the bridge along the footpath that followed the river, when suddenly Mara heard, from just the other side of a fortuitous screen of bushes, the sound of running, booted feet, and then a breathless voice. “I saw something, sir! Couple of blocks back. Just a glimpse of movement. Could have been a dog.”

“Could be something else,” growled a second voice, almost on top of them, though they'd seen no one. “Check along the river. Start down there.”

Footsteps clattered . . . away from them for the moment, but that wouldn't last. “Hurry!” Keltan said, his mouth so close to Mara's ear his lips tickled it and his breath raised goose bumps on her arms. “Once we're under the bridge we're safe.”