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

More tears threatened. Donaia looked away, gaze fixing on the smudges of dirt she’d kicked into her chair’s upholstery. Her foot throbbed, hot in her boot. She swallowed past the tightness and lost her breath in something between a hiccup and a giggle. “Who possibly just broke her toe. Bad judgment still beats out bad luck, it seems.”

That pulled Renata from her reverie. She got Donaia up into a chair and her boot eased off; after a moment’s painful but efficient examination, she pronounced the toe only sprained, not broken.

With that done, she sat back on her heels, looking much younger and more vulnerable than Donaia was used to. “Then if you do not want me gone… I will stay. And I will find some way to turn your luck around.”

Isla Prišta, Westbridge: Cyprilun 19

Sedge must have been waiting for Tess and Ren to come home, because his knock came only moments after they reached the kitchen. Knew better than to wait for us inside, Ren thought. Though, the way I am right now, I would probably have just blinked at him.

No sooner had the door closed behind him than he demanded, “Why the fuck is Vargo telling his people to look for a patterner named Lenskaya?”

“What?” Ren stared at him, gape-mouthed. Then memory came crashing back. “Oh, fuck.” She collapsed onto the bench. “I completely forgot.”

“Forgot what? What did you do, Ren?”

Ren buried her head in her hands. Through the fog of her thoughts she heard Tess explaining to Sedge, and his answering curse. Ren knew she should speak, but her exhaustion was overwhelming her mind. She sat, in a daze, until something Tess said broke through. “But she can’t go. He’ll know for sure.”

“Might be worse not to go,” Sedge said. “Vargo don’t believe in pattern. Not as any kind of magic, anyway. Just women who are good at reading people and trading information. So now he thinks this Lenskaya is part of that. She vanishes into the river, he’ll start dredging it to find her.”

Ren began laughing. It wasn’t funny—it wasn’t even within spitting distance of funny—but her choices were laugh, or break down crying. “What is the worst that can happen? He finds out who I really am? Let him. Who gives a shit if the con ends; I’ve tried already to hook myself to a cursed house. Can’t do much fucking worse than that.”

“Cursed?!” Sedge and Tess echoed, both of them staring at her.

Shivering, Ren got up and grabbed a blanket, then moved toward the empty wine cellar, talking as she went. “Donaia said it. The Traementis are cursed—and I think she meant it literally. She blames Letilia.” Ren retrieved her mother’s pattern deck and stumbled back out into the main kitchen, pushing past Tess and Sedge, who were trying to follow her wanderings.

She sat down as close to the fire as she could get without risking the flame. Don’t want to end up like Mama. Except Ivrina had burned to death from fever, not fire.

Ren stared at the cards. She would need them when she went to face Vargo as Arenza… but no, that wasn’t why she’d gone to get them. She began to shuffle and cut.

“What do you think you’re doing?” Tess asked.

House Traementis wasn’t a person. Was it possible to pattern a group, an institution? Ren didn’t know. But it was more of a question than an overall pattern, anyway, and no reason she couldn’t try the three-card path, like she’d done for Leato.

Tess knelt and put her hand out to stop Ren before she could start dealing. “Are you certain this is a good idea? What with not having slept and all—who knows what you’re like to find because of that?”

“Vargo said ash is derived from aža,” Ren said. “Aža is supposed to help patterners.” Sometimes. Maybe. It certainly made them feel like they understood the pattern better, but Ivrina had always been skeptical. Then again, Ivrina hadn’t needed any help making the cards speak to her.

Sedge growled. “Ash is nightmare poison. Who’s to say it en’t going to make you see things as worse than they are?”

Another bitter laugh. “I’m not sure that’s possible.” She batted Tess’s hand aside and dealt three cards.

An instant later she was on her feet and halfway across the kitchen, Sedge catching her mid-flight. Ren lashed out at him instinctively, twisting out of his grip. “No. No. I refuse—I will not do that to them.”

“Do what?” Sedge asked, hands spread flat to show no threat. “Pattern them?”

“Turn into Ondrakja,” Ren snarled. “In the nightmare, Mama laid a pattern—The Face of Gold was me with the Traementis. Ruling over them like Ondrakja, turning them into my Fingers. Donaia was right; they are cursed. All this destruction they’ve suffered, it isn’t coincidence. All the people who have died, Leato, Gianco, their other kin, even Letilia leaving… it is all the same thing. And still the curse plays out. Donaia is next.” She felt it in the marrow of her bones.

Tess and Sedge were exchanging worried glances. “Ren,” Tess said hesitantly. “I don’t doubt your skill with the cards… but you haven’t even looked at them yet.”

That stopped her dead. Tess shifted out of the way, showing Ren the cards she’d dealt—still lying facedown on the flagstones.

Ren trembled from head to foot. She hadn’t turned them over. But she could see them in her mind’s eye anyway: The Mask of Ashes for the current point, The Mask of Night for the path, and The Face of Gold for the end. Destruction, ill fortune, and doom.

She flipped the cards. All three were exactly as she’d seen.

“That’s fucking unsettling, that is,” Sedge muttered. Then he shook his shoulders, like a dog throwing off water. “You know those cards, though. Must have recognized them by their backs.” It wasn’t impossible. Ivrina’s deck was imbued, and withstood the wear and tear of use better than most—but not perfectly.

Ren’s eyes burned; she was forgetting to blink. Tess