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

As she spoke, she wrapped herself in the length of striped wool every Ganllechyn woman from child to crone wore to keep out the cold and damp. Ren knew it was too late to protest, but she said, “We tried already. And we cannot afford—”

“Vargo can. And he said he’d pay.” Brushing back Ren’s hair, Tess pressed a kiss to her temple. “I won’t be but a moment. Just rest your eyes while I’m gone. Chances are you’ll fall asleep the moment I step outside. Isn’t that always the way of it?”

Ren mustered a wan smile, but Tess’s forced optimism rang hollow. Exhaustion had taken her through fear to resignation: She was going to die from this.

But she couldn’t say that to Tess.

With her gone, the emptiness of the kitchen haunted Ren. Sedge was busy on Vargo’s business; he’d slipped away long enough to make sure she’d survived the meeting, but he didn’t dare stay. Once she was alone, her gaze kept drifting to the door, waiting for the pounding, for someone to kick it in. Which would be preferable: hanging for her crimes, or dying by inches?

Shuddering, she touched the hilt of her knife. Then she wrapped herself in a blanket and drifted through the rest of the house.

The unused rooms weren’t any better. Dustcloths shrouded the furniture, and the moonlight was scant, leaving Ren to navigate by locating the darker shadows amid the lighter. She couldn’t stop shivering. The river was rising in flood, the dreamweavers building their nests, the weather warming with spring, but inside her, everything was ice.

The house was new construction, but without decorations to give it life, it reminded Ren of the ancient and moldering building on the Old Island that Ondrakja had passed off as a lodging house, calling the children her “tenants” whenever a hawk asked, and passing him a purse to make sure that answer sufficed. A vaguely plausible lie and bribes supplied on a steady basis: That was all it took for the hawks to leave her to her business.

Ren remembered tiptoeing her way along the floor at night, trying not to step on her fellow Fingers, learning which boards creaked and which ones were bent enough to catch an unwary toe. Down the hallway was Ondrakja’s parlour, and Ren didn’t have anything to give her. Ondrakja would be so angry…

Ondrakja’s dead. And I’m hallucinating.

Leaving the kitchen had been stupid. She wasn’t any safer in the rest of the house, and she was a lot colder. She should go back and wait for Tess to return. Somehow she’d wound up on the top floor; she inched her way down the steps, wondering the whole time why she bothered being careful. Did it really matter if she pitched headfirst down them?

Back in the kitchen, the embers glowing below the grate pulsed red with threat. Or with a warning. The door closed, and Ren knew she wasn’t alone.

She threw off the blanket and snatched out her knife, stabbing on instinct. Hard fingers grabbed her wrist, and a sudden burst of pain forced her to drop the blade. Ren broke free and grabbed Tess’s cudgel, but the dark figure blocked her panicked strike and wrenched her around, tearing the club from her hand. She groped for another weapon, half-blind with desperation; a stale heel of bread came to hand, and she followed that throw by brandishing the bread knife, knowing it wasn’t any use: The nightmare had come true.

He took the bread knife away and advanced, and Ren, retreating, caught her heel against the floor and fell onto the pallet in front of the hearth. She scrabbled for anything else to defend herself with, but there was nothing.

Her attacker knelt over her, gripping her jaw in one gloved hand. Ren’s scream died in her throat, choked by terror. But instead of striking, he forced her face toward the fire—toward the light.

The explosion of brightness burned out her sight. When he wrenched her back toward him, all she saw was shadow. “You’re not Arenza,” he growled. “Or… you are. But you’re also— Who the fuck are you?”

She had no answer. No words. She was fear, inside and out, and couldn’t speak. The silhouette was familiar: the hooded shape of the Rook.

He released her chin, hauling her to her feet. “Here I thought you were just a victim. Wrong place, wrong time. But maybe what they’re saying is true—that you caused the Night of Hells.”

“No!” She tried to wrench away, but in her weakened state, she didn’t stand a chance. “I swear it—”

His grip tightened painfully, printing bruises into her arms. “Then why did it end when I dragged you out of it?”

Now his hands were the only thing keeping her upright. Because she couldn’t deny it: She was the reason the nightmares began, and she was the reason they ended. She didn’t fully understand why, but she knew that much to be true.

“Nothing to say?” he snarled. “Should we try another? Where did ‘Alta Renata’ disappear to? Nobody on aža reported seeing her. How did she make it out safely while the Traementis heir died? Why were you with him instead?” A gloved thumb smudged her cheek, but for once, she had no makeup to protect her. “Except the answer’s clear now—isn’t it. The real questions are, what game are you playing at, and who are you playing it for?”

“I’m not! I—I—” Her words caught. She was breathing too fast, fighting back tears, because the Rook wouldn’t give a damn if she cried; he would only think she was playing for sympathy. “If you think I would put myself through that—put Leato through it— I tried to get him out, I swear, but the zlyzen…”

She could see them again, writhing and tearing. She was in the kitchen with the Rook, but at the same time she was in the amphitheatre, in the wellspring, with Leato above her and far below, screaming, dying. And she couldn’t