The Masked City

I have to limit this. Irene was on her knees, but she couldn’t quite remember why, and she was shaking so hard that it was physically painful. ‘And then we will part and go our own ways,’ she rasped, her voice strange even to her own ears, ‘free of all obligation, and with no further bonds between us!’

The pressure lifted a little, and any release was a blessed relief: Irene’s perceptions became functional again. She was almost in pain, but not quite.

She stole a glance down to her wrists, where the gold chains of the bracelets showed under the cuffs of her dress. No physical burns. The sensible part of her mind hadn’t really expected any, but she had to be sure.

There was now a mask lying on the carriage floor in front of her. It was one of the white full-face masks, with the eyes outlined in black and gold, and lips painted on in red.

Irene picked it up. The black ribbons for fastening it trailed limply from her hand. ‘Why this?’ she asked.

‘SO THAT THE RIDER MAY NOT SEE YOU,’ the great voice whispered. It seemed to be making an attempt to modulate its volume, and Irene could only be grateful. ‘GO NOW, RETURN WITH THE KING’S SON, AND SET ME FREE …’

If this goes any further, I’m going to have so much stuff hung on me that I’ll look like a Victorian Christmas tree with extra gingerbread. But it would be useful to have a new mask to conceal her face. Without too much hesitation, Irene raised it to her face and knotted the ribbons behind her head.

Nothing unusual happened. It didn’t feel strange. Really. At least, no more than any new mask would. No odd prickles or excessive heat or cold. Nothing at all. She was probably just being paranoid.

‘I need to get to work,’ she said, surprised at how prosaic she sounded after all that shouting. ‘Thank you for your pledge.’

Beside her the carriage door swung open onto the outside world, and the noise of the crowd and the city came flooding into the carriage like a living thing, with the sound of distant bells tolling the hour making the hubbub seem almost musical.

Irene abruptly realized that the sun had set, and the sky was dark. The crowd was still present, but now it was lit by torches and oil street lamps. She swore to herself. It was evening. She’d lost half the day. And she still had to find Kai.

There was one thing she hadn’t tried. She sidled through the crowd till she could find a shadow to loiter in, then reached into her bodice to pull out the pendant, dangling it from its chain. ‘Thing of dragons,’ she murmured, ‘guide me towards your master’s nephew.’

The pendant began to spin. It was like an unfocused compass needle confused by a magnet, turning without stopping, as if one more revolution would help it find the right direction. As it spun faster, it began to whine: a thin high noise like a mosquito, but slowly lowering down the octave towards normal hearing. Its motion grew choppier, jerking at the chain, but still unable to settle on a direction, and Irene could feel a growing heat from it.

‘Stop!’ she whispered hastily, before the pendant could destroy itself due to the place’s chaotic nature, or draw attention from the Ten, or both. She let it dangle for a moment to lose its heat before slipping it back into her bodice.

Damn it to hell. That wasn’t going to work, and hunting across Venice for the Carceri was no longer an option: there simply wasn’t the time. She was going to have to intercept Kai at the opera house, and pray she could handle the Fae who’d come to see the show.

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

Irene strolled away from the crowd, trying to think of options besides the drastically overdone and hideously dangerous. Her preferred form of book heist - or, rather, borrowing - involved a significant amount of time scouting out the area first. Book-collecting activities (as opposed to dragon-rescuing undertakings) usually involved befriending people whom she could pump for information. She also regretted the lack of money with which to bribe guards, a good cover identity, an escape route and all the little things that made life so much easier.

She was just not used to operating on this sort of shoestring basis, and with no time to strategize. That was the hell of it. They’d have Kai on the auction block at midnight. And the chances of scoping out a top-secret prison in time seemed slim at best. Oh, perhaps a heroine might manage it, if the story was in her favour … but she couldn’t depend on that.

She watched the crowd and let herself reflect on what she’d just done. She’d made a pact with a Fae. Not just a convenient cooperative arrangement of the sort she’d organized with Silver, but an outright bargain, promised in the Language. She just hoped there wouldn’t be consequences from the Library. Young Librarians were always warned not to deal with the Fae at all, let alone make formal deals with them. And Irene hadn’t broken the letter of any ordinances - she hoped. She’d just jumped up and down on the spirit of them, then taken them down a dark alley and made some pointed suggestions at knife-point. Saving Kai and preventing a war might save her - but only if she was successful.

There were bells everywhere, echoing through the streets and along the canals, filling the air with sound. The people around her, both masked and unmasked, crossed themselves at particular notes, and Irene tried to match the action without too obviously copying it. The air was cooler, and decent women had drawn their shawls around their shoulders against the evening chill, while the more indecent women strutted with bared shoulders and nearly bared breasts. The last fragments of sunset streaked the sky with orange and pink, like folds of silk showing through a grey-velvet outer layer of cloud. This morning the city had seemed to float on the water, rising out of it like a particularly architectural Venus in pink-and-white marble. Here and now, as twilight gathered and people whispered, it seemed on the verge of sinking into the smoothly shifting reflections.