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

recoiled an instant later. The same pulsing dread that haunted the old burial niches in the Depths waited for him in the dim, crumbling interior. Fuck!

If Tess felt it, she didn’t let it stop her. She hovered close at his shoulder, knitting needle at the ready. “Ren?” she shouted, loud enough to startle any birds in the rafters.

But the birds had already abandoned the rafters, just like the rats and spiders had abandoned the tunnels in the Depths.

“Tess…” Her name caught in Sedge’s throat, weak and airless. She didn’t hear.

“Ren, we’ve come for you. Ondrakja, if you hurt her, I’ll make an apron out of your skin. See if I don’t!”

Sedge forced his paralyzed limbs to move across the threshold, keeping Tess behind him. As he did so, a glint caught his eye. A small throwing knife on the floor, one edge sticky with the putrid violet of zlyzen blood.

Tess’s hand stopped just short of snatching it up. Her face was pale enough to make the freckles look like blood spatters. “It’s one of her throwing knives. From the apology shawl.”

The one the Rook had sent her. There were more knives scattered about—and more zlyzen blood—in the hall, in the kitchen, near the open door from the cellar. But nothing moved; the house was as silent as death.

Sedge wet his lips. “I’m going upstairs. You wait down here.” Where there were open doors and quick escapes, if Tess had to run.

“Like hell I will,” Tess muttered, and clung close to his backside as they climbed the stairs together.

A faded door drape lay wadded on the threshold of Ondrakja’s parlour. The wreckage inside was mostly timeless—broken furniture, shredded upholstery, a mold-damp carpet. But the zlyzen blood was fresh, as were the remains of a glass shattered against a wall. Embedded in that same wall was another of Ren’s knives.

“But where is she?” Tess said, voice high. She called out, as though there was any hope left. “Ren?”

Sedge stopped her with one hand on her shoulder. “Ondrakja… she can go into the dream. I think she took Ren with her.” There were footprints mashed into the rotting carpet, coming into the room. None going out.

His bones ached with guilt and grief. He’d failed her. Again. The Night of Hells, when he wasn’t there; down in the Depths, when he let Ondrakja toss him around like a rag doll. Now this.

Worse. Ondrakja had used him to lure Ren here. To hurt her.

Again.

A dull pain in his side brought him back to the parlour. Tess poked him a second time with her knitting needle. “Stop it. Whatever you’re thinking, it isn’t true. And even if it was, it doesn’t help now. So Ondrakja’s got her. How do we get into the dream? Ash? Do we need ash?”

The thought of Tess on ash was enough to snap him out of his spiral. “Ondrakja had cages down in the Depths, where she kept the kids. Might be she took Ren there. I’ll look.” How high were the waters now? Hopefully still low enough. He could hold his breath if he had to.

Tess chewed her lip, then shook her head. “I don’t like you going, but—I’d only slow you down.”

Sedge hugged her. “The house en’t safe for you, though. Go to those Traementis cuffs. Make them take you in.”

They headed downstairs as he spoke, as though the zlyzen blood was pushing them out of the house. In the street outside, people were reflexively avoiding the building, creating an island of empty space in front of its door. Tess stopped in the middle of that space and faced him. “No. If Ondrakja’s coming for us, she’ll know to look for me there. Plus, what am I supposed to say to them? ‘Protect me, but never you mind about Alta Renata’?” Shaking her head, she tucked her needle through her belt like a dagger. “I’ve friends in Little Alwydd who won’t ask questions. I’ll tell the corner boys to keep an eye out for you. Come yourself. No notes.”

Taking Sedge’s hand, she pressed her wrist to his—scar to scar, blood to blood. “You’ll find her. And bring her back safe.”

Isla Indestor, the Pearls: Cyprilun 35

Gammer Lindworm dragged Ren through city after city—all of them Nadežra, but different turns in the maze. They slogged through a place of water-paved roads and islets of warehouses, a warren of tunnels carved into the fog. They passed whole blocks of smoked-out ruins, ribs of char cracked red and grey, only for Ren to look back and see nothing but a stained glass landscape of green fields and blue waterways.

She didn’t fight. She couldn’t. This wasn’t the horrors of the Night of Hells—but any relief was short-lived, because zlyzen collected around the two of them like a scurry of rats trailing a grain wagon. A few sniffed at Ren’s hair, and Gammer Lindworm shoved them aside. “No, this one isn’t for you. Once we’re done with her, she’s mine. Aren’t you, Renyi? You don’t want me to let the zlyzen feed on your dreams, right?”

She didn’t seem to care whether Ren answered or not. All Ondrakja’s questions had been rhetorical, until they weren’t. That hadn’t changed when she became Gammer Lindworm.

Finally they came to a fortress carved from glittering sapphire, whose impenetrable stone melted at Gammer Lindworm’s touch. She wormed a passage through, to an empty space at the heart. Wrapping her bony arms around Ren, she heaved…

… and they were in the waking world again, Ren cast onto a luxurious carpet. In a room scented with books and beeswax. Before a monolith of a desk.

And a scowling Mettore Indestor.

“I’ve brought you a gift,” Gammer Lindworm said to him. “Well, not a gift. She’s mine. But you can borrow her.”

Mettore shot to his feet. “I told you, hag—not here. And not without warning. Our agreement doesn’t mean you can just show up out of nowhere and drop a filthy gnat on my floor.”

Ren knew that carpet, that desk.