Page 30 of The Darkening (The Darkening)

Within the bundle of cloth is a copper mask; a mold of a face. She sets to work, holding it in one hand, with the other drawing an ikon on the inside of the mask. Periodically she glances up at me, with the furrowed focus of an artist drawing from life.

At last, she shows me the inside. I can’t make out where each ikon starts and ends; she must have looped together a dozen to create such an intricate cat’s cradle of lines.

She raises the mask to my face, the ikon-lined copper filling my vision. “Don’t close your eyes, and don’t move.”

The mask is cool on my skin. Then the coolness turns to ice. A throbbing pain begins, like a distant drumbeat, getting closer and sharper. My eyes tear up and my vision blurs. I don’t move.

The pain settles into a dull buzz, as if my face had gone to sleep and is now waking up.

She pulls the mask away. “All right, give it a moment to take. Let’s do your hair in the meanwhile.”

I twist to look in the mirror, but she holds me still.

“You’ll have a chance to take it all in at once.”

At once? “What more is there?”

“The folks of the third live in the sun. It lightens their hair.”

She stirs something in a bowl, seeming for a moment a potionsmaker right out of a storybook, and then she smooths something cold and wet onto my scalp. It smells awful. She brushes some on my eyebrows, and they start to tingle.

“It should last a good few weeks, till your hair grows.” She piles my hair on top of my head and guides me to a stone basin, where she has me bend over while she pours cold water from a pitcher over my scalp and rinses out the smelly muck. A lock of my hair curls against the stone, now a touch warmer than its usual black.

A trickle of water runs down the back of my neck as she shepherds me back to my seat.

She finishes with my hair and rummages in a crate and comes back with a little pot of kohl and brush. “Close your eyes.” She grips my chin with one hand, and I feel the coarse bristles along my lashes.

“You have good eyes. Thoughtful, kind ones. The kind you can just point at someone and let them talk.”

She instructs me on how to apply the cosmetics, showing me how to flick the little brushes, how much kohl to apply.

Carver lets go of my chin and steps back. “Take a look.”

She holds out a circle of polished silver. A girl looks back at me, who blinks when I blink, who leans forward as I lean forward. Her dark hair frames a softer face than mine; her high cheekbones slope gently instead of curving sharply; her chin is a little pointier, a little daintier. Her eyes are the same as mine, but rimmed in kohl, they’re as large as an owl’s. She’s sweeter than I’ve ever been, but the look in her eyes isn’t quite innocent. She looks nothing like Ma.

I turn my head this way and that, taking in the new angles. I can use this face.

“How’d I do?”

“Perfect.”

Izamal-but-call-me-Iz sits on the lip of the well, petting a gray cat while another curls up at his feet.

He plays well the part of a fifth-ringer without a home, except... “Your boots give you away, you know.”

He looks down at them, then at me. “Vesper?”

I lower my shawl and wink. “Good enough?”

His expression turns impressed. “More than. Dalca’ll fall at your feet. But—” His gaze sweeps down my overdress. “Well, I figured—you don’t have any other clothes, do you?”

My voice is dry. “I’m afraid they burned to a crisp. Along with everything I own and just about everyone I loved.”

Izamal winces. “Right, yes—I didn’t mean—I got these.”

He hands me a bundle of finely spun clothing, made of something much softer than mosscloth.

I don’t know what to say, so I incline my head in thanks.

“That’s good. Very patrician.” Izamal gives me a gentle smile. “Meet me at first light, at the white gates to the third.”