Masks Read online

  “Does this mean I can be a Maskmaker like you when I grow up?”

  “I hope so, Mara. I hope so.”

  Together they walked out into the sunlit morning.

  ···

  Two weeks before her eleventh birthday, Mara Holdfast sat on a padded bench in the tutorhall’s lecture room and heard about the Lady of Pain and Fire for the first time.

  She was listening with just half an ear: the main topic of the lecture, after all, was the wonder and glory of the Autarch, and over four years of schooling she had, in between learning how to read, write, do sums, build a fire, cook a simple meal, and sew, been told over and over (and over and over) how their magnificent leader had squashed the rebels who had murdered his father, instituted the Masks to ensure no one could ever rebel again, established the Watchers, who watched the Masks for the magical signs that the wearer might pose a threat, and blah blah blah perfect society blah blah blah practically a god blah blah blah.

  But when Tutor Ancilla mentioned the Lady of Pain and Fire, she blinked and looked up from the Mask designs she’d been doodling on her slate. “Who?” she asked.

  Tutor Ancilla wore the plain white Mask of the unGifted, marked in black with the insignia of an open book on each cheek, symbol of the teaching profession. Her mouth, just visible, turned down into a frown and her eyes narrowed. “The Lady of Pain and Fire, Mara,” she said. “Did you not read today’s assignment?”

  Mara bit her lip and looked down. “No, Tutor,” she answered.

  On her right, her friend Mayson, a skinny boy with shaggy blond hair, sniggered quietly. Tutor Ancilla’s gaze immediately shifted to him. “From your reaction, Mayson, I assume you did read it. Perhaps you would care to fill in Mara on what she obviously overlooked?”

  Mayson’s snigger died. “No, Tutor Ancilla,” he said. “I . . . I mean, I read it, but I don’t . . .” His voice withered into silence in the heat of Ancilla’s tutorial glare.

  “As I thought,” Ancilla said. Her gaze shifted to Mara’s left, where her best friend Sala sat quietly. “Sala? I know you did the reading.”

  “Yes, Tutor,” Sala said demurely.

  “Then please stand and tell the class what you learned.”

  With an apologetic glance at Mara and Mayson, Sala stood, her bright red hair, too fine to ever be entirely controlled by a ponytail, forming a wispy halo around her head. “In the aftermath of the Great Rebellion,” she said, clearly reciting (Mara exchanged a resigned glance with Mayson; they’d both long since gotten used to the annoying fact that Sala could memorize anything she read almost instantly), “our glorious Autarch faced a terrible trial: an evil sorceress called The Lady of Pain and Fire, who hated everything the Autarch had done to make the Autarchy such a safe and wonderful place. She used her terrible magical powers to destroy entire villages in the north, razing them to the ground and slaughtering everyone who lived in them, men, women, and children. The Autarch personally led a force of Watchers to root her out of her stronghold in the foothills. He threw down a mountain on her head, and she was never seen again, for her dark sorcery was no match for our glorious Autarch’s mastery of the magic of purity and light.” Sala stopped. “Was that all right, Tutor?”

  Tutor Ancilla gave Sala an indulgent smile, clearly visible even through her Mask. “More than all right, Sala. Thank you.”

  Sala gave Mara another apologetic look and sat down. Mara resisted the urge to stick out her tongue.

  “The Autarch’s defeat of the Lady of Pain and Fire occurred sixty years ago today,” Tutor Ancilla continued, “and that is why—”

  The noontime gong shivered the lecture-hall air. Tutor Ancilla glanced through the open windows into the street, brightly lit by the autumn sun. “That is why class is over for the day. Enjoy your half-holiday, children, and I will see you tomorrow morning. Those of you who have not yet done so,” she gave a pointed look to Mara and Mayson, “should take time to finish reading Chapter Five of The Annals of the Autarch: From Triumph to Triumph. Dismissed.”

  There were twenty-three children in the lecture hall. Within a minute, all of them were outside, scattering to the four winds. Sala, Mayson, and Mara didn’t have to ask each other where they would go: they headed downhill toward the Outside Market.

  “Tutor’s pet,” Mayson said to Sala, but without any real rancor, as they went down the first flight of stairs that led from the fifth terrace of Fortress Hill to the fourth.

  “If you’d just do the assignment,” Sala pointed out.

  “I did,” Mara said. “Or at least I tried to. But . . .”

  “But it’s boring!” Mayson complained. “We’ve heard it all before. The Autarch is wonderful. The Masks are wonderful. We live in a wonderful time. Isn’t it wonderful?” He made a face. “I can’t wait until the Second Testing,” he said. “Then we can start learning real stuff—how to use magic.”

  Mara shot him a frowning look; he caught it, blinked, and suddenly blushed. “Sorry, Sala, I didn’t mean . . .”

  Sala giggled. “You may have more magic than I do, but I’ve clearly got more brains.”

  To Mara’s relief, Mayson just laughed at that. Mara grinned, glad her two friends hadn’t argued this time. Sometimes they went at it like cats and dogs, with her caught in the middle.

  “What do you want to do when you grow up?” Mara said. “You’re lucky. At least you’ll have a choice. Once Mayson and I have the Second Testing and find out what kind of magic we can see and use . . .”

  “I think I’d like to be a glassblower,” Sala said.

  “Stand aside, please,” said a gruff voice behind them, making Mara jump. She turned to see a baker descending the steps with a huge tray laden with bread, his beige Mask marked on each cheek with stylized loaves. The three children squeezed to one side. Mayson mimed reaching out and snatching one of the delectable-smelling loaves from the tray as the baker passed, but Sala slapped his hand. He stuck out his tongue at her.

  With the baker safely past, they continued their descent. “Why a glassblower?” Mara asked.

  “Glass is so beautiful,” Sala said, face alight. “And you can do a lot more than just make bowls with it. My mother and I were shopping in the Inside Market along Processional Boulevard last week and saw an amazing display in a shop. It looked like a garden, but everything was made of glass! Reds and greens, silvers and golds, it was so beautiful . . .”

  “So boooo-tiful,” Mayson said, and now it was Sala’s turn to make a face at him.

  “No need to ask you what you want to do when you grow up,” Sala said to Mara. “You’ve said so often enough. You want to be a Maskmaker like your father.”

  “More than anything,” Mara said. “What could be better than being apprenticed to your father?”

  “Not being apprenticed to your father?” Mayson said, an edge of . . . something . . . in his voice. Mara exchanged a guilty glance with Sala. Sala’s father was dead, but she was very close to her mother. Mara loved her parents and doted on her father and couldn’t imagine what it would have been like to grow up without them. But Mayson . . . Mayson seldom mentioned his parents. And more than once he’d come to school with a black eye or a sore shoulder. Mara thought she knew why, but she didn’t know how to talk to him about it.

  “What do you want to be?” she said instead, though she already knew; he’d said so at least as often as she’d said she wanted to be a Maskmaker.

  “A Watcher,” he said promptly.

  As if on cue, a pair of Watchers crossed the street ahead of them: black-Masked, black-helmed, black-cloaked, wearing mail and heavy gloves and high, polished black boots. Their Masked faces turned toward the children for a moment, and as always, Mara found herself running down a quick mental checklist of her recent activities to make sure she hadn’t been up to anything that might get her in trouble. She hadn’t, but still, there was something about those
blank, black Masks that sent a chill up her spine.

  “Why?” Sala asked in a whisper; she’d obviously had a similar reaction to Mara at the sight of the Watchers.

  “They’re not scared of anybody,” Mayson said; and then, as if he’d said more than he’d intended to, added, “And neither am I,” but somehow, Mara knew that wasn’t true.

  ···

  A month before she turned thirteen, Mara once more sat in the lecture hall. This time, though, she was alone with Tutor Ancilla, and the Tutor sat on the bench with her and talked quietly to her instead of lecturing. “In a month,” Tutor Ancilla said, “you will turn thirteen years old. And that means . . . ?”

  “. . . my Second Testing,” Mara said dutifully. It was hardly a surprise: she’d known about it for years. Could any Gifted twelve-year-old not know about her Second Testing? she wondered. It seemed unlikely.

  “Your Second Testing,” the Tutor said, nodding. “In preparation for which, I am required to ensure that you understand what the Testing is all about. So . . .” She tilted her head to one side, her bright brown eyes locked on Mara. “Tell me.”

  They’d learned little enough about magic in their lessons, but what they had learned, she knew by heart. “The Gift of magic is a rare and wonderful thing,” she said. “Very few people have any measure of the Gift, so those who have it must serve the Autarch in whatever fashion their Gift best suits them for and the Autarch sees fit. Because of that, all children are Tested at age six. If they can see magic, then they are Tested again at age thirteen to see what kind of magic they can see, and how strongly they can perceive it.”

  “Very good,” the Tutor said. “Apparently you do pay attention once in a while.”

  Mara shot the Tutor a startled glance. Was Ancilla actually making a joke? If so, the straight line of her lips behind the mouth hole of her Mask did not betray it.

  “What is the difference between the First and Second Tests?” Tutor Ancilla continued.

  “At age six, Gifted children can see all colors of magic,” Mara said. “But by age thirteen, their Gift has settled and they can see only one or, rarely, two—and even if they can see two, one is always strongest.”

  “And the color of magic seen reveals what?” Tutor Ancilla asked.

  “What kind of magic the Gifted child will be able to use,” Mara said.

  “What are some of the colors of magic, and what do they mean?”

  Mara hesitated. “You only taught us a few, Tutor . . .”

  “Oddly enough, I am aware of that,” said Tutor Ancilla. “Only a few colors are permitted to be known. But tell me the few that you know.”

  “The Gift of Healing presents itself as blue,” Mara said. “The Gift of Engineering—”

  “Which is?” Tutor Ancilla interrupted.

  “The ability to use magic to move and shape objects?”

  Ancilla nodded. “Correct. Continue.”

  “The Gift of Engineering presents itself as blood-red.”

  “Any others?”

  “The Gift of Enchantment—the Gift of imbuing inanimate objects with magical traits—” (Mara was rather proud of herself for remembering the word “imbuing”) “—the Gift of the Maskmakers—reveals itself as a coppery red-gold color.” She stopped. “That’s all you told us, Tutor.”

  “Only the Autarch and members of the Circle know them all,” the Tutor replied. “As it should be.”

  Mara said nothing. The list of things only the Autarch and his Circle of advisers and ministers were permitted to know was a long one and not something it was wise to ask too many questions about: Tutor Ancilla had made that clear long since.

  “It sounds like you are well prepared for your Second Testing,” said Tutor Ancilla. “Once the Tester knows what color of magic you see, you will be pre-apprenticed to a Master of that particular Gift. Although you will continue to attend thrice-weekly classes with me—” Mara saw her lips tighten in what she thought might be a smile “—which I am sure is a great joy to you, you will also begin spending several hours a week with your assigned Master. He or she will teach you what it seems good to him or her to teach you about the use of that Gift, although of course you are absolutely forbidden from using magic or even seeing magic until you are Masked, on your fifteenth birthday. Once that occurs, you will become a full apprentice and will be taught the complete use of your Gift in the service of the Autarch.”

  Mara nodded.

  “Very well. You are dismissed.”

  Mara went out into the bright sunshine and stood there, blinking. She looked right, farther up Fortress Hill: up there, on the last terrace below the golden walls of the Palace itself, stood her house, though she could not see its bright green tile roof from this angle. I should go home, she thought. It’s almost suppertime.

  But instead, she turned and headed down Fortress Hill, toward the city wall. She knew Mayson had had his own conversation with Tutor Ancilla just before she had: he turned thirteen the very next day. And there was no way Mayson would have gone home right away: not to his father. Which meant . . .

  Sure enough, she found him at their favorite spot atop the wall, seated, his bare feet dangling into space. She plopped down beside him and hung her own feet over the edge, unconcerned about the fifty-foot drop to the cobblestones of the Outside Market below. “Where’s Sala?” she said.

  “Dunno,” he said. “’Course, she didn’t have to have a little chat with Ancilla about Second Testing. Lucky.”

  Mara shot him a startled look. “Don’t you want to be Gifted?”

  “Only if I can be a Watcher,” Mayson said. He made a face. “But I don’t even know what color of magic I need to see to be a Watcher. What if I end up a Healer? Poking sick people. Old sick people.” He shuddered. “Naked old sick people. Yuck!”

  Mara laughed. Mayson shot her a look. “Aren’t you worried about what color you might see?”

  “My daddy says the Gift of Enchantment runs very strongly in our family,” she said. “His grandfather was a Maskmaker—one of the first Maskmakers, right after the Autarch ordered everyone to be Masked—and his father was a Maskmaker, and he’s the Master Maskmaker. I’m sure I’m going to be a Maskmaker, too.”

  “You can’t be sure,” Mayson said.

  “I’m sure,” Mara said stoutly, and told the butterflies in her stomach to settle down and believe her . . . but they didn’t pay attention.

  A sudden blast of trumpets off to their right startled Mara. She gripped the edge of the wall and leaned out a little. “It’s the Autarch!” she said in amazement.

  “What’s he doing in the Outside Market?” Mayson wondered.

  “Beats me,” Mara said, but there could be no mistake: no one else had an entourage like the Autarch, not even the members of the Circle. To begin with, there was the horse: Keltan, the famed snow-white stallion the Autarch had ridden since he was a boy (which meant Keltan was either amazingly long-lived or the fourth or fifth of his name, Mara thought). Scarlet tack bedecked Keltan: gold bedecked his rider. A golden cape hung from the Autarch’s gold-armored shoulders and draped Keltan’s hindquarters; the Autarch’s golden breastplate glittered with rubies; golden gauntlets encased his hands, and golden greaves protected his legs. Even his boots shone gold in the late-afternoon sun.

  A jewel-encrusted cap of gold hid his hair—or probably the lack of it, Mara thought, mouth quirking; for all his glory, the Autarch was at least eighty—and then, of course, there was his Mask, the only one in all Aygrima permitted to be made of gold. From her perch high above, Mara could see very little of it, but she knew what it looked like: stern, handsome, given an unearthly sparkle by a dusting of tiny diamonds.

  It was, truth be told, a little gaudy, and Mara thought, as she usually did, that her father could make one far better, should the Autarch ever need a replacement.

  The Autarch and his
entourage passed through the Outside Market like a moving seam in the patchwork quilt of the vendors’ brightly colored awnings. The cream, white, gray, and beige Masks of the ordinary citizens, crowded together on either side of the main boulevard to make way for the Autarch, moved in unison to watch him pass. Here and there a Mask of red or green or blue stood out, marking their owners as Gifted.

  What color will mine be? Mara thought uneasily, and pushed the thought away. Copper, like Daddy’s. I’m sure of it.

  “Look at those country yokels,” Mayson said scornfully. “They don’t know what to do with themselves.”

  Mara had to agree, grinning to herself as she watched the vendors scuttle out of the way of the approaching ruler. She could easily pick the country women out of the Masked crowds below by their simple, unadorned hair. No city woman would be seen in public without an elaborate headpiece, feathered and silvered, gilded or jeweled. But country women . . . If they wear headscarves above their Masks, they think they’re popinjays.

  Mara herself was a city girl through and through, born and raised in Tamita, capital city—only city—of Aygrima. She couldn’t imagine living in the rolling green countryside, dotted with cattle and sheep and sleepy little towns, which stretched to her left, west, all the way to the distant western ocean and its tiny fishing villages. She thought it would be even worse to live in one of the lumber towns scattered through the forested hills to the east, or one of the distant mining towns in the lower ranges of the snow-capped, impassible peaks that formed Aygrima’s eastern border and, curving west, the northern one. As for the flat prairie to the south, mile after mile of wheat and barley and oats, eventually giving way to orchards and plantations and finally the salt marshes of the southern shore . . . she shuddered at the thought, even though her own mother had grown up in the south. What is there to do out there? she wondered. Play with cows? Dig holes?

  She glanced over her shoulder into Tamita, climbing in terraced ranks up Fortress Hill. From their perch she had a straight view up Maskmakers’ Way to the red roof of the tutor hall she had just left, the emerald-like gleam of their own home’s tiles, the golden dome of the Maskery, where in two years’ time she would don her Mask. Looming over all there was the Autarch’s Palace itself, a vast, many-towered pile of yellow stone, aflutter with blue pennants from which the sun struck occasional golden sparks as it glinted off the golden emblem of the Autarch.