Shadows Read Free

the occasional blast of spray made it as far as the cliff face.
    The path looked grim, gray, cold, and lonely.
    Perfect
, Mara thought, and set out along it.
    Her feet crunched over the salt-rotted ice covering the sand-and-pebbles beach. Just before the curve of cliff face hid it from her, she glanced back at the Secret City. Two dark figures trudged across the open space, presumably heading to the Broad Way from the stables carved into the base of the cove’s northern cliff. She recognized them instantly as Keltan and Hyram, but they had their backs to her and didn’t see her . . . which suited her fine.
    Ten more steps and they, and the cove, were lost to sight. Alone with her thoughts, she wended her way north along the narrow strip of land between the pounding waves to her left and the gray stone cliff to her right, past the entrance to the mine from which the Secret City drew the gold it occasionally used to purchase goods in the villages via children too young to be Masked.
    I can’t make the Masks Catilla wants
, she thought again as she walked. Spray touched her face. She licked salt from her lips, but lowered her head and trudged on, her breath forming white clouds, the crunch of her footsteps echoing from the cliff to her right.
I don’t know how. I need to talk to someone who knows more. I need to talk to . . .
    Her thoughts and her feet stumbled. She caught herself with a hand on an ice-coated outcropping of gray stone.
    I need to talk to my father.
    Her father had deliberately sent her into exile. At great risk to himself—uncertain if his own Mask, modified though it was, might reveal his betrayal to the Watchers—he had crafted her Mask to fail at her Masking on her fifteenth birthday . . . and then had sent word to the unMasked Army that someone with the ability to make Masks would be in the next wagonload of unMasked children sent north from Tamita to the mining camp.
    Father must have known I couldn’t really make counterfeit Masks
, Mara thought.
Which means he lied to the unMasked Army, tricking Catilla into saving me.
    But now that lie was unraveling. With the stolen Maskmaker’s clay all but gone, she could hide the truth no longer. She would have to tell Catilla that she could not provide her with the counterfeit Masks she needed.
    Unless Mara could talk to her father.
    She wanted that; wanted it so much that she wondered for a moment if she had subconsciously
made
her Masks fail.
Of course not
, she told herself: but having wondered it herself, even for a moment, she knew there was little doubt Catilla would ask her about it point-blank.
    No
, she thought.
I did everything I could. I
did.
I just don’t have the knowledge . . . or the magic. Catilla will have to see that. She’ll
have
to. And then she’ll have to figure out some way for me to go back to Tamita . . . some way for me to see my father again. She’ll
have
to.
    Won’t she?
    Mara stopped her northward wandering and wiped water from her cheeks. She told herself it was spray from the sea . . . but it was warm.
    She looked around. She’d gone past the narrow defile in the cliff that, providing the only access up from the beach for horses, led to the Secret City’s grain fields and pastures. She’d never walked any farther. The cliff curved out to sea in front of her, and the beach narrowed, so that at the tip of the headland the waves appeared to be crashing across it.
Time to head back
, she thought.
Time to face Catilla
.
    She tugged her rabbit-skin hat tighter onto her head, shrugged her coat more firmly into place, started to turn . . .
    ...and then froze as a stranger came around the shoulder of the cliff.

TWO
    Chell
    M ARA’S FIRST INSTINCT was to flee. But then an extra-large wave rolled in from the sea, doused the stranger in spray as it smashed into the rocks, and washed around his feet as it receded. He