The Mask of Mirrors by M. Carrick; (different e readers txt) 📕

was the answer—that they had to get back to the Charterhouse, where it began, and then they could escape. But the five lifeless gazes fixed on her, and the nightmare didn’t end, and outside she heard the wind howling.

Ren lifted her chin, made her voice as strong as she could, and said, “What is going on?”

She expected her voice to echo like before, a tiny thing lost in the vastness of space. Instead it rang out, clear and pure.

Her answer came like the crashing of bells, announcing the death of the Tyrant.

“I deceive all.”

“I manipulate all.”

“I bribe all.”

“I kill all.”

“I damn all.”

Those weren’t the right mottoes. The statues were supposed to represent the servants of Nadežra, the ways they aided the people. Instead they answered her as the city’s masters, gloating in their power.

At Ren’s side, the szorsa shook her head. Blinded though she was, she said, “No. There were seven when the city was ours. Where is the crafter? Where is the szorsa?”

Seven? Ren had never heard of there being seven on the council.

When she looked more closely, she saw shadows within the statues, ghosts carved of wood instead of marble, clothed in Vraszenian style instead of Liganti. A poet, a kurec leader, a trader, a guard, a mystic.

And at their sides, two more. A weaver with a shuttle of thread, and a szorsa with her cards.

Storm Against Stone signified uncontrolled and uncontrollable force. Outside the wind might roar, but the true power was here, at the eye of the storm; Ren felt it in the air, felt it resonate along the threads of pattern. Felt it connect to her.

She was the reason this nightmare had begun. When she drank the drug-laced wine, she fell through into the dream—and pulled everyone else with her.

But that was only part of it. By coming to the Charterhouse, she’d given Mettore something he needed—but whatever that was, it had gone wrong. Storm Against Stone wasn’t just this moment; it was also his ill future, in the pattern she had laid.

When the nightmare began, the Charterhouse had tried to crush her with her own insignificance. Now she felt the opposite—the scale of her significance—and it was more horrifying still.

“Only those born of Ažerais can save the children of Ažerais,” the older woman whispered. She faced the statue of the szorsa unerringly, as if listening to it speak. “And only those born of Ažerais can destroy the children of Ažerais.”

Those born of Ažerais. Children conceived on the night of the Great Dream—as Ivrina had always claimed Ren was. They were said to carry a connection to pattern, and to the goddess of the Vraszenian people.

But the power whose storm was raging outside—that wasn’t the goddess of her people. It was something else.

Like looking through glass, Ren refocused her eyes from the old Vraszenian statues to the newer Liganti ones. They might gloat over their power—but power could be lost, traded, broken… and stolen.

When she’d found herself in Nadežra again, she’d decided to claim what the city owed her. There was so much more for the taking, though. Leato. The Traementis. Her original plan had been to siphon off enough money to start a new life elsewhere, but why let go of a good thing? With the Traementis bound to her, she could make the city pay for taking her original family from her.

Ren’s certainty burned like a coal on her chest, the desire for vengeance, for control, for power. Around her, the wind began to stir.

The szorsa’s hand clamped down on her arm. “No—reach not for that thread. Your dreams will devour you if you let them!”

But the winds were rising, every door in the atrium slamming open, and the tempest was upon them. It lifted Ren from her feet, tearing her from the szorsa’s grip and flinging her through the air.

She skidded across polished wood and slammed to a halt against a wall.

From above came a cynical snort. “Another of Mezzan’s lovers, I take it?”

Ren climbed to her feet. She was in Traementis Manor… but not. They were in Donaia’s study, but all the hangings and decorations were Caerulet blue, the Vigil hexagram, the Indestor seal of two overlapping wheels.

And Leato—

Ren froze, caught between relief and fear. It was the real him, not a dream version, because he was still dressed in his Rook costume. When he saw her face, his brow furrowed. “Wait… I know you. You’re the patterner from Coster’s Walk—the one who helped me find Idusza.” A beat passed, and the furrow deepened. “Aren’t you?”

She was in Vraszenian clothing still, but not made up. Ren hid behind the curtain of her wet and tangled hair and answered in her natural accent. “Altan Leato. We are in a nightmare.” But was it his or hers?

“You think I don’t know that?” Leato said bitterly. “Mother’s lost to aža, Giuna is Mezzan’s contract wife, Renata’s given up on us and gone back to Seteris—Indestor took everything but our ennoblement charter. We’re fucked.”

He didn’t understand what was happening. Ren bit her lip, wondering how to get through to him. Lean on being a szorsa? But she didn’t have any cards.

The Face of Glass.

The good present, in the pattern Ivrina had laid. The turning point of Leato’s future, when that szorsa patterned him in Lacewater.

Truth and revelations.

Fear clawed at her chest. I can’t tell him. Impersonating a noble was a capital crime. If word got out, she would be sold as a slave, or hanged. And this nightmare warped everything, turning even the good to bad.

But staying in it would be worse.

“Why is some Vraszenian szorsa coming to…” Leato’s breath caught, face blanching. Grabbing her shoulders, he shook her once. “It’s not Grey, is it? Ninat spare us—did something happen to him, too?”

She looked up at him reflexively, even though instinct screamed at her to hide. “No, it—”

Renata’s given up on us. That was part of his nightmare. And now she was going to make it worse.

Her hands curled over