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

apart in place and time and context for her to connect them before now. Once on Coster’s Walk, right before Serrado ran her off for cold-decking Nikory… and once along the canal behind her house, chatting with Tess as he offered a basket of bread.

Pavlin. The baker’s boy.

Is a hawk.

“Thank you for your assistance today,” Serrado added. “Idusza helped me convince the Stadnem Anduske. They’re talking people down. There wouldn’t have been any chance of that without you. I assume you also had something to do with Novrus’s concession?”

His voice was a little too loud, his words a little too formal. He’d set Pavlin on her household as a spy, and Ren didn’t know what the constable had reported back to him, but Serrado clearly didn’t want to have that confrontation right here in the street. For a brief instant she was tempted to force it anyway—to make him answer for the way Pavlin had led Tess on.

But she was too tired, and if the city didn’t burn tomorrow, Serrado would be a large part of the reason why.

Besides, Tess needed her.

“Quientis,” she said. “He’s the one paying for it, though Novrus is taking the credit. I’ll owe him for that.”

“Quientis—?” Serrado’s surprise broke into a grimace of rueful admiration. “Is there anything you can’t convince—”

He cut the sentence off, gaze sliding to Pavlin again. “Well then. I won’t keep you. Era Traementis knows where I can be found when I’m not at the Aerie.”

With a military click of his boots and a signal to his squad, he made his escape.

Ren’s gloves stretched tight across her knuckles as she clenched her fists. Pavlin and Serrado were a problem for later. First, she had to take care of Tess.

Little Alwydd and Westbridge, Lower Bank: Cyprilun 34

Little Alwydd was a tiny islet left over from someone’s poor planning, shaped into a lopsided triangle by canals cutting at odd angles between larger foundations. But that made it defensible; there were barricades at the two bridges, with torches flaming in the nighttime fog, and people with cudgels and slings ready to repel any trouble that might come toward them.

They didn’t try to repel Renata. They just gaped in astonishment that a Seterin alta had come alone, on foot, to retrieve her maid.

The old woman who pecked around Tess like a hen with a chicklet was aged past astonishment. She did, however, have question after question for Renata, until Tess finally snapped that they’d all be withered to cronehood before her curiosity was satisfied. After that, the old woman let them escape with only a huff and one last worried frown for Tess.

And Tess said nothing more until they returned to the townhouse—chilly and damp thanks to the broken parlour window and the fire being out half the day.

“I’ll find some coal to build it up.” Tess’s usual lilt was flattened by exhaustion. She set down the rucksack she’d taken with her and fished out the sampler. It dangled between broken pieces of the frame. Sighing, she tossed it into the cold hearth. “That’ll be good as a starter.”

“Not on your life.” Ren snatched up the damaged sampler before her sister could kindle a flame. It had meant so much to Tess when she made it and hung it in the kitchen. The frame might be broken, and there might be no money to replace it… but Ren would find a way if she had to rob a carpenter’s shop to do it.

“As you want.” Tess leaned on the table, curls hiding her face. “I’m that glad you came through safe. We heard Sostira Novrus is paying the amphitheatre admissions for everyone. You did that, didn’t you?”

She didn’t care about the politics. Ren set the sampler down and brushed Tess’s hair gently back. There was a cut on her cheek and a bruise swelling up on her forehead, and Tess wouldn’t meet her eyes.

“I saw Captain Serrado,” Ren said softly. “And… Pavlin.”

A hiccup answered that, then another. Tess sank down and wrapped her arms around herself, face buried against her knees.

“I’m so, so sorry,” she said. “He was bringing bread, and he seemed harmless, and I just thought he was being nice.” Her head rose, cheeks blotchy and shiny with tears, nose dripping snot. “I’ve thought and thought, and I don’t think I said anything to make him believe you weren’t Letilia’s daughter, but then, what do I know. I probably gave the whole thing away, and them all laughing at how easy I was to fool.”

Ren knelt at her side, hugging tight around Tess’s shoulders. Just had her heart broken by a lying hawk, and she’s worrying about me instead. “Tess, you have nothing to be sorry for. Pavlin it is who should be sorry—him and Serrado, playing with you like this. They hurt you, and I will make them answer for it.”

Tess huddled even smaller, curling away from the comfort. “You can’t. If they don’t suspect now, that’ll make them curious for certain—an alta taking vengeance for her maid? And them just doing what they were told to do.”

“If Serrado knows not that you are important to me, then the man is blind and deaf and more stupid than a frog. And I care not if they were told to do it. Me they can target all they like, but you are off limits.”

Tess swiped at the tears with the back of her hand, doing more to smear them about than clean them away. “It wasn’t me they were after. I’m just the weakness in your plan. It was always about you.”

She didn’t intend the words to cut, but they did, and deeply. Ren almost pulled back out of guilt, but she knew how Tess would read that. Instead she tightened her hug. “Then I am the one who is sorry.”

After a moment of stiffness, Tess softened and burrowed into the comfort Ren offered. “Don’t be silly,” she said, voice muffled by Ren’s shoulder. “Then that’s the