She hoped they believed that was her fate.
“Signora?” asked the Forged artisan.
Laila turned to face themascherariwork table, which was situated to the far right of what looked like a grand ballroom that wascurtained off in sections. This side of the chamber carried a distinctly eerie demeanor. Here, it was quiet and hushed thanks to a Forged veil which locked out sound.
“The four masks you requested,” said the Forged artisan.
Laila found it hard to look at the man. He wore a mask like a melted mirror, which adhered to every feature—even his eyes—and rendered him strangely reflective.
“Grazi,” she said, leaning over the table.
In the end, she had chosen the same for all four of them.
“Il medico della peste,” said the artisan, a hint of unease tinging his voice.
The plague doctor’s mask.
Each of the four masks covered the whole of the face. The closely set round eyeholes were covered with shimmering glass, and instead of a hole for the nose and mouth, the mask cinched and elongated into a hooked beak. All four were painted a shade of eggshell white and plastered with sheet music.
“È perfetto,” said Laila graciously.
And it was, in its own way, perfect. Zofia had requested a mask that might hide tools and this was large enough to do so. And the mask held an echo of their final location, Plague Island.
The Forged artisan smiled. Even his teeth were silver. In four deft movements, he folded the masks until they were as thin as handkerchiefs and could fit easily inside the reticule at her wrist.
Laila had just turned to leave when she felt it.
The blankness.
It doused her like sudden rainfall. One moment, her nostrils burned from the cigarette smoke, her ears rang with the throaty purr of a woman’s laughter, and her fingertips skimmed over the rough-hewn pearls of her beaded purse.
The next moment, Laila felt like a grasping shade. Textures vanished. Sounds collapsed. Colors muted.
No, she begged.Not now… not yet.
The blankness hadn’t stolen through her since the Isola di San Michele visit. She had almost convinced herself that it was a waking nightmare until this moment. Laila looked down.
Four.
Four days left to live.
Laila tried to pull air into her lungs. She couldn’t feel her ribs expanding or the perfumed air irritating her nose. She must have succeeded else she would have passed out by now… but perhaps that was not how she was made.
The idea sickened her.
She looked up, staring at the revolving sculpted faces. For a moment, she remembered her village in Pondicherry, India. Was this what thejaadugarhad done for her parents? Had he merely skimmed his wizened hand across a ceiling of ribbons before he found the face she would wear for the next nineteen years?
“Signora, you look as though you wish to start over.”
Laila turned, as if in slow motion, to the woman speaking to her. She was tall and dark-skinned, her golden eyes just barely visible behind an all-velvetmorettomask. The woman gestured to a section of the room Laila had barely paid attention to when she had first entered. Hands stretched through curtains, patrons walking past dropping anything from coins to sweets into waiting palms.
“Let fate give you guidance,” said the woman. “Take some sweetness into the world and start anew…”
“I—” Laila tried to speak, but her tongue felt thick.
“Come, come,” said the woman. “It is a beloved custom for those who visit our sanctuary. For only here can you divest yourself ofthe face you put on for the world. Only here might you tempt love in a new form or summon a new fate entirely.”
A new fate.
