1. Chapter 1: Escape

        Sweat poured down the woman’s face as she ducked into the alley, her breath heavy and heart pounding. Her mask, a wooden chinless piece with high cheekbones and wide eyes, chafed against her skin and rubbed her forehead raw and she wished she’d had the foresight to have bartered for a sincerity cowl, something to pad the rough edges between mask and skin. The markings, carved into its oak surface and stained as was the custom of anyone who might work with water or steam, identified her as a third daughter of the Kaplan family, a meager and unassuming family who had long made their living in kitchens throughout Tol. At a glance, most would assume by its shape and design that she made her living as a baker. Indeed, she was not untalented in a kitchen and it would not be a lie to say her ability to make a delicious apple cake changed her life. But she was no baker and this was not her mask.

It was no one’s mask, in all honesty. She’d paid a handsome sum to Giddeon, the primary mask maker of cheapside, to craft it for her. Rumor had it he was the go to man for forged and stolen masks, but it had never been proven, and her gamble paid off. The mask didn’t fit properly and had a couple of genealogical inaccuracies, but for a rush job, she could hardly complain. Had a stray member of the city guard not grown up in close acquaintanceship with the Kaplans, her deception may not have even been discovered. Such was the fickle whims of fate. Low on funds and even lower on those she could trust, she beat the crown of her head against the wall. She needed a new mask.

Peering out into the crowded streets, she scanned for anyone tailing her. Horses couldn’t easily move down the teeming avenues overrun with vendors and lookiloos readying themselves for the Festival of New Faces. Though most present were merchants, faces of white porcelain with thin eyes, tiny mouths, and a ridge surrounding the edge, people from all walks of life, gathered about eagerly. The festival would not start until sundown, but locals knew to arrive early to scope out where the good stalls and entertainment could be found. The myriad masks of every variety and color made picking out the polished copper faces of the police force, which resembled demons, quite difficult.

In the distance she spotted a pair of them, their wrought metal masks leering in twisted, toothy sneers. The unchanging menace in their faces panned over the crowd, their hidden gazes intent. These were no mere peace keepers. Their gaze was too deliberate. They must have been searching for someone, for her. Each wore the blue and gold silk robes of the common city guard. Good. She’d been spotted too recently. At worst, they might want her for false identity. Such a crime carried harsh punishments, but was not nearly so bad as that which she’d face for the theft of royal relics and the accompanying regicide. Black gloved hands rested on hilts of the traditional two blades that symbolized the power of the guard. A dagger hung at each of their shoulders, a larger sword at the waist on the same side. Images of the two guards flickered through her head, each pulling both blades free of their scabbards in one smooth motion making two clean slashes across her chest and belly, then reversing the blades in their hands for two more cuts, spilling her blood and innards before returning the blades to rest in their sheaths once more. She shuddered.

When she regained her composure, she could see them slowly making their way in her direction. She couldn’t be sure they had seen her, but didn’t dare wait around to chance it. Turning away from the ebb and flow of the assembled masses, she moved farther down the alleyway, pulling her long red hair back in a ribbon. Next, she removed the white silk robe from her lithe body, her hand shooting out to catch the small brass item she’d hidden within. Binding her treasure to her belt, she let the robe fall to the dirty alley floor and tightened the straps to her trousers and shirt, bunching up the loosest bits of fabric. Her fingers racing to undo the laces, she slid her boots free from her feet and stretched her bare toes on the cool cobblestone ground. Tying a quick knot, she tossed the boots across her shoulder.  After a quick stretch, she leapt for the wall and began to climb.

The alley was narrow, perhaps ten feet across at best, and she used it to her advantage. She moved with the grace of a cat, all spring and slender muscle, bounding back and forth from wall to wall. Each time she her feet found purchase on the sides of the adobe buildings, she pushed off hard, propelling herself once more across confines of the alley. Leaping back and forth from one wall to the other, she scaled upward the three stories or so to the flat rooftops  of the buildings surrounding the plaza. Once over the top, she crawled to the edge, crouched low, and cheered her inner gymnast.

From her perch just above the bustling marketplace, she eyed the guards snaking through the crowd below. They would pause every twenty feet or so and look around, their hidden eyes still searching the sea of masks for hers. She smiled. Still looking meant they hadn’t seen her slip away. It meant once she identified a safe rooftop escape route, she’d be home free, at least for the time being. At least for long enough to scrape together something worth bartering, something she could sell to get a new mask, maybe some new clothes.

A surge of movement on the far side of the market drew her gaze. Into the crowd burst a half dozen more guards, this time in the red and gold silk of the palace’s personal protectors. Their masks, similar to the wild demon faces of the city guard only crafted of fiery brass, seemed somehow more sinister than ever before, perhaps because she knew it was her trail they sought. Worse, she recognized the man leading the pack. Lluthor, captain of the Palace Guard. The best of the best of the best. He barked orders to his men, his voice booming from the specially carved mouth, wide cupped to help the commanding presence of his basso carry as far as needed.

“I don’t care if you have to barricade the whole square!” His words echoed through the plaza with crystal clarity despite the din of pre-festival chatter. “I want that treacherous handmaiden brought to me at once!”

The two city guards turned their attention to Lluthor’s words and hurried to him for instructions. They would no doubt abandon their search for her, the girl with the forged identity, devoting their martial attentions instead to pursuing her, the handmaiden wanted for killing Primaa Kyrii, Tol’s female diarch.

She laughed at the thought. “If only you boys knew,” she said, and pulled away from the edge. Below her, the city guards discussion grew more excited. No doubt they’d put two and two together and were eager to prove their competence to Lluthor and perhaps earn some sort of promotion, if not in this life than in the next. The guards fanned their way through the crowd, spreading out and shouting to one another and stopping any bakers they found. She cursed her luck. If they saw the robe, they could track her to the roof. Why hadn’t she simply bundled the robe up and taken it with her?

“Because you would be as identifiable as a naked face,” she said to herself. “Relax. You were wise to leave it.”

She moved back toward the gap at the alley and took several steps back. Then, after focusing her thoughts and clearing her mind, she ran, darting forward with every ounce of speed she could muster. As her feet hit the ledge, she kicked off, sending her body somersaulting across the gap to the neighboring building. She cleared the distance with ease, and came to a rolling stop, ending in a hunter’s crouch. She froze and waited and listened. Nothing but the murmur of the people of Tol below. She breathed a sigh of relief.

“On the roof!” Lluthor bellowed.

“Can’t blame a girl for hoping.”

She rose rapidly and sprinted from rooftop to rooftop, diving across alleys and scaling up laundry lines, moving ever higher in a desperate attempt to evade her would-be captors. All the while, she could feel the brass ring, a foot across and covered in hinges and joints, slapping against her hips. She could always get away, if she needed to. She could use the iris. The temptation tugged at her thoughts. It would be so easy.

“No,” she scolded herself. “You can’t leave it behind. Fate put it in your hands, not theirs.”

Charging up from a hatchway, two guards joined her on the roof, cutting her off. She felt her bare feet skid to a halt on the rough surface beneath her, scraping at her heels. She turned to go back the way she came, but saw two more waiting on the roof she’d just abandoned. She could tell they had no intention of leaping across. Not everyone could easily clear a fifteen foot gap. Still, if she hoped to retreat, she would have to deal with them, and they would be ready for her.

“That was foolish,” she muttered to herself. “Running in a straight line, letting them predict your movements. Foolish!”

The two guards on her building closed in, hands eager to draw their paired blades. The sun, slowly sinking toward the horizon, glinted off their devil’s masks, casting fire into their eyes. Whoever designed the guard uniforms long ago had done a proper job of it. Fear boiled within her heart.

“Handmaiden Gengii Taler, you are hereby ordered to submit yourself to lawful arrest for the murder of the Primaa Kyrii and the theft of the Queen’s Iris.”

“Would you believe I’m innocent?” she asked with an awkward laugh.

They spoke not a word in response. Instead, both drew blades, one pointing his sword at the iris dangling from her belt, the other poised to strike with a moment’s notice. Though they could not see it, beneath her mask, she smiled. One moment’s worth of surprise. She could work with that. City guard were so slow to react. Thank fate the palace guard hadn’t caught her first.

In the blink of an eye, she dropped low and kicked her right foot out in a wide sweeping arch, knocking the threatening guard to his back with a thud. The other moved to slash with his paired blades, but a quick roll to the side and she was out of harm’s way. She crouched low, her head no more than a foot and a half above the ground. She swayed back and forth with the lethal grace of a fierce jungle predator ready to pounce. The fallen guard, the taller of the two, rose to his feet and eyed the woman cautiously as her slinking body crept in feral circles around them. She could see the fear in their eyes, the hesitation. Seizing her moment, she charged the shorter one and leapt, kicking her feet out in front of her. She connected cleanly with the man’s chest.

Despite her small size, she carried a surprising amount of momentum. The shorter guard lurched backward, trying to regain his footing, only to realize too late he’d run out of roof. He windmilled his arms wildly and fell to ground far below, landing in a grotesque pose, his arms and legs contorted into helpless, sickening angles. His mask came loose, revealing a face frozen in terror and pain still half hidden behind the metal demon head. Following behind, she spun her nimble frame and caught hold of the roof ledge. The taller guard ran to her, his blades arching down exposed at her fingertips. Glancing up, she saw the gleam of razor sharp metal cascade toward her and kicked off the wall, spinning as she flew across the alley to the building beside her. Too late, she realized the other two guards had readied themselves to intercept her.

Her fingers caught hold of the roof, but she knew she couldn’t stay long. In a moment, they would have her arms and from there, the rest of her. Looking around, she could see where someone had posted a pole outside of a window to hang laundry. Taking a deep breath, she let go and plummeted to the ground below her. Gleaming steel carved deep into the brick ledge where her fingers had been a half second before.

Dropping quickly, she held her hands out until she felt the cold impact of her palms slapping against the pole. Her grip tightened and she swung, redirecting her momentum and heaving herself forward. Her body arched through the air and tucked into itself, bracing for impact. When she hit the ground a second later, she rolled and rose to her feet in one fluid motion. Peering to the rooftops high above her, she saw the three remaining guards gazing down, sizing up their fleeing prey, looking for any injury or display of weakness before continuing the pursuit. She simply chuckled and brushed the dust from her clothes.

“Sorry, boys! It seems I was a gymnast in my last cycle!” she called to them with a grin. “Or a perhaps cat!”

She turned to dart away into the teeming streets of the market square, hoping to vanish into the crowd. The guards had all scattered in pursuit, leaving the forming bazaar mostly free of Lluthor’s patrols. She put foot to pavement and sprinted down the narrow confines of the alleyway, leaping over the body of the fallen guard and making her way the safety of numbers.

Before she could get away, she stopped herself, her shoulders sinking in defeat at the hands of her panged conscience. She turned and walked back to the guard, kneeling beside his head. His mask had come loose on impact and slipped partially free of his face. She could see the wretched scream frozen on his lips, his eyes wide and staring blankly into nothingness. With delicate care, she took his demon head mask and slid it back onto the body. Her movements seemed almost reverent, despite the quickness of it.

“I apologize for your indecency,” she said to the body. “You were a necessary sacrifice, and we should both be at peace knowing that in giving your life for Tol, you have completed your cycle. May your next life be more peaceful.”

Without another word, she rose and sprinted into the crowd and in a moment had vanished entirely.

A half hour later, she had made her way to the front gate. For a brief moment, she contemplated making a run for it. She would be free of the chase, would no more have to hide. Of course, if she wanted to blend in, she would have to leave the mask behind, lest anyone quickly identify her as a citizen of Tol. She had no desire for that sort of attention. On the other hand, she had lived her whole life within the great walled metropolis. She couldn’t fathom living bare faced. No one she met would understand the shame she felt, but she would know. It would be her own secret sin, eating at her from the inside. Corrupting her. She couldn’t abandon the lot fate dealt her. Only cowards did that. Besides, exile solved nothing, changed nothing. She had to stay in Tol until things were safe again. Otherwise, the same thing would happen to the next girl to come along and replace her. She had to change masks again, had to keep moving.

From her perch in the shadows at the top of a small flight of stairs, she eyed the tourists flooding into town. One of them would have to take the fall for her. One poor soul would be her patsy. But who was to say, she mused to herself, that such wasn’t their fate to begin with? Perhaps taking her punishment would complete their cycle. They could be reborn one step closer to perfection. Perhaps there was a separate cycle for victims, to experience misfortune, injustice, and cruelty that their soul might better know kindness and fairness in future incarnations. Her feelings of guilt eased somewhat as she considered the idea. Yes, there must be a cycle for victims, just as there were cycles for bankers and tailors and kings and so on. Misery seemed as important a lesson as literacy and proper cooking techniques. Humanity, after all, existed to learn all there was to know, to achieve perfection of spirit that they might one day splinter into the soul shards of a new people who would in turn learn and grow through life cycle after life cycle until they too had reached perfection and splintered into the seeds of their own new world. As life begat life, so worlds begat worlds. Who was she to deprive another the opportunity to experience to knowledge of injustice?

The tourists poured in through the city gates and filed past sentry posts, where each signed up for a temporary mask, featureless except for two eye holes and chinless mouth. Each bore a letter and number identifying the gate and the order in which its bearer entered, and each was color coded by gender. Green for girls and blue for boys. One of these hundreds of strangers slipping into her city would be the decoy she needed.

She filed each face signing up for a new mask into appropriate categories based on gender, height, weight, build, skin tone, eye color, hair color and length. Most were dismissed outright. Red, especially the flaming sunset orange of her own head, was not a shade found too often in this realm. Perhaps one in a hundred. The insular population of Tol had skewed the numbers closer to one in fifty, but she couldn’t steal a mask from a local. They would notice. But a tourist, a random traveler in town for the Festival of New Faces, they wouldn’t know one mask from another. They lacked the knowledge of Tol heraldry to spot the difference. She just needed to find the right one.

One by one, she ruled them out as they came. Too tall. Too fat. Too young. Hair not red enough. This one had the wrong eyes. That one seemed too knowledgeable. She had begun to despair that she might never find an appropriate scape goat. The probabilities didn’t seem in her favor. One in a hundred had hair of her shade. Half were the wrong gender. One in two hundred. While blue wasn’t an uncommon eye color, perhaps only a third of all eyes were blue, brown being the majority. One in six hundred. She was of average height, meaning only  twenty five percent had to be tossed outright. One in seven-fifty. She was skinnier and more athletic, which skewed the numbers still more out of her favor. At an optimistic estimate, she figured her odds were one in a thousand. Perhaps ten thousand tourists wold come to the festival, passing through one of four gates, and many had come through before she even arrived. She’d be lucky to find even one. And still they kept coming. Too short. Too old. Freckled arms.

A small contingent of city guards passed by, establishing an air of control and authority over the immigration proceedings. Tourists loved the sight of a polished police presence. She ducked deeper into the shadows, pressed herself flush against a wall. She hadn’t been seen, not yet, but at any moment her luck could turn. It had done nothing but turn against her for the past several days, and she had no intentions of betting today would finally submit to the law of averages. She’d almost turned to flee when she spotted her, the perfect mark. Medium height, lean. Good complexion. Curly orange hair down to her shoulders. The right expression of naivety on her face. She couldn’t tell eye color from this distance, but with everything else so perfect, she didn’t care. She could take that risk.

She watched with baited breath, the hot wet air clinging to the inside of her mask around the nose. This stranger, this doppleganger, stood outside the city gates for what felt like eternity, talking to some guy. Some utterly average, inconsequential guy. Big and oafish. She worried this girl might change her mind. She seemed conflicted. He seemed upset.  It could go either way.

“Say something foolish,” she muttered under her breath to the ogre holding up her lost twin. “Infuriate her. Send her storming off through the gates!”

Not that she wished any more ill will upon her target than necessary, but she wished less to be caught, to be dragged before Lluthor and face summary execution. The fates must have heard her pleas, for a moment later, the strange woman made her way through the checkpoints, collected her mask. S-741 Green. She chanted it to herself over and over as she slipped from the door and followed the young woman through the crowd.

S-741 Green. S-741 Green.

Just stay there.

S-741 Green.

Good girl. Don’t stray too far.

S-741 Green. S-741 Green.

“Later tonight,” she thought to herself as she trailed the young woman through the crowd, “you have a date with the captain of the guard and I have a date with your mask.”