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

wall and stuffing it into the rucksack by the door, Tess ventured out. Smoke tickled her nose the moment she stepped onto the canal walk. The mist of Veiled Waters swirled, thick enough that she couldn’t make out the townhouses on the far side of the canal, but down the way she imagined she saw a glow of orange warming the damp grey.

“Raped or burned out,” she muttered, pulling her striped woolen over her head and striking off in the opposite direction, through Kingfisher toward Little Alwydd.

She kept as much as she could to the twists and turns of back canals and covered passages, places narrow enough to squeeze the energy out of a rioting crowd—but there was no way to get to Little Alwydd without crossing the Fičaru Canal. And as Tess approached, the press of bodies clogging every street thickened, unnatural as the fog.

A quick scramble onto the back of an abandoned wagon revealed the cause. Armored hawks blocked the way onto the bridge, holding back the crowd with a wall of overlapping shields.

Tess hopped down, trying to think. She didn’t know this area as well as she might. Were there any other crossings, and if so, where?

Shouts rose behind her. Before she could duck under the wagon, a mass of laborers armed with cudgels and stinking of zrel surged up around her and swept her into the fray.

She tried to struggle free, and almost went down under their boots. A second attempt got her an elbow to the brow, and her vision burst with stars. After that, she yielded to the press. The rucksack became her shield. When she shoved back against another elbow, she heard her sampler frame crack.

Then the elbower dropped, a crossbow bolt bristling from his neck, and the crowd trampled over him before she could quite understand what had happened. A thin wail began, soon taken up by other voices—

“They’re shooting into the crowd!”

The flow broke into a churning morass, battering her on all sides, screams and shouts and shoving first one way, then another. Tess struggled to breathe, to swim to safety, but every head was higher than hers; she couldn’t see above the surface to know which way to go.

This must be what drowning feels like, she thought with numb calm. If drowning stank of sweat and fear and voided bowels.

Then a swirl in the crowd spat her out on the shoals of the hawks—not the crossbows, but the shield line keeping the crowd trapped. Tess fell to her knees and writhed between their legs, below the edge of the shields. Behind the line, the air was blessedly clear, but she only managed to suck in two grateful breaths before a hand clamped around her upper arm, hard enough that she feared the bone would snap like her sampler frame.

A hawk dragged her to her feet. “Please, I’m only for Little Alwydd,” Tess begged, letting her woolen fall back and hoping her freckles and copper hair spoke louder than her broken whisper.

He had a thin nose and high brow she vaguely recognized—a face made for sneering, as it did now. “Nobody gets past. Get off the street, unless you’d rather go to the Aerie.”

A surge of fury gave her voice strength, and she barely checked the urge to kick the hawk’s shin. “I can’t get off the street if I’ve nowhere to go to, you blighted—”

She bit down on the list of things she wanted to call him, but any chance to win his sympathy was gone—if it had ever existed. Grip tightening, he shoved her back toward the shield line, and the screaming chaos and bloodshed beyond it.

“Kaineto!” Another hawk stepped into their path before the first one could throw her to the wolves, cradling instead of grabbing her. “It’s all right. I know her. Tess, what are you doing out here? You should be back at the townhouse.”

“P-Pavlin?” The elbow must have struck her harder than she realized. The hawk holding her had the face of the prettiest man in Nadežra, even twisted as it was into worry. “What are you doing here? And dressed as a hawk?” Too late, Tess clapped a hand over her mouth. Was this some ruse of his, and she’d just given it away?

The thin-nosed hawk spat and released her. “Get her out of here, Ranieri.”

Tess rubbed her aching arm and let Pavlin lead her away. She’d been living the lie with Ren for too long, seeing the same thing everywhere. This wasn’t a ruse—at least, not one meant to trick the other hawks. Pavlin pulled her through the lines of men and women in their blue-and-tawnies waiting on the bridge, and they gave way without complaint. Some even nodded at him in recognition.

On the far side of the Fičaru Canal, the streets were deserted, the silence ringing oddly in her ears. Tess pulled back from Pavlin, staring. “You’re a hawk.”

At least he had the grace to look ashamed, tugging at his hair as though he could drag it down to hide his pretty, lying face. “The captain’s off with Alta Renata; they met up in Horizon Plaza and then went somewhere else. But I need to get back before Kaineto makes things worse. Again.”

“The captain?” Understanding was blooming—dark and aching as a bruise.

“Serrado.” Pavlin squeezed her fingers. “You have somewhere safe to go?”

Tess ripped her hand from his and cradled it to her chest. She couldn’t seem to catch her breath, like she’d taken that elbow to the gut instead of the head. “You were spying on me. On us. For him.”

How much had Tess given away? Enough to make Donaia question Ren’s story? And Sibiliat? She’d almost ruined the whole scheme, flattered into foolishness because someone had noticed her. Had paid attention to her.

Any hope that he might deny her accusation was dashed when he said, “I was. But only at first! I’ll explain later. After…” He cast a worried glance back toward the bridge and the chaos beyond.

“Don’t trouble yourself, Constable.