Turold woke up with Guido hovering over him, his face white, eyes crazed. Apparently he had fallen asleep in his great-chair while puzzling over the lines of the spell. His neck was sore and his arm throbbed, but the latter had nothing to do with sleep; Guido clung to it with manic desperation. Turold spent several minutes trying to calm him down, and urging him, finally forcing him, to relax his grip and restore his blood flow. When a semblance of calm returned to his expression, Guido coughed and gasped and finally wheezed out,
“Your assistant…removed her mask…nothing’s there!” he said.
Giacinta had been right, of course; he had no business bringing a stranger into the apartment. Strangers tended to snoop and ask questions. And Guido, he had already learned, was inordinately fond of gossip. Soon the entire city would know about the ‘faceless woman’ sharing rooms (and possibly, beds) with the ‘dwarf-astrologer.’ It made a perversely attractive headline. Their only hope was to nip this in the bud as soon as possible with a well-placed, and somewhat plausible lie. And the most plausible lies were always those which used as much of the truth as possible until dodging at the last second.
“Yes, I should have warned you, but you were already asleep,” Turold said, slipping out of the chair. “As you’ve seen, she’s lost her face. It’s not permanent, and she hasn’t really lost it. It’s just an illusion—a curse by a jealous rival. In fact, we’re going to meet someone today to begin its reconstruction.”
“Not real?” Guido repeated. “But when she looked at me…I saw her skull. No skin. Just eyes!”
“I admit it is rather frightening—at least, at first,” Turold said, with a laugh. “Would you like some tea? Something stronger?”
“No, ah, just the tea,” he nodded, clutching himself. “And you live with her? You look at that day and night without terror?”
“To be honest, it’s harder to see it now than to forget,” he said, warming the samovar. “When I look at her, I don’t see that, I see the woman she is. Besides, we all look like that. Just this tiny flap of skin convinces us otherwise. And when that goes…only one thing remains.”
“Yes, memento mori,” Guido nodded, shaking his head. “Death is always among us. How quickly we forget.”
“Precisely. Do you like it straight, or sweet?”
“Death? Oh, you mean the tea! Sweet, thank you.”
“I have some sugar from the Vansal district, the best in the city,” he said, removing the sugar. “Needless to say, I want to keep this quiet. Certain people would get the wrong ideas. And if the Council investigated…”
“No, we wouldn’t want that. As the Astrologer Royal you have to keep your nose clean,” he said, raising his hands. “And just between you and me, you trust her?”
“Implicitly,” Turold nodded, pouring the tea into his finest cups (only slightly chipped). “She’s one of the few people I can trust.”
“I’m glad to hear it,” he said, scratching his unshaven face. “Because there are rumors you’re being watched. Enemies of your late master—they wish you harm, terrified you’ll support his agenda. I don’t know anything more than that. I merely repeat what is being whispered throughout the palace, in the coffee house.”
“Who told you?” Turold asked, swirling in the sugar.
But before he could answer Giacinta came into the room, mask firmly in place, hood drawn tight. Guido gave a start and backed away from the table.
“Good morning,” she said, with a bow of her head.
“I should probably go…never made it home last night, the wife might worry,” Guido said, visibly shaken. “Again, a pleasure to meet you both. If you should need anything, don’t hesitate…”
He darted out of the apartment with Turold holding his freshly made cup, which Giacinta accepted without missing a beat.
“Something I said?” she asked.
“He saw you this morning. You took your mask off?”
She took a long sip before responding, “I didn’t need to. He took it off for me.”
“What?”
“He was prowling about the apartment in the wee hours. He skulked into my room and lifted it up. I watched him, ready to strike. In the end I didn’t need to.”
Turold ran to the window to see if he was still within earshot. The streets were largely empty at this hour, and a thick fog swirled over the shadows of buildings and trees. It had swallowed him up.
“Did he take anything? Was he looking for something?”
“I don’t think so,” she said, cradling her cup. “Just curious, digging for gossip. I suppose he found it.”
“I tried to explain it away, he promised me to keep mum. But now…I’m sorry, I was drunk. Normally I would have thought twice. Or thought once.”
“Actually, I’m glad you didn’t,” she said, crossing the room to the window. “Because it’s convinced me to go through with it. If people come here looking for a woman without a face, then that’s exactly what they can’t find.”
“I agree, of course…but are you sure?” Turold said. “I don’t want to pressure you—”
“I’m sure. I dreamt about it all night. So how was dinner? Besides the getting drunk?”
“Oh gods—I have so much to tell you! I don’t even know where to begin!”
“About the spell? I already know,” she nodded. “The beer cavern. Free the grain from wonder-lock.”
Turold gasped audibly. He almost wondered if there was a grain of truth in Guido’s warning: were the spies closer than he thought? Had she been watching him all along?
“Don’t act so astonished: your Familiar came home a few hours after you did,” she said, with a laugh. “He told me everything. And a few more things you don’t know about. I’ll meet you downstairs.”
Turold looked down and saw his shadow exactly where it should be, aping his swaying arms and tilting head. At least it was still coming home. But for how long?
“Are you up to impersonating me at the toilette this morning?” he asked.
Naturally; I was just getting dressed.
A moment later, it appeared beside him in his traveling clothes, only a little bleary-eyed from last night’s events. Apparently it had been drinking, too.
“Keep your eyes open, and speak as little as possible,” Turold said, smoothing its cravat. “I don’t want to raise suspicion. You’re still a child at this.”
I could say the same for you. You committed at least six faux pas last night, and one gross taboo. The king almost noticed your departure. Lucky I stayed behind.
“Never mind, just be careful. Get back as soon as you can. And no more drinking!”
His Familiar made a face that resembled a nobleman cleaning his shoe on an underling’s coat. Turold let it pass, since he wasn’t sure exactly how to admonish one’s shadow; and truth be told, maybe the shadow was the nobleman in their relationship. Even now he attempted to tally up six possible faux pas, and only came up with three…was it wrong to take off your boots under the table if no one saw it?
Outside, Giacinta stood like a sentinel in the fog, her figure even more shadowy than usual. Sometimes, he felt that he had imagined her entirely, and if he stared hard enough she would become thin air. As the fog thickened, his fears almost came true; but as he walked closer her form materialized, her familiar features and voice greeting him warmly. They walked briskly toward his friend’s address, taking back alleys and waiting in shadows to throw off pursuers. They exchanged news in scattered whispers: he repeating everything he had learned that evening, and she telling him of what the Familiar witnessed between Lord Gramsteed and the mysterious spell-broker.
Before they could make a meal of their news, they reached Kastushiro’s building, an apartment nestled high on the fifth floor on the ramshackle remains of an old fortress. Gunshots peppered the walls, some dating back hundreds of years, others, by the looks of them, from late last night. Giacinta froze before the landing, her hands balling into fists, turning white.
“You’re scared?” he asked.
“A little. Not of getting a new face…of what he’ll say when he sees me,” she said, the smile on the mask seeming to crack. “Besides you, I’ve only shown my face to one other person…well, not counting our guest last night. I’ve tried to hide it for so long. I’m not sure I can take it off, even for this.”
“What if I took it off? Would you let me?”
She stared at him a moment, then nodded. He reached up and slid the mask over her face, the hair tumbling down over the grinning skull, whose eyes flickered in pain. Yes, she was ghastly, almost horrific, but if he focused on her eyes the rest slipped away.
“Now I’m really scared,” she said. “I can’t go up.”
“Think of the face in your mind, the way you see yourself deep down,” he said, taking her hand. “Concentrate on why we’re here.”
“I can’t see anything. When I look…I only see a blank.”
“Very well, then look at the blank spot until you can see the contours of a face. Your face!”
She squeezed his hand and took the first step, thinking, peering into the vacancy to descry her visage.
