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

bring to Ondrakja, Ren aging herself with makeup and doing her best to keep her mark’s hands from wandering until her knot-mates had lifted what they could.

Her knot-mates. She felt like she had a lump in her throat. Conning the Traementis was supposed to get me away from all of this.

Just then, a familiar figure shuffled into the room, scanning the place before heading for Leato’s table.

Tess spotted him, too, if not his destination. She sat straighter. “Maiden’s knickers, isn’t that— Oof!”

In the steady noise of the dance hall, the odds of Stoček hearing her were low, but Ren didn’t want to take the chance. Bad enough that Leato might spot her or Tess; now they had two pairs of eyes to worry about. “Sorry,” she murmured, removing her elbow from Tess’s ribs. “But I think I understand now.”

Stoček was as close to an institution as Lacewater ever got, a middle-aged Vraszenian peddling little dreams off the Zatatsy Canal. He usually had a bag of honey stones in his pocket that he passed out to his favorites among the pity-rustlers and river rats—Ren included.

Five years hadn’t changed him as much as they’d changed her. His long hair was still thick and black as river mud, gathered in braids woven through with colorful ribbons and bells. He was missing a few more finger segments than before, and he sported a fresh bandage around a joint too stubby to be a full thumb. That was the punishment for dealing aža if you couldn’t afford the bribes. And Stoček had been dealing aža since before Ren was born.

So this was what Leato was up to. The same thing his father had done before him: finding refuge from life’s hardships in a little echo of Ažerais’s Dream.

But she’d seen countless people buy from Stoček, including any number of slumming cuffs in masks, and none of them had acted like Leato was now. He leaned across the table, as if he didn’t want to be overheard, and talked while Stoček listened.

“That doesn’t look like a deal to me,” Tess murmured in Ren’s ear.

Leato slipped some money across the table, but the expected trade didn’t happen: Instead of handing over a vial of aža, Stoček began to talk.

Ren cursed the crowded dance hall. People kept moving into her line of view, interrupting her attempts to read the man’s lips. She couldn’t even try to drift closer and listen. If she’d had time to put together a proper disguise, she might have swiped a tray and some mugs and attempted to pass herself off as a server, but with her face painted like Renata and her underdress the same one she’d worn to dinner, she didn’t dare risk it.

Whatever Leato had paid Stoček for, he’d paid well. One singer left the stage and another took it before the man stopped answering Leato’s questions, crossing his arms and giving a curt shake of his head.

Leato was the first to leave. Ren couldn’t follow, not with Stoček gazing after him with a pensive frown. His glance swept the room, and Ren ducked her head over her zrel to keep him from seeing her. Tess’s head was already down, resting on the rim of her mug, her soft snores rising and falling with the dance hall music. She’d been up long hours altering and disguising Ren’s clothing, when she wasn’t trailing along in Renata’s wake like a proper alta’s maid.

If Ren came back to find Stoček later, as herself…

But no. Her gut twisted at the thought. There had to be rumors at least of what she’d done to Ondrakja; Stoček would never help her after that. She’d have to pretend to be someone else entirely, and she didn’t have the coin to bribe him into spilling what he’d talked to Leato about.

She would have to work that out by other means.

Ren nudged Tess awake, and once Stoček was firmly occupied drinking his way through some of the money Leato had given him, the two of them slipped out, the cold late fall air hitting them like a slap after the overheated confines of the dance hall.

“Right. Was that worth me getting a new crease in my forehead?” Tess asked, touching the reddened groove where her head had rested on the mug.

Semi-disguised and away from anyone who would recognize Renata, Ren had no compunctions about slinging a sympathetic arm over her sister’s shoulders. “I wasn’t sure if you wanted me to wake you. For me, though, I would say it was worth it. We know Leato is up to something, even if not what.”

Tess bumped Ren with her hip, making them both sway like drunkards. “Handsome one like that, a few secrets only add to his appeal. How did dinner go?”

They walked the rest of the way home, to save money on a chair or a skiff. Tess told Ren about the Traementis servants—friendly but uninclined to gossip about their masters; Donaia must pay them better than expected—and Ren told Tess about the ring and what the nobles had said regarding Vargo.

Tess’s response was a tch and a shake of her curls. “Easy for them to judge. Don’t forget that I’m a wanted criminal in Ganllech. Though you shouldn’t trust my judgment; I’ll forgive a lot from a man who appreciates fine tailoring.”

When their chuckles faded, Tess gave Ren a comforting squeeze. “We’ve seen what the bad ones are like. If he’s truly awful, then people will talk about it—our people, I mean, not the nobles. But you’re smart to check the currents first.”

Ren’s hair couldn’t be fixed in the dark, but Tess flipped her surcoat right side out again before they approached the house, then stripped it right back off once they got to the kitchen. While Ren laid their pallet in front of the banked coals of the fire, Tess went out the yard door to fetch water for washing.

She returned with a cheesecloth-covered basket and flaming cheeks. “Well, we won’t have to worry about breakfast for the next