gone before. Hope swelled in her pounding heart, but hands rose out of the darkness at the base of the ramp. They grabbed her wrists and her ankles. They pulled her down, held her down. Faces that were only eyes and voices hovered over her, muttering a two-word chorus: mistake and failure.
She fought free of them, sprang to her feet and ran onto the stony shore where flames and screams made everything seem unfamiliar. Dodging arms and clubs, Mahtra looked for the path that would take her to the hide-and-bone hut where Father and Mika were waiting. There were paths she’d never seen before, and all of them blocked by the same five mutilated corpses who rose up when she approached them, blaming her, not Death, for their dying.
She was frantic with despair when a wild-eyed halfling ran toward her. His cheeks were on fire and his bloody club was the most terrible of all Death’s weapons. While Mahtra cowered, he found the familiar path that wound between the reproachful corpses and led to the hide-and-bone hut where little Mika stood bravely before the door.
The burnished marks on Mahtra’s face and shoulders grew warm. Her vision blurred and her limbs stiffened, but it wasn’t herself she wanted to protect; it was Father and Mika, and they were too far away. In agony, she forced her eyes to see, her legs to move. One stride, two strides… gaining on Death with every stride, but still too late.
The club fell and the only scream she heard was Father and Mika screaming as halfling-Death battered the hut with his club. Mahtra threw herself at Death and was repelled, simply repelled. Death did not want her; Death wouldn’t threaten a made creature like her, who’d never been born—and without threat, Mahtra’s flesh wouldn’t kindle, her vision wouldn’t blur.
Gouts of Mika’s blood flew off the club as Death whirled it overhead. The sticky clots adhered to Mahtra’s face. She fell to her knees, clawing at her hard, white skin, unable to breathe, unwilling to see. Her vision finally blurred, now—when it was too late and there was blood already on her hand, but she didn’t give up, not completely. Lunging blindly, Mahtra aimed herself where her mind’s vision said Death last stood. She felt the hem of Death’s robe in her hands, but Death didn’t fall. Death pulled free, and she fell instead.
Crawling again, she sought Death by the sound of his club as it fell, again and again. Warm, sticky fluid pelted her. She wanted to curl into a tight ball, but forced her back to straighten, her head to rise. She opened her eyes—
—And saw sunlight. The nightmare images of fear, rage, helplessness, and defeat faded quickly in the bright light of morning. Since escaping the cavern, Mahtra had had this same nightmare, with its hopeless ending, whenever she’d fallen asleep. Its terrors were at least familiar, which was not true of her surroundings.
With her heart pounding as if the nightmare had not ended, Mahtra swiveled on her hips and sat cross-legged in the center of linen-covered mattress beneath the silken canopy. Night curtains had been drawn down from the canopy, but they were sheer, like spiderwebs, and she could see through them…
And be seen through them.
Mahtra felt her nakedness as an afterthought, but reacted swiftly, tucking the coverlet tightly around her lest she be seen by someone uninvited. There was no one watching. She was alone, as far as she could tell, in this bright bedchamber, and there was no one in the next chamber, which she could see through an open doorway.
Her gown was neatly folded on a chest at the foot of the bed. Her belt and coin pouch were on top of the dress; her sandals had been cleaned, oiled, and set beside them. And her mask—her mask wasn’t on the chest. Mahtra’s hands leapt to her face. The mask wasn’t there, either. She kept her fingers pressed over what the makers had given her for a mouth and nose and racked her memory for the places she had been last night.
Not this room. Not any room. Not since she’d staggered out of the cavern many days ago.
As soon as she’d felt the sun on her face, Mahtra had made her way to the high templar quarter, but she hadn’t gone back to her old eleganta life. She hadn’t been inside any residence. She’d hied herself to House Escrissar and sat herself down on the alleyway doorsill. House Escrissar