“Some of us aren’t born as lucky as others.”
“You are luckier than you know. You were born
without
that which most people prize their lovers for. That ridiculous prize called beauty. You know what it is to be overlooked. Know it keenly enough that you paid a boy to love you. To taste that sweetness, if only for a heartbeat.”
“It wasn’t that sweet, believe me.”
Aalea smiled. “You already understand what it is to
want
, my love. And soon enough, you’ll understand how much power instilling that want in others can bring.”
“… What exactly do you teach here?”
“The soft touch. The lingering stare. Whispered nothings that mean everything. These are the weapons I shall give you.”
“I prefer steel, if it’s all the same,” Mia frowned. “Quicker and more honest.”
Aalea laughed. “And what if you need information to fulfill an offering? If your mark is in hiding, their location known only to a trusted servant? Or you need to acquire a password to access a gathering at which your mark will be present? The trust of a woman who can lead you to your kill? How will steel serve you then?”
“I’m told hot coals work wonders in those situations.”
“Warm skin serves better still. And leaves fewer scars.”
The Shahiid stood, drifted to Mia’s divan and sat beside her. Mia could smell the woman’s perfume, heady and dizzying. Staring into the dark pools of her eyes. There was a gravity to her. A magnetism Mia couldn’t help but be dragged into. Perhaps it was some kind of arkemy in the scent she wore?
“I will teach you how to make others love you,” Aalea purred. “Men. Women. Completely and utterly. If only for a nevernight. If only for a heartbeat.” She reached out with gentle fingers, drew a tingling trail down Mia’s cheek. “I will teach you how to make others
want
. To feel as you feel now. But first, you must master the face you see in the mirror.”
Aalea’s spell shattered, the butterflies in Mia’s belly dropped dead one by one. She glanced at the nearest looking glass. The reflection therein. The scrawny, pale girl with her broken nose and hollow cheeks, sitting beside a woman who might have been one of the statues in the room come to life. This was lunacy. No matter how sweet her perfume, how delightful the nothings she might whisper, Mia would never be a beauty. She’d resigned herself to that fact years ago.
“I’ve looked into the mirror harder than most, believe me,” the girl said. “And while I appreciate the sentiment, Shahiid, if you sit there telling me I need to learn to love myself before others can love me, I think I might spew this O, so fine whiskey all over your pretty red rug.”
Laughter. As bright and warm as all three suns. Aalea took Mia’s hand, pressed it to blood-red lips. Despite herself, the girl felt a blush creeping into her cheeks.
“Dearest, no. I’ve no doubt you know yourself better than most. We plain ones always do. And I don’t mean to say you must learn to love the face you see in the mirror now.” Again, Aalea touched Mia’s cheek, eliciting a dizzying rush of warmth. “What I mean to say is, you must master the face you see in the mirror on the morrow.”
“Why?” Mia frowned. “What happens this eve?”
Aalea smiled. “We give you a new one, of course.”
“… A new what?”
“That nose, those eyes, no.” Aalea tsked. “Far too remarkable, you see. A crooked beak might prompt questions about how it was broken. Bruised hollows might make a mark wonder what you do with your nevernights instead of sleeping like a faithful daughter of Aa should. And the places we shall soon send you…” The Shahiid smiled. “For now, we need you pretty, but forgettable. Likeable, but unmemorable. Able to turn a head should you choose it, or fade into the background when the needs rise.”
“I…”
“Would you not enjoy being pretty, my love?”
Mia shrugged. “I don’t give a damn how I look.”
“And yet you pay a pretty boy to love you?”
The Shahiid leaned closer. Mia could feel the warmth radiating off her skin. Her mouth was suddenly dry. Breath coming just a little quicker. Anger? Indignity? Or something else?
“It may not be right,” Aalea said. “It may not be just. But this is a world of senators and consuls and Luminatii—of republics and cults and institutions built and maintained almost entirely by men. And in it, love is a weapon. Sex is a weapon. Your eyes? Your body? Your smile?” She shrugged. “Weapons. And they give you more power than a thousand swords. Open more gates than a thousand war walkers. Love has toppled
kings
, Mia. Ended empires. Even broken our poor, sunsburned sky.”
The Shahiid reached out a hand, brushed a stray hair from Mia’s cheek.
“They will never see the knife in your hand if they are lost in your eyes. They will never taste the poison in their wine when they are drunk on the sight of you.” A small shrug. “Beauty simply makes it easier, love. Easier than you have it now. It may be sad. It may be wrong. But it is also true.”
Mia’s voice was a tight whisper. Anger waiting in the wings.
“And what would you know about how I have it now, Shahiid?”
“I’ve worn so many seemings, I can scarce remember my first. But I was no portrait, Mia.” Aalea leaned back and smiled. “I was much like you. I knew want. The ache of it. The emptiness. Knew it like I knew myself. And so when Marielle gave me beauty, and I learned how to give that want to others, there was no stopping me.”
“Marielle…,” Mia breathed.
The flesh weaver.
It all made sense now. Aalea’s unearthly beauty. Mouser’s young face and old eyes. Even the Revered Mother’s facade of homely warmth. She understood this room’s name at last.
The Hall of Masks
. Daughters, it might apply to the entire Mountain. Killers within—killers all—hiding behind facades not of ceramic or wood, but flesh. Beauty. Youth. Soft maternity. How better to maintain a cadre of anonymous assassins than by reshaping their faces whenever the need struck? How better to seduce a mark or blend into a crowd or be met and instantly forgotten than by crafting a face suited to the task?
How better to make us forget who we were, and shape us into what they want us to be?
Flawed as it might be in other’s eyes, this was
her face
. Mia wasn’t sure how she felt about these people taking it away …
Own nothing
, Mercurio had said.
Know nothing. Be nothing.
Mia breathed deep. Swallowed hard.
Because then you can do anything.
“Come,” Aalea said. “The weaver awaits.”
The Shahiid rose, held out her hand. Mia remembered Marielle’s hideous features; the split and drooling lips, those malformed, stunted fingers. Mister Kindly sighed at her feet and the girl steeled herself. Curled hands into fists. This was the price she’d chosen to pay. For her father. Her familia.
When all is blood, blood is all
.
What else could she do?
She took Aalea’s hand.
She’d not noticed it the first time she was down here, but unlike Aalea’s hall, the walls to Marielle’s rooms
were
covered in masks. Ceramic and papier-mâché. Glass and pottery. Carnivalé masks and death masks, children’s masks and ancient, twisted masks of bone and leather and animal hide. A room of faces, beautiful and hideous and everything in between, none so horrid as the face of the weaver herself.
And not a mirror in sight.
Marielle was hunched in pale arkemical glow. A statue of a lithe woman with a lion’s head stood on the desk beside her, globe held in its palms. Marielle was reading from some dusty tome, the pages crackling as she turned them. When Shahiid Aalea rapped softly upon the wall to announce their presence, the weaver did not look up.
“Good eve to thee, Shahiid.” A ribbon of drool spilled from Marielle’s lips as she spoke. She frowned, dabbling at the now-stained page. Mia’s mouth curled in revulsion.
“And to you, great Weaver.” Aalea bowed low, smiling. “I trust you are well?”
“Passing fair, I thank thee.”
“Where is your beautiful brother?”
Marielle looked up at that. Smiling almost wide enough to split her lip again.
“Feeding.”
“Ah.” Aalea put her hand at the small of Mia’s back, ushered her into the room. “I apologize for interrupting, but this is your first canvas. You’ve met, I believe.”
“Briefly. Thou may thank gentle Solis for our introductions.” Marielle wiped the spittle from her mouth, offered Mia a twisted smile. “Good turn to thee, little darkin.”
Mia rankled at the leer on the weaver’s face. Now that the shock of their first meeting had worn off, she recognized the sort of woman Marielle was. Mia had dealt with her kind a thousand times. The woman was smiling to goad her, she realized. Marielle enjoyed torment. Loved watching pain and inflicting it, and the company of those who loved it as much as she.
A sadist.
And yet, Shahiid Aalea spoke to the woman almost reverentially, eyes downturned in respect. It made sense, Mia supposed. If Marielle were the one who kept Aalea looking the way she did, it was only logical for the Shahiid of Masks to want to stay in the weaver’s good books. Even if they
were
stained with bloody drool.
“Come ye, sit her down.”
Marielle rose from her desk with a wince, motioned to a familiar slab of black stone. Leather straps and gleaming buckles. Mia’s mouth tasted sour, remembering waking here, the pain and uncertainty and vertigo.
“Thou shalt need to disrobe, little darkin,” Marielle lisped.
“What for?”
Aalea laid a gentle touch on her cheek. “Trust me, love.”
Mia stared at the weaver. Mister Kindly curled in the shadow beneath her, drinking her fear as fast as he was able. With a wince and without a word, she pulled her arm from her sling, dragged her shirt and slip off over her head. Kicked off her boots and britches and lay naked on the slab. The rock was chill against her bare skin. Goosebumps prickling.
At a word from Marielle, a handful of arkemical globes blazed into life above Mia’s head. She squinted, dazzled by the radiance. Two vague silhouettes loomed over her, blurred in the light. Aalea’s voice was warm and sweet as sugarwater.
“We must bind you, love.”
Mia grit her teeth. Nodded. This was the way things were done here, she reminded herself. This was what she’d signed up for. She felt straps tighten around her arms and legs, wincing as the leather cut into her wounded elbow. Leather padding was pressed either side of her neck. She realized she couldn’t turn her head.
“Thy thoughts?” Marielle lisped. “Fine bones. A rare beauty I could make her.”
“Just a taste for now, I think. Best not to swim too deep too quick.”
“She seems to have misplaced her bosom.”
“Do what you can, great Weaver. I’m sure it will be masterful, as always.”
“As it please thee.”
Mia heard cracking knuckles. Slurping breath. Blinking up into the light, the silhouettes swimming inside it. Her heart was racing, Mister Kindly not quite able to absorb her rising terror. Helpless. Bound. Pinned down like a piece of meat on a butcher block.
You fought to be here
, she told herself.
Every nevernight and every turn for six years. Six fucking years. Think of Scaeva. Duomo. Remus. Dead at your feet. Every step you take here is one step closer to them. Every drop of sweat. Every drop of bl—
Gentle hands caressed her brow. Aalea whispered in her ear.
“This will hurt, love. But have faith. The weaver knows her work.”
“Hurt?” Mia blurted. “You never said anyth—”
Pain. Exquisite, immolating pain. Misshapen hands swayed above her, fingers moving as if the weaver were playing a symphony and the strings were her skin. She felt her face rippling, the flesh running like wax in flame. She grit her teeth, bit back a scream. Tears blinding. Heart pounding. Mister Kindly swelling and rolling beneath her, the shadows in the room shuddering. Masks fell from the walls as the pain burned hotter, and somewhere in that scalding, clawing black, she felt someone take her hand, squeeze it tight, promising all would be well.
“…
hold on to me, mia
…”
But the pain.
“…
hold on, i have you
…”
O, Daughters, the pain …
It lasted forever. Abating only long enough for her to catch her breath, dreading the moment it would begin again. Not once through all those endless minutes did Marielle actually
touch
her and yet, Mia felt the woman’s hands were everywhere. Parting her skin and twisting her flesh, tears running down melting cheeks. And when Marielle moved her hands lower, down to Mia’s chest and belly, she let it go. The scream, slipping past her teeth and up, up into the burning darkness above her head, dragging her down to a merciful black where she felt nothing. Knew nothing. Was nothing.
“…
i will not let you go
…”
Nothing at all.
She wasn’t beautiful.
As she sat in her room afterward, Mia realized the weaver hadn’t given her that gift. She wasn’t a statue come to life like Aalea was. Not someone a general might raise an army for, a hero slay a god or daemon for, a nation go to war for. But as Mia stared into the looking glass on her dresser, she found herself fascinated. Running her fingertips over her cheeks, nose and lips, hands still shaking.
Mister Kindly watched from her pillows, glutted on the feast of her fear. She’d woken in her bed to find him beside her, watching with his not-eyes. Shahiid Aalea had been nowhere to be seen, though Mia could still smell her perfume.
When she’d first sat in front of the mirror, she’d expected to find herself staring at a stranger. But as she’d peered at the face in the polished silver, she’d realized it was still hers. The dark eyes, the heart-shape, the bow lips, all hers. But somehow she was … pretty. Not the kind of pretty that borders beautiful. The kind of commonplace pretty you pass on the street every turn. The kind you might notice as it breezed past, but forget the moment it was out of sight.
It was as if the puzzle of her face had some missing piece finally pushed into place. Subtle differences that somehow made all the difference in the world. Her lips fuller. Nose straightened. Skin smooth as cream. The shadows beneath her eyes were gone, and the eyes themselves seemed a little bigger. Speaking of …