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

swipe of Ondrakja’s free hand and stabbed upward, trying to catch her in the soft pit between ribs and arm. But the hag twitched back, fast as a snake, and the only good thing was that she let go of Sedge. He pulled out another knife with his good hand and threw it, but Ondrakja avoided the blade with ease, retreating a step.

“Such rebellious little children,” she sighed. “Don’t you want your mother back?”

“You are not our mother,” Ren spat. That was one mask Ondrakja had never tried to wear: She was their knot leader, but never tried to call herself family. I would have poisoned her years earlier if she had.

Ondrakja pouted. “Is it because I look like this?” She plucked at her robes, at the spotted parchment skin of her arms. “Don’t worry. I’ll be better soon—he promised. Then we can be a family at last. You don’t want it now, but that’s no trouble.” Her teeth gleamed in the faint light. “I can make you want it.”

Her certainty was even more unnerving than her words. “Like hell you fucking will,” Sedge hissed through his pain, but Ondrakja just clicked her tongue.

“You’ll see. I’ll come for you. All three of you, and then I’ll punish you like you deserve. Like a good mother should.”

At first Ren thought the light from the stone she carried was fading. But no, it held steady; Ondrakja was the one fading, wisping into nothingness like she was made of smoke.

Ren made one last, desperate lunge, but her knife passed through the empty air where Ondrakja had been. As though the woman had been nothing more than another nightmare.

18

Aža’s Call

Eastbridge, Whitesail, and Duskgate: Cyprilun 29

Vargo’s repertoire of curses would have impressed even Tess. “Just the two of you. Alone in the Depths. With the floods already starting. You have an excuse for not understanding how dangerous that is, but Sedge…” His glower promised retribution.

She’d told him almost all of it, after stopping at the townhouse long enough to change disguises and hand Sedge over to Tess for bone-setting. The zlyzen blood, the children’s cages, the unnatural strength, even Ondrakja vanishing into thin air—everything but Ondrakja swearing to punish Ren for her betrayal.

“Blame me, not your man,” she hurried to say. “I told him that if he didn’t guide me, I’d go on my own. A rashness I heartily regret now. We’re lucky he suffered nothing worse than a broken wrist.”

“And he’s lucky you came to no harm. Forget the floods; you’re still recovering. Don’t you know how much filth is down there? You could have gotten sick.” Vargo shifted back as though to protect himself with distance.

“I scrubbed thoroughly afterward.”

That didn’t seem to reassure him. “I suspected Indestor was behind the ash production, but it’s some madwoman in the Depths using stolen children and… monsters? How?”

“The zlyzen were feasting, she said. Growing fat.”

His fingers drummed on the arm of his chair, which Master Peabody seemed to take as a cue to peek out from his collar. A row of four bead-bright eyes fixed on Renata. Vargo said, “The walls—they were covered in zlyzen blood?” Setting Peabody on the table, he rose and retrieved a sheaf of loosely bound papers and spread them in front of her. “The blood on the walls… could some of it have been numinata? Anything that looked like this?”

Vargo’s “this” wasn’t much. Sketches of unconnected lines; notes in a much neater hand than Tanaquis’s saying things like vesica piscis and acute enough to be Ninat? and who the fuck uses Ekhrd to estimate regression??? Even when he set them in a grid to show the whole figure, there was more missing than present.

The pulsing dread had made it difficult to even look at the blood, but she’d seen enough to be confident in shaking her head. “It was just splashes—nothing precise. As I understand it, numinatria requires concentration and a steady hand; I doubt that madwoman is capable of anything of the sort.” Renata looked up from the papers. “Why? What is this?”

Sighing, Vargo gathered up the sheets and tapped them against the table to straighten them. “Found the remains of an operation in Froghole. This was what was left.” He cocked his head. “Was it iridescent, the blood? Like dreamweaver feathers, but putrefied?”

“More violet than a dreamweaver’s feathers. But yes, it had something of a shimmer.” She rubbed her thumb against the tip of her finger, as if the residue were still there.

“We found something like that, too. Disgusting, but it didn’t have any unusual effect. So she’s dosing the children with aža, letting the zlyzen feed on their dreams, then taking the zlyzen blood and transmuting it into ash with a numinat. You said she disappeared—could she have gone into the realm of mind?”

“I think she must have. We know it’s possible; that’s what happened to all of us at the Accords. But it looked like she could control it at will. We don’t know where she is… or when she’ll appear.”

Vargo gave her a sour look. “Thank you for tonight’s nightmares, Alta Renata. You didn’t grow up with tales of zlyzen eating your brain while you slept.”

If he was the Rook, he knew she had grown up with such tales. But in his shoes, she would have said the same thing, to throw her off the scent. I’m going to go mad, trying to guess whether he knows.

Vargo’s thoughts had moved on. “Indestor’s got an inscriptor capable of doing what this Gammer Lindworm hag can’t. And you say she made it sound like they’re working together.” He absently riffled the edge of his notes. “But why?”

Renata leaned back in her chair. That night in Mettore’s office, when he’d asked for another dose, saying he needed to test something—had he meant ash, intending it solely for her? If Ondrakja had then poisoned all the wine, that explained the double dose she had received.

“Someone’s selling it on the streets,” she said slowly.