Masks, Page 2

  Chapter Two

  Mark’s lip stung as he dabbed the paste into the blood. His hands shook but he managed to work quickly. He tried not to look at himself in the mirror. The lace, the pale blue velvet, the diamond buttons—he didn’t own any of it, not even himself.

  I should have let them sell me to the navy ....

  A conclusion drawn eight years too late.

  He wrapped a neckerchief over the fresh bruises around his throat. White gloves covered his red knuckles and the rug burns on his palms.

  The gold clock chimed once—it was a quarter after.

  Mark’s heart punched high in his chest. He dashed out into the long hallway and hurried down the marble stairs.

  Professor Vinkin stalked out of the lower east hall, his bulky valise bouncing against coarse linen trousers. His brown coat, of a loose fashion from a decade before, matched a floppy brown hat. Most of his slick black hair had pulled free of a single limp ribbon.

  “Professor Vinkin—”

  “We’ll have to reschedule.” The professor’s bunched-up shoulders and the tight disappointment in his voice hurt worse than the lost history lesson. Mark darted in front of him and predictably the professor stopped well before there was any danger of physical contact. Vinkin had plenty of room to step around and get to the front door, but he didn’t move. His shoulders rose closer to his ears.

  Mark didn’t know if the professor was that way around everyone, or just him, but he felt guilty either way for trapping him with it.

  “Stand aside, please.” Vinkin looked shabby but his voice carried more refinement than Lord Argenwain’s. The marble entry made him sound even more grand.

  “Please. I’m sorry. You can charge for the full hour—”

  “That would be unethical.”

  “—or half. Just stay. Please.”

  The professor focused on a delicate wall sconce where a carved, gilded candle waited to be lit. “By the time I arrange my materials again you won’t have time for even half a lesson. Now please, stand aside.”

  “I’ll pay you double.” It would set his indenture back a bit, but it seemed like a small sacrifice.

  The professor hesitated. “You can’t bribe time.” His shoulders bunched up even higher and he hurried past, brushing the wall to get as far from Mark as possible.

  No.

  “If you leave, Gutter won’t be happy with either of us.”

  The professor went rigid beside the door.

  Mark didn’t expect that much fear. He stammered onward. “And Lord Argenwain won’t like it either.” Still a threat, but softer, he hoped. Shit, the professor might never come back after this. “I’m so sorry. I didn’t mean—” What had he meant to do? “It’s just that—” The professor made him happy.

  The professor set down his valise before Mark could think of another tack. Hope, warm and vibrant, rushed through Mark’s tangled guts and he took a full breath.

  Professor Vinkin’s shoulders lowered as he turned. “I know they’re hurting you.”

  Mark’s breath shortened as the professor’s gaze slid around, touching everything but him. “It’s not them.” It didn’t matter. “If there isn’t enough time for a lesson, then just sit with me.” He almost offered to pay again, but he hesitated in time. Why did the professor have to be so complicated? Everyone else Mark knew, except Gutter of course, was so simple. As long as they benefited in some way, they were happy to spend time with him.

  The professor’s gaze stopped on the alabaster statue of a half-dressed boy reclining with a fawn in his arms. It seemed innocent at first glance. The grace and softness in the composition distracted from the crass symbolism, assuming the viewer knew terms like staghorn and supple and ‘the depth of one’s lean.’ A nearly prone male would accept almost any attention a man might wish to visit on him. The fawn implied even more.

  Mark hated that statue. It didn’t just flaunt Lord Argenwain’s preferences for boys. Everyone assumed Mark leaned just as far as the boy in the statue, and that it had begun when he first came here eight years ago.

  He’d been a fawn, but he’d never leaned over.

  Kneeling wasn’t so bad.

  The professor gestured back down the hall where the study lay and Mark’s heart leapt. Mark led the way, opened the door but the professor gestured for Mark to go first.

  The professor shut the door behind them. He’d never done that before. Mark’s joy took a dark turn. “Can—” Deep breath. “I order some chocolate for you?”

  The professor gestured to a chair and Mark sat, his obedience now an act of will instead of flowing from his gratitude. But he’d do whatever he needed to keep this man in his life.

  As he’d always done to survive among the men in his life.

  “Take off the scarf and gloves.” The professor’s voice had a soft quality that made Mark uneasy.

  Mark slipped off the gloves, one finger at a time and then a tug. He’d undressed for Argenwain many times, but he hadn’t felt so naked in the unveiling of so little for a very long time.

  Mark unknotted the neckerchief and unwound it. The lace-edged silk slid and flowed over his hands.

  The professor finally looked at him. “Did Lord Argenwain do that?” The soft voice didn’t hide the professor’s disgust. Mark couldn’t tell if his revulsion was unwisely directed at the most powerful man in the city, or Mark, or the entire household.

  “No.”

  “Don’t lie to me, Mark, or I will leave.”

  Irritation crowded out the guilt and embarrassment. “You teach history, but I’ve learned more about politics from you than anyone else. I would think that you’d understand the danger you’re putting yourself in. Besides, what would the truth get you?”

  “So it is him.”

  “No! It’s—” Maybe the truth would help. “Lord Argenwain is impatient with the new valet.” Cruel should have been the word, but Mark didn’t dare say that even though nearly every room at the manor was perfectly private. Not because he feared Lord Argenwain. He feared for the professor if he should repeat something he shouldn’t. “And Bainswell takes it out on me. Because I’m short and slender,” and I lean, “and I’m Lord Argenwain’s pet.”

  “And Lord Argenwain does nothing?”

  “It’s beneath him to notice.” And from Gutter when Mark wrote to him—nothing. He fought down a gut-clenching feeling of betrayal.

  “He doesn’t have to notice. He could evict that degenerate and be done.”

  Mark cringed. “I know.”

  “So Lord Jester Gutter enters into this.”

  Mark hated to admit it, but it had to be true. “I haven’t been told anything. I just have a feeling that Bainswell is another sort of tutor.”

  “To teach you what? How to conceal bruises? Which, by the way, I feel I shouldn’t applaud you in this matter but most of the time I don’t see anything.” A shudder went through the professor, but it didn’t look like horror. More like hot rage.

  Mark pressed his lips together to firm the paste over the cut. “I’m learning to be wary. Unfortunately he caught me after fencing practice, and I was tired—”

  “You should have skewered the bastard!”

  Mark wanted to shove him. “You think it’s that easy? You do it. Ram a long length of steel into a human being—” He barely kept the memory of his mother’s death behind him. Her last moments pressed close, her dying breaths more vivid than what he remembered of maternal love.

  Murder. How could the professor suggest it?

  “It’s what he wants you to do, isn’t it?”

  “There are other ways to deal with men like him.” I’ve let this go too far. “But enough about that. We shouldn’t be talking about it.”

  “I believe it’s long past time to talk about this. Why do you tolerate it? This isn’t how jesters are trained.”

  “He’s not training me to be a jester. It would be useless. I’m—” He didn’t want to say it. His dreams felt too fragile. “Even
if he was training me wrongly, then maybe you can tell me how you train liars, thieves and killers at university.” Mark’s temper had him now but he didn’t care. The heat felt good. “You’re very quick to advise me to kill a man because he bruised me. It seems to me that your opinions need a new accountant.”

  “I thought you invited me for a discussion, but you subject me to a lecture instead.” Arms crossed and hunched, the professor watched Mark from somewhere high and immovable.

  The heat bled away, and with it most of Mark’s passion. His favorite tutor turned out to be made of books rather than flesh. Mark longed for him to be wise and to reveal the answers that would make the years before his freedom more bearable. “I’m sorry.” I thought you’d be a friend to me.

  “I teach history,” the professor murmured. “What you want is theology. I was never very good with religion. I don’t care about morbai or allolai. I care about people. History is a study of human victory and error. I fear the choices you’ll make without those history lessons in your heart. I see a young man being run through a maze. And I’m afraid of what you’ll find at the end.”

  “I know where I’ll end up.” He couldn’t remember how his father looked anymore, but he remembered the creak of ropes and wood in a strong wind, the stormy color of deep water, and the shadows that masts and rigging made on sunlit sails.

  “Mark?”

  Mark reluctantly lifted his gaze from the past to his teacher’s face.

  The professor uncrossed his arms and braced his hands on a chair. “Have you considered going to the Church for protection? Lord Argenwain is absolved of wrongdoing if Gutter provides for him, but that doesn’t mean you as the provided object can’t protect yourself from harm from both of them. If you’re not willing—”

  “You mean leave because I don’t want to lick an old man anymore? To what? Sit in a cell for my own protection, earning nothing toward my future, knowing that anyone of means would be insane to have anything to do with me, assuming that they didn’t hate me because I’m a staghorn and a traitor to my lord. No one would give enough of a shit about me to flick a cupru onto the street for me to pick up.” He wasn’t even angry, just tired of looking at the layers of filth covering his life.

  Everything always felt so ugly and grim when Gutter was away. Mark hadn’t seen him all winter, and he dreaded how much worse things might get as the weeks reluctantly slogged toward spring. Gutter wouldn’t cross the mountains until then.

  Professor Vinkin pressed himself away from the chair. He went to the door. “I would find a position for you at the university, if you decide you’ve had enough of bruises and terror and being a repository for forgiven sins.”

  Mark blushed, dark with anger and hot with shame.

  “As I said, I’m not well versed in religious matters, but I do believe in the hells, and I hate to see someone I’ve grown to care about very much live in a hell made for him in life.” Professor Vinkin went out and shut the door.

  As if the University could shelter Mark from two men second in power only to the King himself.

  That admission made him feel like he’d been filled with cold molten gold. He was too heavy to move, trapped by wealth and power.

  In the quiet the old study clock gently tocked. It never chimed on the hour like the other clocks in the manor. Gutter said Lord Argenwain needed a room where time passed softly.

  Gutter had said it with such affection. Mark had felt a surge of jealousy at the time. It seemed peculiar that Gutter’s love for his lord never treaded anywhere near even a chaste kiss. In fact, though Gutter inspired intense feelings in everyone, he behaved as if he had no sexual passion for anyone.

  Mark didn’t dare linger in case Bainswell came looking for him. That bastard—Mark had never met anyone like him. The first time Mark fought back, Bainswell had laughed. He’d enjoyed the brutality more.

  Mark set off for his room, every sense hunting for the slightest hint of ambush. He would never run, and he’d never hide, but that thin, watery courage had led to some nasty beatings.

  A knock startled him. Someone had arrived at the front door just as Mark crossed the foyer. Heart still tapping fast and light, Mark opened the door. “Lord Argenwain’s residence. May I help you?”

  Obsidian stood out in the snow about a dozen feet from the manor’s entrance. The wind threw aside any protection his cloak might offer and savaged his silks and lace, turning the young jester into a beautiful yet seemingly ragged thing. He wasn’t wearing his mask, but he had makeup on his lips and eyes. He gripped a silk purse with a heavy brass clasp in his left hand while his right rested on his rapier. He faced the gate for a long moment before he trotted lightly up the granite walkway to the door. “Mark—is Gutter here?”

  “No.” The way Obsidian’s breath came so sharply and the fearful glances he cast into the manor and back out made Mark’s skin prickle.

  The peace ties on Obsidian’s pistol and rapier fluttered loose in the wind.

  Mark opened the door a little wider, not sure if he should invite the jester in. “He’s been gone all winter and we don’t expect him for at least a month.”

  Obsidian closed his eyes and nodded. “Good.”