MELANIE
Two years previous
The sniffy old enchantments dealer took his lunch at the same hour every day, locking up before walking three blocks to a hot-soup stand whose owner knew his name and order like she knew the days of the week. But, while the soupist knew her beans from her barley, she was trusting and uneducated, eager to please all who came through the door without a second thought as to their motives. If their bellies were full, she was satisfied. The only person she could have envisioned carrying malicious intent would have to be a soup hater.
Sebastian, who now posed as Melanie’s employer, knew the soupist fairly well, as he was also a regular diner. He’d spent so much time around the mask shop trying to ward off unsuspecting buyers that the enchantment district felt like a second home.
So he wasn’t too keen when Melanie decided to involve the soupist in their plan.
“I thought we were only going to rob him a little—not poison him.”
“My dear, honorable Monsieur Leiwood,” she said, looping her arm through his as they strolled down the street, scoping out the area. “I told you, Belladino knew things. Useful things. It’s not poison, it’s medicine. He’ll take a very long nap and feel quite refreshed upon waking. Better, even, because we aren’t going to steal the masks. We’ll pay, leave him new rent slips, and alter others. He won’t think anything is out of the ordinary until days pass and the masks aren’t returned. Believe me, the medicine will make him feel at ease. Nothing will seem wrong with his world.” She said it with so much confidence, she surprised herself.
She’d taken care of her sick parents long enough to understand the basics of healing. What to put in a drink to ease the pain, how to sew up a deep gash, and the like. But now she knew what an amateur she’d been. Her previous knowledge was a drop in the healing bucket compared to the fount that was Belladino’s. And now it all belonged to her.
As she glanced at a weed working its way up through the cracks between pavers, facts about the plant ordered themselves in her mind. She saw all the equations it belonged to: for that’s what Belladino had concluded effective healing to be, an equation. She knew the weed could be used in a paste for cleaning teeth, and in a brew for nausea. She knew the roots were poisonous, but if you harvested the leaves slowly, the plant would continuously send up new shoots even through the winter.
Tugging on Sebastian’s arm, she brought him to a halt and crouched. She ran her fingertips over the green tendrils before pulling up the weed and pocketing it.
It was a good thing Master Belladino had been a healer, as it would have been easy for him to turn his accumulated wisdom to darker purposes. Even now, thinking about what had to go into the concoction to make the shop owner sleep for exactly the right amount of time, she was perfectly aware of how to change the temporary sleep into a permanent one. Just a tad more lung mushroom, a dash more sulfur, and a hair less water meant the shop owner would be no more. Worse still, it would be unlikely for poison to take the blame. Less-experienced healers than Belladino would finger poor diet and fatty blood—and she had yet to hear of a healer with more experience than Belladino.
Such was the depth of understanding she now possessed.
“He’ll be fine,” she reassured him.
It was only a matter of Sebastian spiking the man’s soup when the soupist wasn’t looking.
The morning of the plot, Melanie woke with a terrible itch burning across her forehead. She raked her nails across it, but felt raised, thin lines already there. Perhaps an insect had stung her in the night?
Realizing she needed to once again change the bandages on her hand anyway, Melanie rose, groggy—trying not to wake her mother—and went to the washbasin in the corner. The curtains were still drawn, but a strip of sunlight shone through onto the silvered glass mirror. She paid her reflection no mind, focusing first on her hand. The pain in her fingers and palm was acute—a deep sort of throbbing that radiated up her wrist. Luckily she’d grabbed the grate in such a way that the creases of her joints had been spared direct contact. She could still flex her fingers without too much additional pain.
The new medical knowledge fluttering around her head told her the burns on her pinkie and ring finger were the most severe. That they’d likely scar.
She rubbed an appropriate salve over them from the small medical kit Sebastian had procured for her, before wrapping her hand again.
Sighing, she glanced up furtively to meet her own gaze in the glass. But instead of sharing an irritated look with herself, her eyes immediately caught on the blotch across her forehead.
“What in the…?”
Some sort of irritation had blossomed around where the needle mark had been.
Unable to make it out well in the dark, she retrieved the small oil lamp from the writing desk, lit the wick, and held it near her face while she scrutinized herself in the mirror.
Narrow red lines formed an intricate pattern across her skin, each section an interlocking piece that formed a framing circle at the outer edge.
It looked as though someone had deliberately carved the design into her forehead.
She touched it delicately with her fingertips. It didn’t hurt.
But it was wildly obvious.
And she had no idea what it was.
Her heart gave a panicked kick against her rib cage.
Muttering watered-down versions of expletives to herself, she hurriedly retrieved her ratty hat, pulled it down tight over her brow, and headed out into the inn proper.
Sebastian was already behind the front desk, greeting a blond-haired man with familiarity. She stood back as he worked, noting how his business voice and posture were different than when he spoke to her. The blond man gestured at his older, silver-haired companion who stood near the front door—clearly a distinguished noble gentleman—and leaned in conspiratorially to Sebastian. “This one’s been dancing around me for a year now. Finally got up the gumption to ask for what he wanted. Nobles are usually good at that—not this one.”
Sebastian smiled and shook his head, as though used to the other man’s shenanigans. “What my guests get up to is none of my business. As long as everyone is happy and well taken care of—”
“Oh, he will be, trust me.”
“Master Thibaut.”
“Come now, don’t pretend to be scandalized. Hand over the key and I’ll spare you the details after. Besides, I think you have another guest who needs to speak with you.” He nodded at Melanie.
She blushed and looked away—instantly betraying the fact that she’d been listening in on their conversation.
As the blond man and his nobleman disappeared up the steps, Sebastian hurried to her side. “What’s wrong?” he asked immediately. “Are you nervous about…? We don’t have to, you know, we can—”
“That’s not it, I—Can we go someplace more private?”
“Cigar room?”
She nodded. “Cigar room.”
Once again secluded behind the pretty doors and heavy curtains, Melanie took up her previous seat.
“Were you planning on going out already?” he asked, gesturing at her hat.
Presuming it was better to simply show him her new problem than try to explain, she pulled the moth-eaten old thing off and crumpled it in her fists, pressing it into her lap with her head bowed.
He slowly descended to his knees before her, lifted shaky fingers as though to smooth over the blotch, but kept his hand a hairsbreadth away.
“Dear gods, what is that?” he whispered.
“I don’t know. Did I pick up some infection from the needle? I didn’t—I didn’t pass it to my mother, did I? No,” she said, answering her own question. “No, that can’t be it.”
“This doesn’t look like an infection. These lines are deliberate. It looks like—” He cut himself off, swallowing thickly.
“What?” she asked quickly. “If you have even some inkling, tell me.”
“It looks like…” His eyes went wide. “M-Melanie … This is an enchanter’s mark.”
“What? No.”
“Yes.”
“That’s ridiculous.”
“I know—I know how it sounds,” he said firmly.
“Only enchantments have enchanter’s marks. And you can’t enchant a person.”
They both sucked in sharp breaths, eyes darting to each other’s.
“You can’t,” she said, an edge of desperation making the words bite.
“You have Belladino’s knowledge. You hold what the mask was meant to.”
She shook her head, rejecting the notion. “No. Sand, wood, gems, metal. Not people. Not flesh.” Panic rose inside her throat. Her chest felt tight, her limbs heavy, her blood sour. She couldn’t draw a proper breath, she couldn’t—couldn’t—
How had it all gone so wrong?
“Melanie? Melanie, breathe. Breathe.”
“Not people,” she repeated. “Not people, not people, not people—” She reached for him, fingers digging into his arms. He grasped back, big hands encircling her arms, trying to hold her firm, steady.
“I know, I know. Believe me, I’ve spent years thinking about this, and I’ve been just as sure of it as you—”
“What are you talking about? This—this is not something anyone considers. Because it’s not a … people don’t … It’s not—How do you—?”
“I have considered it, Melanie. Trust me. When I was young, I … I looked for such things. When you grow up with a father like mine you wish every day that you could just make magic happen. That he could simply be put out, stopped, by sheer will.
“You watch your great-aunt act the soothsayer and wonder if the way she uses enchantments is real. If she can really talk to the dead—which is blasphemy, you’re well aware—then why can’t you, a small boy, convince them to help you? Why can’t magic be elsewhere, if only for a moment? If the gods gave us magic to make up for our shortcomings, then why—” He took a quavering breath, stilled himself. His pain was clear—long-standing, deep. “I have thought about it. I searched, years ago, and I was convinced. But now … We can’t deny the evidence of our own eyes.”
“We can and we will,” she spat. “I can’t be enchanted. Because magic…”
It wasn’t just that this blotch would be a horrid souvenir of her time in the mask, wrestling with the echo. And it wasn’t the notion that someone might see it and arrest her for self-desecration. Something else entirely kicked the swells of terror into her chest.
What horrified her was the root of it.
The mark was a symbol of something deeper, as all enchanter’s marks were. It meant she’d been fused with the power of the gods …
And people had ways of detecting such power. Of finding it, and using it.
Magic was controlled. Magic was restrained.
“By the Five,” she gasped. “Magic is owned. It’s regulated. It’s measured. It’s a possession.”
“You can’t own a person,” he said flatly.
“Just as you can’t enchant one?” she spat back.
He shook his head, aghast. Stood, as though needing to distance himself physically from the idea—from her.
He left her clawing at the air. Still needing to grip something—anything—one hand went to her throat, the other to her blouse.
Everything was falling apart.
Everything was spiraling out of control.
She just needed to make it all go away. “If I am what you say I am, then … We’ll remove it,” she said quickly, latching on to the idea. “We put it in, we can take it back out. Return it to the mask—”
“Like we did with the echo?” he asked darkly. “This whole time, we’ve been toying with things we don’t understand.”
“I’m supposed to return the mask in an hour. How can I go there like this? How can I face that man?”
“Because you have to. One problem at a time—all right? We’ll go through with our fake-rentals plan, just as designed, and then after we’ll deal with—with this. It’s too much all at once.”
“I don’t know. I don’t know. I don’t think I can—”
His expression contorted, her distress reverberating through him, tugging at him. He returned to her, knelt down, and took her face gently between his hands.
His palms were soft, strong. Comforting.
“You can do this,” he insisted, voice low and velvety. “Because you’re not alone. I’m right here. I’m right here with you. You can do this.”
“We can do this,” she corrected, trying to will her heart to slow, her humors to settle.
“We can do this,” he agreed.
Melanie brought Belladino’s mask back to the shop while Sebastian went to spike the soup ingredients, just as planned.
Outside, she had to steel herself. She braced her hands on her thighs, bending over to gulp air, to press down the nausea. She wore her hat low over her eyes, but the mark throbbed beneath.
You can do this, she reminded herself.
Narrowing her focus, tunneling her vision, she stood straight once more and marched into the shop.
The owner’s eyes were dull, his gaze empty. He did not recognize her. It had only been a few days, but she was so beneath his notice that her previous presence had already been wiped from his mind.
Good.
“Can I help you?” he asked.
“I’ve come to return this,” she said, slipping the mask from her cloth satchel.
She thanked him, assured him she’d gotten all she needed from it, and tried not to hold her breath as he took the mask—plucking it from her fingertips as though she’d sully it if she held it a moment more.
“This scrape—” he said immediately.
“I’m sorry, I was clumsy.” With shaking fingers, she drew out an extra minute from her purse. “Will this—?”
He snatched the time from her. “Fine.”
Relief washed over her as he set Belladino aside, turning to some other work, suddenly ignoring her entirely.
Yes. This could work. They could manage.
Melanie felt better when she and Sebastian trailed the shopkeeper to his lunch spot. They watched as the man ate heartily, obscenely licking his bowl clean before strolling back to his post with a skip in his step.
Sebastian and Melanie followed behind, making sure he’d secured himself in his shop before taking up a street bench to wait out the concoction’s slow release.
Two hours. That was how long they had to wait to be sure he’d be unconscious when they entered.
“Time?” Sebastian asked continuously. He fidgeted more than she’d seen in the past few days—more than when they’d toasted their own sad circumstances, more than when he’d explained what Belladino’s echo had been saying with her lips, more than when she’d shown him the mark.
“Still a few minutes more,” she said. “We need to be sure. If we enter the shop and he’s simply drowsy, he’ll remember us.”
After Sebastian had inquired several more times, prodding at her patience like a small child in need of attention, she gave in. “All right. Hopefully he’s succumbed by now.”
They crossed the street with determination, Melanie in the lead. Her heavy-heeled boots made a clop clop over the pavers, accenting her resolve. Other pedestrians went to and fro, some at a stroll, some in a haggard rush, all unconcerned with the young man and woman making for the mask shop’s entrance.
The bell chimed, doing its best to alert the owner to a customer. Unfortunately for the bell, he lay passed out over the counter, snoring away in such an undignified manner that it conjured images of grunting warthogs in Melanie’s mind.
As she stepped fully inside with Sebastian close behind, the smell of worked wood and thick paint invaded her nose. She hadn’t noticed this morning, so wrapped up in herself, so worried. It drew her attention to the walls and the wares they displayed.
So many masks—just like the day she first saw them. It seemed long ago now, though it had only been a week. But while she’d felt fascinated, and perhaps a little intimidated that first time, now she felt … erratic. The faces and figures seemed to jump forward and flash backward, undulating on the walls like a thick coating of multicolored insects. They pulsed with magic—she couldn’t see it, but she could sense it. Not the knowledge, but the echoes. Trapped, confused, wakeful even when there was no wearer. They squirmed in their shells like worms in a corpse.
Or perhaps that was all in her mind.
Her forehead burned.
There was one mask that remained still, though. Not dead, but empty, like the husk left over after a molt. It still lay exactly where she’d seen him set it earlier—aside, not yet rehung.
The green tree frog was embroiled in a tangle of vines, and small birds accented the flow of the main carving, brilliant paint giving an air of realism to the piece. Belladino’s mask was still beautiful, despite what it had done to her.
Keeping her head bowed, she scurried past the rest of the strange façades to check on the shop owner. Belladino’s training kicked in immediately. The man’s breath was strong, as evident by his snoring. She ran two fingers over the pulse point in his neck and noted a healthy beat, then thumbed one of his eyelids open, examining his pupil and the flecks in his iris. Too much yellow bile often manifested in the sclera, but she saw no signs of imbalance.
Luckily, his expression was soft. No nightmares plagued his sleep. She’d mixed the components correctly, and he would wake feeling worlds better than he had before his midday meal.
“Is he all right?” Sebastian asked.
“Fine. Where should I put the time vials?”
“There should be a lockbox nearby. Don’t forget to alter his rental slips.”
Sebastian had suggested they take four masks in total. Any fewer and it might be obvious which they were after. Any more and the shop owner might not believe he’d done so much business.
A hook made a sharp clat as Sebastian lifted a mask off the wall. A white rabbit, with cherry red eyes, its ears formed of curled and painted leather.
She found the lockbox on a shelf under the counter, next to the sales slips. She frisked the man for his keys, feeling crooked as she did so. Melanie had always prided herself on being a good girl. A devoted daughter, a sweet soul. There might be less pain in the world if more people took pleasure in genuine nicety, she imagined.
Yet, here she was, drugging someone in order to use them, stealing the keys off his unwilling form.
Her skin crawled with antipathy. Moral clarity hit her squarely in the back, stealing her breath, and she paused.
“Maybe—” she whispered, too softly for Sebastian to hear. “Maybe I should…” Maybe this isn’t such a good idea.
What had happened with Belladino’s mask had been an accident. This was calculated. This was wrong.
Would she spend her whole life committing injustices to correct one mishap?
But then the shop owner groaned, shifting in his sleep, and his key ring slipped from his coat pocket into her open palm. She stared at the keys for a long moment. They’d fallen into her hand like an encouraging sign from the gods. Do this, the keys seemed to say. Finish what you’ve begun.
Swiftly, she unlocked the box and emptied the time vials from her bag. They clinked and glinted like little musical instruments, chiming out a delicate overture in sharp contrast to the solemnity of the situation.
She pulled up the sales pad and flipped through. “The masks—he has the sales and rentals listed by name. We need to know whose masks they are.” She risked a glance in Sebastian’s direction.
He flipped over the rabbit mask in his hands, scanning the reverse side. “They aren’t labeled.”
“I can’t simply write the bunny. Bring it here and I’ll look for a clue. He must have an inventory list somewhere—Oh, here, here.”
On the shelf, beneath the lockbox, was a thin tome, with a hardwood cover and an openly threaded spine. The paper was thick, the fibers coarse and uneven. Catalog was written across the front in heavy ink.
But when she opened it atop the sales counter, her heart fell. It was blank. Fresh pages waiting to be filled.
While Melanie continued to search for a current inventory list, Sebastian gathered several other masks: a red-and-gold maple leaf, a flock of sparrows that would swoop up a wearer’s face in simulated movement, a likeness of the Great Falls complete with huge boulders and a rainbow, an abstract tar slick that shimmered like ravens’ feathers, and a birch monstrosity with bars in the eyelets.
He brought them over together, piled up high in his arms.
“Any luck?”
“The only book in here is this—his keys won’t open the back room, some kind of enchanted security, I’m sure.”
She tapped the open pages of the catalog with her finger, then jumped back as an image temporarily flared to life on the pages. It dissipated as soon as she fled.
“What in the Valley?” Sebastian set the hoard of masks aside, then tried pressing his palm to the page. Nothing happened. “Whatever you did, do it again,” he prompted.
Gently, she touched a fingertip to the center of one page. In a moment, the two-page spread was filled with an image of Master Belladino’s mask, accompanied by a list of names and dates, with hers directly at the bottom. She whipped her hand away again and it disappeared. “It knows—it knows it’s me. This will never work if his inventory list can recognize his renters!”
“I don’t think that’s it,” Sebastian said. “Look. When I touch it, nothing happens. I’ve rented from him before. Before I ever wore my father’s mask. I think…”
He lifted the rabbit mask and set it on the book. The image returned, only it was changed. This was a list of the rabbit’s renters, with an illustration of the bunny mask beside them.
“It’s recognizing the enchantment,” he said.
“It thinks I am the mask,” she gasped. No, that—that doesn’t make any sense.
“We could never simply fake the slips,” Sebastian said. “He must fill this out after. An enchantment for keeping track of enchantments.”
Melanie’s heart gave a cruel, heavy thump in her chest.
If the dealer had tried to catalog the mask’s return this morning, she would have been caught right then and there. The pages would have remained blank as he set the wood atop them.
Melanie had never even heard of such a creation—a book that knew things. Not one that simply conveyed information, but one that knew things. She wondered if the shopkeeper had some kind of master key for the book, one that would let him examine and alter its contents without a specific mask in hand.
She took each mask Sebastian passed to her in turn, setting it on the book to be sure the pages behaved the same for each. Yes, there was always the illustration, the list, the name of the enchanter, and the name of the person for whom the death mask had been made.
Only one held a surprise. When she set the birch mask down, a familiar name hovered near the center of the list: Sebastian Leiwood.
“This is the one you rented?” she asked.
“Yes,” he admitted, though with a slight quaver in his voice, as though trying to preempt whatever questions might come after.
There was no time to dally with such probing inquiries now. But Melanie noted the dead’s name for later: Blackhaus.
With each mask, she noted that the words slightly throbbed on the page, almost like the masks appeared to throb on the wall. She wondered if it was perhaps a side effect of her own enchantment—was she seeing places that magic seeped out? Or detecting where magic might get in, where change might be made?
“I’m going to try something odd,” she told Sebastian. “It probably won’t work, but … This book recognizes masks and knows things about them. But if it can’t tell the difference between the mask and me, then maybe, I mean, what if I can change what the book knows?”
“What are you getting at?”
“Maybe we don’t have to steal anything at all.”
She expected encouragement, or at least a smile. He looked skeptical.
“Or maybe I’m being silly. But it’s worth a try.” She removed Blackhaus’s mask, pressing her palm firmly to the paper.
Belladino’s beautiful mask painted itself once more. She stared hard at the list, concentrating on the names, willing them to change, willing the enchanted paper to accept the new knowledge, though it was a lie. She imagined she knew it to be true, with every fiber of her being.
She filled the lie with half-truths, scattering bits of information from herself and her family.
Slowly, the script began to change. Her name wiggled, slithering into something new. The name her mother had wanted to give her at first—Shin-La, after her eldest sister—and an amalgamation of family surnames—HuRupier—appeared on the page.
“Melanie,” Sebastian breathed in awe. “How did—?”
“I’m—I am the mask,” she said, unsure herself. “The mask tells the paper things, and … and a mask can’t lie, and the paper can’t tell the difference, so … But what does it matter? Even if I change the name here, what if—what if he remembers me?”
“I doubt it. I don’t say that to be cruel, Melanie, but you know his type. You were beneath his notice when you walked in. He could see you didn’t have money, and that was what mattered to him. If the ledger says your name is Shin-La, I don’t think he’ll question it.”
Quickly, she tried more. She invented a new renter, an elderly farmer who she used to buy goat’s milk from. He’d passed peacefully very recently. He would have had cause to rent the mask, might have had means, she wasn’t sure. The shop owner might think his memory faulty if he could not recall the old man—much more likely than a mask rewriting its own history.
“By the Five,” she breathed as the man’s name appeared, standing out in sharp, black ink. She shifted the dates ever so slightly, starting to feel the shape of the ink, the way the paper asked her for information.
“Not too much, not too much,” Sebastian warned. “Even if you change your name, he knows where to find me. Make him doubt his own records, but not enough to suspect.”
Melanie yanked her hand back, nearly tearing the paper, though she hadn’t clung to it. The enchantments had been drawn to each other, and she could feel extra breath leaving her body as she pulled them apart. The physical toll of wearing Belladino’s mask was not unique to it, she realized. Using magic was exceedingly hard on the body. Her brow was damp with exertion, and she felt she too could do with a long bout of sleep, just like the shop owner.
“Quickly, put the masks back,” she urged, leaning heavily on the counter. “And hang Belladino’s in place, so that he thinks he already marked it in the catalog. We take nothing. He’ll never suspect. Even if Regulators come to investigate, they won’t find a Shin-La HuRupier. Even if they question you, just tell them the truth. You met a farm girl—”
“By the name of Shin-La,” he said.
“Felt sorry for her, and lent her some time.”
He stared at her across the counter for a long time, and she grew worried under his gaze. “What? You don’t think it will work?”
He shook his head. “That’s not it. I never thought I would meet another … doesn’t matter. I’m in awe of you, Melanie Dupont.”
“You can be in awe of me as we flee our crime scene,” she said. “Hurry, return the masks.”
As he scurried back toward the hooks, she did her best to replace the shop owner’s things. There was no need for him to think a single thing out of place. Everything was as it should be.
“Ready?” she asked Sebastian, moving toward the door and holding out her hand for him. “We came quietly, we go quietly. Just a couple out for a stroll.”
“Y-Yes,” he said, slowly taking her hand.
Feeling better about everything since the entire fiasco began, she pressed on, letting the bell tinkle happily.
But as soon as they set foot outside, the shop behind them exploded in a cacophony of bells. Every sort of alarm Melanie could imagine screeched out, vibrating the shop windows, vibrating her bones.
“Don’t run,” Sebastian said quickly, holding her hand all the tighter.
He pulled her gently to the side, crossing the street. “Gawk,” he told her. He pointed at several other bystanders who were looking toward the noise, bewildered, covering their ears and moving away.
Melanie covered her ears as well, heart pounding wildly and arrhythmically. Her feet begged her to flee, but she trusted Sebastian. They stood for a moment, looking around at the others. No one seemed to think they were the cause of the noise.
“Will it wake him?” Sebastian asked directly in her ear.
“I don’t know,” she answered truthfully.
He ushered her away, as other individuals ushered their partners or children away.
“He must have an enchantment for intrusion,” Melanie said as they rounded a corner, the buildings blocking the sound, lowering the volume from startling to annoying. “Why didn’t it go off when we entered? And I thought the shop was open … Why—?” She cut herself off. “Oh no, I forgot the time vials. I left—”
“It’s fine,” Sebastian hissed.
But all that money …
“We should stick to our escape routes,” he said sharply, looking more harried than before. “You go your way, I go mine. Meet you back at the inn.”
“Oh, yes. Of course.” She felt deflated as he crossed the street again, this time away from her, without so much as a good-bye.
Shame colored Melanie’s cheeks as she stomped through the city. Through polite addresses of “hello” and “good day” she kept her gaze trained at the pavers. If she made eye contact, someone would see her sins, she was sure.
She thought she’d gotten away with it. But no. Even if the shop owner didn’t awaken, surely the local Watch had gone to investigate the noise. They would know something was afoot.
Why did her wrongdoing feel like such a visible thing? Like it grew from her skin in long branches, like it called out for attention to every stranger on the street?
Would she ever be able to put Belladino’s ghost behind her?