Queen of faces, p.24
Queen of Faces, page 24
My smile faltered, and I wrenched it back into place.
‘One more game.’ I smirked. ‘It’ll be fun.’
‘You always win,’ said Gage. ‘That isn’t fun. That’s just power.’
‘Power is fun, grey girl. Anyone who thinks otherwise has never been powerful.’
Nima snorted, playing ping-pong against himself on the corner table. He swung his paddles with blinding speed and intensity, the easy competence of a world-class athlete. In the midst of his game, a stray ping-pong ball shot at Korin’s head. Korin ducked, and the ball splashed into his bubbling pork broth. He fished it out with the ladle.
‘Throw it back.’ Nima was out of balls.
‘It’s not nice to demand things,’ said Korin. ‘Can you say please?’
‘Bokhoresh,’ said Nima. ‘Throw it back or I’ll set your bed on fire, old goat.’
‘Say please or you don’t get dinner.’ Korin launched into a set of squats, his long white hair coated with sweat. He grumbled. ‘Kids these days.’
I turned back to Gage. ‘Well, if not chess, what do you normally do to relax? Sit in a dark corner and brood?’
She scowled. ‘I read.’
‘Ah, a literary soul. Who do you read? Kirklend? Savoy? Carlyle? I thought his latest book was shrewd but aimless. The lukewarm oyster of the picaresque genre.’
Gage stared at her feet. ‘I read Panda Blossom,’ she mumbled. ‘A Nekean romance manga about a girl with time panda powers. And—’
‘I see.’
‘And she has to choose between seventeen different boys.’ Her voice was a shameful whisper. She pointed to a comic book lying in the corner. ‘You can read it if you want.’
‘I’ve changed my mind,’ I said. ‘Have fun with your exam scoring.’
‘What about those cards I gave you?’ said Gage. ‘The ones with the silver crowns on the back. Your birthday gift.’
‘Oh,’ I said. ‘Think I lost those.’ A lie. I had meant to throw them out ages ago, but they, annoyingly, were perfect fidget material. I could shuffle them, fan them, stack them into houses. It was enough to keep my hands moving for hours. But I wasn’t about to let Gage know that.
I stripped out of my dress shirt and began a set of push-ups. This body might not be mine in a year, but I still needed my strength, if I was to survive the coming months and defeat my replacement. Cardamom snuggled in the grey girl’s lap, and she rubbed his belly while reading through her test answers. She stole the occasional glance at my sweaty muscles.
I caught her eye and winked at her. A scarlet tint crept up her cheeks, and she turned away. ‘Tall idiot,’ she muttered.
Don’t bother yourself, Gage, I thought. I preferred tall blond boys with stable psyches and country estates.
Still, her Edgar face had grown more familiar over the past months, more intriguing. I found myself relishing the brief moments when those grey eyes lit up with excitement from a solved problem or a successful plan. Gage could never learn this, of course, so instead of examining her, I often found myself admiring random Edgars on the street, watching them laugh and smile, searching for a hint of what I saw in her.
It was oddly pleasant, burning away the hours with Gage. And the clock tower loft made for adequate living, even if it was filled with annoying eccentrics. Mercenary work never got boring, never asked for long essays or dull readings. I never had to watch some elderly mage drone on in a lecture hall, or squeeze myself into a gown for parties. Even aside from my regular thrills, studying for the Ousting exam felt easier than I was used to. Smoother. There was a clarity in this body, a beautiful simplicity that none of my forms at Paragon could match. Perhaps it was the star-woven origin. Or perhaps it was something else.
This isn’t your home, Samuel’s voice reminded me. Your home is in the clouds. Over the last few months, his voice had got fainter and fainter, popping into my mind less frequently with each passing day.
My memory of him was fading, piece by piece. If we got lazy, if we didn’t find Khaiovhe, I would be stuck here forever. And I would never see him again.
The next day, I spied on my replacement, my family’s new heir. I sat at a Hightown teashop, next to the gilded playhouse that served as the biggest exit tunnel from the cable-car station. I waited for her, gazing through the arched windows and watching the rain drizzle on the street. Chugging automobiles raced past, splashing through puddles and skidding on the damp tarmac.
After an hour, my replacement still hadn’t shown, but Samuel stepped out of the theatre doors, wearing a raincoat over his blazer. The boy ambled past me, wincing and flexing his right foot. His toes were still missing; Gage’s injury to his Pith had lingered.
The rage started to bubble up again. It grew for hours, and when I felt ready to burst, a familiar face stepped under the shining marquee. A blonde girl with purple glitter spattered on her cheeks, wearing a Paragon blazer. My replacement. The rain curled round her, forming a thin curtain that kept her dry. I flicked a handful of notes on to the table, and left to follow her.
I tailed the impostor for an hour, flying across the slanted rooftops, following her tram down the mountain. Rainwater drenched my socks, and my dress shoes slipped for purchase on the wet tiles. Finally, the girl entered a quiet corner of Midtown and approached a café beneath an apartment building. A boy sat on a couch by the fire, waiting for her. I spied on them from a gabled rooftop three storeys up, crouched on the wooden shingles over a department store. This far up, I could only make out the boy’s torso and legs. I squinted through the rain, brushing droplets out of my face.
Then the boy stepped forward to hug her.
And I saw his grey hair.
My bones went numb. My hands gripped the wet shingles, clenching until my fingers ached.
There was no mistaking that chassis. No one else wore that exact Edgar, with those exact flaws.
The truth rushed over me in a landslide. Anabelle Gage had befriended my replacement, the monster who’d Ousted me. She’d betrayed me.
I stared at my arm in front of me. The impostor’s arm. The impostor that was now resting her head in Gage’s lap, staring at her with those silver-flecked eyes my mother had once bestowed on me. Her whole body was an icy reminder of what I’d lost.
And the way they looked at each other, the hugging, the intimacy. They weren’t just friends. A void opened inside me, and anger flowed into it like magma. Think, fool. Think.
This union was far worse than I could’ve imagined. Yes, Gage was sleeping with the enemy. But more importantly, she was talking with the girl. Sooner or later, they would discuss the Ousting. The impostor would describe that foggy morning last summer, and our duel on top of the Everautumn.
No one else fought like I did, using Folding Edge with my paper sword. Gage would learn my identity, that Weston Brown, her ally, was the same girl who had threatened to boil her alive. The girl whose hand she had chopped off, whose Ousting she had caused. She would realise I’d been lying to her, manipulating her.
I couldn’t separate Gage and my replacement, and I couldn’t direct their conversations. Which meant I had only one solution to this problem. The obvious solution, that I’d been planning since we first met.
That evening, I was supposed to give Gage more knife training. Instead, I found myself in a booth at a swing club, eating perfectly adequate oysters from an ice plate. In the corner of the room, a singer in a flapper gown crooned a melancholy song, something about ocean sunsets and lost chances.
A pair of girls sat at the far end of the bar, making eyes at me and smiling. I scowled at them until they looked away. In the booth behind me, two Black Arrows were talking about Gage. ‘They say the Azure Queen flits between bodies like changing clothes. She can slip into your dreams and pluck your mind like a harp. One look in her eyes, and she’ll bewitch you.’
My fingers twitched. I resisted the urge to lean back and slit their throats. I wasn’t done with my oysters.
At the bar, a middle-aged woman shouted at a group of men. Her face was red and wrinkled like a roasted pepper, and her nose looked crooked. She downed a shot, spilling gin on her yellow vest.
‘My dock manager was an idiot to sack me,’ she spat. ‘I’m more fit than any of you termites. Watch. My next job’s gonna pay double.’
The men shied away from her as she downed another shot. They weren’t her friends, and she hadn’t come here with anyone. I couldn’t think of anything more pathetic than going to a bar alone.
The ugly woman kept getting in people’s faces, yelling at them, poking them.
Finally, a man shouted, ‘Prophets, will you shut up?’
‘Don’t believe me?’ she said, slurring her words. ‘I’m special. I was heir to the greatest family in Caimor! That big-shot admiral? The admiral of the Home Fleet? I was her, until the shrew Ousted me.’
The world dropped out from under me.
I gripped the table, my fingernails digging into the wood. Impossible. My mother had never Ousted anyone.
‘Well,’ she said. ‘Joke’s on her. She married some big-shot professor, and our most famous crazy-witch set him on fire. Sent his ashes back in a flour sack. Flour.’ She giggled. ‘Maybe the admiral baked him into a cake.’
My vision went red for a moment. This drunkard was making up lies about my family, slandering our name. Such a sin could not go unpunished.
The woman grabbed a steelworker’s shoulder, and he shoved her back. Then she threw a punch, starting a fight. After seven humiliating seconds, the woman collapsed on the floor, and the bouncer threw her out.
I slipped out a side door and watched the bruised, drunk woman stumble down the street. Dim moonlight shone off her ragged trousers. I followed her in the darkness, tightening the knapsack with my wings folded inside. My secret wings, the ace in the hole that the rest of Queen Sulphur still didn’t know about. With every step, my blood boiled hotter.
Then the woman turned on to an empty street. Time slowed down, and the rain seemed to stand still.
I unfolded my wings, stretched my Pith into my clothes, and yanked myself forward with my magic. In half a second, I grabbed the woman, pinned her arms and shot into the air.
The wind swallowed her screams.
After a minute of flying, I dropped the pretender on a pitch-black harbour crane, hundreds of feet up. It was the witching hour, and the other dockworkers had left. She could shout, but no one would hear her.
I touched down beside her. The woman gripped the steel beam beneath her, no wider than a diving board. Far below, the dark waters of the ocean crashed against the shore.
‘Y-you can have my money,’ she stuttered. ‘It isn’t much, but—’
I shoved her. She slammed down on the metal, shivering.
‘Fight back,’ I said. ‘Use your magic.’ I shoved her again. ‘You said you were special, didn’t you?’
The woman stretched her finger towards me. Her face screwed up with exertion, and her hand shook.
A yellow spark fizzled at her fingertip, then died.
I unfolded my sword. ‘Lie to me, and you’re done. Are you the former Lady Rowyna?’
‘Yes!’ cried the woman. ‘That given name is blocked from my mind, but I was her.’ She removed her wallet with a shaking hand. ‘Look at the old ID.’
I grabbed it and flipped through the contents. My hands pulled out coupons, coins, and finally, an old ID card. In place of a name, it had a serial number, just like mine.
My head spun. She was telling the truth. My mother had been born in this body, this pathetic shell. She’d Ousted this woman, taking her place, her body, her name.
‘Magic, it’s like a muscle,’ the woman choked. ‘If you don’t use it, it atrophies. I got Ousted decades ago, and I’m basically a Humdrum now.’
A gust of wind blew across the crane, and my veins ran cold. Basically a Humdrum now. She had been a proud Paragon student, a mage, and this is what she’d become.
‘If you were so strong, how did you lose the Ousting duel?’
‘I was beating the thief,’ the woman breathed. ‘Broke her damn face.’ She pointed to her crooked nose. ‘But when I had her pinned, I hesitated. My final blow could’ve killed her, so I held back, just for an instant.’ She swallowed. ‘In that sliver of mercy, the challenger destroyed me.’ The woman hunched over and began to cry. ‘Please,’ she sobbed. ‘Please, sir, don’t kill me.’
I gazed out at the ocean. Moonlight shone on a cluster of warships to the east. The Elmidde Home Fleet, led by the Adamant. The largest battleship in the Eight Oceans, a floating castle of reinforced steel. My mother’s flagship. My mother’s legacy.
She hadn’t just been handed that power. She’d fought for it, rising up from nothing to seize her position. Winning the same battle I’d lost. Me, and this broken woman.
I looked down at the shivering wretch before me. It felt like every muscle in my body was clenching, like the sheer force could snap my borrowed bones like matchsticks.
‘Body is a privilege,’ I said. ‘Memory is a privilege. Name is a privilege.’ I tossed her wallet at her face, and she barely caught it. ‘You don’t deserve any of them.’
My wings unfolded, and I soared into the darkness.
I didn’t return to the clock tower that night. I stayed up in Midtown, flying over terraced rooftops and domed museums, pacing on balustrades above damp, empty streets. As I stalked in the pale smog, the rotting threads tangled before me, an impossible knot.
This fish market job wouldn’t turn up Khaiovhe. It was too obvious, too simple. Something would go wrong. The Black Wraith would live another day.
Which meant I wasn’t going home, and sooner or later, Gage would learn the name I’d been born with. She’d learn of my machinations, of the knife I’d poised at her back. That is, if she hadn’t already.
When she learned, she would force me out of Queen Sulphur. If Nima didn’t kill me first. She’d strand me on the streets, alone. I would never find Khaiovhe and avenge my father. I would never earn my mother’s favour, or return home to a grand destiny.
But there was a path forward. A cruel, vicious path. A truth so obvious it burned like an ember in my skull.
My fellow mercenaries were criminals. Rogue mages, wanted by the Eldritch Guard for a multitude of crimes. Nima Qasemi had slaughtered two police officers, plus Prophets knew who else. Korin Nameless had helped blow up dozens of my mother’s soldiers. And Anabelle Gage had stolen a body. Maimed two Paragon students, including my family’s property. What’s more, Headmaster Carriwitch had hired all of them illegally, pursuing his redemption quest without the Guards’ knowledge.
My mother had reason to despise these people, to want them dead especially out of all the cut-throats in Lowtown. She wouldn’t care about their work, the jobs completed for Carriwitch. She would relish their skulls on her mantelpiece.
And I knew where they slept.
If I killed Qasemi and Korin, if I killed Gage, I could take the evidence to my mother. I could expose Carriwitch’s crime, dealing a blow to her political rival, all while removing three hated criminals.
The door would open again. I’d get a chance to Oust my replacement.
Khaiovhe was the better prize, of course, a thousand times better. A stronger guarantee of my mother’s approval, and vengeance for my father. But she was also a thousand times harder to find, to survive an encounter with, even as someone’s backup. Not a prize worth betting my future on. Not when I had a more certain bounty. Not when my mercenary group was about to collapse.
The sand was trickling down the hourglass. Gage would learn the truth soon. When she did, my future would shrink to a dirty mattress, rotting in Lowtown.
I reached for Samuel’s voice in my memory. The tempering insights that had kept me alive these last few months, the careful wisdom. Tell me what to do. Please.
All I heard was silence. With every day that passed, I would keep forgetting him, keep forgetting everything about my old life. I’d end up like that woman on the crane, broken and bitter and alone.
I couldn’t become like her. A de facto Humdrum, a filthy wretch. A hollow string of numbers on an identity card. I would rather perish. I would rather burn down this city, and everyone in it.
I couldn’t be paper. I had to be steel. Like Samuel. Like my mother.
The impossible knot tangled before me.
All I had to do was cut it.
Kill Gage. Take back your name.
And kill Queen Sulphur with her.
it didn’t take long for the perfect opportunity to drift into my lap.
Two days before Carriwitch’s doomed fish market job, Queen Sulphur threw a surprise birthday party for its leader, Anabelle Gage.
The grey girl hadn’t told us which day it was, but, at Korin’s behest, Nima had used Copycat to steal the information from her mind. On the twenty-second of May, right on the border of spring and summer. I donned a fetching pair of trousers and an ironed button-down with a tie under my raincoat. In the evening, when Gage came home from class, we all jumped out with balloons, sparklers flashing around us.
Then Gage had a panic attack. She flipped open her knife and backed into a corner of the dumbwaiter, shaking and wheezing. Maybe the loud noises had triggered it, the bright lights, the surprise.
Or maybe, deep down, some part of her knew what was coming.
I knelt next to her, my voice soft. ‘You’re safe,’ I lied. ‘You’re all right.’ I thumped my chest twice with my fist. The heartbeat salute. My arm felt like lead.
Gage’s skin flushed, and sweat coated her neck. Gradually, her breathing slowed, and her body stopped shaking. She wiped a tear from her cheek.
‘As one?’ I said.
She patted her chest twice. ‘As one.’
Korin and Nima thumped theirs. Korin used his fist, but Nima used a three-fingered claw with both bodies. ‘It’s the Kshatran version,’ they said. ‘Men do the fist, women do the palm. Everyone else does a claw.’
Cardamom padded over and nuzzled Gage’s leg.
‘Thanks, Paperboy.’ The girl smiled at me, but I couldn’t look her in the eye. I couldn’t turn back now. If I hesitated, I was done. Ten thousand smiles wouldn’t undo my Ousting. Everything bad that had happened to me this year, every horror, had been her fault.
