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

All clawed up—by something in the dream, I guess. The one it happened to, he broke out of my hold like it was nothing, dislocating his own shoulder. Died before anyone could do anything.” He scrubbed his hands over his face. “Leave it to fucking Ondrakja to make friends with zlyzen—like she weren’t nightmare enough on her own. C’mon. Stay close.” He sloshed past, his slower pace having nothing to do with the water that had risen to their calves.

They were well under the Point now, the stone above their heads natural rather than blocks held together with crumbling mortar. The niches continued at regular intervals—and then Ren’s wavering light caught a change.

Iron bars across their mouths.

Sedge swore. “That lunatic’s been keeping zlyzen caged?”

Ren edged past him, lifting the stone to light each niche in turn. The gates were open and the holes all empty now—thank the Faces—but in one she found a small lump of rags. Sedge’s breath hissed between his teeth when she reached between the bars to pick it up.

The rags were tied in the vague shape of a human. A doll, not much different from the one Ren had made when Tess first joined the Fingers.

“No,” Ren whispered dully. “This is where she kept the children.”

And in the silence that followed she heard a voice, rising in a croaking parody of song.

“Find them in your pockets,

Find them in your coat;

If you aren’t careful,

You’ll find them on your throat…”

In the deepest shadows, something stirred. The paltry gleam of Ren’s lightstone caught the edges and angles of limbs as withered and bent as dried branches, the sag of torn and filthy clothes not even fit for a rag heap, the brittle swampgrass hair and skin-draped skull of an old woman who might have stepped out of the darkest fire tale.

Gammer Lindworm. No wonder the street kids called her that.

And yet in the bones of her face, in the long red nails that clacked along the wall and the smear of purple across her lips like paint, Ren could see the ruined shreds of Ondrakja.

Sedge made a choking, terrified noise.

“What have you found, my little friends?” Ondrakja creaked. Her eyes seemed too large for her face, as though they might fall out of their sockets. When the light from Ren’s stone caught them, they gleamed like a cat’s at night. “Come closer, come closer, where I can see.”

Ren couldn’t have moved even if she’d wanted to. It was a nightmare come to life, and not because of the zlyzen blood on the walls. “You’re supposed to be dead. I killed you.”

Pointed teeth flashed in reply. “You didn’t kill me enough, little Renyi. And it seems I didn’t kill Sedge enough. We’re all failed murderers here.” Her voice might be broken, but the words sounded just like Ondrakja. Her creaking shivered into a ghastly laugh. “Or maybe not. I killed your friend, after all. You shouldn’t have run. It’s always better to stay and take your punishment, rather than let other people get hurt.”

Leato. Ren’s gorge rose.

Ondrakja crept closer, easing into the light as though testing to make sure she wouldn’t burn. She kept talking—she’d always loved the sound of her own voice. “I could have saved him, if I wanted. Like I saved myself. Fed him the blood.” Her nails came away from the wall dripping viscous purple, and Ondrakja licked them clean. “Or fed him little dreams and let my friends feast. They grow fat on it, fat with nightmares, then bleed those nightmares out to feed others.”

She was only a few arm’s lengths away now, close enough for Ren to smell her stink, even over the rot and mildew of the catacombs.

“Then there’s you. Little Renyi.” Ondrakja’s voice hardened. “Little traitorous bitch, turning against your own knot. Do you still dream of that night? Is that a sweet dream for you? They prefer the sweeter dreams. Food and family and warmth. The sweeter the dream, the more bitter the nightmare that follows.”

Ren felt Sedge tense behind her. It was the confrontation they’d never had five years ago: Sedge against Ondrakja, pitting his growing size and strength against her viciousness and experience, and the years of habitual obedience. By the time she stopped to cut his charm, casting him out of the knot—by the time he realized she meant to kill him—he’d been too broken to fight back.

He wasn’t broken now.

“But where’s the other one?” Ondrakja said, her ruined voice suddenly warming to a parody of friendliness. She pressed her clawed hands to her breast. “There were always three of you. Where’s little Tess?” From under her rags she drew the Acrenix medallion she’d torn from Ren’s neck in the nightmare, inscribed with three Tricats. “We must do things in threes. Isn’t that why you gave me this? I can’t punish you properly without all three.”

In the cellar of the old lodging house there was a small room where Ondrakja used to lock misbehaving Fingers, alone in the dark and the damp, saying the zlyzen would come for them soon. But Ren and Sedge weren’t the children they’d been, cowering in fear of Ondrakja’s rage.

“You don’t fucking touch my sisters,” Sedge growled—and lunged.

He was bigger now, and stronger, and she was a withered husk of her former self. He drew two knives as he hurled himself forward—

—and with one negligent hand, Ondrakja slammed him against the iron bars of a cage.

“Now, now,” she said, in a singsong tone. “Doesn’t matter if you’re a pinkie or a fist—you don’t threaten your knot’s boss. There’s only room for one traitor here.”

“You en’t my boss no more.” Sedge lurched to his feet, one dagger still in his left hand, but Ondrakja caught his arm and twisted it. Even through his cry of pain, Ren could hear the snap as his wrist broke.

She couldn’t stand frozen while Ondrakja killed him again.

Drawing her own knife, she ran at Ondrakja. Rather than matching herself against the woman’s unholy strength, she ducked under the