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

His eyes focused on her. Saw her properly—not through the filter of the nightmare. And understanding began to dawn.

Just not the understanding Ren expected.

“Lumen burn him—Renata. Not you, too. Is Mezzan playing house again? Did he force you into this?” He touched the bell of her sleeve. “That mud-rutting swine. I’ll stop him from— I’ll make him pay for—”

“No! Leato, I…” She choked on the truth. It would be so easy to play along, to let Leato think she was shackled as a contract wife or concubine to Mezzan Indestor, dressing up in Vraszenian clothing at his command. But the cards were clear.

The Face of Glass. To escape, she had to remove her mask, and make him see the truth.

“I am Renata,” she said, her accent Vraszenian, her lips numb with fear. “But I’ve lied to your family. You have no cousin.”

“No cousin?” Leato’s grip loosened. “Then… Letilia’s daughter…”

“There is no such person.” Telling the truth was so much harder than lying. But having begun, she couldn’t stop. “I am a con artist.”

“No.” Leato stumbled back, shoving one hand into his hair as though trying to root out his confusion. “This is some new part of the nightmare, isn’t it?” The look he gave her was so lost she nearly crumbled. “Isn’t it? Why would anyone bother to con us? We’ve got nothing but our pride, and you can see the value of that.”

His gesture took in the ancestral manor, now claimed by House Indestor. But even with the nightmare warping matters to their worst, it fell like salt on the open wounds of Ren’s own past. “You think you are poor?” she said. “My mother died in the streets because we could not afford food. I found her body naked in a gutter—people as poor as us had stolen everything, even her clothing. I was eight.”

“Then con them!” he snarled back at her. “That gives you some right to lie to us, to make us hope? My grandparents died when I was too young to remember. My father lost himself in aža and was killed in a duel over his debts when I was ten. Great-Uncle Corfetto’s entire family went that same year, in the grain riots they started. The next year it was Sogniat’s household, burned to the ground by a spurned lover. Her husband drank himself to death from guilt, and then everyone else, one by one… Do you even know how much it meant to us, gaining family for once instead of losing it?”

He wrapped his hands around the back of his head, curling in on himself as though that would protect him from the truth. “Please let this be part of the nightmare. Please let me wake up.”

His helpless plea cut like shards of glass. As if she’d found Sedge alive… only to realize he wasn’t Sedge at all.

That’s not the same, Ren thought desperately. Sedge is my brother. Renata was no one to Leato.

But she had become someone to him, these last few months.

She made herself breathe, even though her throat felt strangled tight. “Leato. We can shout at each other all we like—after we get out. I think that to escape I must keep moving. I can bring you with me.” I hope. “Will you trust me at least this much?”

“Trust you?” he spat. “I don’t even know your name.”

She almost said Arenza. But that, in its own way, was still a lie. “Ren.”

He swept aside the skirts of his coat and gave her a bow that was all mockery. “So very nice to make your acquaintance, Mistress Ren.”

It was the bow that did it. Furious and hurt as he was, the odds that he would answer were nonexistent, but the question burst out of her anyway. “Are you truly the Rook?”

“Am I what?” He gaped at her, then down at his costume. The laughter that followed held a trace of hysteria. “Sure. Why not. Let’s both be liars and thieves. Why would I be the Rook? He despises the nobility. What sort of nightmares have you been having, that you would think that?”

“Lacewater! You said at the Gloria how angry you were, and then the Rook came out of nowhere to thrash Mezzan—”

“Giuna was the one who said he deserved a thrashing! Maybe she’s the Rook.”

“Giuna was not late joining us and was not conveniently nearby afterward. And you always run off, but not to where you say you’ll be—and at Indestor Manor—” Ren cut herself off, breathing hard. She’d known some excellent liars in her time, but she didn’t think she was looking at one now.

Leato wasn’t the Rook. And he was laughing at her for suggesting he might be.

Her face heated. The nightmare had taken many forms so far, but humiliation was a new one.

“Never mind,” she muttered, shoving her damp hair back. “That’s not the point. Give me your hand, and I will see if I can get us out of here.”

After the faintest pause, he offered her a gloved hand. She took it in her bare one and closed her eyes, thinking. “Next was The Face of Gold. That is wealth, and it was the good future.” It would wind up twisted, but it still gave her guidance. “Were it not for this, my future would have been right here. So perhaps we need not go anywhere.”

She opened her eyes, and the study transformed around her.

The blues warmed to rich amber and brown, the wheels of the Indestor seal shifting to form the crossed triple feathers of the Traementis.

And there was a second Ren in the chair.

No, not Ren—Renata. Dressed in all the splendor Tess’s needle could achieve, without any need for scrimping or trickery. The bronze wool of her underdress was so finely woven that it shimmered like brushed silk, and her surcoat was encrusted with rubies. A fire blazed in the hearth, a crystal wineglass stood at her hand, and she smiled with the satiety of a