A Mask
,
they said.
Does it matter which one?
And here she is. This is the woman who crushed my
parents under her steel-bottomed boot, who brought the Resistance to its knees
88
by killing the greatest leaders it ever had.
How did she do it? How, when my parents were such masters of concealment
that few knew what they looked like, let alone how to find them?
The traitor.
Someone swore allegiance to the Commandant. Someone my
parents trusted.
Did Mazen know he was sending me into the lair of my parents’ murderer?
He’s a stern man, but he doesn’t seem like a willfully cruel one.
“If you cross me”—the Commandant holds my eyes relentlessly—“you’ll
join the faces on that wall. Do you understand?”
Ripping my gaze from my parents, I nod, trembling in my struggle not to
allow my body to betray my shock. My words are a strangled whisper.
“I understand.”
“Good.” She goes to the door and pulls on a cord. Moments later, the one-
eyed girl appears to escort me downstairs. The Commandant closes the door
behind me, and anger rises in me like a sickness. I want to turn around and attack
the woman. I want to scream at her.
You killed my mother, who had a lion’s heart,
and my sister, who laughed like the rain, and my father, who captured truth with
a few strokes of a pen. You took them from me. You took them from this world.
But I don’t turn back. Darin’s voice comes to me again.
Save me, Laia.
Remember why you’re here. To spy.
Skies. I didn’t notice anything in the Commandant’s office except for her wall
of death. The next time I go in, I have to pay closer attention. She doesn’t know I
can read. I might learn something just by glancing at the papers on her desk.
My mind occupied, I barely hear the feather-light whisper of the girl as it
drifts past my ear.
“Are you all right?”
Though she is only a few inches smaller than me, she seems tiny somehow,
her stick-thin body swimming in her dress, her face pinched and frightened, like
that of a starved mouse. A morbid part of me wants to ask her how she lost her
eye.
“I’m fine,” I say. “Don’t think I got on her good side, though.”
“She doesn’t have a good side.”
That’s clear enough. “What’s your name?”
“I—I don’t have a name,” the girl says. “None of us do.”
Her hand strays to her eyepatch, and I suddenly feel sick. Is that what
happened to this girl? She told someone her name and she had her eye gouged
out?
89
“Be careful,” she says softly. “The Commandant sees things. Knows things
she shouldn’t.” The girl hurries ahead of me, as if wishing to physically escape
the words she’s just spoken. “Come, I’m supposed to take you to Cook.”
We make our way to the kitchen, and as soon as I walk in, I feel better. The
space is wide, warm, and well lit, with a giant hearth and stove squatting in one
corner and a wooden worktable sprawled in the center. The roof drips with
strings of shriveled red peppers and paper-skinned onions. A spice-laden shelf
runs along one wall, and the scent of lemon and cardamom permeates the air. If
not for the largeness of the place, I could be back in Nan’s kitchen.
A stack of dirty pots rises from a sink, and a kettle of water boils on the stove.
Someone has laid out a tray with biscuits and jam. A small, white-haired woman
in a diamond-patterned dress identical to mine stands at the worktable, chopping
an onion with her back to us. Beyond her is a screened door that leads outside.
“Cook,” the girl says. “This is—”
“Kitchen-Girl,” the woman addresses her without turning. Her voice is
strange—raspy, as if she’s ill. “Didn’t I ask you to wash those pots hours ago?”
Kitchen-Girl doesn’t get a chance to protest. “Stop your dawdling and get to it,”
the woman snaps. “Or you’ll be sleeping with an empty belly, and I’ll not feel a
shred of guilt.”
When the girl grabs her apron, Cook turns from her onion, and I stifle a gasp,
trying not to gawp at the ruin of her face. Ropy, vivid red scars run from her
forehead down across her cheeks, lips, and chin, all the way into the high neck of
her black dress. It looks as though a wild animal clawed her to shreds and she
had the misfortune of surviving. Only her eyes, a dark, agate blue, remain whole.
“Who—” She takes me in, standing unnaturally still. Then, without
explanation, she turns and limps out the back door.
I look at Kitchen-Girl for aid. “I didn’t mean to stare.”
“Cook?” Kitchen-Girl moves timidly to the door, opening it a crack. “Cook?”
When no response comes, Kitchen-Girl glances between me and the door.
The kettle on the stove whistles shrilly.
“It’s nearly ninth bell.” She twists her hands together. “That’s when the
Commandant has evening tea. You’re to take it up, but if you’re late . . . the
Commandant . . . she’ll—”
“She’ll what?”
“She—she’ll be angry.” Terror—true, animal terror—fills the girl’s face.
“Right,” I say. Kitchen-Girl’s fear is contagious, and I hurriedly pour water
from the kettle into the mug on the tray. “How does she take it? Sugar? Cream?”
90
“She takes cream.” The girl rushes to a cupboard and pulls out a covered pail,
spilling some of the milk. “Oh!”
“Here.” I take the pail from her and spoon out the cream, trying to stay calm.
“See? All done, I’ll just clean up—”
“There’s no time.” The girl shoves the tray into my arms and pushes me
toward the hall. “Please—hurry. It’s almost—”
The bells begin to toll.
“Go,” the girl says. “Get up there before the last bell!”
The stairs are steep, and I’m walking too fast. The tray lists, and I barely have
a chance to grab the cream pot before the teaspoon clatters to the ground. The
bell tolls for a ninth time and falls silent.
Do'stlaringiz bilan baham: |