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

Donaia would have agreed. But Tanaquis had been a friend to the Traementis, when the curse stripped them of nearly everyone else. Donaia hesitated only a moment more before giving a sharp nod. “What must we do?”

At Tanaquis’s direction—and with due care for the precisely chalked lines—each of the three cursed women took up station in one of the larger triangles. “Face outward, turning your backs on the curse. Focus on the tripod thread connecting to your circle,” Tanaquis said, placing The Mask of Ashes between Donaia and Giuna, The Mask of Night between Giuna and Renata, and The Face of Gold between Renata and Donaia.

Ren fought the urge to touch each card one last time. Mama… keep them safe. They’re all I have left of you.

“I’m placing the master focus now. Whatever happens, do not leave your position.” From behind Ren came the soft clink of a metal disc set down onto the tripod plate. Tanaquis moved past her and out of the numinat. Taking out a piece of chalk, she swiped a bold curve at the open edge, closing the circle.

Unease tightened Ren’s gut. Pattern she could interact with—but this was just copper wires, chalk lines on the floor, three pieces of painted paper, and three women praying for salvation.

Her skin began to itch… then crawl… then her whole body started trembling. The braided thread took on a copper-bright glow, vibrating in time with Ren’s body. It resonated with the other two threads she couldn’t see, a discordant triple tone that made her teeth ache. A faint ringing noise pierced through it—but she wasn’t hearing that with her ears. It reminded her of nothing so much as the ringing in her bones on the Night of Bells, when she’d gotten dizzy and had to leave the plaza to rest.

She couldn’t sit still. But Tanaquis had told them not to move.

Ren dug her fingers into her knees, and even so, she felt like she was shifting. No, something inside her was shifting—dragging from her one strand at a time, as though fingers were digging under her skin to pull it free.

And she recognized it.

During the nightmare, when she went back to the Charterhouse with that blinded szorsa. She’d felt it then: two forces unleashed, represented by Storm Against Stone. One of them was Ažerais. The other…

The other was something else. And it was here, in the circle with them, its power running along the channels of the numinat, draining out of Ren and Giuna and Donaia.

Ren’s vision blurred, as if aža were showing her a glimpse into Ažerais’s Dream. To her right, The Face of Gold gleamed brightly under the lightstones, transmuted to gold itself. To her left, The Mask of Night darkened to a void, only the two slim crescents of the moons breaking its perfect blackness. She couldn’t see The Mask of Ashes behind her, but she smelled it on the air, the dust-dry memory of a fire burned out.

Traementis Manor hadn’t burned like her childhood home, but those were the ashes she was tasting: the destruction of the Traementis family, by whatever power she’d felt in the Charterhouse that night. A power that had been around since long before the Night of Hells. It crawled inside her, desperately clinging against the compulsion of the numinat, and her head spun. For an instant she couldn’t even remember who she was: a child happy with her mother or weeping for her loss, a Seterin noblewoman fleeing her mother and seeking refuge with the Traementis, a con artist out to take what she wanted from the world, Arenza or Renata or Ren.

With a snap, the threads broke—and it stopped.

The recoil jarred Ren into a slump. She heard Giuna’s sharp cry and Donaia’s grunt. Then the wet slide of a dampened cloth across wood. Footsteps. A murmured question.

She sat, dazed and aching, until Tanaquis crouched before her, presenting a fan of three cards. “You see. No harm has come to them.”

Ren clutched the cards to her with a relieved cry, not giving a damn in that moment if anyone wondered why Renata Viraudax cared so much about a pattern deck.

Whitesail, Upper Bank: Cyprilun 33

Any illusion that Tanaquis had finished with them didn’t survive for long. Removing the curse might have been a straightforward affair—though Renata was startled to realize nearly an hour had gone by while they sat in Tanaquis’s numinat—but then she had to finish her study of the whole affair.

Starting with asking Renata to lay a new pattern.

She should have seen it coming. Her cards had revealed the curse to begin with; it made sense that Tanaquis would want them to verify its removal. But the thought of laying a pattern with Tanaquis and Donaia and Giuna all watching was nerve-racking—Tanaquis especially. What if the astrologer could somehow see her Vraszenian ancestry at work?

It was a foolish thought, and besides which, Renata didn’t have any excuse to refuse. But she only recited the prayers to the ancestors in her mind, not out loud, as she shuffled, cut, and dealt three cards.

The Ember Adamant. Labyrinth’s Heart. The Peacock’s Web.

“The middle one is pretty,” Giuna said, pointing at the woman kneeling in prayer at the center of a labyrinth. “Does that mean it’s good?”

Before Renata could answer, Tanaquis said, “My understanding is that even cards that seem good can have negative meanings. Which makes it easier for charlatans to fool the gullible.” She frowned at the cards. “These make no sense.”

Renata blinked innocently at Tanaquis. “What do you mean?”

With an exasperated huff, Tanaquis pointed at the cards in turn. “That one, The Ember Adamant. I believe it refers to obligations. How is a curse an obligation? The pretty one in the middle makes some sense if we assume the curse is lifted. Doesn’t it indicate peace? The third is puzzles and riddles, but the only puzzle I see before me is these cards. Lumen give me a good Ninat, saying, ‘Yes, this is ended.