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

First to appear was a team of four bays pulling a beautifully joined and painted wagon filled with the traditional gifts the clans brought in offering. It was for show only; they must have carried both wagon and gifts up the steps and harnessed the team at the top. The driver was another show of false humility. His raccoon mask and the rich silver and grey embroidery of his panel coat marked him as the Kiralič, the head of the Kiraly clan. Renata wasn’t certain how he managed it, but as he circled his team around the audience hall, the lead horse let tumble a cascade of droppings right in front of the Cinquerat seats. They broke on the five-pointed star laid into the floor, and the wagon’s wheels ground them into the grout between the tiles.

Mettore Indestor’s stony facade twisted into fury, and only Era Destaelio’s hand clamping down on his arm kept him in his seat.

After the first pass, the driver stopped the wagon in the middle of the room, and the rest of the ziemetse who led the clans filed in, followed by their retinues. A young woman in Kiraly colors hurried forward to take charge of the team so their clan leader could join the line of ziemetse, but nobody moved to do anything about the horse droppings, scattered between the standing Vraszenians and the seated Cinquerat like a gauntlet thrown.

The Vraszenians made a splendid display, easily as grand as the Cinquerat, but in a wildly different style. The men’s panel coats were sumptuously embroidered, the back panels so thick with silk thread the fabric underneath could barely be seen. The women’s sash belts were the same, and fine lace dyed crimson and saffron edged the slightly belled ends of their sleeves. Men and women alike had pinned their hair into elaborate constructs of braids, with charms of knotted silk cord dangling from the ends of the pins: the triple clover for family, the rose of Ažerais for good luck, and the great flat-woven knots symbolizing their role as the representatives of their lineages, their clans, and the Vraszenian people as a whole.

“Ryzorn Evmeleski Kupalt of Clan Dvornik gives greetings to the Cinquerat of Nadežra,” said a dapper old gentleman on the far end of the line, doffing a cap from his bald pate and bowing with a grandiose flourish. Even without the name, his mask and green embroidery marked him as leading the clan of the fox.

The next of the ziemetse was one of the lihoše, like the person Renata had seen bargaining with Vargo at the warehouses. “Sedlien Hrišaske Njersto of Clan Meszaros gives greetings to the Cinquerat of Nadežra,” he said. He was the only Vraszenian looking at the horse apples with disapproval.

On down the line it went, from oldest to youngest of the clan elders: the Kiralič struggling to look stern in the aftermath of his trick and the grey-haired Varadič with his eyes narrowed in calculation; the Anoškinič with his ghost owl mask hiding his expression, and the Stretskojič watching the rest of the crowd as though he expected an attack.

Until they came to the seventh, standing slightly apart. Her black braids were silver-shot, and her dreamweaver mask was made from the feathers of the birds themselves. “I am Szorsa Mevieny Plemaskaya Straveši. I stand for Clan Ižranyi, in memory of the kin who died when the city of Fiavla fell. May we never forget their names; may we never forget their spirits, lost even to Ažerais. May we never again face the Primordial horror that turned sister against brother, husband against wife, until the ground of Fiavla itself wept blood.”

Her words produced a chill in the room, and in Ren’s bones. Even growing up in Nadežra, she’d heard the stories; everyone knew why there were only six Vraszenian clans, where once there had been seven. The slaughter was centuries in the past, but the memory lived on: a whole city overwhelmed by the madness of the ancient forces imprisoned outside reality by the gods. Something had slipped free of those chains and infected Fiavla. One day it was a prosperous city, the heart of the Ižranyi. Eleven days later, every person bearing that clan’s name—whether in Fiavla or not—was dead.

Sostira Novrus broke the silence. Dressed in the pearl-grey robes of Argentet, she stood with a false smile and began a speech about Nadežra’s great history.

Ren’s teeth worried her lip. Was there any way Mettore could have figured out the truth—that she was kin to these Vraszenians in their animal masks? But if so, it made more sense that he would wait for Renata to be scribed into House Traementis before he revealed her true identity. For the Liganti, connections were built out of contracts, not blood; there was nothing preventing a family from adopting a Vraszenian woman. For a noble house, though, the scandal would be devastating.

Right now, he just looked bored. This ceremony happened every year; he must have sat through it a dozen times, with each Cinquerat seat in turn making a speech and being answered by the clan leaders. Ren herself would have been bored if her mind weren’t racing, mapping out different ways this could all go wrong. She kept coming back to another dose again and again, then running aground on the fact that the council and the clans would drink from shared cups, and that poisoning someone here would be deeply unsubtle.

Besides, the cards had spoken of magic, not murder.

The Nadežran and Vraszenian leaders seated themselves for the pageant, while a servant finally scurried out to clean away the droppings. Then the actors took the floor: a Kaius Rex in splendid armor, against six people representing the scattered might of Vraszan and its conquered city-states.

Ren knew the story the way any Vraszenian child did. How Kaius Sifigno had sailed an army across the sea from Seste Ligante to conquer the broad, rich valley of the River Dežera; how he made his stronghold in