Chapter Nine #3
I looked about wildly, feeling like some kind of trap was closing in. Mieka had told me Ladran owned half the city—the taverns, the gambling hells. She worked for him in some capacity, didn’t she? Ladran’s lapdog, Grizel had spat at her.
“Did Mieka bring me here because of you? Is she …?”
“She does not know I am here,” he said quickly.
“My intentions are nothing but good.” Somehow he had taken my hands again without my noticing and was spinning me round as the crowd continued to dance.
There was some kind of magic in it, that dance, and I was caught up in it and could not pull myself free.
“And what are those intentions?” I managed to say.
“I want to help you.”
“Out of the goodness of your heart.”
He shrugged. The bird mask tilted.
“I’m not going to pretend I don’t have a vested interest. I am loyal to the king.
I look out for the good of Virelith. I work with others like you—those who don’t want to bend the knee to the Temple and see the kingdom fall to the One-Eyed God, or become little more than a tool for the high lords to wield.
Those like your mother, as well. She rejected the Temple, I think? ”
“What do you know about my mother?”
“Very little, I’m afraid, but I would like to know more. I would like to help you find her—and her spellbook. That book is of great significance to the kingdom’s future. Many have heard of its existence. Many have been looking for it. I like to … pay attention to such things.”
“Are you a spy?”
“A spy, a businessman, a merchant, a diplomat …”
“A traveling magician in a patched coat?”
“Whatever the king finds necessary. Sometimes the best way to observe is to be invisible, in the shadows—and sometimes being a colorful distraction and putting on a show is even more effective.”
“What were you doing that day near the Tower?”
“I was simply trying to help you.”
My voice trembled, but I forced it to be strong. “Forgive me if I am not immediately overwhelmed with gratitude.”
He spun me round again. “I heard tell that an attack was planned on the Tower.”
“Heard tell from whom?”
“I am not quite ready to reveal that, my dear. After all, a large part of my business is secrets.”
“Then why didn’t you stop it?”
“I was on my way to the Tower when I heard I was too late. But I also heard that you had survived, so I made sure I was there to …”
I glared at the blank eyeholes of the mask. “Interfere?”
He pulled me in closer, so his voice sounded right in my ear, warm and intimate. “Interfere? That’s uncharitable. If I hadn’t interfered, your pursuers would have had you twice over by now, and you would have lost all your coin,” he said.
“If you know all this, you must know why Temple guards wanted my Mother’s book.”
“I’m afraid I do not, although I would very much like to.”
I snorted.
“A most unladylike noise,” he observed, but I fancied I could see the hint of a smile through the mask.
I had barely noticed, as I was so angry and so absorbed in the conversation, but the last of the sunlight was bleeding from the sky, and the crowd had started counting down to the Unmasking.
It had to be done at the very moment when the sun slipped its moorings and dipped beneath the horizon—when the glims and candles and lanterns became the only points of light.
I had not intended to remove my mask, but someone behind me wrenched it back, laughing, and although I clutched at it, it was too heavy for me to raise again easily.
Beneath it, my Hair floated freely around my shoulders.
Shouts and laughter and whoops all around, and then confetti was thrown from the upper windows of the houses all around, as were handfuls of grain and sugar dyed every color.
All around us, couples and friends and strangers embraced, lights flared to life, and despite myself, I felt the intoxicating swirl of it all.
“Kiss! Kiss!” the crowd shouted in a hundred voices, and someone threw a ladle of pink sugar over us.
It stung my skin like a thousand tiny pinpricks.
Patrick took his skull mask by the beak and lifted it, just enough to expose his mouth and leave his eyes in shadow—and he kissed me.
It was featherlight and brief—barely a kiss, a suggestion of a kiss—but it tasted like sugar and salt at once, and it was shockingly close and warm.
I managed to get hold of my mask and wrenched it forward, breaking the kiss, flattening down my Hair again, and shielding my face, which was burning hot. We stared at each other for a moment—or, at least, I stared into the empty eye sockets of his mask, and he stood infuriatingly still and silent.
“What … Why would you …” I said, still reeling.
After a beat, he gave a low, theatrical bow. The bird skull mask covered his head completely. I could not even see the color of his hair. “I did not want to draw attention to us,” he said in a low voice. “It would have seemed stranger had I not …”
A kiss given to allay suspicion. As a form of disguise. I felt a surge of anger—first at him, for kissing me, and then at myself, for letting him.
“I don’t care,” I spat at him. “Leave me alone. Stop following me. I don’t want to see or hear from you ever again.”