Night of Masks and Knives: Book 1 – Chapter 3

“Up. Malin, get up.”

I groaned against whatever nudged my hip. A bump, then another. Something firm and hard kept tapping at my bones. I’d cut it to pieces should it touch me again.

″Leave me,” I mumbled.

″Bleeding skies.” Thick, strong hands were all at once curling beneath my arms. A little shriek scraped out of my throat as instinct demanded I thrash and fight. Until a throaty chuckle rumbled through my blood. “By the gods, girl. Do you wake like a feral cat every morning?”

″Ansel.” My eyes adjusted to the dark and I shoved him back. With an irritated sigh, I brushed off the pieces of hay stuck to my trousers and hair. “What are you doing here?”

One look outside showed the sun had not even considered waking yet.

″We have work to do.” Ansel dropped a spade at my feet. He was Hagen’s closest friend, to the disappointment of my stepfather, and had the bulky shape of a berserker warrior. But his heart was kind and good.

Since Hagen’s arrest, Ansel had stepped into a position where he took pride in treating me like a helpless younger sister.

″What?” I scrubbed the sleep from my eyes. “Why now?”

″Master Strom received word a prison transport is arriving today.” Ansel’s white smile broke the darkness.

My pulse pounded in my skull. I forgot to breathe. Little by little a smile—one of both relief and disbelief—cut over my mouth. “A prison . . .” I curled my fingers around Ansel’s wrist. “Is it Hagen?”

Ansel laughed softly. “I’d daresay it is, Mal. Your stepfather wants the grounds prepared for his return.”

Hagen. My brother. The only man in House Strom who cared at all if I lived was returning home!

Most of my life he’d traveled to the Northern Kingdoms on foreign business for House Strom. I didn’t know what sort of business, he never told me, never let me ask much, but I didn’t care. So long as he returned.

Until two turns ago, he didn’t.

To have him come home . . .

I hurried and smoothed the ratted mess of my hair, tied it in a loose braid, then tugged on my only pair of boiled leather boots. In moments I slid among the groundskeepers and followed Ansel’s orders.

By the time morning light chased away the mists of dawn, I’d cut down wild grass along the front path, fed goats, the mares, and managed to catch a goose for Cook to roast. Beads of sweat gathered over my brow as I plucked a few bitter roots and turnips for the feast my stepfather would surely demand tonight.

″Malin, get to the hogs, girl. The damn pen broke open.” From the front of the longhouse, my stepfather locked me in a hard glare.

I nodded and used the back of my hand to wipe the grime from my eyes. “Yes, Daj.”

Jens Strom had a powerful voice like the waves on the Howl. The sound of it carried in every movement of the manor. From the shudder of the breeze in the branches, to the clatter of wooden plates in the cooking rooms. When my stepfather spoke, the estate listened.

A burly man with thick arms, strong as stone. His beard was braided in the center, then to show his rank as a nobleman, the sides of his russet hair were shorn to his skull, a long ridge of a braid ran down the middle. Runes were inked into his scalp and cheekbones. Protection. Strength. Prosperity. All the markings of a nobleman.

I was glad for the Strom wealth, though. Without it, Jens would be an Alver pup at the masquerade with the rest of us.

He was an Anomali like me. A name for mesmer that was unknown, strange, powerful.

From clues he left, I’d deduced my stepfather had some kind of gift with lies and truth. Something about controlling what words were spoken and what tales were told.

Such a gift could be useful if you swindled your way to nobility. If victims could not speak the truth, who could stop you? I must’ve been a little wicked myself because I cared little if Jens rose to wealth dishonorably. His purse kept the lot of us free Alvers, and he had enough influence to keep the truth of my mesmer hidden.

For some reason, he did.

As far as I knew, Ivar had no idea the stepdaughter of House Strom was anything but utterly ordinary.

Jens did not love me, but he gave me his name, kept me with a roof over my head, and meals in my belly. By law he did not need to. As his dead wife’s daughter, Jens was not bound to me; he hadn’t been bound to me for nearly my entire life.

Most days I resented him, ached for him to break his back doing endless work like the rest of us, but part of me loved him for keeping me from a life at a cheer house, or skin and bones in the gutter.

And on a day like today, he could ask me to do anything, and I’d do it without a second thought.

Hagen would be here soon.

″Malin,” Jens snapped as I handed the basket of vegetables to another servant. “When you finish, I want you to keep to the stables. Understand?”

My mouth parted. “But I had hoped—”

″Is there a problem?”

″I hoped . . . I wanted to meet with Hagen, Daj. It’s been so long, I thought I might join tonight at the main house.”

A wicked sort of laughter echoed across the grounds. “The little mouse? Inside with us? We wouldn’t shame my dear brother with such a sight his first night back.”

Bard emerged from the longhouse and bit into a ripe, red blood apple. Juices dripped down his strong chin. To some, Bard was handsome. Dignified. The heir of House Strom.

To me he was cruel and spoiled to the fibers of his bones.

An embarrassing knot tightened in my throat. “I did not mean any disrespect, but . . . I am Hagen’s sister too.”

Bard laughed and took another bite. “Tell me, little mouse. What claim do you have on anything in this house? You’re lucky to have a roof to call yours.”

″I am entitled to my mother’s portion of House Strom.” By the hells, what was I doing? I blamed the rush of delirious pain on the thought of being banished from Hagen a moment longer.

My outburst stopped more than one servant to pause and watch. Some with horror, others with a thrill in their eyes that something interesting might happen at House Strom at long last.

″Your mother?” Bard tossed the half-eaten apple and took a step closer, his voice rife in petulant irony. “Oh, poor little sister. Do you not realize your whore of a mother is dead?”

″Enough,” Jens snapped. His eyes narrowed in a look of . . . disgust, maybe disdain. Perhaps something else. “Malin, you will do as you’re told. I do not want to see your face near the main house. That is my final word, girl.”

Bard winked. I’d like to ram the point of my knife into his leg to wipe the grin from his face. Instead, like always, I nodded. I bent to the word of my stepfather, picked up the spade, and turned away toward the hog pen.

The cobbled path wrapped around the main longhouse. Jens didn’t need to have stock or pens of hogs. He was a man of weaponry. One of the trusted forgers of the Black Palace armory. If I believed him to be a kind man, I might think my stepfather added smelly pens and lush gardens to have more work for his servants, so he could justify keeping them paid and off the streets.

But he was not a man I’d call kind, so he must simply like the presence of stupid creatures like escapist hogs.

At the pen my throat dried until it was hard to swallow.

Elof stood inside, adjusting the broken latch.

Guilt plunged into my chest like a knife whenever my heart skipped at the sight of the man. As if I were betraying the only boy I’d ever loved by this unseemly attraction to another. Another who was irritable and, frankly, rude.

Elof lifted his eyes. “Need something ?”

″Not from you.”

Elof didn’t pause his work, but that intoxicating twitch played at his mouth again. “How could you know such a thing?”

″Hmm. Call it a bit of indigestion telling me you would never have anything I want.”

″You speak in such definitive ways. I’ve been told by many I have a talent at delivering one’s deepest desires.”

My insides twisted. His words dripped in underlying meanings, and I didn’t want to dig into them.

″What an unpleasant surprise to have you here during the day.”

″I am needed here today.”

I rolled my eyes and hurried to the other side of the gate where one of the hogs had slipped through. The smallest and swiftest. I fought to catch the animal until my lungs burned.

It could not be understated how much I resented being forced to ask Elof for help.

He said nothing, but the gleam in those ocean eyes told me he was shouting all the ways he had something I needed until the animal was safely behind the repaired gate.

″The sun is setting, . You ought to head back to your little bed.”

I tucked pieces of my sweaty, dirty hair behind my ear. “And you should go find someone else to torment.”

″Well spoke, . No truly, I’m wounded.”

″Good.”

. I had less wit than a bleeding stone, and Elof knew it. His arrogant laughter stuck in me like broken glass as I finished packing the newly straightened posts with mud and clay and he went back to feeding the stupid hogs.

My work had slowed since my stepfather demanded I stay hidden. What was so terrible about allowing me near Hagen? Jens knew we were close; he’d never tried to keep us apart. One of those suspiciously kind acts I didn’t understand. But now it was as if he knew something more and kept me in the dark because he didn’t want me to be privy to his secrets.

″It is probably for the best you are out of the way tonight, .” Elof said, leaning one elbow over the end of his spade.

I glared at him. “What?”

″Tonight, when your brother returns. I think it is wise to stay out of the way.”

Did I speak out loud about Hagen? Or did my face merely scream I was a little more broken being unable to see my brother? I ignored him and wiped my muddy hands on my trousers.

Elof’s voice turned dark. “In fact, I think you ought to hurry back to your loft. Now.”

″You don’t get to—”

Words choked off at the shudder of wheels over grit and pebbles. My heart stilled in my chest. I held my breath and turned toward the front drive of House Strom.

By the gods. Black Palace coaches. Hagen. My blood raced, and a watery smile couldn’t be held back.

Until the dream turned to a wretched reality.

″Dammit.” Elof’s curse was another knife in the chest, proof what I was seeing was true.

″The masquerade,” I said under my breath. Not Black Palace coaches. These were transport carriages with painted masks on the sides, and bars over the windows. The sort of wagons used to trap and transport purchased Alvers for the Masque av Aska.

If anything proved the Alvers employed at the masquerade were not free it was the bars on those coaches.

My knees weakened when a trio of armed skydguard opened one of the barred doors, and dragged a thin, weak man from the back.

″No,” Elof said under his breath. “This is not possible.”

I didn’t know what he meant, all I heard was my own strangled voice. “Hagen!”