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

Behind her mother, Giuna pressed a fist to her lips, holding in a sob of understanding.

“I’m sorry.” The words cut him open. “He’s not… I’m so sorry. We found his body.”

“No.” Donaia’s weight dropped, dragging Grey down with her. “No, you must be mistaken. It must be someone else. Not Leato. Not my boy.”

She kept repeating it, over and over, and Grey felt the threads of the Traementis family fraying around him, the last remaining strands.

And the last strands of himself, too.

Donaia’s denials became fists beating against his shoulders. Grey let her strike him, because he deserved it. The aža shifted his vision again; now he saw the Aerie as a place of chains, of strangling order that did more harm than good. He squeezed his eyes shut and tried to rub comfort into Donaia’s curved back, his hand brushing Giuna’s as she did the same.

It was Giuna who finally brought him back to his surroundings. She drew in a sharp breath, and Grey opened his eyes.

“What about Renata? She was with Leato in the Charterhouse. Did you find…” Giuna swallowed hard. “Anything?”

“Nothing.” Grey glanced up at Cercel, who was doing her best to move traffic around them. “You’ve had no reports?”

Cercel shook her head. “We’re still locating people. I don’t know how they got scattered across the Island, but—some of them might not even be on the Island.”

“Then expand your search beyond it!” Giuna snapped, rising to her feet to square off against Cercel. Even with her eyes reddened from tears and her body trembling, she had never looked so much like her mother. “Renata doesn’t know Nadežra. She might be lost. She might be hurt!”

She might be dead.

Giuna didn’t have to say it. The more time passed, the more likely that became.

Grey rose, swaying as the aža tried to show him another dream of the Aerie. Alone on the floor, Donaia wrapped her arms around her own body, rocking back and forth. He didn’t want to leave her with only Giuna for support, but he could do more for her grief out in the city than he could by staying here. “She lives in Westbridge—might have gone there. I can take my unit and—”

The door to the Aerie shrieked clean off its hinges, the heavy panels slamming into three hawks and knocking them to the ground. Mettore Indestor thundered through the gaping threshold, wrapped in the spangled robe from someone else’s costume and streaked with dried blood from his wounds. A Caerulet secretary scurried in his wake, braying for his master to stop and let himself be tended, but Indestor showed no sign that he even noticed the pain.

“I want to know who did this to me!” he roared.

Grey had seen the man in a fury plenty of times before, but this was pure, elemental rage—and something more besides. Indestor gripped the edge of a desk, and the people behind it scattered on instinct, a heartbeat before the desk splintered against the wall.

Ash. They’d seen its effects enough on the streets lately for Grey to recognize them on sight.

The hilt of his sword was cold against his palm. Drawing steel against Caerulet would get him killed, but that strength, combined with Mettore’s rage…

Indestor’s dilated eyes fixed on him, and for one paralyzing instant Grey felt like the man could see what he’d almost done. “It was your people,” Indestor snarled. “Fucking gnats. They did this to me. I want to know who. Bring me answers or I’ll spit you on that pin you wear, and everyone who vouched for you.”

It was all too clear what methods Mettore expected Grey to use. Cercel interposed herself between the two of them, not quite putting her back to Indestor, but blocking Grey’s view enough to force his attention onto her. “Go,” she told him. “I’ll send someone else to Westbridge.”

“My people didn’t do this.” Grey wanted to shout his fury at Indestor, but he’d been a hawk and a Nadežran too long for that sort of pointless idiocy. Even with the aža showing him glimpses of Ažerais’s Dream, even with Leato’s death bleeding him dry inside, he had enough sense to keep his voice low so only Cercel could hear. “Our ziemetse were poisoned, too. We would never do something like that.”

“But they might know something, and you’re the only person they’re likely to talk to.”

It twisted another knife in his gut. Most Vraszenians saw him as a slip-knot. The clan elders were from the upriver city-states, but they knew perfectly well what a Vigil uniform meant.

Indestor shoved his secretary back when the man tried to dab at his cuts with a damp cloth. The man went reeling, and would have fallen if there weren’t so many people behind him. “Do you want him sending somebody else?” Cercel growled at Grey. “If we’re going to get justice for this, Serrado, I need you to do your job.”

Grey looked down at Donaia. Giuna was crouched next to her, setting her own grief aside to comfort her mother. Finding Renata wouldn’t do much to make things better, but finding her dead could only make things worse. How could he leave that responsibility in someone else’s hands?

But Cercel was right. As bad as he was for talking to the clan leaders, any other hawk would be disastrous.

Indestor had already stormed upstairs, bellowing for the high commander. Grey clenched his jaw, wishing anyone had the authority to subdue the drugged-up cuff before he threw another desk at someone. “Fine. I’m taking Ranieri with me.” Pavlin had only traces of Vraszenian blood, but he wouldn’t use this as a chance to jockey for Caerulet’s favor, the way Grey’s other constables would.

“Take whoever you think will be useful. Just go, before this gets worse.”

With all the noise in the Aerie, he couldn’t possibly hear Donaia’s broken sobs as he left. But the aža seemed to sense her grief, and all he could see as he headed for Seven Knots were people weeping all around him.