The Order of Masks

Chapter One

CHAPTER ONE

Mira

By the time I turned sixteen, I’d lived many lives.

I was too young to be what I was – a pickpocket, a noblewoman’s daughter, a circus performer. I’d played so many roles that they all blurred together. Sometimes when I looked into my reflection, even I didn’t know which Mira was staring back.

To my mother, our lives were an endless adventure. A dangerous, exhilarating game that she played with daring smiles and boundless confidence.

‘Who do you want to be, Mira?’ she would ask, her eyes glinting with anticipation.

It didn’t matter what answer I gave. The ending was always the same.

Look forward, don’t dwell, move on.

Those were the rules we’d lived by, for as long as I could remember. The rules that kept us alive.

The roar of the audience thundered through the circus, pulling my attention towards the distant stage. It was encircled by fire, as was tradition in Zigilia. Despite the sweltering heat, I appreciated the effect: in the night-time, with nothing but the fire braziers for light, the performers were cast in shadow. They looked like they really were magical, like they belonged to one of the three royal Orders.

From where I sat by the fortune-teller’s tent, the smell of rich spices and sizzling meat wafted from the food carts lining the narrow walkways. Eager patrons made their purchases, most dressed in typical Western fashion: the men in brightly coloured vests and airy, billowing pants, the women draped in richly dyed silks. Some of the vendors were familiar, but I didn’t recognise any of the people they were serving. Damar was a large city, and one person easily blurred into another.

Which was precisely the point.

One of the vendors handed a kebab to a female customer, and as the woman turned, I glimpsed my mother’s vibrant face. She sashayed towards me, still in her dancer’s outfit: a purple beaded top cut just above her navel and a matching full-length skirt. Even nibbling on a kebab, she managed to turn heads, yet she seemed oblivious to the eyes on her.

Only I knew that naivety was a charade, executed so skilfully that no one else would sense the lie. My mother was a born performer. And she never stopped performing. Not even with me.

‘Choose a card.’ Celeste slid into the seat opposite, brandishing a crimson deck.

I hesitated. Deira would be furious if she returned from her break to find her assistant playing cards. I should be waiting for customers who wanted their fortunes read – not literally, of course, but I’d developed an instinct for reading people and telling them what they wanted to hear.

Then again, the night had been slow; I hadn’t had a single customer since Deira left.

I glanced at Celeste, who was wearing an impish smile. This was for practice, but it was also for fun. She liked showing off her abilities, her little parlour tricks.

But tonight, I had something different in mind.

‘No,’ I said, keeping my expression neutral. ‘It’s your turn to choose.’

Celeste arched an eyebrow, and I knew what she was thinking. Card games had never been one of my strengths. Even if they had been, no one could replicate my mother’s quick, effortless manipulations.

Leaning back in her chair, she confidently handed over the pack of cards. I fanned them out across the stall table, arranging them face down.

‘This one,’ Celeste said, picking up a card with her manicured fingers.

Gathering it up with the others, I methodically shuffled the deck. But my mother’s stare lingered on me, filled with silent challenge, and it wasn’t long before my fingers were turning the cards into flickers of colour.

‘What do I get if I choose correctly?’ I asked.

My mother tilted her head. Her auburn hair was swept back from her face, displaying her sudden wariness to full advantage. ‘What do you want?’

‘Nothing much. Just a question.’

‘A question,’ she repeated.

I met her gaze steadily, not blinking. ‘Yes. Just one.’

Applause cut through the tension between us. I wasn’t sure who was on stage, but they must have been good. Maybe the twins. Or it could have been Reverie, the hypnotist.

‘Alright,’ my mother said, as I set the cards down. ‘Guess correctly, and I’ll answer one question.’

I knew she thought it was a safe bet. From the back, the cards looked identical. But I let their red and gold outlines blur before my eyes, waiting for the pull. The insistent, sharp tug that would tell me which to choose.

Almost involuntarily, my hand reached out to touch one of the cards. I felt a sudden chill as I picked it up.

Celeste looked on in stunned silence as I flashed the title at her, displayed in elegant, golden letters: The Sorceress.

‘You’re getting better at this,’ she said, but her tone was accusatory.

Did she think I’d cheated somehow? Was relying on intuition a cheat?

‘I had a good teacher,’ I said absently, distracted by the woman on the card: dark-haired and dark-eyed, with the beguiling smile of a trickster.

She was beautiful, but it wasn’t her beauty that drew me in. It was the power emanating from her. I wasn’t sure if it was a good kind of power, like in my mother’s stories – or a darker sort, like the tales told over campfires in the icy North. Whatever it was, it intrigued me.

As I angled the card towards the firelight, it seemed to come alive, taking on a reddish glow. The woman closed one cat-like eye in a wink—

And then she was gone.

I dropped the card as if it had burned me. It fell to the table, deceptively ordinary amongst the others – but still blank.

I glanced up, wondering whether my mother saw it too. But she was focused on me. ‘I suppose you’ve won your question.’

I blinked, feeling like I’d resurfaced from a dream. That would make more sense. Cards, even Eastern cards, didn’t just change. In the Ravalian Empire, magic was restricted to the three Orders: Warriors, Artisans and Masks.

‘I’ve been thinking,’ I began, ‘that other daughters know a great deal about their mothers. But I don’t know even the most basic facts about you.’

Celeste’s shoulders tensed. ‘Mira, you know it isn’t so simple.’ There was a warning in her voice, one I ignored.

‘I obey all your rules,’ I retorted, bracing my arms against the table. ‘I’ve spent my life running, never asking any questions. But now I’m asking.’ I paused. ‘What’s your name?’

‘Celeste,’ she whispered, barely an exhale of breath.

‘Your real name.’

‘No, Mira.’ Her voice turned hard. ‘Not that.’

And I knew that the contest didn’t matter. My mother’s true identity would always be kept from me, a secret buried so deep it would never surface.

Celeste collected the cards and tucked them into a small pouch. She stood abruptly and strode into the crowd without a backward glance, leaving me feeling like I’d disappointed her. Like I was the one who had hurt her, and not the other way around.

As I glanced back at the table, I realised she had forgotten a card – the one with the dark-haired woman who had winked at me. The woman who had, inexplicably, reappeared.

A shiver crawled down my spine. In our histories, there was the story of an immortal sorceress. A sorceress who had travelled the world for centuries, watching kingdoms rise and fall. I stared down at the card, taking in the woman’s striking features. And as I did, I wondered.

I wondered if immortality had begun to weigh on her, until it was a curse rather than a gift. I wondered if living so many lives had felt somehow empty, like it did with me. Because no matter how many roles I played, it was like trying to quench an endless thirst. I had a sip each time, a fleeting taste, but it was only ever that – fleeting. That was the overarching rule in our lives, the rule that followed us wherever we went: nothing ever lasted.

It was so subtle that I almost missed it. The pull.

It drew my gaze across the bustling crowd. At first all I saw were the usual sights: street vendors selling their wares, people haggling over prices, and a crowd grouped around the raised stage at the far end, where the performers were still entertaining. But then my eyes fell on him.

The stranger was watching me from a few tents away, his arms folded as he surveyed the spectacle. Now that I’d seen him, it seemed odd I hadn’t noticed him before. He was older than I was – at least Choosing age – and he was arresting even from a distance, with ebony hair and cut-glass cheekbones. Something about his hawk-like stare made me uneasy, a feeling that only intensified as he came closer.

Black whorls of ink covered his face, obscuring even his dark skin from view. The details of the tattoos were impossible to make sense of: every time I tried to focus on an image, it started to transform.

‘Are you doing my job for me?’ he asked, his voice pitched low.

A fortune-teller. A real one.

Sweat beaded across my forehead, but I met his eyes steadily. His eyes were the only features truly visible on his face, unobscured by the tattoos. One was so dark it was nearly black. The other was an eerie, colour-leached grey.

‘You’re from the Order of Artisans,’ I said, standing and facing him.

He smiled. His lips were covered in ink – the upper wholly black, the lower dusted in gold. The effect was beautiful and disturbing all at once.

Run. I should run.

I didn’t move. I wasn’t sure I could.

His gaze lowered to the card resting on the top of my stall’s table. The red was very bright against the black sheeting. It gleamed like a drop of blood.

‘I wasn’t predicting anything,’ I said quickly. ‘I was just—’

‘I know what you were doing.’ He picked up the card in his hands, turning it over. I noticed that he held it very gently, like it was something precious. ‘The Sorceress,’ he murmured, his disconcerting eyes flicking to me.

I tensed, uncomfortable with the scrutiny.

‘So much fear,’ he said in a low voice. ‘What do you know of fear?’

I knew a great deal. But I didn’t answer. I didn’t want him to know anything about me.

His mouth twitched, as if my reaction amused him. ‘Relax,’ he said. ‘I’m not going to hurt you.’ His teeth were startlingly white against the black of the ink. ‘In fact, I might even tell you a secret. Would you like that?’

If I could, I would have declined. But there was no way to politely decline anything freely offered by an Artisan. ‘What would you tell me?’

He considered me for a long moment. ‘First,’ he said finally, ‘look down – and tell me what you see.’

I followed his gaze down to his hands. Down to the ink that seemed to lighten and shift underneath my gaze, forming into the charcoal likeness of a person.

‘My mother,’ I breathed.

Apprehension crept over me as I took in the details of her face: the hollows of her cheeks, the harsh line between her brows, the pinch to her full lips. She looked scared. No – she looked terrified .

Even as I watched, a tear fell from her inky eyes, so dark that they could have been empty sockets. Her mouth opened, as if to form a name. My name.

And I knew, with shocking certainty—

I was watching my mother die.

‘I know what she is,’ the Artisan said, a million miles away. ‘She can run from the past all she likes, but the past always leaves traces. It leaves a trail.’

He leant in, his lips brushing my ear.

‘And if I can see the trail,’ he whispered, ‘then so can they .’