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

to help Tess nurse Renata, and it was all Tess could do to find a reason to turn her away. She’d barely closed the doors on the girl’s heels when someone else rang the bell—another courier, this one not bearing any tonics, just a message from Meda Fienola saying that she’d spoken again with Captain Serrado and conceded, based on his experience, that medicine wouldn’t solve the problem.

The problem with Ren not sleeping was that Tess couldn’t sleep, either. She didn’t dare nod off, not with the hallucinations and paranoia making Ren so unpredictable. But sooner or later weakness would drag her down, and what would she do then?

It came as a crying relief when she heard Sedge’s knock on the door. “Vargo’s orders, if you can believe it,” he said when he came in.

A flash of panic raced through Tess. “How did he find out?”

“That she’s sick? Probably from that physician you terrorized. But Fienola talked to him, too, because you told her he was sending remedies.”

“But why send you?”

“I know a bit about people dosed with ash,” Sedge replied grimly, and refused to say aught more.

His presence meant she could sleep through the night, though she had to take the pallet to the parlour to do it. The next morning Sedge helped her carry Ren to the Tuatium in the Pearls, where Fienola had prepared some kind of numinat she thought would help the alta sleep. The only thing Tess could say for it was that it didn’t cause the mess and fuss of the purgative.

Another night without sleep. Another day without answers. Sedge was summoned to talk to Vargo, because Vargo was talking to the Traementis and Serrado was talking to Fienola and Tess tried not to fret her fingernails off over what everyone was saying where she couldn’t hear. Where Ren couldn’t hear: Ren was the one who knew how to steer such things. But Ren was in no state to steer anything.

Tess couldn’t leave her sister alone in the kitchen anymore, not even for a moment—not after Ren, in her growing delirium, tried to escape while Tess was busy relieving herself. That left the wine cellar, and Ren fought like a feral cat every inch of the way.

“You dare lock me up, you kinless bitch? I’ll send you to the Vigil for this treatment!” The words were Renata’s, but growled in Ren’s throaty accent.

Catching a flailing hand before Ren could add to Tess’s collection of scratches, Tess said, “You’ll do no such thing.”

“No? Maybe I’ll just ship you off to become someone else’s problem. Seemed to work for your family.”

A shove sent Ren stumbling into the wine cellar so that Tess could slam the door shut and lock it. “You don’t mean that,” she whispered, too softly for Ren to hear through the heavy wood. But then, the words weren’t meant for Ren. “She doesn’t mean that.”

Normally the kitchen was a comforting place for Tess. It was the center of every Ganllechyn home; some of the places Tess had lived as a child were little more than a kitchen and a few sleeping alcoves built into the walls. But the townhouse’s kitchen was too fine, and with Ren locked up, too empty. The sampler Tess had hung proudly on the wall seemed now to mock her. How many kitchens had she passed through, handed from aunts to uncles, from cousins to kin only by marriage? Until the last of them packed her aboard a ship to Nadežra, only for her to learn on arriving in Little Alwydd that her great-uncle had died of mud fever months before, and her with no way to get home—and no family who’d take her if she could.

A sampler on the kitchen wall meant home: something Tess had never had, until now. But it was a stolen home, built on lies… and thanks to a single night of misfortune, it was crumbling away.

“You’re being a maudlin ninny. Stop it.” She dashed away tears. Perhaps a moment’s respite and a bit of air would help. Scraping crumbs from the empty breadbox, she stepped out to the back walk to feed the finches.

Her heart thumped when she saw someone approaching along the canal’s rim. Pavlin. And her a tearful wreck and too tired to care.

Tess did her best to wipe away the evidence of her self-pity, but he saw her attempt, and his step quickened. “Did something happen?” he asked, setting his muslin bundle on the canal wall and tentatively touching her cheek. His fingers were cool, and it was all she could do not to turn her face into that comfort.

Marry a man what brings you food, and you’ll never starve for love. Tess shivered at the stray memory. And now her cheeks were warm for a different reason, though it didn’t make her any less of a ninny. The ruse with Ren made such hopes impossible. It wasn’t like she could tell him the truth.

“You’re cold,” he said, and made to take off the coat she’d retailored for him. The first of several over the past weeks—coats, waistcoats, a binder imbued for comfort—in trade for the bread he kept bringing.

“No, keep your coat. I’m tired, is all. The alta’s taken ill, and there’s only me to see to her needs.”

“I heard. That’s why I brought this. One less thing for you to worry about—and I included the spice cakes you like.”

Tess took the bundle, tears pricking again. Pavlin came by so rarely. She hadn’t seen him since before the Night of Bells. “Thank you,” she whispered. She couldn’t say why it meant so much that he’d come now, amid all this chaos. Perhaps it was like the kitchen sampler and the spice cakes: a moment of comfort that was only for her.

Before she could second-guess herself, she rose on tiptoe and pressed a kiss to his cheek. The softness of his skin lingered on her lips, even as she backed away. “I… I should get back to the alta,” she