Chương 11: A Thousand Faces

I locked Sinon's door and stood in the corridor with the lantern, taking a moment to orient myself. The Misericordia had not changed, but something inside me had, and I felt adrift in a place that had grown to be an extension of my body. Then I did something I had not done in years. I went straight down the central spine, cutting through the high-vaulted marble corridors of the main rooms. The outer ring hugs the perimeter walls.

Wide enough for two biers to pass, it is nevertheless the slow way down from the Regesta to the tavern. Amalia once asked why I never used the main hallways. I had needed time to give her an answer, and even then I was not sure it was complete. Now, turning into the Facerium, I understood the core of my answer to be true. Hundreds of bronze faces looked down from the walls and ceiling, each cast for an ochre whose family could afford the metal and a place to hang it.

Their privilege had followed them even here, into the Misericordia, where all men should have found equality in death. Nello was at his post by the west door, on the stool beside the brazier basket, a long iron poker laid across his knees and coal-dust to the wrists. Seventeen, and the only other living soul in the building at this hour. He stood as I came down the aisle and caught himself against a brazier stand.

"Examiner. Finally done for the night?"

"Close, Master Barzi. I just need to take a look at the beggar one final time."

"Were you not down there an hour ago?"

"I forgot something down there." I paused.

"I took out my house-keys when I examined him, and then I left them down there."

"Of course, Ser." He was a good kid, and I was making his night awkward.

"I noticed that the third brazier from the west door is drawing badly again," I said, to say something.

"Corso knows, and he was supposed to fix it, but you know what he is like. Perhaps you can take a look at the flue at the west steeple? You know the pigeons always nest where it comes out."

"Yes, Ser!" he said, more enthusiastically this time, happy to be given a task.

"But wait for dawn," I added.

"And ask Corso to hold a rope for you. It rained earlier, and the roof will be too easy to slip on."

"We will get it fixed, quaesitor Vale. Don't you worry."

"Right," I said, and was about to leave when he spoke again.

"Ser, you never come down this way. Through the faces-hall."

"Tonight I do," I said, hoping that would be it.

"Why?" I breathed out. I wanted to hurry down to the tavern, to take the next step into my life with a class — whatever that step may be. But the boy spent night after night, doing a job few others in the city would, and he did it with care and enthusiasm. He deserved better from me.

"What are you asking? Why I came this way tonight, or why I normally avoid it?"

"Both, I suppose." I did not immediately answer, instead asking him a question. Perhaps the boy even had knowledge useful in answering one of the night's small mysteries.

"Who pays for all this, Nello?" I gestured up at the bronze faces looking down on us from the walls and ceiling. They were hung by family. The walls had filled years ago; now new faces hung in ranks before the old ones, layer upon layer. He looked up at the walls as he answered.

"The families. Who else? A face up there means someone paid to have it cast and for the bronze. There's a waiting list for the lower tiers. The high ones near the vault are for the old houses." He looked down from the wall and toward me.

"My uncle in the Silk quarter says a good placement costs more than his house."

"And the ones nobody pays for?"

"Those stay." He jerked his chin toward the far end of the hall.

"The small auctions sell funerary lamps, plaques, urn fittings. Not faces. A family can stop paying for its place, but nobody carries the face out."

"Nello. When you work nights, do you always keep vigil from this place?" This story is posted elsewhere by the author. Help them out by reading the authentic version.

"I guess." He scratched his chin.

"I will go rounds, but I come back here. I… I guess I like it here."

"So you know about these masks." I kept my voice intentionally flat.

"Did you ever see any of them… go out?"

"What do you mean, out?"

"Do they leave this room? To be… perhaps returned, rehung, moved?" He leaned the poker against the stand and thought about it.

"No," he said slowly.

"That's the thing, isn't it? They come in and they stay. I've been here two years, and I know these faces. I look at them every night. There are always new ones coming in, but I've never once seen one missing." He hesitated.

"Why?"

"An idle question. Nothing more." I had turned to go when he spoke again, to my back.

"Ser. The old man came through me, you know. The beggar. Wednesday night." I stopped, and looked back over my shoulder.

"Yes?" I asked, softly.

"I hope you figure it out. Whatever the mystery about him is. That is all." I didn't answer this time, but left him there at his braziers and his thousand faces, heading down towards the tavern. The coemeterium smelled of a dozen corpses slowly decaying. The beggar lay where I had left him. Forearm open, no cloth over him, the lamp still directed at the incision. How long had it been since I did that? An hour? It felt like a lifetime.

I set the lantern on the shelf and threaded a needle, drawing the edges of the long scar back together and stitching the skin as I had stitched ten thousand corpses before him. I pulled tighter and used more force than I would have if he were alive, overlapping the folds of skin. Once he began to swell, the wound would gape if I did not do this right. I tied off the last stitch and laid the arm straight at his side and then I sat there for a moment as I looked at his face. Thanks, old man.

Whatever that ring was, I think it will change things for me. As thanks, I will find out what happened to— The door banged open.

"Marek?" Corso's voice preceded the man himself. Was it dawn already? I had time to wonder before he stood before me.

"You're here. At this hour, in— Marek, what are you wearing? Are you all right?"

"My old clothes," I said.

"Did you…" He looked at me, his normal grin faded behind an expression that was either suspicion or compassion.

"Did you not go home?"

"I…" I put the needle down and looked at him.

"I came down to try to figure him out. A last chance before he goes out the doors. I couldn't sleep, so—""You are such a strange man, Vale. But you are yourself. Did you find anything?" His grin slipped back on his face, but then he bent, and noticed where the tunic was folded up on his arm. The grin froze in position, and he lifted the arm up.

"You did this tonight," he said, indicating the new stitching.

"Just now."

"On a black-strip body. Hours before the cart." He let the arm fall back down.

"Why?" Because I cut him open to rob him, and to send him to the pits with that open wound would have been the greatest injustice I ever did anyone, living or dead.

"Go and put the kettle on, Corso."

"Vale! That's not—""Kettle first. I need a cup, Corso. Give me a minute." He grumbled something and went. I heard him clattering in the back room, and then his voice came through the doorway.

"You haven't slept at all, have you?"

"No."

"And it's not just about him." A pause. The kettle's iron scrape.

"The stitching, I mean. That's not all of it." I looked down at my hands. At the black ring.

"No," I said.

"It's not just him."

"You're going to tell me." We both knew that. I wanted to tell him, to shout, to share the news of my class, to sing my fortunes. It felt strange to hold something so momentous in. Why could everyone not see that the world had shifted overnight?

"Not here," I said.

"Not in the Misericordia." Corso came back to the doorway, arms folded, leaning against the frame.

"Something happened last night. After I left." I just nodded.

"Something you're not going to put in any report."

"Corso."

"I'm only asking because if I have to lose my memory for the morning, I'd like fair warning." I almost smiled. Almost.

"Nothing like that. Nothing that even matters if I write it down. I think. We can send the man and the others out with the black-cart. And we can see who comes in today. We can wash their bodies, and see if we can summon up some minor mysteries. At the end of today," I looked at him and met his eyes, so he could see the truth of it, "every single report will be written and signed, truthfully and timely."

"So if Sinon asks?"

"Tell him. You saw me here when you arrived to work. And if he asks further, I was solving the mystery with the beggar. It's even true." I smiled at him.

"But yes, there's more. Finish your shift," I said.

"I will finish mine, and then—" I stopped. When had I last done this?

"Then come and have a drink with me. The Selvadego, if it's still standing. I will pay." I did not think I had gone out for a drink in many months. The blue always preferred my apartment. Corso's eyebrows went up.

"Your coin. Saints preserve us. Should I fetch a witness? The day Vale invites me to a real tavern, and not this"—he gestured at the coemeterium around us—"is a day to remember."

"I'm serious, Corso."

"I know you are. That's what's frightening me." He pushed off the doorframe and came and stood across the table from me, and for a moment the grin was gone entirely. Instead, his face simply showed worry.

"Whatever it is, Marek. It can keep until evening?"

"It can keep."

"And you're not in trouble?"

"Not yet," I said, before I thought better of it. He stared at me.

"That was supposed to be the easy one."

"One drink," I said.

"I'll tell you what I can." Corso held my gaze a long moment, then shook his head slowly, and the grin came back, but gentler.

"The Selvadego, then. After our shifts. And Vale—""Yes."

"Whatever you've got yourself into, you could have done worse than a friend who puts the kettle on when he's told. You wait here, and I will make you your tea." He walked past me, headed for the kettle, and paused at the door.

"I'll get the first round. You get a second. This sounds like a two-wine conversation, and I suspect you need your coin for whatever is coming." Then he left the room for the kettle, and I answered an empty tavern.

"For now. Perhaps." 300 florins for whatever is linked to the mask. And what else may be out there.