The Mask of Mirrors by M. Carrick; (lightest ebook reader txt) 📗

by contouring out the remaining softness of youth. Her cheekbones, her mouth—nothing remained untouched, until the woman in the mirror was Renata Viraudax instead of Ren.

Tess bustled in with an armful of fabric. She hung the underdress and surcoat from the empty canopy bars of the bed before flopping onto the dusty ropes that should have held a mattress.

“Whoof. Well, I can’t speak to the state of my fingers or my eyesight, but the embroidery’s done.” She held her reddened fingers up to the light. “Wish I could just leave the insides a tangle, but it’d be Quarat’s own ill luck if a gust of wind flipped your skirts and flashed your messy backing for the world to see.”

She stifled a giggle. “I meant your embroidery, not what’s under your knickers.”

A masquerade was more than just its physical trappings. “Tess.”

The mere pitch of that word was enough to remind her. Renata’s voice wasn’t as high as Letilia’s—that woman had cultivated a tone she referred to as “bell-like,” and Ren thought of as “shrill”—but she spoke in a higher register than Ren. Now she said Tess’s name in Renata’s tone, and Tess sat up.

“Yes, alta. Sorry, alta.” Tess swallowed a final hiccup of laughter. Her part required less acting, but she struggled harder to get into it. With her round cheeks and moss-soft eyes, she’d been one of the best pity-rustlers in the Fingers, but not much good at lying. She stood and bobbed a curtsy behind Renata, addressing her reflection. “What would the alta like done with her hair?”

It felt uncomfortable, having Tess address her with such deference. But this wasn’t a short-term con, talking some shopkeeper into believing she was a rich customer long enough for her to pocket something while his back was turned; she would need to be Renata for hours at a time, for weeks and months to come. And she needed to associate every habit of manner and speech and thought with Renata’s costumes, so they wouldn’t slip at an inopportune moment.

“I believe you had some ribbon left over,” Renata said. “I think it would look lovely threaded through my hair.”

“Oooh, excellent idea! The alta has such a refined sense of style.”

Tess had never been an alta’s maid. While Ren had run herself ragged satisfying Letilia’s petty demands, Tess had been sewing herself half-blind in the windowless back room of a grey-market shop. Still, she insisted that obsequiousness was part of the role, and no amount of correction from either Ren or Alta Renata could stamp it out. Sighing, Renata put in her earrings—formerly Letilia’s—while Tess retrieved ribbon, brushes, needle, and thread, and set to work.

Tess’s skill at imbuing went toward clothing, not hair, but by some undefinable magic she twisted the strands into a complicated knot, turning and tucking them so the outermost parts were the ones bleached lighter by sun and wind, and the darker sections were hidden away.

Just as Ren herself was hidden away. She breathed slowly and evenly, nerves beginning to thrum with familiar excitement.

By the end of today, the nobles of the city would know Renata Viraudax’s name.

The Rotunda, Eastbridge: Suilun 4

The Rotunda, situated on the Upper Bank side of the Sunrise Bridge, was a marvel of beauty and magic. Under a vaulted glass dome etched with colored numinata that kept the interior cool in the day and lit at night, a wide marble plaza allowed for casual strolling and diverting entertainments. In the center, a small garden offered benches where patrons could rest their weary feet. Around the perimeter, shops presented the finest imbued wares for the delight of those who could afford them.

Twice a year, in the spring and the fall, merchants from Seste Ligante arrived bearing the newest fabrics and fashions, setting up displays of their wares in the Rotunda. And all the nobles and delta gentry of Nadežra flocked to the seasonal Gloria, to spend, to see, and to be seen.

Despite her resolve to think only Renata’s thoughts, Ren couldn’t keep her pulse from quickening as she passed through the Rotunda’s grand archway with Tess in tow. She’d often peered at the riches beyond, but she’d been inside only once before—with Ondrakja, not long before everything fell apart.

The scheme had been an audacious one. Ondrakja came in first, dressed as a rich merchant from one of the upriver cities, and examined some jewelry. While the jeweler’s back was turned, a sapphire bracelet vanished. The Vigil constables guarding the Rotunda searched Ondrakja from head to foot, but found no sign of the gems, and the only people near her when the bracelet disappeared were nobility they dared not accuse. The hawks threw her in jail for the night on principle, but the next day they let her go.

Half an hour after Ondrakja was quietly force-marched out of the Rotunda, a beautiful girl who presumably belonged to one of the delta houses came up and browsed the jeweler’s wares. It had been laughably easy for Ren to remove the bracelet from the putty Ondrakja had stuck to the underside of the counter, then walk out with no one the wiser.

Ondrakja had been so pleased with her for that one. She’d bought Ren a bag of honey stones to suck on, and let her wear the bracelet for a whole day before it was fenced.

“May I help you find someone, alta?” a man asked, stepping too close to her side. “You seem lost.”

Djek. A hawk!

“Just taking in the view,” she said reflexively. Long hours of practice paid off; despite the skin-shock of fear, her words came out in the clipped, fronted vowels of Seteris.

She got a second shock when she looked properly at the man who’d addressed her. Since when are they making Vigil officers out of Vraszenians? His accent was cleanly Nadežran, but there was no mistaking him for anything other than full-blooded Vraszenian, with his thick, dark hair—trimmed short though it was—and sun-bronzed skin.

Yet he wore the double-lined hexagram pin of