Mask of Shadows (Untitled #1)(44)

I waited for Five to leave. His servant stayed, taking deep, calming breaths.

I pulled off my mask, face painfully bare, and fixed my hair. I might’ve been in black, like every other auditioner, and wearing secondhand clothes, but the tunic was proper and fancy. I pulled the silver cuffs from my pocket and snapped out the hinges, folding open the silver filigree like blossoming petals. They should never have been pried from dead arms. They needed new memories.

Just like I did.

I raced down the trail so I could walk toward the servant. Busying myself with cleaning an imaginary speck from my cuffs, I marched straight toward her. The servant glanced up and started angling away from me. I veered into her path.

I crashed into her. We stumbled into each other, arms tangling in an effort to stay upright, and I slid my right hand over her shoulder. My fingers scooped up the key from her pocket and my other hand gripped her arm, righting us both and keeping her attention away from my fingers. The key fit well between my second and third fingers. She tried to pull away.

“I’m so sorry.” She bowed with her arm still in my grip, gaze darting to the silver on my wrist. “My apologies.”

“It’s fine. Really.” I grinned and helped her up. She’d be starved for kindness after dealing with Five, and she had to think I was some silver merchant come to the palace for business. Best she remember my words and wrists but not my face. I flicked the key down my sleeve. “I wasn’t paying attention to where I was going.”

I drew out my words like Rath did—the telltale dialect of the Alonian coast and not at all how I normally spoke. Now to show her I’d not lifted the key.

“No harm done.” I spread out my arms and splayed my fingers. “I’m not hurt. You’re not hurt. No foul.”

She nodded, eyes still wide and mouth drawn. “Thank you. Have a good day.”

“I will.” I smiled one last time and took off to Five’s haven.

His room was as bare as mine. A pile of dirty clothes was in one corner, bloody bandages beside them. Scuff marks—the footprints placed like Ruby’s sword stances—marred the floor, and a long bow half as tall as me leaned against one wall with a quiver full of arrows. A military-issue sleeping roll was propped against one wall.

It’d been used recently. The cloth was wrinkled, and dust that wouldn’t be found here clung to the edges.

I’d found the archer.

Wasn’t enough to get Five disqualified, but it was good to know.

I snapped a thread from one of his clean shirts and knotted it around the key, hanging it at eye level on the wall across from his door. To let him know he wasn’t safe.

Fear and nervousness would make him twitchy and force him to make bad decisions. I needed him twitchy.

Pulling the charcoal from my pocket, I drew a wide staring eye behind the key.

And a dozen more—small narrowed pairs with pinprick pupils hidden on the wall behind his pillow; large eyes with their lids ripped away all staring at his bed; and a series of handprint-size eyes staring down at him from the ceiling over his bed.

He could wipe the easy ones away in a heartbeat and fret over the hidden ones as soon as he lay down to sleep. He’d rip apart the room trying to find everything I’d touched.

Removing the silver cuffs and tucking them into the clean safety of my pockets, I rolled up my sleeves and shoved his bed out of the way. I covered the floor in charcoal and created a pool of rippling, dusty shadow where the dark under his bed would be. I left two bare slits for eyes in the center and dragged two spindly arms up the wall, jagged fingers reaching for Five’s head. Safe behind their walls and armies, Erlend hadn’t feared them.

If Five wanted shadows, I’d give him shadows.

He’d no right to invoke their brutality.

I pushed the bed back into place, made sure the shadow drawing was completely hidden, and washed my hands in the washbasin. A wooden memory box sat on a table next to Five’s bed—a tradition older than Igna, Alona, and Erlend combined, usually packed with memories of the recently dead. It rattled as I moved past it. They were supposed to be buried a year after death, with the grief of death returned to the earth. But this box was old and well cared for. I pried it open.

Finger bones. I’d seen enough during my time with Grell. Five had enough bones for two hands, and the edges were worn down to smooth polished points from constant touch. Constant prayers. I dropped them and closed the box. My stomach rolled.

I locked the door with my picks and pushed the dismantled hands from my mind. Whatever Five was up to, it didn’t involve me and might even get him killed before I had to deal with him again. No one with a box of bones had peaceful intentions, even if they were a treasured memory. I tossed the charcoal into the woods.

What a good day.





Twenty-Six


I made it to breakfast in time to stuff a roll into my pocket and be ushered to Emerald’s greenhouse. She vanished through the door, a wavering green blur through the damp glass, while her servant kept us outside. I leaned my back against the wall and glanced around—rooftops and tree branches, any nest for an archer. Four paced, his gaze always landing back on me. I ignored him.

It wouldn’t do me any good to think of the others as people with their own lives and desires.

It would only bring more nightmares.

“You’ll go in one at a time,” Emerald’s servant said, holding open the door, “and remain inside for the duration.”