Burning Bright

“I don’t know,” Lioe said, but let herself be towed through the busy streets. Roscha paused at the first canal bridge, looking right and left as though searching for a scent, then started left along the bank. This was a narrow waterway, barely wide enough for two gondas to ride side by side, and the embankment was equally narrow, so that she had to step carefully to keep up with Roscha. She dodged another Avellar—a woman this time, but with the same familiar features shaping the hard-faced mask, the corners of this one’s mouth drawn down in a frown that was almost tragedy—and nearly ran into a street vendor, his cart folded to its minimum width. She murmured an apology, and saw Roscha beckoning from the bend in the bank ahead of them.

The streetlights were starting to come on—the sun must be down by now, Lioe realized, though it hardly seemed to make much difference in the shadowed streets—and their light fell into the canal’s dark water. A boat, a small barge with its mast unstepped and laid from bow to stern, lay at the center of one pool of light, and a woman looked up at them from the boat’s low deck. She was dressed as the Viverina, rich purple robe embroidered with dragons, sleek black wig that fell almost to her knees, skulls with bright red eyes braided into that mass, and she was laughing at them from behind the painted mask. Dozens, a hundred masks and piled cloth that must be costumes filled every available centimeter of the deck; masks hung from the horizontal mast, crowded cheek to cheek along its length, and still others dangled from the crossbar of the Viverina’s spear.

“Gelsomina,” Roscha said. “Are you still selling?”

“Since you’re here, I suppose so,” the Viverina answered. She was older than Lioe had guessed at first, about sixty, but straight as the spear she carried. “What will it be, something from the Game?”

“Yes, if you have it,” Roscha answered, and the woman beckoned to her.

“Well, come aboard, then.” She looked up at Lioe, tilting her head inside the painted mask. “And you too. Are you here for a mask?”

“I don’t know,” Lioe began, and Roscha answered for her.

“Yes, probably.” She dropped down onto the deck—not a long drop, not much more than a meter—and the boat rocked under her. Gelsomina kept her balance effortlessly, and beckoned for Lioe to follow. Lioe hesitated, but lowered herself more carefully onto the unsteady planks. The boat rocked anyway, and she steadied herself against the mast. It shifted under her hand, and the faces danced, seeming almost alive in the streetlight’s glow.

“These are beautiful,” she said, and didn’t quite realize she’d spoken aloud until Gelsomina bowed to her.

“Thank you. But then, I enjoy my work.”

“Do you have any Avellars left, Na Mina?” Roscha asked, and Gelsomina shook her head.

“No, child, not a one. There’s some off-worlder doing a scenario with him at the heart of it; I sold my last one before noon.”

“Damn,” Roscha said, and then, belatedly remembering her manners, “Na Mina, this is a friend of mine, Quinn Lioe. She’s the one who wrote that scenario.”

“I’ve heard a lot about you,” Gelsomina said. She tilted her head to one side, studying Lioe from behind the mask. “What were you looking for, do you know?”

“Thanks,” Lioe said, and heard her own uncertainty in her voice. “I didn’t really have anything in mind. I’ve never been on Burning Bright during Storm.” She scanned the rows of masks in the hopes of finding something, and, to her surprise, one face seemed to leap out at her from the row crowded on the mast. It was a full mask, with a heavy, elaborately braided wig covering the back of the head. One half of the face was plain, smooth, a bland collection of planes and angles, pleasing enough, but nothing out of the ordinary; the other was deformed and distorted like the carvings on a ritual mask, the cheek eaten to the bone, the mouth drawn down by a scar like a sneer, the eye hidden by a painted patch. And the rest of the scars were decorated, too, layered with color so that they became almost an abstract painting of a face. Lioe reached out to touch it, drawn and repelled at the same time, and Gelsomina nodded.

“That’s from one of LaChacalle’s novels—Helike, from The Witch-Vizier. Do you know it?”

“I’m afraid I don’t,” Lioe answered, and didn’t know if she was glad or sorry. The new name, the last name on the session list, had been LaChacalle. “Is LaChacalle a Gamer?”

Gelsomina shrugged one shoulder. “She used to be. I haven’t seen her much lately—she quit about when Ambidexter did. They were old friends.”

“She’s playing tonight, I think,” Lioe said. “Or someone with that name is, anyway.”

“There’s only one of her,” Gelsomina said.

“What about Hazard?” Roscha asked, and Gelsomina shook her head.

“No, but I do have Cor-Clar Sensmerce. I remember you used to play her.”

“Thanks,” Roscha said, and Gelsomina turned to the lines of masks, running her staff idly along the rows until she found the one she wanted.