Shadows (17 page)

Shelra shook her head. “No, nothing like that. Well, not that I know of,” she added with a small smile. “No, I mean she suffered from a
magical
perversion.” She gestured at the basin. “Normal Gifted use magic that has been drawn to the black lodestone. But the so-called Lady of Pain and Fire could pull magic directly from other humans. It's disgusting. It's a form of rape. And the Autarch quite rightly knew that it could not stand.”

“So he killed her?” Mara said, taking another bite of sausage.

“He defeated her,” Shelra said. “And that's enough discussion of it.” She got to her feet. “Back to training.”

And with that, Mara had to be content.

Doesn't she know the Autarch also suffers from this “perversion”?
Mara wondered.
Or does she know but wants to be damn sure I don't? And what would she do if she knew I had it, too?

That hardly bore thinking about. If the Autarch “defeated” the Lady, when he was just a youth, what would he do now to someone who threatened his power as directly as Mara might? Suppose she pulled the magic out of the Mistress of Magic? Suppose she drew it from the Child Guard? Suppose she could connect to the steady streams of magic from the ever-growing number of new Masks, the ones that fed a trickle of power to the Autarch at all times, the power that kept him young and vital, kept his age from withering and weakening him? What would that do to the Autarch's rule?

I could do it, too
, Mara thought.
I could . . .

Except, of course for two things. It might kill her . . . and it might mean the death of her parents.

She needed to get out of the city. She needed to be free of the Autarch's grasp, needed her father free of it. Then together they could rescue her mother. And then . . .

Then she
would
do something about the Autarch. Somehow. Whatever it meant for her.

Just one more day.
It didn't seem to be too much to ask.

But it turned out to be a day too far.

Once again Mara woke from a sound sleep to find someone in her room. But this time she woke in the gray light of morning, not the middle of the night, and this time the figure at the foot of her bed was not Chell.

It was Stanik.

She sat up, blinking. “Guardian Stanik?” she said, her brain still sleep-fuzzed. “I don't . . .”

“Your father,” Stanik said, without preamble, his voice cold and hard as frozen steel, “has been arrested.”

Mara's heart flip-flopped in her chest. “But—but I've done everything you asked! I've been training, I've promised to help the Autarch—”

He knows about Chell
, a terrified part of her mind gibbered.
He knows about the plan.
He'll arrest Chell and Keltan, too—

But Stanik made a dismissive slashing gesture with his right hand. “
You
have done everything we asked. But
he
has betrayed the Autarch.”

“I don't—”

“Understand?” Stanik snarled. “Are you sure?” He pointed at her. “Your father,” he grated, “was discovered in a part of the Library forbidden to any but members of the Circle. He was researching unusual Gifts . . . Gifts such as yours. That alone was enough to get him arrested. Perhaps he could have talked his way out of that—after all, he is . . . or was . . . the Master Maskmaker. But as a matter of course, one of our most Gifted Watchers examined his Mask closely, and discovered the truth: your father
modified his Mask
. And that raises an interesting question: did he also modify yours? Is that why a child with your unusual Gift suffered an
unprecedented
failure of her Mask?”

Mara felt the blood drain from her face and knew that, even with the iron half-Mask obscuring half of it, she had just given herself away.

Stanik gave a short nod. “As I thought. There is something more here, something I
will
get to the bottom of. But for now, this is all you need to know: your father is in prison, and being interrogated. And tomorrow at dawn, he dies.”

“No!” The cry exploded from Mara as though yanked from her soul with a steel hook. “No, you can't!”

“Can't?” Stanik stormed around to the side of her bed. “
Can't?
” His hand lashed out, cracking across her cheek with so much force it drove her back into the headboard. Crying in pain and helpless fury, she slid back down into the bed and stared at him, holding her hand to her face, tasting salty blood where her teeth had cut the inside of her cheek.

“I can do whatever I want,” he spat. “And I will do what I must. And what I must do, for a crime of this magnitude, is make an example. To the people. And to you.” He pointed a gloved finger at her. “You still harbor rebellion in your heart. It's as clear as the blood on your face. You still think that, once you are trained, you will somehow strike back at us with your great Gift. But hear me, Mara Holdfast, daughter of the disgraced and soon to be deceased Charlton Holdfast: you will
never
strike back at the Autarch. Rebellion is futile. Worse than that, it is fatal.

“You have lied to me. That is clear. Your father designed your Mask to fail. He must have known that the wagon carrying you to the camp would be attacked. Which means he knows who attacked the wagon. Which means
you
know who attacked the wagons, and the camp.” He folded his arms, glared at her. “So. You want to save your father? Tell me the truth!”

Mara stared at him, horrified by the dilemma on whose horns she had just been hung. She opened her mouth, closed it again. She didn't know what she could say.

“You have one minute,” Stanik snarled. “Or your father dies, no matter what.”

“No!” Mara felt as if she couldn't get her breath, as if all the air had somehow been sucked from her lungs and from her breath. “No! I . . .”
I can't betray the Secret City
.
Hyram, Alita, Prella . . . all those people . . . I can't . . .

Maybe she didn't have to. Maybe she could give just some of the truth, just enough of the truth to save her father . . .

“I was . . . it wasn't just bandits,” she said desperately. “You're right about that. I don't know how my father knew, but . . . there's a story. All the children have heard it, it sounds like a myth, but it's true.” She took a shaky breath. “The unMasked Army.” Her heart spasmed as she said it. “The unMasked Army,” she said again. “It's real. They want to overthrow the Autarch.”

Stanik just stared at her, still as a snake about to strike. “And where can we find the unMasked Army?” he said, and like the fangs of a snake, his voice held venom.

“I can't . . . I don't know!” Mara cried. “You have to believe me. I don't. They took me to a . . . a place. Caves. They blindfolded me. They didn't trust me. I don't know how to get there. I don't!”

“Who is their leader?” Stanik said, still cold as frost, implacable as stone. “I want a name. And do not tell me you do not have one, or make one up. If I have the slightest doubt that you are telling the truth, your father dies.”

“Catilla!” Mara cried, the name torn out of her throat by the horror of what Stanik threatened. “Catilla is her name. I don't know her last name, if she has one. I don't know anything else.”

Stanik stood absolutely still for a long moment. “Catilla,” he breathed. He took a step closer to Mara's bedside, and leaned over her, his hands on either side of her body in a horrible parody of a lover's embrace. “Thank you,” he said. “That name is enough. I know Catilla's name from the records. I know who her father was. And I know what her father found: a network of caves, along the coast, remote, inaccessible . . . the ideal hiding place for this unMasked Army we never believed really existed . . . until now.” His voice lowered, took on the tones of the purr of a contented cat. “You have given me everything I need, Mara Holdfast. Everything I need to destroy the unMasked Army. You have served the Autarch well.”

Mara felt sick to her stomach.
What have I done?
she cried to herself, but out loud all she said was, “Then you'll spare my father?”

“Spare your father?” Voice dripping contempt, Stanik straightened. “Hardly. Your father is a traitor to the Autarch. Your father will die at dawn tomorrow. You will watch. You will wear the iron Mask. There is nothing you can do to stop it. And once it is done, you will think about what it will mean to see your mother similarly executed, and you will tell me everything—everything—you have held back from me thus far. Or your mother, too, will die.” The hand lashed out again, snapping Mara's head around, driving her back into the bed. Fresh blood flooded her mouth. Weeping, she stared up at the Mask of the man who had just destroyed her world. “And after you have watched her die, then you, too, will hang outside Traitors' Gate!” He spun and went out. The door closed and locked behind him, and Mara curled into a ball in her bed and bawled like a baby, tears, snot, and blood staining the fine linen of her pillow.

Traitors' Gate

T
RAPPED IN HER ROOM, Masked so she could not use magic, left alone without food, with nothing to drink but the water from the taps in the bath, Mara thought she might go mad. She pounded on the door of her room, begging the Watcher she knew must be stationed outside to bring Stanik to her, or Shelra, anyone she could talk to, anyone she could beg for clemency for her father, for her mother, for herself. Inside, she felt like acid was eating away at her soul, as though a pit of darkness were swallowing her whole. She could see no hope, no light. She contemplated trying to drown herself in the bath, but even that would not save her father: it would only mean she would not have to face his death, and that he might well suffer the anguish of knowing she was dead before he joined her. She could not do that to him.

But how could she watch him die? How could she bear that? How could she emerge from the other side of something that unthinkable, that horrific, and remain herself?

She didn't know: but as the day wore down to darkness, and the darkness wore away into gray twilight, and no one came, no one offered her hope, no one offered her succor, and even the sleep that might have given her some relief from the horror of her own thoughts stayed away, it seemed more and more certain that she would find out.

And then it was morning, graying toward dawn.

In a small measure of defiance, she dressed in her old clothes, the ones she had worn on the journey from the Secret City, washed and mended and returned to her many days before. Just as she hung the cloak about her shoulders a Watcher, without knocking, opened the door to her room. She had both hoped and feared it might be Mayson, but it was not. There was a second Watcher in the hallway outside. Both towered over her, head and shoulders and more. They escorted her, one to each side, across the courtyard, down the corridor she had traversed upon first entering the Palace, across the Great Courtyard. Once more she was taken through the Watchers' common room, as empty this time as last. Once more she was taken out onto the barren plateau where the gallows stood like dark, naked trees.

No bodies hung there. All twelve of the gallows stood stark and bare, silhouetted against the graying sky.

There was a kind of stage off to one side, a wooden platform raised several feet above the black rock of Fortress Hill. The Watchers took her to it, guided her up its steps, then turned her to face the gallows. And then they waited.

There was a murmur of voices, down the hill toward the town. Mara turned her head, and saw a crowd of Masked, and a few furtive children, gathering just outside the iron fence that surrounded the gallows. Among the unMasked children she saw a familiar face, pale and drawn: Keltan.

Her cheeks flamed with shame as she remembered what she had done, how she had betrayed the unMasked Army to save her father. She looked away, afraid to meet his eyes.

More people emerged from the door next to Traitors' Gate that led to the Watchers' guardhouse. All were Masked, save one: Chell. To her surprise, he accompanied his escorts to the platform, and climbed up beside her. She stole a glance at him that was not returned. His face, too, looked pale and drawn, but perhaps that was just the early morning light.

She could not imagine her own looked any better.

For what seemed an eternity, they all stood there, silent in the chill air, breath forming clouds of steam around their heads, the official witnesses on the stand, the ordinary citizens forced to the perimeter. Mara shivered. She felt drained, as though every bit of emotion, every thought, had been sucked out of her the same way she had sucked magic from the Watchers at the mining camp, the same way the Autarch sucked magic from everyone. She thought she would never feel again.

She was wrong, as she discovered the moment Traitors' Gate opened, for that was when she saw her father.

He wore only a white loincloth, and he was unMasked. His back was marked with long red welts, and he carried his right hand cradled to his chest. The fingers looked misshapen, and Mara realized with horror that they had been broken.

His eyes flicked around the crowd, and finally found Mara's.

For a long moment, they stared at each other across the stone plateau. Mara couldn't breathe. It seemed everything else had disappeared, that she looked down a long dark tunnel at her father's face, the face she had never before seen unMasked outside their home, the face she loved more than anything else, the face that had been the center of her world, the face whose cheek she had kissed, the face which had kissed her cheek or forehead every night of her childhood as she snuggled into her bed, the bed that had once seemed to have a magical ability to keep at bay everything bad in the world. No monsters could hurt her in her bed, after she had been tucked in by her father. No evil could touch her. No sadness could seep into her dreams.

She longed for that time with all her heart, for here and now, there
were
monsters, there
was
evil . . . and there was sadness, so much sadness, so much bitterness and guilt and horror that she thought her heart would break in her chest and she would fall dead on the spot, and it seemed to her that would be a good thing.

But her heart kept on beating. Her father's gaze was torn from hers as he was urged forward again.

The Watchers accompanying him made him climb the gallows. One of them reached out and ripped the loincloth from him. Mara's eyes filled with tears at this final humiliation, but she did not look away from his nakedness; could not look away from what might be the last sight she ever had of her father.

A Watcher fitted the noose around her father's neck. And then Guardian Stanik climbed the gallows to stand beside him. He faced the crowed, and his voice rang out over their heads, a voice that Mara hated as she had never hated anything before.

“Witness,” cried Stanik, “the penalty for betrayal of the Autarch. Witness, and learn: however great you may think yourself, however high you may rise in the ranks of the fortunate within Tamita, the Autarch's justice is terrible, and implacable, and even-handed. For this man before you, stripped of his Mask, stripped of his dignity, stripped of his wealth and power, is Charlton Holdfast, Master Maskmaker of Aygrima. He betrayed his duty, his oath, and his Autarch. And now he pays the price.”

Stanik turned. The Watcher standing on the gallows next to her father stepped aside, and Stanik took his place. He reached out and took hold of the wooden lever at the gallows' side.

He pulled it.

The trapdoor opened, and Mara's father dropped like a stone into the space beneath the gallows. The sharp report of his neck breaking echoed off the stone walls of the Palace.

Mara opened her mouth to scream, but no sound came out; it felt like an iron vise had clamped around her chest, squeezing the breath out of her, squeezing everything out of her, her vision darkening until she seemed to view the horror before her through a red-lined tunnel.

And then magic came roaring down that tunnel toward her, a tidal wave of magic, the magic released by her father's death. It slammed into her with the force of an avalanche.

The iron half-Mask could not withstand such magic, pouring out of the man who had made it. It split down the middle with a sound like a struck gong, and fell away from Mara's face, clattering to the planks of the platform on which she stood.

Mara's Gift opened. Power from her father filled her, and there was more power crowded all around her, and this time she did not turn away from it. She reached out and ripped magic from the Watchers all around her, as though she were tearing meat from a bone. The magic seared through her body like living flame, but she welcomed the pain, welcomed the way agony blotted out everything but her fury and grief. The Watchers dropped where they stood, falling from the platform all around her, their bodies striking the stones below with cracking thuds and splatters of blood.

But this time was different than the last time, in the mining camp. Thanks to Shelra's training, this time Mara had more control. This time she could
choose
whose magic she would take, and whose she would leave untapped. Chell, standing beside her, remained untouched. The ordinary citizens watching from the perimeter remained standing, though they were beginning to turn and run as they realized that something very strange was happening.

And Stanik—Stanik still stood by the rope that twitched with the death spasms of her father's body. Mara focused her power to a point and hurled it like a spear. It struck him full in the face. His Mask cracked and crumbled away, revealing wide eyes in a pale, angled face. His mouth opened, but whatever he intended to say or scream, whether he intended to hurl curses or beg for mercy, remained unheard, as his head tore from his body, flew across the courtyard, and smashed in a spray of red, white, and gray against the Palace wall.

Spurting blood from its severed neck, the body fell. Stanik's magic slammed into her almost as hard as her father's had. She had too much magic in her now, too much to bear; she had to rid herself of it—

—and so she did. She focused it again, and hurled it away from her over the heads of the fleeing crowd, down Fortress Hill. Chimneys shattered into dust and rooftops exploded into flinders and burst into flames as the mere fringe of that power brushed them. Dust and smoke rose in tortured whirlwinds of gray . . .

...and then the magic struck the city wall.

Twenty feet thick at its base, fifty feet high, made of massive yellow blocks fitted together without mortar by the greatest Gifted engineers of Aygrima more than four centuries before, the wall of Tamita had never been breached since its construction, never been damaged by storm, earthquake, or fire. But Mara's magic tore through it as though it were no more than a mud dam constructed by a child playing in a ditch. Blocks of stone the size of wagons sprayed out from the breach, slamming into the ground a hundred yards away, smashing trees to kindling, scraping long scars in the earth before burying themselves in the dirt. An enormous cloud of pulverized rock rose into the air, mingling with the smoke and dust from the damaged buildings to cloud the scene in a gray miasma.

The fire in Mara's veins receded, leaving her cold and weak. She teetered, the whole world spinning around her, and would have toppled from the platform herself if Chell, the only one close at hand whom she had left untouched, had not suddenly grabbed her arm. She clung to him. “I . . . opened a path,” she said. “We have to go . . . find Keltan . . .”

“He's coming this way,” Chell said. He sounded awed. “Let's get off this platform.”

With his help, she descended to the courtyard. Keltan, dashing toward them, skidded to a stop. He stared at her, wide-eyed and white-faced. “If I hadn't seen it—”

“We have to get out of the city,” Mara said faintly. “Now. In the confusion. Horses . . .”

“Right,” Keltan said. He took a deep breath. “Right. This way.”

Keltan led them down to where the crowd had been waiting. Half a dozen Watchers lay unconscious on the ground; near them, lathered, snorting, eyes wide and white, pulling on their reins, stood their tethered horses. Keltan and Chell went to them, soothed them. Mara, swaying, stared down at one of the fallen Watchers. Blood pooled beneath his head; he had struck it on a rock when he fell. But he still breathed.
So I didn't kill all of them
, Mara thought. And then, unbidden, the image of her father falling through the trapdoor of the gallows rose up in her, and her fury almost choked her again. She felt magic nearby, in one of the buildings, the workshop of some Gifted artisan. She reached out for it, and it leaped to her, a flash of multicolored light streaking right through the wall behind the horses, past the oblivious Chell and Keltan. It covered her hand. She drew on the red, so that it appeared to her she'd dipped her hand in blood. She reached out toward the Watcher—

—and then jerked her hand back, horrified.
No!
She couldn't kill him in cold blood, with magic. Her father wouldn't want that. He wouldn't want his daughter to become a killer. He wouldn't . . .

Her rage gave way to horrible grief. She turned the magic to blue, the color of Healing, and let it flow into the Watcher's head. The bleeding stopped and his ragged, uneven breathing steadied, though he did not wake.

“Mara!” Keltan shouted. “Mount up!”

Mara jerked her head around and saw Chell and Keltan already astride two of the Watchers' horses, Keltan holding the reins of a third. She staggered over to it and, on the second attempt, managed to heave herself up into the saddle. She gathered the reins.

Black-clad Watchers suddenly boiled out from Traitors' Gate like termites from an overturned log. “Time to go!” Chell shouted. He clapped his heels to his horse's flanks, and galloped down Fortress Hill toward the wreckage of the wall, Keltan and Mara in his wake.

The streets were deserted, everyone having apparently reacted to the destruction by running away from it, probably not only to avoid collapsing buildings but also to avoid being anywhere nearby when the Watchers arrived. Mara, Chell, and Keltan rode through a choking cloud of dust and smoke, buildings looming out of it, dark and shrouded, and vanishing behind them again. Then they were at the base of Fortress Hill and clattering across the Great Circle Road. Mara, though she had directed the magic that had done it, gaped in amazement at the enormous breach in the city wall, fifty feet wide, the stones set in the earth sheared as cleanly off above as though they were slabs of butter carved by a knife. They galloped through that breach, past the scattered slabs of rock hurled far and wide by the force of the blast, and across the fields beyond. They ran down into a shallow, wooded valley, out of sight of the walls. There they halted. “We must get to Edrik,” Keltan panted. “We can flee back to the Secret City . . .”