Enrique hadn’t felt that twinge of curiosity in what felt like months. Lately, all his research had an undercurrent of panic and urgency. It still did, but now there was a new facet to it… he was learning not just for the sake of others, but for himself too. Slowly, Enrique felt as if the pieces of himself were falling back into an order he recognized. And when his friends moved around him, he was less like a piece buoyed along by momentum, and more like an anchor, certain and secure. Around him, the world seemed to reveal more and more of itself, and with every revelation, Enrique felt certain he would discover his place within it.
Beneath the mask, he smiled.
IT TOOK LAILAno more than ten minutes to determine where House Janus kept their treasures. As they moved through the party, Laila brushed her fingers against platters held by servants, towels slung over arms, the occasional lantern hanging on a pillar.
“This way,” she said.
Laila led them past the throng of partygoers, and down one of the many hallways radiating off the main platform until they arrived before a short, empty hallway. At the far end, a sprawling silk tapestry covered one wall.
Enrique studied the tapestry. Embroidered across it was another compass rose, the diamond-shaped points reflecting the territories that fell north, south, east, and west of them. In the north, glaciers sewn together with silver thread. In the south, thready, golden sands. In the east, mountains of green knots, and in the west, woven blue waters.
“From the objects I read, I got the impression that the entrance to the treasure is connected to the tapestry,” said Laila.
“Then let’s go—” said Hypnos.
He took a step past the entrance, but Laila caught his arm.
“Zofia?” said Laila.
Zofia reached into her sleeves and rolled a spherical detection light across the stone. All along the sides of the hallway, coin-sized red lights sprang up next to the lit torches. Enrique’s stomach sank.
“What are those?” asked Zofia.
“Shape-detecting Mnemo devices,” said Hypnos, annoyed. “We employ the same ones at House Nyx. They raise alarms if they detect a moving shape in the background. Usually to get past, one must have a deflecting device that disrupts the machine’s sensors.”
“Then how will we get past?” asked Enrique.
“Simple.” Zofia tapped the end of her mask’s beak. “We remove detection of all shapes.”
In a deft motion, Zofia pinched the long, hooked end of her beak. Puffs of steam uncurled from the nostrils in the bone-white mask, obscuring the blue of her eyes. In her long, navy robes with her face and hair hidden, Zofia reminded him of a psychopomp from a myth… a figure tasked with ferrying souls away from mortal realms.
Laila copied the motion, and Hypnos did the same. Enrique reached for his mask, feeling the slight groove of a depression in its design. A second later, steam poured out.
Zofia must have added a barrier within the mask because he could neither smell nor feel the steam, though he did see it gusting outwards and momentarily clouding his sight. As it cleared, he saw the Forged fog climb up the hallway, blanketing it in a thick, impenetrable mist.
“I counted ten paces to the wall,” said Zofia. “Go.”
Enrique walked through the blankness, his heartbeat thudding loudly in his ribs. He wondered how they might have looked in that second to anyone who might glimpse them… like envoys from hell, cursed angels with plague curling out from their nostrils.
He stretched out his hand, feeling the rough texture of the tapestry under his palm. The hallway seemed to exhale like a long-held sigh. The blankness of the fog gave way to a different hallway as they crossed through the Forged tapestry.
Enrique thought they would be met with silence, but a figure waited for them not two meters away from where they emerged.
A figure dressed in red, head bowed, with a lacquered mask the color of a slit throat.
Slowly, they raised their head. Gloved hands slid up, shoving back the hood, and Enrique sucked in his breath.
A slew of emotions ran through him. Joy, then anger… the bizarre desire to laugh punctured by the sudden throbbing of his wound.
Séverin’s hair was mussed from the mask, but he stood tall and regal in his red robes. He arched an eyebrow, his mouth curving into a grin.
“I told you I’d find you.”
18
LAILA
The moment she saw Séverin, Laila felt the ground melting beneath her, and her belly swooped with sudden weightlessness. It was not desire or even surprise. It was a moment when the present thinned, and the bones of the past showed through.
