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

planned to frame the Anduske for whatever scheme he had devised. Their leader, Koszar Andrejek, had published a broadsheet last year condemning the ziemetse, the leaders of the six surviving clans, for bending the knee to the Cinquerat. It wouldn’t be hard for Mettore to persuade everyone that Andrejek had abandoned words in favor of more drastic measures.

She didn’t have any leverage to make Mezzan talk, though, unless she threatened to reveal his secret relationship. And Ren wasn’t nearly desperate enough for that yet.

Deciding that she might as well look for Leato and Giuna instead, and enjoy herself for a time, Ren turned toward the steps—and this time came face-to-face with Derossi Vargo.

She nearly swallowed her tongue. Vargo’s open, ground-length coat of whisper-thin indigo silk was weighted with tiny jet beads that ticked against each other with every breath. Its cobweb embroidery carried over to his bare chest, gold-dusted skin shimmering with traceries of black, and blue brilliants caught in the web like dew in shadow. Those same brilliants wove through his loose, dark hair and sparkled at the corners of his kohl-rimmed eyes. A sheer veil that barely qualified as a mask draped across his lower face, doing nothing to hide the smirk of a man who knew exactly how provocative he looked.

With a hand bare of anything but gold dust, he lifted Renata’s glove to his lips. “Blessing of the Tyrant’s downfall,” he said. “May the waters of the Dežera renew us all.”

If invited to wager on Vargo’s costume for the night, Renata would have bet on Kaius Rex himself. She assumed Vargo would want to associate himself with someone powerful, and knew he was cynical enough to dress as someone both powerful and despised. Instead, he had chosen the guise of one of the three courtesans who—according to legend—had brought down the unkillable Tyrant with venereal disease.

It was an audacious gesture of contempt toward the city’s elite… but laid against that was the open invitation of his body, provocative and mocking at once.

Vargo’s smirk deepened. He kept hold of her hand, curling it into the warmth of his bare chest as he stepped closer. “I hear a dreamweaver was spotted earlier. Doesn’t that mean it’s too late in the winter for the river to stand frozen? Much better to hear her rushing breathless. Care to dance?”

Renata scrambled to find words. The best she managed to come up with was “Lead the way.”

Out among the dancers, she resolved not to let his attire distract her into clumsiness. But the intensity she’d seen in his eyes the day she delivered the charter echoed in his every movement, heating the air between them, making her pulse race.

Unlike the Dreamweaver’s Welcome or the dances she’d learned in the Traementis ballroom, the dance Vargo drew her into was meant for pairs alone. She wound up snared in a loose embrace, his hand warm against her shoulder. Searching for some safer resting place than his kohl-lined eyes, her gaze alighted on the scar torn through the side of his throat; he’d made no attempt to hide it, letting his dangerous past speak for itself. When her eyes skittered away, she found herself staring at the painted skin of his chest, which held its own danger.

This close, she could see some kind of mark, not quite fully hidden by the paint. Its circular shape suggested some kind of numinatrian tattoo, but she couldn’t make out the details without obviously staring.

If she didn’t find something else to focus on, she was going to embarrass herself. She dragged her gaze up to meet his. “People say I’ve been setting Nadežra on its ear, but you seem determined to spin it around until no one knows which way is up.”

“Given this costume, I think whichever Kaius I choose tonight will be up, and I will be down.” Vargo’s chuckle said it was more than a metaphor. And yet the jet-glitter of disdain in his eyes could have belonged to the original courtesan whose guise he wore. “Isn’t that always the way of it for Nadežrans?”

“You would know better than I.”

So his pragmatism extended to himself. She wondered what he intended to gain tonight, and who he intended to gain it from. Derossi Vargo wasn’t just out to scrape whatever wealth and status he could from the edges of the city’s current power structure; he wanted to break the structures that blocked him from his goals. And he would use whatever tools he had—including his own body—to make that happen.

Ren had limits. Vargo, it seemed, did not. It chilled her a little, but also made for an odd sense of camaraderie; they were not so different, the two of them.

Vargo was silent until the tempo and time of the music changed, signaling the beginning of the next dance. Then he led her out, stopping near a young and very muscular Kaius she recognized as Fadrin Acrenix. Acrenix, however, wasn’t looking at her at all; his attention was entirely on Vargo.

“I believe this is where we part for the evening,” Vargo said with a faint smile.

The ease with which he dropped her hand to take up Fadrin’s sent a shiver down Renata’s spine, one that stayed with her as she retreated, no longer in the mood to dance.

Long tables laid at the edges of the plaza served drinks and food, and at one of them she caught sight of a familiar copper surcoat picked out in Tricat patterns of pearls. Renata pressed one hand to her chest, where the Acrenix medallion lay hidden under her dress. Tricat to Tricat: Surely it would do some good.

Certainly Donaia seemed pleased to see her as Renata approached. “Are you enjoying the festival, my dear?” she asked with a smile.

“The masks add a fascinating touch. As do the puppets,” Renata said. All the Vraszenian clan animals were represented tonight: the Anoškin ghost owl soaring overhead; the Meszaros horse circling the plaza in stately procession; the Varadi spider, the Stretsko rat, the Dvornik fox,