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

interesting, and though it sounds strange to say, I felt as though I should have it.” She smiled in self-deprecation. “After I bought it, I learned it was a Vraszenian pattern deck. A silly superstition, and a diversion for myself and my friends; I performed a few readings for them.

“But then… Mother found out.”

Renata raised her eyes to meet Donaia’s. “I’ve never seen her so angry in my life. She almost threw the cards into the fire, until I stopped her. I demanded to know why she was so upset, and she told me that before she left Nadežra, she and some friends visited a szorsa.”

It was the kind of thing bored young nobles did—witness her own abortive outing with Sibiliat and the others. “I don’t know what the woman said to her, but Mother admitted she went back several times more, on her own, in secret. Whatever they talked about, when Veiled Waters came, Mother was persuaded to take aža and go up to the amphitheatre… where she met a man.”

She let her lips twist into another ironic smile. “Mother claims he was beautiful beyond words and must have been a god, but I think that was the aža talking. She lay with him, and soon afterward, realized she was with child.”

Given that she’d already admitted to a different month of birth, they must have suspected she was working toward a revelation of that kind. But the look they exchanged was even less surprised than that—as if they’d anticipated it long before she began talking.

What do they know? Neither of them said anything; she had no choice but to go on. “Which should have been impossible, of course. Mother insists she still had her contraceptive numinat, that she hadn’t lost it in her revels; at this point we’ll never know. But that day, when she caught me with the pattern deck, she swore it was the fault of the szorsa that she found herself pregnant. That the woman had done something to alter her fate—as if Vraszenian superstition could overpower numinatria!”

“It most certainly can’t,” Tanaquis said. “But numinata can be poorly inscribed, and if the man wasn’t wearing one himself…”

Renata sighed. “Whatever the cause, it put Mother into a panic. From what I’ve seen of Eret Quientis, I imagine he would have duly registered me once they were married… but it would have broken the story Mother liked to tell herself. Not a celebrated beauty with the hearts of everyone laid at her feet, but a prosaic bore’s fiancée who got spun on aža and had sex with a stranger in the Great Amphitheatre. Mother couldn’t endure the thought. She decided the only thing to do was to run away to Seteris and find her beautiful lover there.”

“So the man she met was Eret Viraudax?” Donaia asked, brow furrowing.

“Hardly,” Renata said with a bitter snort. “The man I’ve always known as my father has never left Seteris. He was merely a rich altan who liked the look of my mother and was willing to indulge her fantasies. His wealth, laid against a man who might not even be in Seteris, or have any fortune or position even if Mother succeeded in finding him… It was no choice at all. She persuaded Father to adopt me as his own, and ever since has told the world—myself included—that I was born in Colbrilun, to hide the fact that I’m not his natural daughter. That I was conceived in Nadežra.”

Renata sagged in her chair, as if admitting the truth had lifted a great weight from her shoulders. “After that I decided I must come here and see—well, see what I could discover. Only I’m not certain what I’m looking for.” She made herself meet Donaia’s gaze again. “I’m sorry, Era Traementis. What I said to you when I first arrived, about wanting to reconcile you with my mother—that was utter nonsense. Both moons will sink into the northern sea before that happens. But I couldn’t bring myself to explain the truth to a stranger, and having started in that fashion… I didn’t know how to stop.”

“You’re hardly to blame for your mother’s foolishness,” Donaia said. Then she passed a weary hand over her face. “Though I’m relieved you weren’t foolish enough to expect reconciliation.”

Tanaquis looked like she wanted to be taking notes. “You were hoping to find your father? Or some news of him? There are some Seterins here besides yourself, but you don’t seem to have been seeking them out.”

“And say what?” Renata asked ironically. “‘Do you remember impregnating a spoiled young alta more than twenty years ago?’ No, I realized when I got here that it was beyond impossible.”

She needed to turn the conversation before they prodded any more closely at the fabric of her lie. Fortunately—if it merited that word—she had something guaranteed to drive the subject from their minds. It was the reason she’d involved the pattern deck at all.

“But there’s something else I should tell you, though I apologize for bringing this up when you already have so many other things to grieve you. The other day, Era Traementis, after the funeral… you said House Traementis was cursed. And I—I was delirious at the time, and perhaps what I saw was only my sleeplessness talking, but…” Placing one hand atop the cards, she said, “I laid a pattern for your family. And I believe you are cursed.”

She hurried onward before either woman could respond. “I know it sounds absurd. Ever since I bought this deck, though… Maybe there is something to what Mother said, about that patterner manipulating her fate and mine. I’ve always felt like the cards speak to me. But they’ve never spoken as clearly as they did that night, when I asked them if House Traementis was under some dark fate.”

It was a risk, revealing her connection to pattern at all, when that was firmly a Vraszenian tradition. But it was the only way she could think of to give Tanaquis some hint of