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

Isla Prišta, Westbridge: Cyprilun 17

The sound of the doorbell made Ren flinch.

Tess’s arms wrapped more tightly around her. “Ignore it. You don’t have to be facing anybody right now.”

Even Tess’s embrace couldn’t chase the cold away. The fire was built high, flooding the kitchen with warmth, but Ren shivered uncontrollably. Whether her eyes were open or shut, all she saw was Ondrakja.

And the zlyzen tearing into Leato as she left him behind.

The doorbell rang again.

Tess cursed and sprang to her feet. “I’ll deal with that. Just you stay here and drink your tea.” She hurried out.

At first all Ren could make out were indistinct murmurs. Then Tess’s voice rang down like one of the well-washers from Ganllechyn fireside tales. “No, you may not come in to confirm, and the alta won’t be coming down so you can poke at her, neither!” she shrieked. “I told you she’d returned with only some scratches. Are you calling me a liar?”

The following murmur didn’t seem to satisfy Tess. “I don’t care if you were sent by Mettore Indestor himself; I’m not letting you—what’s your name?—right then, Lieutenant Kaineto. You’re not setting one foot through this doorway.”

She’s screeching like that to let me know what’s happening, Ren realized.

“You do that. And while you’re at it, you tell this Commander Cercel of yours that we don’t much appreciate being hassled at this hour. After what my alta’s been through…” The door thudded shut.

Moments later, Tess slumped down the stairs, hand to her heart and face pale as a pearl ghost. “That’s taken care of for now. We should have at least until morning. Later, if the hawks are as scattered as they seem to be.” She laid a hand against Ren’s brow and her own cheek, as though testing for a fever. “Do you want to talk at all? Or would you rather rest?”

Ren’s heart was racing as if she’d run up the Point again. As if the Vigil really had kicked in the kitchen door, Grey Serrado at their head, to arrest her for her crimes.

That was the first of it to come out, in broken fragments. Then, like floodgates opening, the rest: Her turning the Traementis into pawns, Tess leaving, Sedge dead at Vargo’s hands, Ivrina in the flames. Crawling to Ondrakja again and again, and the blind szorsa going with her to the Charterhouse statues.

Leato. Over and over, trying to say what had happened to him, how she’d abandoned him, but the words caught in her throat like barbed fishhooks. Tess must have known he was dead, long before Ren managed to give it voice, but she just sat and stroked Ren’s hair and murmured comforting nonsense until the last of it was done.

Enough silence passed that Ren wondered if Tess had fallen into a doze, but then her breath stirred Ren’s hair. “I can’t speak for the rest of it, but I would never leave you.” She caught Ren’s hand and turned it over, laying her arm beside it so their scars formed the line that bound them in sisterhood. “This means as much to me as it does to you. I’d sooner cut off all my fingers and never sew again.”

Ren’s eyes had been dry and burning since the Rook dragged her away from the vanished wellspring, but now the tears came, blinding her.

“Oh dear. Now see what I’ve gone and done.” Tess wrapped her arms around Ren, rocking her gently.

The knock that came on the door seemed almost like pattern at work. Sedge’s knock, so they would know it was him. Tess let him in, and at the sight of Ren, Sedge swore and dropped to his knees in front of her.

“She’s only scraped and bruised a bit, but she’s in a bad way. She saw Ondrakja,” Tess said as she locked the door.

Sedge took Ren’s hands and looked up into her face. “Shoulda been here earlier. We was all out looking for Vargo—guess I hoped you’d be with him. Fuck. Ondrakja? But it wasn’t really her, right?” He glanced over his shoulder at Tess. “Way we was hearing it, it was all in people’s heads.”

Ren gripped his hands hard enough to bruise. “Not in my head, but not—not real. Masks have mercy, not real.” Sedge was alive. And she wasn’t going to pry into Vargo’s secrets ever again, not if it would get him killed.

Sedge got up on the bench with her, and Ren leaned into his strength. He didn’t have Tess’s knack for soothing words, but he was solid and real, and she could see their scar on his wrist, half buried among the others he’d picked up along the way.

Without these two…

It didn’t matter. She had them. And she wasn’t going to lose that.

Cold dawn light streaming through the high windows of the half-sunken kitchen took her by surprise. She hadn’t slept, but somewhere along the line the animal panic had faded. Not gone; just far enough beneath the surface that she could think.

Until morning, Tess had said. People would want to know what happened, to make sure Alta Renata was all right.

Either I run, Ren thought, or I put my mask back on.

It made her skin crawl, calling to mind the version of herself she’d seen ruling over the Traementis. But simply vanishing, grabbing the bags she and Tess kept ready and fleeing Nadežra, would leave Donaia and Giuna to face Leato’s death alone.

Leato, who’d died to save Ren. She owed them whatever she could do now—however pitiful and inadequate it might be.

“Tess,” she said, her voice creaking as if she hadn’t used it in a year. “I need my makeup. And my mirror. And a dress.”

Sebatium, the Pearls: Cyprilun 18

The Liganti temple where Renata was called to give her testimony was one of the most beautiful buildings she’d ever seen. It was dedicated to Sebat, the numen of perfection in imperfection, of purity, of beauty and art and craftsmanship—and of inscription, the highest of