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

friend’s way. “What do you mean, ‘once that comes out’? I thought we were…” He jerked to a halt just outside Grednyek Close, betrayal hitting him like a punch to the gut. “This isn’t about finding Kolya’s murderer. This is about your fucking feud with Indestor.”

“It isn’t just a feud!” Leato slammed his hand against the wall. “It’s the safety of my family! Do you think he’d stop short of selling us onto the penal ships? You work for the man; you know what he’s like. And I wasn’t lying to you, Grey. Even before I saw the note about the black powder, I wondered if Indestor was behind it all somehow. It was just too bloody convenient, Novrus’s client taking a hit like that.”

He was talking too rapidly for Grey to get a word in edgewise, his hand coming off the wall to bury itself in his golden hair, knocking his cap askew. “I’ve been digging for the last year—ever since I found out how badly off we really are. Trying to find something I can use against somebody in that house to get Mettore’s boot off our necks. I was hoping I could get justice for your brother at the same time. But if I can’t have both, I can at least have this.”

Grey wanted to hold on to his hurt, his feeling of being used—but he understood too well Leato’s hollow desperation.

He forced himself to soften his voice. They’d already attracted too much attention. “But you can’t. You cannot use this. You know what will happen, what Mettore will do if he finds out his son has taken up with a Vraszenian. And she isn’t the only one in danger. He’ll go after her family—sell them into slavery. Them, and any other scapegoat he can catch.”

“Then let’s get rid of him!” Leato’s hands balled into fists. “Instead of being fucking puppets for that kinless bastard to play with, let’s get him out of power! Don’t you want to drag him down?”

“I want to drag them all down, from the man who lit the spark to the puppeteer behind the screen.” Grey clamped both hands on Leato’s shoulders and gave him a shake as though sense would follow. “Tell me how we get to Indestor without destroying those we love. Force him into the street and condemn him? You take his arms; I’ll take his legs? You’re Traementis. You know better than any how vengeance ends.”

He felt the moment Leato deflated. “Fuck.”

Grey forced his own rage down, back into the box where he kept everything he couldn’t let himself think about—everything that would drown him if he let it. When his breathing was steady at last, he draped one arm across Leato’s slumped back and steered him toward Westbridge. “We’ll find some other way of getting Indestor and protecting your family.”

“How?” Leato’s voice was devoid of all emotion. “I’ve been trying. Mother’s been trying. Renata’s been trying. But Indestor has everything we don’t: people, money, power. How do you win against that?”

Grey’s heart ached for his friend’s despair, even as he wanted to rail at the irony of a noble son of a Liganti house bemoaning such things in the narrow, dirty streets of Seven Knots. “You take a lesson from my people,” he said, nodding at the wall of tenements draped in a shawl of laundry lines, the elders gossiping on their stoops, the children playing skip-hop in the street. “You give up on winning. You learn to survive.”

Seven Knots, Lower Bank: Pavnilun 18

Ren didn’t follow the two men out of Seven Knots. She’d risked enough by tailing them—and heard enough to make her skull overflow.

Mezzan had a Vraszenian lover? And not just any lover, but a seditionist? One who had something to do with Kolya Serrado’s death—no, it sounded like that lead hadn’t come to anything. But Captain Serrado had gotten her message, and gave it enough credence to show it to Leato.

Leato’s rage against Mettore Indestor… was that just the anger of a man trying to protect his family, or the fury of the Rook, blamed for a cuff’s crimes? Would the Rook come back tonight and pay Idusza Polojny a visit?

No, not tonight. Any Rook stupid enough to show such coincidental timing would soon be caught. And Serrado was right; exposing Mezzan’s relationship with Idusza might hurt House Indestor, but at terrible cost for the Vraszenians caught up in it. She hoped Leato understood that, Rook or not.

Even so…

Ren cast a speculative glance at the entrance to Grednyek Close. A young, pretty woman emerged, tugging her shawl over her hair, and hurried away. Good odds that was Idusza.

Not for one heartbeat did Ren believe that Mezzan Indestor had taken up with her out of love, or even lust. The latter might explain a random Vraszenian woman, but not a member of the Stadnem Anduske.

Which meant he was up to something else. Something she could use against his house. And if the Rook did pay Idusza a visit later… that would be very interesting to know.

But how to get Idusza to talk to her?

The Kindly Hawk. Grinning, Ren tugged her own shawl straight and turned toward home. She needed to speak to Sedge and Tess.

Westbridge, Lower Bank: Pavnilun 26

The following Epytny, Arenza set herself up at the border of Westbridge, laying her shawl on the ground near the ostretta where Idusza worked. She got a few customers—enough to pay for the scrap of heavy wool Tess had bought for the plan—and then, at the last bell of sixth sun, Tess appeared and loitered nearby, waiting for Arenza’s current client to be done.

They nearly failed right then, because the young man seemed more intent on flirting with Arenza than heeding what his pattern said. It finally took A Spiraling Fire and warnings of impending impotence if he didn’t propitiate the Masks at the nearest labyrinth to drive him off. Tess hurried up and settled