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

He scowled at the floor and the chalky remains of the vesica piscis scraped across it. The lamplight caught that rainbow shimmer—the stuff that wasn’t aža, staining the floor.

“Or… their dreams?” Like the dreamweaver birds, aža was sacred to Vraszenians. They even called aža the “little dream”—after the Great Dream that overtook Nadežra every seven years, when Ažerais’s sacred wellspring appeared on the Point, full of glowing waters that offered true visions to anyone who drank them. Vraszenians believed that aža dreams were little echoes of those true visions, but most Nadežrans didn’t use aža for such lofty purposes; they just wanted a brief, pleasant escape from their daily woes. Since the Cinquerat did their best to strangle the trade with their control, smugglers like Vargo made good money selling aža to Vraszenians and Nadežrans alike.

The inscriptor had chosen Vargo’s aža depot to scribe their numinat, and stolen Vargo’s aža stores. And Tuat was the numen of intuition and dreams.

::Still a fool’s goal. Dreams are as ephemeral as love.::

Nobody who’d inscribed a numinat this complex would be so foolish. But there were dreams, and there were dreams. “Aža isn’t.”

Vargo scowled at the mental laughter that followed. “What? It isn’t much different than using a numinat to improve the effects of medicine.”

::Except that such effects fade quickly, and any power the numinat conveyed would break when it was erased.::

Alsius had a point. Barring jewelry and the little paper blessings exchanged on special occasions—weddings, christenings, the new year at the summer solstice—most numinata remained where they were inscribed, serving whatever purpose they’d been created for until time and geometric flaws cracked them beyond use.

“What about transmutation? Like using numinata to make prismatium?”

::The creation of prismatium is an arcane and lengthy process, one of the great master works of numinatria.:: Alsius’s response came verbatim from the opening lines of Declasitus’s Principia Numinatriae. ::It is not something that may be accomplished overnight in a slum.::

Arguing with Alsius when he took that tone was futile. Returning his attention to the sketches, Vargo traced farther along the spiral. Beyond Tuat, the other numina were too geometrically complex to easily discern from the remaining traces. That cluster of angles and crossed lines could easily be Tricat drawn for stability and harmony, or Ninat for death, endings, and apotheosis.

They could be at this puzzle for hours—days—without learning anything more. His eyes were getting bleary from squinting too long in the dim light of the lamps, and he could practically feel the walls breathing disease at him.

“Enough of this. We’re not solving it tonight.” Vargo climbed down, waving off Varuni when she held up his coat. “Don’t bother. I’m having someone burn this entire outfit when we get home.”

Pausing on the threshold, Vargo glared at the puzzle left for him. He had a plan to carry out, and the next step waited on a Seterin alta to prove her use; he didn’t have time for new mysteries.

But someone had disturbed his web, and there’d be no sleeping until he knew who and why.

Froghole, Lower Bank: Suilun 24

The stench of Froghole was thick enough to gag on. Between that and the tension wiring her shoulders together, Ren was fairly certain that following Nikory here had been a mistake.

This wasn’t her turf. Before she’d left Nadežra, this had all been Blue Cob territory, and anyone else setting foot there risked bleeding for it. She didn’t know the lookout points, the escape routes. Her sole defense was that she looked like a random Vraszenian woman out on her own business… but that defense weakened when Nikory stopped outside a dilapidated building and took up a guard position with the man at his side, leaving Ren to loiter suspiciously in the shadows.

And it got as fragile as blown glass when Vargo himself appeared, looking like he was ready to gut somebody with a dull knife.

A legitimate businessman didn’t set foot in places like this. His presence alone was more than enough evidence for Ren to agree with Donaia that Vargo hadn’t shed his criminal side.

But she couldn’t flee, not without the lookouts seeing. Not until the sagging door opened again, revealing one of the men who’d gone inside with Vargo, and the guards turned to talk to him. She wouldn’t have a better chance to leave unnoticed.

Ren eased backward, pressing herself against the wall for cover, even though it crawled with mold and river beetles. As soon as she rounded the corner, she started moving faster, trying to put distance between herself and whatever Vargo was doing.

She sacrificed caution for speed, and paid the price.

Hands shoved her shoulders from behind at the same moment a kick took her knee from under her. Ren fell hard, skidding in the mud, all the wind driven from her lungs. The man above her was nothing more than a silhouette, his weight dropping onto her before she could reach for a knife, pinning her wrists and trapping her legs. Ren would have screamed if she thought it would do any good.

The man snarled, “Right, then, what the fuck do you—”

She heaved with her whole body, trying to use the slime of the street to twist out from under him. Her shawl fell from her head, and the man’s grip slackened.

It was an opening she couldn’t waste. Her elbow slammed into his throat a half instant after he said, “Ren?”

He fell back, choking. Ren was on her feet and three steps away before the word sank in. Her name. He’d said her name.

Not Renata. Not Arenza. Ren.

Against every shred of common sense, she turned back.

He was on his ass in the muck, and although the alley was narrow, enough of Paumillis’s copper-green moonlight filtered in to pick out his features. Dark hair, skin not quite Liganti-pale, a nose broken more than once, and scars cutting his cheeks, his lip.

But he knew her through the makeup, and she knew him through the scars.

Ren whispered,