Masks Read online

  Mara lowered her head, shrugged her smock back up onto her shoulders, tied it tight, then rubbed a crick in the back of her neck. “May I see?” she said. No one had ever drawn her picture before.

  “No,” the fat man snapped. “Come with me.”

  He led her across the floor to an empty cell and locked her in. In the cell to her left the dark-skinned girl lay on her cot, one arm across her face, apparently asleep. In the cell to the right stood the boy, huge and muscular, almost the size of a grown man. As the door clanked shut and the fat man strode away, the boy gripped the bars and grinned at her.

  Mara didn’t like the looks of the boy; wouldn’t have liked them even without the vivid red scars slashed across his cheeks and forehead. He hardly looked as if he’d been Healed at all. Ragged stubble speckled his upper lip and chin.

  “What’s your name?” the boy said. His grin twisted into something more like a leer. “I’m Grute.”

  “Mara.” She looked past Grute; the cell on the other side of him was empty. There were only the three of them on this side of the warehouse; the other girls were invisible in the shadows across the broad floor. “All of you failed the Masking?”

  “Sometime in the last month, yeah,” Grute said. “Now we’re just waiting.”

  “For what?”

  “For them to take us where the unMasked go,” Grute said. “Looking forward to it, myself. I’ve heard some things. I’m gonna do all right there. Better than I ever would have in Tamita, anyway.”

  He hadn’t taken his eyes off her since she’d started talking to him; she found his gaze unnerving. “What are you staring at?” she snapped.

  He snorted. “Your face, of course. You don’t have these.” He lifted one hand and traced the contours of one of the scars slashing across his cheek. His smile/leer widened. “And you’re pretty, too. Or will be once you flesh out a bit.”

  “I was cut up, too,” Mara said. “I just had a better Healer.”

  “Yeah? Why did you rate?”

  “Just lucky,” she said. It was the only answer she had. Why had Ethelda been there? Representing the Autarch, she’d said, but why? Why hadn’t the Autarch himself attended? She was the daughter of his Master Maskmaker. Why had Ethelda come in his place?

  “Gifted, were you?” Grute said. “Think that makes you special?”

  “Yes, I have the Gift,” Mara snapped. “What’s it to you?”

  “Have it?” Grute’s voice dripped vicious glee. “Had it, you mean. You ain’t got it no more.”

  “What?” Mara stared at him. “What do you mean?”

  “I mean,” Grute said, “that when a Gifted’s Mask fails it takes her Gift away from her. You got no more Gift than I do. Or the fat man out there.” He jerked a thumb in the direction of the chair in the middle of the warehouse floor. “You ain’t no better ’n anyone else, now.”

  Mara’s stomach flip-flopped. “I don’t believe you!”

  “Ask her,” Grute said, pointing at the sleeping, dark-skinned girl. “She had the Gift, too, until a month ago when her Masking failed—right in front of the Autarch, too. She knows she ain’t got it no more. Masker flat out told her. Gift don’t survive when the Mask fails.” He jerked his head in the direction of the cells on the far side of the warehouse. “’Nother girl over there, same thing. They know the truth. Now you know it, too: there ain’t nothing special about you at all, not anymore.” His gaze traveled over her body, and she felt herself blush. “And I do mean nothing.” Then his eyes moved back to her face and his voice dropped to a low growl. “Except you got no scars. That’s special. That could make you real popular where we’re going. Men’ll probably be fighting each other over you.”

  Mara swallowed. For the first time, she wondered if the Healer had done her a favor. “What’s with lard butt out there?” she said, wanting to change the subject. “The drawing. What’s with that?”

  Grute snorted. “Don’t get out much, do you? Big black market for drawings of the unMasked. Girls, mostly, though there’s a market for boys, too.” He leered. “You’re just lucky he didn’t make you take all your clothes off. He usually does. Probably would’ve, if you had anything much to look at. But you don’t. Saw that much when your smock slipped down.” The leer became an evil grin that almost split his face. He was missing two teeth. “No, it’s your face he cares about. UnMasked and unscarred. Must be a first.”

  Mara gaped at him. “That’s disgusting! I don’t believe you.”

  “Ask her,” the boy said, again nodding at the sleeping girl. “Made her take all her clothes off, first day here. Couple of the other girls, too. I watched.” He leaned forward, eyes locked on Mara, and said in a thick whisper, “I didn’t find it disgusting at all.”

  If Mara hadn’t already been on the far side of the cell from him, she would have backed away. “Leave me alone!”

  Grute rattled the bars of the cage. “As if I have a choice.” He grinned again. “For now.” He mimed a huge kiss, then went to his cot and flopped down onto it, his back to her.

  Mara stared at him. She looked back at the dark-skinned girl, but she remained asleep. She looked out through the bars at the fat man. He seemed to be putting the finishing touches on a drawing. Mine? She imagined men buying it from shadowed stalls in the city’s back alleys, and felt dirty. “How did this happen?” she whispered to herself. “How did I end up here?”

  No one answered her.

  The day wore on into evening, gloom gathering in the warehouse as the sun slipped too low to shine through the windows. She desperately needed to relieve her bladder, but there was no way she was going to do that, in the bucket, while there was light enough for Grute to watch her, which she was sure he would.

  Not that he had any qualms about it. She had to avert her eyes twice during that long afternoon.

  The fat man gave them each a loaf of bread and some water as the windows turned orange. When the room was all but pitch-black, Mara finally felt her way to the bucket and did what she needed to do. But when she returned to her cot, she found no rest.

  It wasn’t just the lumpy mattress or the chill in the air that the thin blanket could not ward off. It was the fact that in the dark she was completely alone with herself, her thoughts . . . and her memories. The excitement of donning the green dress. The anticipation of the Masking celebration to come. Walking to the Maskery in the cool morning air. The sound of birdsong in the courtyard. The wonder of seeing the beautiful Mask her father had made for her, his love for her apparent in every beautiful bit of it . . .

  ...and then the tearing pain as her face split, the crunching agony as her nose broke, the blood, and, worse than all of that, her mother’s screams . . .

  Now here she was, locked in a cell, unMasked, degraded, cast out, sentenced to who-knew-what fate.

  I wish the Mask had worked, she thought, as tears ran down her face onto the smelly cover of the straw-filled mattress. Even if it really does change you. I wish it had worked. Because nothing could be worse than this. Even my Gift is gone. I’ll never see magic again, ever. . . .

  And then her eyes, squeezed shut against the tears, flew open.

  Ethelda had Healed her face with magic—and Mara had seen it, clinging to her hand like a glowing blue glove. Maybe the Gift doesn’t vanish instantly when the Mask breaks, she thought. Maybe it fades slowly. Maybe it’s gone now.

  But maybe, just maybe, it wasn’t.

  “Be strong,” she whispered to herself, echoing Ethelda’s last words to her. “Don’t lose hope.”

  Clutching the faint possibility that her Gift had not deserted her, as tightly as the night before she had clutched Stoofy, she finally found sleep.

  The shouts of the jailer jolted her awake what seemed an instant later. She lay confused and frightened, heart pounding. Why was she so stiff and cold? What had happened to her bed, her cozy room, the skylig
ht?

  Then, sharp as a slap, everything that had happened the day before rushed back. She gasped, and raised her head.

  The fat man strode from cell to cell, slamming a long wooden club against the iron bars. “Wagon is here,” he shouted. “Say good-bye to your luxurious accommodations, my sweets.”

  Luxurious? Mara thought with a mixture of outrage and lack-of-sleep befuddlement. Grute stood in front of his bucket, peeing. He winked at her. Mara closed her eyes. If this is luxurious, she wondered, what comes next?

  She found out half an hour later when, having used her own bucket as modestly as she could, scrubbed her face in cold gray water from the basin, and choked down a handful of dates, she blinked in a sudden flood of light as the big doors at one end of the warehouse crashed open.

  A tall black wagon, pulled by two huge, shaggy-footed, dappled gray horses, clattered in over the flagstones. The hairs stood up on the back of Mara’s neck. It had a brutal look: thick wooden slats, rusty iron studs, tiny barred windows high above wheels that stood as tall as Mara herself.

  But the worst of it was that she had seen wagons like it before, had wondered what they were for and where they were going; had seen them because she had sat on the city wall staring down at this very warehouse . . . the warehouse that had once belonged to her mother’s father.

  She felt sick.

  Two Watchers flanked the driver, a slight man wearing a dull-gray Mask, nondescript clothes, and calf-high boots of scuffed black leather. He stayed put, holding the reins of the blowing, stamping horses, while the Watchers jumped down, boots slapping against the stone, and went around to the back of the wagon. Doors swung wide, and then the Watchers moved to the first occupied cell on the far side of the warehouse. The fat jailer opened the cage door, and the Watchers escorted out a trembling girl who looked too tiny to be fifteen. They led her to the wagon. She was too short to climb up into it, so one of the Watchers grabbed her, swung her legs up, and shoved her in feet-first. The other two girls from the far side of the cell, one about Mara’s height but much more rounded, the other taller and tough-looking, were rousted out next, and climbed in under their own power.

  The Watchers crossed to Mara’s side of the warehouse. They opened the cage of the brown-skinned girl. She crossed the warehouse floor with her head high, and climbed in with no difficulty.

  Then it was Mara’s turn. She padded on bare feet across the cold flagstones. She, too, was able to climb up into the wagon’s dark interior without help.

  Like the cell, the wagon was lined with straw. Unlike the cell, it didn’t have a bucket, only a small hole in the center of the floor. The interior stank of mold and sweat and urine, and Mara shuddered at the touch of the rotting straw under her hands and bare knees as she crawled in.

  The other four girls had huddled together in a corner. Mara instinctively joined them, so that they were shoulder to shoulder when the Watchers came back with Grute. He jumped easily into the wagon, which rocked under his weight. His head barely cleared the ceiling as he stood looking down at them, hands on his hips. “Well, well,” he said, face twisted into the leering grin Mara had already come to hate. “This could be fun.”

  The doors closed, plunging them into darkness. Mara felt the brown-skinned girl, who had been sitting to her right, get up. The wagon jerked on its springs. Grute gave a high-pitched, almost girlish shriek, and the wagon jerked again as something heavy thudded to the floor. The next moment Mara’s neighbor was back at her side. The sound of moaning filled the wagon.

  As her eyes adjusted to the faint gray light seeping through the tiny barred windows, Mara could just make out Grute lying curled on the floor, hands between his legs. Tears glistened on his cheeks.

  Mara felt a smile turn up the corners of her mouth for the first time since her Masking. She turned to the girl. “My name’s Mara,” she said. “What’s yours?”

  “Alita,” said the girl. She put her arm around the smaller girl. “And this is Prella.”

  “I’m Simona,” said the buxom girl.

  “Kirika,” said the tough-looking one.

  The wagon shifted again as, presumably, the Watchers climbed back aboard. And then they were rolling, the light brightening as they trundled out of the warehouse into sunshine.

  They drove for hours without stopping. As the sun rose higher and higher, so did the heat and stench inside the wagon. Grute, once he had recovered enough to quit moaning, crawled away to the far corner of the wagon, where he sat, silently glaring, his eyes all Mara could see clearly in the semidarkness. They gave her a creepy feeling, but she kept watching them all the same. She wanted to know exactly where Grute was all the time. She doubted even Alita’s . . . forceful . . . action would keep him at bay indefinitely. The boy was bad, and it was no wonder the Mask had rejected him . . .

  ...just like it rejected me.

  She talked a little with the others. Alita and Prella, she learned, were—or had been—Gifted; Simona and Kirika were not. Alita had been destined for apprenticeship to a Healer and Prella to a Horsemaster. Simona had expected to go to work in her father’s bakery. Kirika said nothing about what her plans had been.

  But all of their plans and expectations had come crashing down in the same way: the writhing of the Mask, the pain, the blood, the screams of horrified Witnesses, the Watchers hauling them away down the long tunnel.

  At both Alita and Prella’s Maskings, the Autarch himself had been present. “Not that I saw him,” Prella said. “He was behind a golden screen. But I saw the Child Guards.” Her voice trembled. “I was so ashamed when the Mask failed. Failing like that in front of the Autarch!”

  “The Autarch comes to the Maskings of the Gifted?” Simona said, sounding awed.

  “He didn’t come to mine,” Mara said. “The Palace Healer, Ethelda, was there instead. I don’t know why.”

  “Lucky you,” Alita muttered, and Mara felt a pang of guilt. Every time they see my unmarked face they’ll know how lucky I was, she thought. I hope they don’t resent me for it. It’s not like I had anything to do with it!

  But then she remembered what Grute had said about how “popular” she might be among the men where they were going, and the pang of guilt turned to a worm of nausea that made her swallow hard. “Maybe not,” she whispered, but she doubted the others heard her over the noise of the wagon.

  Of the four, Kirika said the least, and nothing at all about her background. Alita was slightly more forthcoming. Mara found out she was the daughter of a blacksmith, that she came not from Tamita but from one of the outlying villages, and that she was the first of her family to be Gifted. All Gifted were sent to Tamita to be Masked, since only the Master Maskmaker—Father, Mara thought—could make their special Masks.

  “The week before my fifteenth birthday, the whole village feasted for three days. And when I rode out onto the road to Tamita with my parents, they showered us with flower petals . . .” She fell silent after that, and would say nothing more.

  Simona said her father’s bakery was located on the far side of Tamita from Maskmakers’ Way, which explained why Mara had never seen it. Simona had been working in the bakery several hours a day, with her mother and only sibling, an older brother, since she was eight. The Masking had seemed a mere formality, just an annoying interruption in a well-established routine. “They’ll miss me in the bakery,” she said. “And there was . . . a boy . . .” She fell as silent as Kirika and Alita had become.

  Prella, on the other hand, prattled. Her father was a tailor and her mother a dressmaker. She was the youngest of eight children. Her eldest brother was also Gifted, and currently working in the Corps of Engineers, building the city’s new aqueduct from the eastern mountains. All of her siblings had been Masked without a problem, she couldn’t understand what had happened, wasn’t that warehouse an awful place, being drawn by the fat jailer, she’d never been so embarrassed, where did they
think they were being taken . . . She talked enough for all the rest put together.

  That suited Mara. She said only that her father was a Gifted craftsman—nothing about him being a Maskmaker—and that she was an only child.

  “Your poor parents,” Prella breathed when she heard that. “I mean, my parents will miss me, but at least they’ve got seven more. What will your parents do?”

  “I don’t know,” Mara said, against the lump rising in her throat. She swallowed and pressed her lips together. I’m through crying, she told herself fiercely. Crying won’t change anything. It just makes me look weak. And I can’t afford to look weak. Not in front of Grute.

  But despite her resolve, more than a few tears found their way down her cheeks during that long ride.

  A few hours after setting out, they stopped briefly and were let out of the wagon to stretch. Given hard bread, harder cheese, and carrots that were anything but, along with tin mugs of rather funny-smelling water, they sat with their backs to the wheels on the shady side of the wagon and ate their meager fare while gazing out over a wheat field. Smoke rose from the chimneys of a village in the distance, but no villagers were to be seen. Know enough to stay away, Mara thought.

  She shot a glance at Grute, sitting well apart from the girls. Are all unMasked boys like him?

  No, she answered herself firmly. She thought back to her encounter with the boy calling himself Keltan. He certainly wasn’t like Grute, or she would never have escaped that coal room. But he wasn’t rejected by the Mask, she reminded herself. He rejected it.

  Even though she was half-convinced her failure to turn him in was one of the reasons she was where she was, she hoped fiercely that he’d escaped. She wished, even more fiercely, that she had accepted his offer to run away with him.

  The Watchers soon ordered them back into the wagon. “Where are we going?” Mara dared to ask as she climbed in.

  “You’ll find out when we get there,” one Watcher growled, and slammed the door.