“If you know all this, you must know whyTemple guardswanted my Mother’s book.”
“I’m afraid I do not, although I would very much like to.”
I snorted.
“A most unladylike noise,” he observed, but I fancied I could see the hint of a smile through the mask.
I had barely noticed, as I was so angry and so absorbed in the conversation, but the last of the sunlight was bleeding from the sky, and the crowd had started counting down to the Unmasking. It had to be done at the very moment when the sun slipped its moorings and dipped beneath thehorizon—when the glims and candles and lanterns became the only points of light. I had not intended to remove my mask, but someone behind me wrenched it back, laughing, and although I clutched at it, it was too heavy for me to raise again easily. Beneath it, my Hair floated freely around my shoulders.
Shouts and laughter and whoops all around, and then confetti was thrown from the upper windows of the houses all around, as were handfuls of grain and sugar dyed every color. All around us, couples and friends and strangers embraced, lights flared to life, and despite myself, I felt the intoxicating swirl of it all.
“Kiss! Kiss!” the crowd shouted in a hundred voices, and someone threw a ladle of pink sugar over us. It stung my skin like a thousand tiny pinpricks. Patrick took his skull mask by the beak and lifted it, just enough to expose his mouth and leave his eyes in shadow—and he kissed me. It was featherlight and brief—barely a kiss, a suggestion of a kiss—but it tasted like sugar and salt at once, and it was shockingly close and warm.
I managed to get hold of my mask and wrenched it forward, breaking the kiss, flattening down my Hair again, and shielding my face, which was burning hot. We stared at each other for a moment—or, at least, I stared into the empty eye sockets of his mask, and he stood infuriatingly still and silent.
“What … Why would you …” I said, still reeling.
After a beat, he gave a low, theatrical bow. The bird skull mask covered his head completely. I could not even see the color of his hair. “I did not want to draw attention to us,” he said in a low voice. “It would have seemed stranger had I not …”
A kiss given to allay suspicion. As a form of disguise. I felt a surge of anger—first at him, for kissing me, and then at myself, for letting him.
“I don’t care,” I spat at him. “Leave me alone. Stop following me. I don’t want to see or hear from you ever again.”
I backed away and stepped in a puddle of sugar water,which rather spoiled the haughty effect of my words. The parade was still snaking about the center of the city, round and round until the revelers collapsed from exhaustion, and I could hear its drums approaching us again. Patrick’s kiss lingered on my mouth, even as the procession rolled past a second time. I started to walk away and then, when I was sure he was not following me, I ran.
I heard him calling my name, but the street was a chaos of color and movement, laughter, kisses, the grittiness of sugared skin brushing my own, and hands trying to grasp at mine as I pushed my way through, snarling at anyone who tried to pull me back in to the celebration, glad that my mask was both fearsome and unpleasantly pointy enough to put off any questing hands or mouths. The powdered sugar that had sweetened the air and dusted my skin had now blended entirely with my sweat to become a sticky, sickly paste, stinking like sour milk. My clothes were stained with color from the melting crystals and soot from the cremation chimneys.
Stupid. Stupid.It had been a stupid risk to take, all for sweetmeats and dancing. I thought about finding and confronting Mieka, but my mind was crowded with new information, and I just needed to get away andthink. I would be lucky to make it back to the shop unscathed, or mostly so.
The parade snaked past again, and I wondered how I would push my way through the floats decked in ribbons, the dancers stomping in time, the Priests swinging censers that spewed their choking smoke, the standard-bearers carrying some vast and intricate banner …
I halted. The great tapestry.
It took a dozen men to carry it, stretched taut between tall gilded poles. The cloth seemed even more massive outside of the Temple building, and the stitched motifs took on almost godlike size and significance: the rising Plague represented by waves of skeletal figures, and the Temple triumphant against them, the Eye of the One-Eyed God blazing over neat rowsof graves. Every thread stitched to tell the story the Temple wanted remembered.
The crowd cheered, some throwing flower petals, others shouting prayers. But not all voices blended. I began to hear the undertones first—hoarse cries, angry chants—until the protestors surged forward.
“Liars!” someone bellowed.
“Thieves!” shouted another. “Bleeding us with your tithes!”
The Temple guards stiffened along the parade line, then moved to shield the Priests. The celebration cracked open. A stone flew, striking one of the guards’ helms with a sharp ring. Shouts turned to screams. The guards surged into the crowd, and the crowd shoved back, fists rising.
A woman was knocked down to sprawl in the mud, then trampled as the crowd pressed and broke apart. The drums faltered, then ceased altogether. Someone pushed me hard from behind. The tapestry lurched, creaking and snapping like a ship’s sail caught in a storm wind as its bearers struggled, some dropping their poles and running, some fighting to keep it upright.
For a heartbeat, the tapestry still loomed, the vast Eye flaring against the embroidered bones, and then a protestor leapt, blade flashing. The fabric tore, and the great cloth sagged, ripping down the middle, its two halves flapping like wounded birds and coming to rest on the dirt-and-sugar-crusted ground. People clawed at it, tearing it apart, trampling the Temple’s story into mud and spilled wine and ash fallen from the torches overturned and doused on the wet ground. The crush of bodies grew worse. I couldn’t breathe, shoved shoulder to shoulder with strangers. The air was sharp with sweat and smoke. Somewhere, a guard’s sword flashed—too close.
A hand gripped mine. Patrick.
“This way.” His voice was low, steady against the chaos. He cut a path through the crowd with quick, precise movements. When someone lunged in our direction, he shoved them aside,keeping me behind him. I stumbled after him, my mask jostled sideways, my sweat-soaked Hair tumbling into my eyes. Everywhere I looked was madness: a man bleeding from a rock to the temple, a baker face-down in his own spilled sugar, a young boy crying underfoot until someone dragged him clear. The beautiful tapestry lay in shreds.
Patrick pushed me through a gap between two stalls, the wood already half splintered from the press of bodies. “Run,” he said, and for once I didn’t argue.
I ran.
My lungs burned. The sounds of the riot followed—screams and shouts, steel on steel, bells clanging—but they dulled until only my own panting breath filled my ears.
By the time I burst into the narrow street where the Book Man’s shop waited, I was shaking. My palms were raw from clutching my skirts, my heart still pounding with the kiss and the riot and the sight of the tapestry falling.
