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

::Well done,:: Alsius said softly.

“Master Vargo.” It was Tanaquis, pencil and notebook in hand. “When you’re ready, I’d love to collect your report.”

17

The Peacock’s Web

The Pearls and Eastbridge: Cyprilun 27–28

Ren drifted upward, unsure of where dreams ended and reality began. She felt as if she were wrapped in a cloud, and even once she surfaced enough to feel bodily discomfort, the cloud feeling didn’t go away.

When she finally cracked an eye open, she realized why. She was lying on a thick mattress, with a heavy blanket over her, and a down pillow beneath her head.

Her first attempt to sit up produced only a twitch of her limbs. But that was enough to bring Tess into her field of vision—Tess, with an imprint of chair upholstery on her cheek, like she’d been sleeping upright. Relief and uncertainty warred in her eyes. “Ren?” she whispered. “How are you feeling?”

Understanding came as slowly as waking. Ren’s memories smeared together, a mass of exhausted days and nights. The Charterhouse. The horrors that followed. And then the horror that didn’t end: her inability to sleep.

Until now.

Her second attempt to sit up got farther, but Tess pressed her back down. “If you’re up for it,” she said, still in that whisper, “I’ve your cosmetics with me. I’ve done what I can, but you should fix it. We’re in Traementis Manor.”

An urgent need to use the closestool gave her good motivation to get up and away from the door. While Ren scrubbed away the previous makeup and reapplied her mask, Tess explained matters: the days of delirium and weakness, and the numinatrian ritual that healed her at last.

“Vargo?” Ren said, pausing with her eyes half-done to stare at Tess.

“He was that concerned. We all were.”

She would have to think about that later. She’d been asleep for an entire day, and still felt like Sedge had stomped all over her in his boots—especially around the ribs, which Tess explained was from the purgative she didn’t remember taking. But no worse than that, which alone was a miracle.

Ren was in Traementis Manor because it was that or the Tuatium, and Donaia had won that fight. “They wouldn’t let me take you home,” Tess said. “Tanaquis wanted to keep an eye on you.”

Not surprising. And Ren honestly couldn’t disagree. Tess had already done the work of twenty women, caring for her this past week; blurred and absent as most of her memories were, she remembered that much. It was dangerous, spending this much time in someone else’s house, but Tess had managed to keep Renata’s face on her well enough to pass scrutiny—and drooling into her pillow, it wasn’t like Ren could do much else to ruin her own con.

Once Tess allowed the rest of the world in, things became a blur of a different sort. Donaia and Giuna cried over her in relief; then Renata inhaled an enormous meal while someone went to fetch Tanaquis. Donaia hovered through the whole examination that followed, as if guarding Renata from something, which was puzzling. Not until Tanaquis was gone did Tess get the chance to tell her that she’d apparently given away the real month of her birth at some point during her sleeplessness.

The suppressed question in Tanaquis’s eyes made sense then, and Ren swore inwardly. How was she going to explain that away?

More problems for later. She slept again—more fitfully this time, in the too-soft bed with its smothering pillow—and woke to eat again, then more sleep, blessing every forro she’d spent on imbued cosmetics, which didn’t rub off all over the sheets.

The second day, over the protests of everyone else, she rose, got dressed, and ventured out to visit the man who’d saved her life.

Her memory of the last week insisted Nadežra had been locked in the depths of murderous winter, but the streets were filled with brilliant morning sunlight and the trills of dreamweavers migrating northward for the spring. The canals were beginning to rise, the river’s flood bringing them toward Veiled Waters. Renata threw back the curtains of the sedan chair and breathed in the sweet Upper Bank air, feeling alive for the first time since she had drunk the ash-spiked wine.

Though possibly not for long. Tanaquis had complained that Vargo’s report was woefully short on details; Tess said that Sedge had heard even less. Whatever Vargo had seen in Ažerais’s Dream, he was keeping it to himself.

Blackmail material lost its value, after all, if one shared it with too many people.

Vargo’s townhouse was almost a mirror of Renata’s, on the other side of the river in Eastbridge. When she knocked on the door, it opened to reveal the dark-skinned woman she’d seen around Vargo before, though her name slipped through the holes in Ren’s mind. She’d been there when Vargo met with Arenza, but showed no flicker of recognition—or anything else—as she said, “Yes?”

“Alta Renata Viraudax. I’m here to see Master Vargo.”

The woman’s expression didn’t alter. “He’s not at home.”

Truth, or a servant’s well-practiced lie? “Can you tell me where he is? Or when he’ll be at home?”

“No.”

“It’s all right, Varuni.” Vargo’s familiar baritone preceded his appearance in the doorway. His hair was mussed, and he wore a river-blue dressing gown only slightly less decadent—though considerably more opaque—than his courtesan costume from the Night of Bells, with Vraszenian-style trousers beneath. “I’m always at home for Alta Renata.”

Renata half expected to be on the receiving end of a surly look, but the woman merely said, “Understood,” and stepped aside.

As Varuni strode away, Vargo shoved his hands into the pockets of his robe—possibly to avoid taking hers bare-handed. “Are you certain you should be out? You look realms better than the last time we met, but it was a hard week even before you fell ill.”

His expression was unreadable, but he didn’t act like a man gloating over his leverage, nor one who’d recently found out that a river