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

It was a dance meant for everyone, from children to the old to the infirm, so the steps weren’t complicated: a circle round that turned to laughter when it shifted direction, causing everyone to knock shoulders with their neighbors, and then again when the circling stopped. Serrado held firm in place as Ren was crushed against him by several neighboring dancers who apparently didn’t know how to count to eight. But it was all in good fun, and after he’d righted her, she skipped into the middle with the other women, before spinning back out to her partner in a tangle of blue ribbons.

Like many Vraszenian dances, it sped up as it went, until the final figure called for them to spin in pairs around locked hands, so fast the rest of the world blurred. Ren came out breathless, dizzy, and laughing, as did everyone else—including Serrado. He tried to steady her, but given that he was swaying like a man who’d drunk too much aža-laced wine, he wasn’t much help. Which only made them both laugh more.

“Thank you,” she said when she’d gulped enough air to form words. “That was…”

She trailed off, utterly unable to think of what comment a Seterin alta should make. Serrado rescued her by saying, “A pleasure. Which is what dancing should be. But tell Alta Parma not that I said such things.”

He might as well have been a different man: smiling, laughing, forgetting himself enough that he dropped into the throaty tones of his native accent. He still wore the uniform of a hawk, but now it looked like a costume—and underneath it she could see Leato’s friend, the man welcomed into Traementis Manor despite the differences of ancestry and rank.

Him and his brother. She watched the shadow of guilt settle over his expression, like a cloud masking the sun. Ren remembered the first time she’d laughed after her mother died… something Tess had said, though she no longer remembered the specifics. Only the guilt stayed with her, that she could be so careless as to laugh when Ivrina Lenskaya was gone from the world.

She was so used to seeing Serrado as a threat to her masquerade that sympathy caught her like a blow under the ribs. Of course he was grim. His brother was dead, and even a captain’s hexagram pin couldn’t bring him the justice he sought. His family was broken; no amount of wanting could make it whole again.

As though realizing he’d shown too much, Serrado shuttered away the sadness. “I’ll leave you to your evening, alta,” he said, his voice and demeanor blandly Nadežran once more. One bow later, he was gone.

“Whoof! That was a bit of fun, wasn’t it?” Tess stumbled up, fanning herself with her mask. Then, remembering where they were, she lowered her eyes and tamped down on her smile. “I hope the alta wasn’t offered any insult. I understand this is a local custom.”

“A very energetic one,” Renata said, using her own breathlessness to cover for anything out of place. “You may enjoy yourself, Tess, as long as you keep near the musicians. I will find you if I need anything.”

With Tess freed to her own entertainments, Renata soon lost herself in the swirl of celebration. The costumes in the Charterhouse plaza tended toward Liganti and Seterin themes—the various numina and their associated planets, figures from history and legend—but to her surprise, she counted no less than six Rooks in the space of an hour, four male and two female, most of them young delta blades who thought it very daring to take on the guise of an outlaw who despised their kind. Four of them danced with her, the last of whom was Oksana Ryvček.

“What luck to find the river so nearby,” she said, pressing closer to Renata to avoid the elbows of a passing Ghusai sultan. Close enough that her intimate murmur was easy to hear even over the din. “After all this dancing, I crave a sip of cool water.”

Renata offered her right hand to kiss—the one representing the pure East Channel, rather than the polluted West. “Mistress Ryvček. I commend your originality; the three Rooks before you tried to get me to surrender a glove.”

“Ah, but have I not one already?” Ryvček’s words were warm against the net that covered Renata’s fingers. “It only seems sporting to leave an alta her modesty.”

Ryvček danced with the same confidence as Leato or Captain Serrado, and a good deal more panache. After a breathless series of turns ending on a sedate promenade, she said, “Speaking of sporting, I have watched you at the Palaestra. Leato goes easy on you. The next time you’re there, I’ll give you a real lesson with the blade.”

“Thank you, Mistress Ryvček,” Renata said—hoping she wouldn’t regret accepting the offer. Judging by the wink Ryvček gave her just before vanishing into the crowd, the ambiguity was intentional.

She does it on purpose. But that didn’t make it any less effective.

Renata glanced around, wondering if she should climb the Charterhouse steps to scan the plaza. She had a half-formed notion to look for Mezzan Indestor and see if she could provoke him into revealing anything. She’d met with Idusza twice since the Kindly Hawk, but it hadn’t yielded anything useful, even though Ren had cold-decked her in order to strongly hint that Idusza’s lover was keeping dangerous secrets. Instead Idusza wanted to recruit Arenza into the Stadnem Anduske, saying that her talents would be greatly valued there. At their last meeting the woman had admitted point-blank that they wanted to steal something—the saltpeter Renata had worked so hard to secure for Quientis—and wanted the guidance of pattern before they moved.

It wasn’t that Ren minded assisting them. The saltpeter had already served its purpose for Renata; if it could help Arenza, too, so much the better. But she was reluctant to involve herself with them without any surety that it would shed slight on Mezzan’s activities.

It did make her wonder if Mettore