Thy Wretched Mask

Chapter 1

Autumn comes a month early to Emul’s Fall. That was two weeks ago, and now the chill in the air is starting to bite. Sleeping in empty houses without a furnace isn’t gonna cut it anymore.

I don’t have any firewood, and if I did, smoke rising out of a building nobody lives in is gonna raise questions, sooner or later. It’s a risk, but I can’t say courting frostbite ain’t a risk either. I’m shivering under my bandages.

Of course, a fireplace’s not much use if the walls around you ain’t insulating, and even the houses people still live in are falling apart. You’d wonder if this town was going to shit, but then you see the kids nestled in half the women’s arms and cartfuls of bread coming in every day. There’s a history to that, a story there. Just a streak of good harvest? I never bothered to figure out what was going on here.

I jump the fence and creep out of an alleyway, hoping to blend in with the crowd. I don’t expect I’ll catch anyone’s eye. Dark skin and white hair might look out of place in a backwater village, but I clock three people more foreign than I am at a glance. One of them I bet isn’t even human. Like shards of glass distorting a human form — was it half‍-​spirefolk? A quarter? I don’t stare, and make my move.

Nobody blinks. You always seem more conspicuous to yourself, but I don’t really matter to the beggar swinging his pot of coins, or mother with her kid on a leash. If this were a city, I might worry about guards, but they don’t do that sort of thing here, do they?

Wondering if anyone would notice me grabbing a few coins for myself, I size up my mark.

Some boy in a red‍-​frilled robe, jeweled necklace gleaming in the sunlight. A merchant’s son? Some minor priceling? Whoever it is, they don’t have a modicum of situational awareness. Now let’s see if I can lighten their purse a bit.

I walk up behind them, reach over, and then—

Fingers close around a metal coin — feels finely machined — and grope around for a bit more. Then the kid startles, I feel him startle, and I get scared too. Bump into him trying to salvage the situation.

He flinches away from me, and my hand slips inside my own cloak pocket depositing my earnings. Kid’s face curls disgust. I’d grin back, but I think my fear’s shining my eyes. Don’t know which way it’d fall.

“Keep your filthed hands to yourself.”

“You, uh, you got it, kid,” I stammer it out and then break away in the opposite direction. Fuck. Best make myself scarce. Definitely didn’t want to get caught. Might get a hand chopped off again, and it was so hard to get a new one.

But hey, I got my fingers on a nice new coin. Might as well get myself some breakfast.

I brisk my way down dirt streets. Fall came early, but no so early there’s dry leaves under foot. Not good crunch to be found. A few’d fallen and still had water in them.

A few turns later and I step into a bar where the door’s about to fall off it’s hinges.

“Yo, Beca. The usual?”

Not the name I was born with, so there’s a dumb second. Then I say, “Yeah, don’t forget the salt this time.”

After the exchange I’m frowning uneasy. ‘The usual’. I should be a ghost. They shouldn’t remember me. I don’t come here every day — I make sure of that — but I suppose there’s only so many people who’d come by this dillapidated joint.

Kynan is pouring a glass of surprisingly clear water and a place of eggs, toasted bread, and some mushrooms that might be growing in the cellar. I don’t ask.

I don’t care, really. Food is food. Never really got why people made such a fuss about taste. Don’t think I could tell apart fruit and meat except by feel. It’s all the same mush.

“Hey Beca, you ever met somebody named… Utamara?”

My fingers pause in their dissection of my egg.

“They were lookin for you earlier. Told them you’re an irregular. Hope you don’t mind.”

“What did they look like?”

“Big guy, that much I could tell, but nothing else. Thick, billowing robes covers covered up everything, couldn’t even see if they had legs. Didn’t buy anything, kicked the cat on their way in. You in some debty kind of shit? Spooky business. Not sure I want that type around.”

“Know what they want?”

“You. Said to tell ya to meet them in the marsh out west as the dusk falls.”

“Where?”

“Said you’d see it if you went. Like I said, spooky. Seemed to hate my questions. Shouldn’t be so mysterious, then.”

I finish my plate. I don’t thank them. Not for the food, or the news.

I’m up toward the door, but something tells me to peek outside first. I see the kid, some paces away. I see a well‍-​dressed man with a club and a mean look. And they’re talking to a fella sitting on the street, pointing right at the pub I walked into.

“There’s only one way in here, isn’t there?”

“I don’t throw the trash out front, do I?”

“Mind if I head out that way?”

“There’s trouble if I say yes, isn’t there?” They shake their head. “Look. I like you, Beca. I’ll show you the way out back, and I’ll cover for you. But, do me a solid, right?”

I decide to hear him out.

“I’ll give you a note. There’s a kid, Tio. Buys shit on tab, doesn’t pay it off, and they’ve been avoiding me. Was wondering how to send a message, and something clever came to me. You’re the type to get up to some real skulduggery, yeah? Think you could sneak in their house, and leave it in there? Be all spooky about it. Sound manageable?”

I glance around at the spiderwebbed hole in the wall. About as professional as you’d expect. I say, “I’ll see what I can do.”

“Wanna swear it?”

Kynan holds out a coin, and I lean in to kiss it, speaking the words of promise and power. A shiver, and you knew the world is listening.

I follow the barkeep out the back, but I’ve got a frown and a jaw working.

There’s a problem. Big problem. Tio? Tio Emula? The Lord’s cousin? I didn’t bother learning most of the lore of this town, but knowing who not to fuck with is just self‍-​preservation.

Noble families are in all sort of fuckery, but really, what’s a noble doing in seedy joint like this?

How, for all that’s iron and true, am I going to sneak into the house of the lord’s cousin? Where do they even live?

Was this Kynan’s fuck you? Probably not, if he was giving me an out. But why the hell did I say yes?

The unnamed pub opens up to a stinky alley way, and I squeeze by the sacks of trash. Rats scurry underfoot, and at the edge of the alleyway, I’m looking both ways to see if the coast is clear.

It’s not. Oh boy is it not. It wasn’t just some dude this noble kid got to come after me. There’s a crowd of people, and one of them sees me skulking in the alley, and they scream out “Thief! There they are!”

I make a calculation. I weigh getting the shit beaten out of me versus making myself memorable. But I didn’t end up in this situation by making the sane long term decision, did I?

I whistle, high and cutting. She’ll hear it. If she doesn’t, I’m fucked.

High above, I hear a resounding caw.

Alright, let’s do this.

First, I make a run for it. I whistle again, a message in it. Go for the eyes. I don’t look for it, but above me, and black form dives. Beaks are hard, and it’s too tricky for most to hit something with wings.

I dodge into another alley. I hear Valeri cry out as some brute tries to lay a hand on her, but it’s indignation more than pain. I run down the length of the alley even as I hear someone shouting for me to stop.

From the other end.

I slip and tear open my knee and bust my face against the rocky dirt ground. Fuck, not another break in the skin. But I scramble for cover. Some crates stacked up in this ally. Another shout, then the stomp of determined steps down the ally.

Hm, I’m just a little bit fucked now, aren’t I? No way out but through. I stay huddled behind the crate.

A man turns the corner of the crate ready to grab me, knowing I had nowhere to go.

So I go forward. Knock the crates over, dodge around them. I kick a crate behind me. If it landed heavy on their foot, well, that was a bonus.

I book it down the alley way, cross the street while eyeing every face for another hero. A whistle to recall Valeri, then slip down another alley, cross another street and — there. An empty house with a broken window that didn’t bite too bad.

I’m in and I whistle and I wait for Valerie to arrive.

In the meantime, I bandage up the gash from my fall. Feels like it’s just a few years before I’m all wounds. I’ve got enough bandages it’s practically another layer of clothes. But I didn’t have much other option.

My wounds never closed right.

Valerie announces herself with a chirp.

“Hey, girl. We’ve got a new quest,” I murmur to the bird as she perches on my shoulder, crowing as I pet her. I give her the rundown. No hiding just how daunting infiltrating Tio’s house sounds. She makes a rattling sound.

“I should probably just give this job up, right? I only agreed to get protection and they did fuck all in the end. But hey, maybe this way, I can get a favor out of the lout. Might be worth it. Not like I have anything else to do.”

(And — a part of me could never forget this — I had sworn it and the world heard me swear it. Stupid thing to do. But maybe it’d be simpler to find the coin I sword on and burn the oath off. Stealing another coin wouldn’t be hard, would it?)

“Utamara,” the raven echoes.

I groan. “Sure, but that’s not till tonight. I’m not gonna sit on my thumb till then.” I shrug and keep shrugging until the bird has to flap off my shoulder. “Be useful and find a dead body, okay? I need some new clothes if I’m gonna hide from the crowd. Heh, maybe I’ll disguise myself as a man.

Emul’s Fall isn’t a big town, but it’s big enough that telling Valeri to find a body usually just works. Something about all the beggars and vagrants is that death comes for them first of all

Dead bodies tell a story. It took a few minutes, but Valeri led me to some poor man, gaunt from malnutrion. He has a field worker’s smock, dirty enough he must’ve lost work. I touch his face, and my eyes instantly dart to the leg. Did he break it? Sure enough, I pull up the pant leg and see the thing rotting on the bone. Broke his leg, couldn’t keep working, didn’t have anyone to help him, dead on the streets.

The thing about telling a story is there’s an ending. There’s never a happy ending if you tell it long enough.

He ought to be buried. Have his body treated with some respect. I lick my lips. My fingernails dig at the side of the face. There’s a part of me that itches to dig in, tear the meat off and see that he has the same skull underneath that everyone does.

I just wanted his clothes, but a complete disguise would be wearing him, skin and all, wouldn’t it? Maybe I don’t have to be greedy. My skin never closed right — maybe all it would take is a few strips of fresh meat to show my wounds how to close.

I shake my head. Stupid thoughts. Dripping blood and draped in man skin is a fast way to do the opposite of be disguised. I get stupid around dead bodies.

Leaving the back street, I’m wearing that dirty smock, albeit brushed off a bit. Despite that urge to clean, I’ve smeared some dirt on my face, and donned his ratty hat to go with it.

Maybe any disguise at all was overkill. At the end of the day, a merchant’s son mad about getting a coin pickpocketed isn’t going to sustain a whole witch hunt. But you never know.

Anyway, first order of business: where the fuck does Tio live?

The sun carves an arc across a clouded gray sky.

So. The good news is that it’s not a mystery where Tio ended up. His mother had a big fight with the lord and got kicked out of the estate. Now she’s sleeping with Basira Elksfield.

Fucking Basira Elkfield. The Masked Merchant. That’s another name on the list of people not to fuck with. I’ve only got to infiltrate the house of the richest man in Elum’s Fall.

(I fucking hope that kid I pickpocketed wasn’t Tio. They wouldn’t be fucking around this close to where their debts are due, would they?)

I start toward the Star District to case the place, but let’s be real. There’s gonna be guards. There’s gonna be doors. Doors everyone would see me break in to. There’s gonna be absolutely no shot of me sneaking into a place like this.

Do I even need to sneak in? What are the paramaters of this quest? Just getting the note in Tio’s room would do the trick, right? Could Valeri just like, fly in somehow? But that’d take an open window. Fuck.

Okay, let’s think laterally. The point of all this, the reason I’m not just handing the note to Tio, not just beating them up and demanding the money, is that we’re trying to spook them, right? Mysterious knowing message appearing when you don’t expect it.

Wait, I’ve got it! Ravens are spooky omens of death. So why don’t I just reverse pickpocket the note into Tio’s pocket — fulfilling the letter of the request — then have Valeri swoop in and say something spooky, fulfilling the spirit of it too?

So for this, all I need is to find Tio. Ideally, without anyone knowing I was looking for them.

“Valeri? Want to check if the Tio is in their room?” A birdly nod in reply. “Swoop by the windows, see if you see any kids.”

I watch her flap up and way, soaring and coating as she does a loop of the merchant’s upper class house.

She returns rattling a negative.

Guess we’re on a sleuthing beat again.

I ask around to find out what Tio looks like — kid likes to wear this expensive pink scarf now that it’s getting cold — and I send Valeri out scouting again. She returns not to long later; she found them.

The good news? Tio isn’t the kid I pickpocketed. The bad? Tio’s hanging out with the kid I pickpocketed. Operation reverse pickpocket is not looking too bright.

“Okay. This doesn’t ruin our plans. Right, Valeri?”

She pecks at the note I’m holding. She’s picking it up awkwardly in her beak. Val is pretty dang big for a raven — her head is about as big as my fist, so her beak is like a pair of fingers

“You think you’d be any good at planting it? Wait.” My brow furrows, and between one thought and the next, a plan comes together. “Here’s what we’re gonna do. We watch, and wait for them to walk past some overhang or other. You carry the note, and carefully push the note so that it falls into Tio’s clothes. Then you do the spooky apparition thing we talked about. Got it?”

If a caw could sound dubious, Val pulled it off.

Nevertheless, I wave my arm and tell her to get to it.

Valeri is a good, smart bird, and she patiently waddles over the eaves of a shop. Tio slips into the shade for a moment, and the bird kicks the rolled up scroll of paper over the edge.

There’s a terrible moment where physics reigns wild: the paper flutters, eddies and air resistance play dice. But it lands true in the folds on the pink scarf. Not very secure, but that’s a feature, not a bug. From Tio’s perspective, the note will have just msyterious appeared.

Now for part two.

I trust the bird to spin up something suitably pretentious and poetic. She always loved quoting songs. There’s something to repurposing an omen of death as a portent of debt. From this distance, I only hear the caws and croaking voice. And the kids flinching.

I’m already leaving, as if in evidence of my lack of involvement. I know Valeri will catch up to me, and I have nothing left to do but fulfill my quest.

Back at the seedy pub, door creaking as I enter, Kynan smiles and welcomes me in.

“Back so soon? I take the task was nothing for someone of your… particular skills?”

I grimace. “I made do with the cards the world gave me. But I’m not sure why I bothered. As far as I can tell, I saved my own skin, didn’t I? But I’m nice, so I’ll count this as a favor.”

Kynan gives a shaky laugh. “Yeah, right. Sorry about that. I did what I could but. Your own fault for getting in that much trouble, yeah?”

I just stare flatly.

They flinch and say. “Okay, okay. I’ll make you dinner and spare a few coins, okay?”

I shrug and glance at the menu. Only ever had breakfast here; by dinner there’s other people here, and I don’t like to be around people when I’m hungry. I get some mush — meat and vegetables by the look of em — and some nuts for Val.

“Listen. Passing on the message is good and all, but I do need to get the money. Do you… You think you could make sure that happens? Not right now, but sometime this week?”

I wonder if he’s asking if I’ll outright steal back what’s owed. Or just intimidate them into paying? Given that these kids are rich enough to be walking around with coins, they could definitely cough up the money. But…

“Meh. I’ll think about it, the answer’s probably no.”

“Even if I say I’ll figure out a place for you to stay?”

“Even if. Thanks for the food. Nice doing business with you. Now if you don’t mind,” — I glance at the window, beyond which, the sky is warming red — “I have places to be. You’d know all about it.”

Kynan laughs shakily again. “Don’t uh, don’t die. And if it’s as sketchy as it seems… leave me out of it! Haha.”

I’m gone. I’m walking the streets till I’m hopping the wall (It’s more of a fence, in the least impressive parts of town.

It’s not even sunset yet, let alone dusk. I’m heading north, but I don’t need to hit the marsh yet, do I? Might as well climb a tree and relax a bit.

As much as one can relax, with the chill biting.