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

be distracted, not to have considered why Grey might release his three delta gentry headaches and their supporters and keep the constables with no family connections… or to wonder why they would head out again without reporting to Cercel.

“I’m aware, Ranieri. We’ll be done soon—after we attend to one thing.” He let a grim smile slip through. “I don’t think any of you will regret the delay.”

They met Meda Fienola at the bridge to the Isla Micchio. She had an Iridet clerk with her, bearing a lantern, and she weighed the Vigil quartet with her gaze as they approached. “This is all you brought?” she asked.

Grey said, “I thought it wiser to move quickly. And not to involve…” He rolled a variety of responses over his tongue. “Unnecessary people.”

“Indeed.” Fienola led them over the bridge and into the fog-veiled plaza. “Breccone’s townhouse is there,” she said, gesturing into the murk. Then she frowned, realizing the uselessness of the gesture. “In the back corner, by the Via Trabuso. You should send at least one of your people around to the servants’ entrance, in case he takes it into his head to run.”

“Any particular danger we should prepare for?” Grey asked. He knew enough about numinatria to be wary of it.

Fienola pondered. “If all goes well, we won’t have to enter the house. If it doesn’t, then look up, check walls and under rugs. Don’t assume the numinat is going to be easily visible.” She twisted a loose wisp of hair—a gesture that might have looked flirtatious on a woman not speaking casually about injury and death. “Tossing something flammable ahead of you at intervals is a sensible technique to avoid becoming a cinder.”

So comforting. “Ranieri,” Grey said. Whatever else Pavlin was struggling with today, he still had the best eye and most sense of any of Grey’s people. “We’re here to arrest Breccone Simendis Indestris for his part in instigating today’s unrest and for reckless use of numinatria. Take Tarknias around the back. If anybody comes out in a hurry, you know what to do.”

If he was surprised, Ranieri’s face didn’t show it; he and Tarknias jogged off. Grey loosened his sword in its sheath. “Lead on, Meda Fienola.”

Indestris’s butler answered the door in his night-robe, rubbing at his eyes. “What?” he said when Fienola finished delivering her declaration of arrest. “I’m sorry—who did you say you were?”

She repeated herself, by which point the man was more awake, but no more helpful. “Altan Breccone is asleep,” he said, as if arrests should only happen during social hours.

“Then wake him,” Fienola said with crystalline precision. “Out of respect for his rank, he may have time to dress, but no more.”

“I can’t wake him!” the butler said, scandalized. “Altan Breccone is very particular. He requires an unbroken night of rest to carry out his work—”

“Meda Fienola, this man is stalling,” Grey said, barely able to keep himself from lunging over the threshold. “He knows perfectly well why you’re here, and he’s trying to buy time—probably for his master to flee.”

Fienola tipped her head to one side. “I believe you’re correct. Remember my warnings, Captain.”

Tacit permission was enough for Grey. He grabbed the butler by the collar before the man could figure out what she meant and shoved him backward into the front hall. I bet he’s flammable.

Then he realized the butler had more than one reason to stall.

Grey knew enough about ash to know that in the normal way of things, it took the better part of a bell to show its effects. The three men who came charging toward him from a side room were fully in its grip. Someone had tipped off Indestris’s household that an arrest party was coming.

Grey dropped the butler and drew his sword to meet their rush.

The world slid both nearer and further away, his senses sharpening to the blade’s edge but his mind stepping back. Grey sank into a detached awareness that took in his surroundings without letting the chaos of the moment swallow him whole. It was a kind of imbuing, threading his spirit into his swordsmanship the way crafters did with their wares. It had saved Grey’s life in the past, when he’d been jumped by Lower Bank knots or his own fellow hawks.

And it saved him now, as three ash-crazed men tried to tear him apart.

The drug made people strong, not fast. He slipped through the gap between two of the men, though one snagged his arm briefly, and even that fleeting contact was enough to spin Grey around. He ducked and cut low as he went, slashing across the backs of one man’s thighs. His target went down in eerie silence: no scream, just an abrupt collapse as his legs wouldn’t hold him anymore.

But ash also dulled pain. Crippled and bleeding, the man kept moving, fingernails scraping the marble floor as he clawed toward Fienola.

The other two spun to face Grey. His usual methods wouldn’t work here; men on ash had no compunctions about parrying with their hands, trying to wrench his sword from his grip even as it cut their palms open. Behind them, Dverli lost her sword to exactly that tactic. She narrowly avoided being tripped to the floor and grabbed a statue from a niche, smashing it over the head of the hamstrung man.

An instant’s evaluation told Grey he couldn’t get through to Dverli without exposing his own back to the other two. He had to trust her to keep Fienola safe, and retreated to lure the remaining pair away. For a moment the clarity of his focus wavered: I hope I’m not backing into some numinat.

He’d come here hoping to bring as many of Indestris’s people in for questioning as possible. With ash flooding them, though, “as many as possible” might be “none.” If he kept trying to disable rather than kill, he was going to lose one of his own people in trade.

A clatter of feet on the stairs decided the question for him. Breccone Indestris, fully