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

“I’m sorry, what?”

Someday, Tess hoped to tell her grandchildren about the time she threw the Rook off-kilter. But first she had to get Ren away from here. “What’s wrong with that woman? Is she—”

He lowered Ren to the ground, and the last of Tess’s breath left her. It was Ren, sure enough—looking exactly like herself, under the blood and dirt. The River Dežera costume was gone like it had never been; she was in Vraszenian clothes.

But she was alive. Staring and wordless, she huddled in on herself when the Rook let go. She showed no sign that she realized Tess was even there—but she was alive.

Rough stone cracked against Tess’s knees as she fell at Ren’s side. “Oh, Mother and— What happened to you?”

“You know this woman?” the Rook asked.

Tess wasn’t Ren, didn’t have the knack of weaving lies together into a good strong fabric that resembled truth. So she just kept her head down, hoping her own simple costume was disguise enough and that the Rook hadn’t realized he held Alta Renata. Especially if he was really Leato, like Ren thought.

His hand fell on her shoulder. “I said, do you know her?”

“Yes,” Tess replied. Ren still hadn’t moved. If she hadn’t been breathing, in shallow, erratic gasps, Tess would have thought her dead.

“Then I’ll leave her with you.” The Rook’s voice was bleak as winter ice. “If the Vigil’s coming, she shouldn’t be caught with me.”

Tess nodded. Her sight was blurred from tears, but she didn’t dare wipe them away until the Rook was gone and she could take her mask off again. “Get you gone. I’ll take care of her—get her back to her people.”

He set off before she finished speaking, down the path and then leaping from it to a rooftop, out of sight in moments. Tess curled herself around Ren, using her own generous padding as a cushion against the stone. Shaking, she pressed her brow to Ren’s and allowed herself a moment of relief. Thank you, Mother and Crone. Whatever else had happened, Ren was alive.

She brushed her sister’s hair back from her brow, then lifted her head. Their troubles weren’t over yet. Ren didn’t look like Renata anymore, which meant they had to get out of sight.

Home, Tess decided. But she wasn’t the Rook, and couldn’t carry Ren all the way to Westbridge.

“Right, then,” she said, her voice strengthening. “I need you to help me, Ren. Up with you—”

They lurched upright, Tess bearing more of Ren’s weight than Ren did, but at least her sister was on her feet, and something like moving. One careful step at a time, they made their way down, headed for home and for safety.

Aerie, Duskgate, Old Island: Cyprilun 17

“Serrado! Where in Ninat’s hell have you b—”

Cercel’s frustrated shout withered to nothing as the crowd in the main room of the Aerie parted to let Grey and his constables through, with their bloodstained burden.

When his patrol found the body, Grey had tried to carry Leato himself. He couldn’t do it for Kolya—there’d been little left to carry—but at least he could do this for the man who’d been almost like a brother to him. It didn’t make up for not being there when Leato needed him, but he’d tried.

After two stumbling steps, Ranieri had quietly taken command, wrapping the body in his coat and ordering the other constables to take Grey’s burden. Now he faded back, ceding control to his captain once more, as Cercel shoved through the crowd to meet them.

Grey owed Ranieri thanks for the respite, even if it hadn’t been enough. Not to recover from everything he’d seen that night. The walls of the waking world blurred around him, the front room of the Aerie briefly awash in blood—a dream of the building as a place of violence. Grey pressed the heel of his hand into his brow, willing himself to see only what was real.

“Commander. We found him in the amphitheatre. Where—” Grey’s voice broke. He cleared his throat and tried again. “Where are we placing the bodies? We need to inform Era Traementis that her son…”

This time the blurring was entirely due to tears. Grey drew in a shaking breath. Then a second. Then a third. He just had to get through these last steps; then he could sink into the grief that was waiting to tear him apart.

Cercel’s jaw tightened so hard she risked cracking a tooth. “Downstairs,” she said. “Ranieri, see to it.”

She stepped in close as Ranieri and the others took Leato away. What was left of Leato. Dropping her voice so no one else could hear, she said, “I need you to tell me right now, Serrado. Are you on aža?”

“I needed to see what was happening,” he said. “I gathered my unit as quickly as I could.”

“I know you did.” The compassion in her voice almost broke him. Her initial anger was easier to deal with than this. Cercel’s hand twitched as if she wanted to lay it on his arm, and he was unspeakably grateful that she held back. “With everything that’s going on, I can’t afford to let you go home, but I’ll—”

“Where is he? Someone said they found him. Leato?” Donaia Traementis appeared at the top of the stairs leading to the commanders’ offices, where people of rank would be sent to wait. Her hair was in wild disarray, and a streak of mud darkened her surcoat at the knee. Giuna hovered behind, looking more composed than her mother, but only just.

Grey stumbled back a step. He wasn’t ready for this. Donaia spotted him and rushed down the stairs. Cercel, damn her, cleared a path.

“Grey!” Donaia clutched his hands. “Was it you? You found him? Where is he?”

He couldn’t. He opened his mouth to speak… but he saw the desperate hope in her brown eyes, and he couldn’t be the one to destroy her world. He shook