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

Stadnem Anduske had been distributing for years, piling up further and further, marking the way to a heavy door that had once been hinged onto a caravan.

Idusza stopped. “They know you’re a hawk. Many of them at the hands of the Vigil have bled, or lost kin. I will do my best to make certain you leave here alive, but expect not that anyone will welcome you.”

Grey unbuckled his sword belt and handed the entire kit to her. “To prove my goodwill.”

She snorted as she accepted it. “They would have taken it from you inside. But giving it now may help. A little.”

Her rhythmic knock on the door was clearly a code, and a narrow slot opened for the watcher inside to examine them both. Idusza murmured at the slot; a brief, low-voiced argument followed; she held up Grey’s sword belt for the watcher to see. A clock tower rang ninth sun, the sound muted by the fog and layers of wall, and Grey tried not to tense at how much time was slipping away. If this continued past dusk, there’d be no stopping the fires; darkness was fuel for a riot.

Finally a heavy bolt thunked aside, and the door creaked open.

The room beyond wasn’t much different from the other gang hideouts he’d seen in Nadežra. The people crowded inside were well-armed and wary, and the embroidered wall hangings almost certainly hid other entrances and exits. But here everyone’s hair was long and braided, and the back of Grey’s neck felt naked by comparison.

It wasn’t hard to spot which one was Koszar Andrejek, the leader of the Stadnem Anduske. A heavyset man stood at the center of a clump of people, cheeks pitted with old pox scars and wire-coarse hair thick with braids and beads. The people around him looked prepared to throw themselves between their boss and the intruder if Grey so much as blinked wrong. “Ča Andrejek,” Grey said, bowing his head and touching his brow.

The man ignored him. “Idusza,” he snapped. “You waste our time. This man is the lapdog of the Vigil and the Traementis.”

The man spoke in Liganti, a denial of their shared heritage. There was no diplomatic way to answer him. To these people, diplomacy was weakness, and the tool of those who bent the knee to the invaders.

Just as he’d done with Idusza, Grey had to thrust at their weakest point. “So to Mezzan Indestor you will listen, but not someone working to clear our people of blame for the Night of Hells.” He spoke in Vraszenian, his accent coated with road dust, unlike the river-slick dialect spoken by those born in Nadežra, and spat on the floor behind him. “Who here is the lapdog?”

“Listen to him,” Idusza said, her voice tight. “I wanted more than any of you to believe that Mezzan was with us—but he was so insistent on coming to me early this morning, after he left the gathering at Novrus Manor. And he just happens there to have seen a pile of dreamweaver bodies, plucked and half-eaten?”

Several of the seditionists were muttering angrily among themselves. Idusza spoke over them. “Where now is Mezzan? If truly he supports our cause, why defies he not the Cinquerat to stand at our side?”

Arms folded and faces set, Andrejek and his inner circle listened as Grey laid the facts before them: not just what Alta Renata had described, but what he’d come across in his investigations. The street children. Gammer Lindworm. The missing arrest record. Aža twisted into ash.

He made no mention of the stolen saltpeter. They would want to know how he knew, and he needed these people to see him as a friend, not a hawk on the hunt. If he could stop this, perhaps the saltpeter would never be put to use.

“The Night of Hells was an accident—Indestor’s own ally turned against him. But he works toward something bigger, and whatever it is, he wants you to take the blame.” Grey flexed his fists, wishing he had concrete proof to offer them. “But that succeeds only if you help him. To you our people will listen. You can turn them from this. You can stop Indestor from using you.”

Andrejek scoffed. “You want us to… what? Stand down? To this blasphemy bend our necks? Indestor, Novrus, they are all the same. If Indestor’s doing it was, so much the better that he bleed for it.”

Before Grey could point out that Indestor wouldn’t bleed nearly as much as the people of Seven Knots would, someone else stepped forward. A younger man, clean-shaven and slight of build. His braids were tied together at the back of his head, and his eyes were lined with kohl. He wasn’t quite as tall as Grey, but he came close enough to stare him down, unblinking. The man’s tone was mild as he said, “You signed yourself over to the Vigil, slip-knot. Over your own people you chose Caerulet and the Cinquerat. Why should I believe a thing you say?”

A glance at the man Grey had thought was Andrejek showed only surly deference to the one speaking now. He’d been a decoy, ordered to draw Grey out while the real Andrejek watched and judged.

And found Grey wanting, thanks to old choices he couldn’t take back. There was no point explaining his reasons for joining the Vigil, the changes he’d hoped to make from within. But even if what Andrejek accused him of was true, he was still Vraszenian by one thread—a thread he would never break. “My brother was Jakoslav Szerado. He died in the Fiangiolli fire. You know of him?”

Andrejek’s brow furrowed. “The one the Rook killed.”

Anger wouldn’t help here, nor would thinking about the Rook. He met Andrejek’s eyes and said in a clear voice, “Mezzan Indestor is not your friend. Mettore Indestor uses your organization to harm our people. If I lie or mislead you, may my brother abandon me. May I never feel him in this life or see him in the next.