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

another line. And as it did, Ren saw something flickering in the air, like motes of dust coming visible in sunlight.

Lines: not the geometric precision of the numinat, nor the curving path of the ancient labyrinth, still faintly visible in the stone where the Tyrant had chiseled it away. Lines between people. A strong one from Ren to Sedge; faint ones from Ren to the Rook, and the Rook to Arkady. Something powerful from Vargo himself, even stronger than the one from Ren to Sedge, but she couldn’t see where it went; then one from him to Ren. The silver thread he’d spun out when he pulled her spirit from the dream.

And a line from Gammer Lindworm to one of the zlyzen.

All the zlyzen were linked to each other, but the thread from Gammer Lindworm was different. And Ren had been trying so hard not to look at the creatures, she’d missed it: a knotted charm hanging around that zlyzen’s neck, the ends of the cord lengthened by a bit of rough string. She hadn’t seen that charm in five years—but she still recognized it. She remembered throwing it at Ondrakja’s feet.

They’re her knot.

The zlyzen wearing the charm pounced on Vargo’s back, flattening him to the stone, claws and teeth tearing. The Rook was too far away, locked hilt-to-hilt with Indestor; Arkady and Sedge were both limp. And Ren couldn’t fight Gammer Lindworm.

But she could lie.

“You’re right.” Ren sank to her knees, her voice breaking. “I—I have no one. Not anymore. No knot in this city will take me, not after what I did to you.” She laughed, a wild, bitter sound. “Even the Traementis will not have me. I got their son killed. I have no one.”

She looked up at Gammer Lindworm. “Ondrakja. Please. Take me back.”

Ondrakja halted in her approach, eyes slitted in suspicion. “You know you can’t lie to me. I always know when you’re lying. I can see what you want,” she said—but she took a step closer, keening faintly with each breath.

“Not a lie,” Ren whispered. “I will swear the oaths. Already you have given me ash—I am ready.”

“This won’t save your wellspring,” Ondrakja whispered, spittle flying from her lips.

But she held out her hand for Ren to swear upon.

Ren interlaced her fingers with Ondrakja’s twisted claw and met the woman’s gaze. “All our grudges are washed away. Your secrets are mine, and mine are yours. Between us there will be no debts.”

Every word of it nauseated her. But she’d made her choice, years ago: to choose her brother over her knot. And Ren would commit blasphemy again to save Sedge, to save the wellspring—to save everything.

She got a close view of Ondrakja’s sharpened teeth and a gust of foul breath as the old woman laughed and pulled Ren to her feet, dragging her close. “Yes. We will be as we were when I—”

The gloating cut short. Gammer Lindworm tried to disentangle their hands, to pull back from the embrace, as she saw too late what Ren intended.

It was true: Ren wanted to rejoin the knot. But only so she could use it.

Her fingers wrapped around the charm’s cord and tore it from Gammer Lindworm’s neck. The Acrenix medallion clanked to the stone, and Ren twisted in the hag’s grip, turning all her attention on the zlyzen tearing Vargo apart.

The zlyzen—and the thread running to it. Ren seized that thread and pulled.

The zlyzen’s head came up. Like a dog heeling its master, it leapt off Vargo’s body and slunk toward Ren. Who tore her arm free of Gammer Lindworm’s grip just long enough to fold the charm over the edge of her throwing knife and slice through its stained, filthy cords.

“I cut you out,” Ren snarled at Gammer Lindworm. “You are part of this knot no more.”

Gammer Lindworm’s arm closed down on Ren’s throat, a heartbeat too late to silence her. Ren’s vision flared white as her air and blood were choked off—but the zlyzen shuddered like waking hounds and turned their skull-dark eyes on Gammer Lindworm with feral intensity. She let go of Ren and reached for them, nails clicking like beetle wings. “My darlings, my children.”

The nearest zlyzen snapped at her when her nails brushed its flank. She snatched her hand back. “No. No, that’s not what you want. You—you’re hungry, yes? I have a child right here…”

Ren staggered clear, gasping for air. It was like watching the Fingers around Ondrakja, trying desperately to figure out how to placate her when she was in one of her rages—but in reverse. Gammer Lindworm kept babbling as the zlyzen gathered, prowling closer, abandoning Vargo and Sedge. The Rook dropped Mettore with a hilt to his temple and started to rush toward Ren, but she stopped him with an outflung hand.

Gammer Lindworm retreated farther, one hand fumbling behind her like she was trying to find Arkady. But instead her heel caught Arkady’s outthrust leg, and she fell backward, almost into the wellspring.

It was all the opening the zlyzen needed. Eerie in their silence, they mobbed her: rags and flesh and blood and bone, tearing into her with the cruel abandon of children freed from the trappings of civilization.

Ren looked away, unable to watch—and saw that Vargo wasn’t moving.

He was on the far side of the wellspring, past Gammer Lindworm and the zlyzen, just out of reach of the numinat’s last element. Desperate, Ren laid her hand on the line that connected them. Pouring herself into that thread, she cried, Finish it.

Amid the shattered lines of the numinat, Vargo stirred. Dragged himself the last few inches to the final figure… and swiped part of it away.

The poisonous light went out.

Only the wellspring blazed, pure and bright—and then fading, as the veil between the realms began to knit itself back together, restoring the waking world.

Including the stone of the stage, above their heads.

Ren leapt for Arkady, ash-fueled strength helping her throw the girl over one shoulder. Then Sedge, whose solid weight should have been far too much for