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

her weight shifted, instinct preparing her to run if necessary. She could never interpret a pattern as clearly when someone else had laid it, but there was no mistaking those first two cards, the good and the ill of Leato’s present.

They both indicated herself.

Orin and Orasz—the Vraszenian names for the twin moons, but here that duality meant two-faced behavior. The Welcoming Bowl meant a new arrival. Both described her… and the fact that Orin and Orasz was revealed, showing its good face, only partially made up for The Welcoming Bowl. That card, veiled, meant the new arrival brought danger.

Ren offered up a silent prayer of thanks to Ir Entrelke Nedje that this szorsa clearly lacked the gift. Instead she had only the mundane talent of any successful patterner: the ability to read the client in front of her and tell him pleasing things.

“Hospitality,” the woman said, indicating The Welcoming Bowl. “To withhold it can be dangerous. Sword in Hand tells me the time has come for you deciding—will you take up another’s cause? Will you stand, even if it brings you into conflict? From Orin and Orasz we know this will bring both reward and cost… but revealed it stands, and so in the end the reward will outweigh the cost.”

I should pay her extra for that. The woman had clearly picked up that Renata was the newcomer in question. But instead of identifying the cuckoo in the nest, she’d all but told Leato to push his mother into accepting his new “cousin.”

Leato responded like any hooked client: wary, but wanting to believe. He leaned forward, studying the upturned cards as if he could read their meaning. Then he met the szorsa’s waiting gaze. “I think I’ve already decided—if I ever had a choice—but nothing here tells me what I need to…” Biting off the end of the question, he sagged back in his chair. “But I suppose it wouldn’t. Apologies, szorsa. Perhaps my future has more answers.”

His reaction took Ren by surprise. She’d been focused on the cards’ significance for her—but it seemed Leato was thinking of something else entirely. She glanced back down. Sword in Hand. Did it have anything to do with why he was late tonight? And what he was doing in that alley?

The szorsa turned over the last three cards. “This is your future, the good and the ill of it, and that which is—neither.”

Ren had been watching the szorsa closely and knew the shuffle had been honest. But the three cards she turned over were The Face of Stars, The Mask of Night, and The Face of Glass.

Not just three aspect cards, and not even just three all drawn from the same suit—the spinning thread—a commonality that indicated greater significance. The Face of Stars and The Mask of Night were the two aspects of Ir Entrelke Nedje, and they sat revealed and veiled, in direct opposition.

“Well, fuck.” Leato slumped further. At the szorsa’s glare, he rubbed the tired frown from his face and tried to appease her with a rueful grin. “Apologies, szorsa. And to you, cousin. You wouldn’t know this, but those cards right there?” He pointed at The Face of Stars and The Mask of Night. “They mean I should stick to watching you play tonight rather than betting on any hands myself.”

“I imagine they mean rather more than that,” Renata said, keeping her voice steady.

“Yes.” The patterner hesitated—probably debating between two finishing styles. Promise Leato glory and riches if he sought out Ir Entrelke’s favor? Or warn him that his dire fate could only be averted by offering money to appease Ir Nedje, the aspect of the deity that brought bad luck? She might even be one of those who did a side trade in rose-knot charms and other methods of preventing doom.

“At a crossroads you stand,” she said, her voice hushed. “This cause you have taken up—it may lead to great success, or to disaster. For you there is no middle road.”

“There isn’t any road,” Leato muttered. “Not one I can see.”

She lifted The Face of Glass. His future, neither good nor bad. “Revelations will come. Revelations, I think, having to do with that lie from the past. What then you learn will determine your path—what you learn, and how you use it.”

If The Laughing Crow had indicated a lie, that might have been accurate. But the szorsa was right that The Face of Glass indicated truth and discovery, and Ren felt cold. Does that mean me? Or whatever Leato is up to?

“What I learn and how I use it,” Leato murmured, twisting his head as if he could see the cards from the patterner’s side of the table. She made a soft sound in the back of her throat, and Leato came back to himself with a shake. “Thank you, szorsa.”

Rising, he once again approached the shrine. After a moment’s frowning hesitation, he pulled out a thumb knife and pried two sparkling amethysts from the skirt of his coat. He placed one in each of the side bowls, for the Face and the Mask.

“Seemed fitting,” he told Renata with a shrug, pocketing the knife. “Don’t let my fate put you off, cousin. We’ll hope there are happier cards for you.”

She’d seen enough to pay her coin, remove her mask, and sit down with only a faint qualm. If she turns up anything I don’t want her to, I’ll just lie my way out of it.

The szorsa scooped up her cards and reshuffled them. Again it seemed honest, and when the first line emerged, it contained nothing to fear. The reader laughed at The Face of Gold, revealed. “You will think me a fraud, alta—anyone with eyes can see you come from great wealth. But there is loss also in your past, a sacrifice unwillingly made. Made for the protection of your family, perhaps.”

Ren studied the other two cards, Hundred Lanterns Rise and Turtle in Her Shell, simultaneously trying to figure out their true significance for her, and what they