Chapter 154 Six Faces

Twilight painted floor twelve in orange, the new windows glowing over a table crowded with plans and cold tea. Tilly arrived at the last minute with a paper bag and an expression that promised a very hefty invoice.

She pressed the bag into his hands, “One fresh bun, sugar side up, my half of the bargain, the favor stays unnamed and accruing.”

“Do I eat it now or save it for the afterlife?” he asked.

“Eat it now, ghosts do not tip.”

He bit into the bun and winced, “It’s delicious, I hate that it’s delicious.”

“Delicious costs three marks extra,” she said, already scribbling.

Zinnia checked her watch, “Eleven approaches, the rooftops are waiting, you may finish your goodbyes.”

“Squad Nine departs in two minutes, anyone who needs a speech may take a number,” Bruno said, adjusting his pauldron.

Tilly grabbed his sleeve and held it a moment too long, “Come back with all your edges, I only own one notebook.”

Squad Nine took position at eleven o’clock, slipping across the Silk Row rooftops like cats with a grudge. Pipa kept her lens shut under Crown’s order, tying her notebook to her wrist and praying for sightlines.

“Radio check, I am a sniper with a notebook, a tiny pencil and zero audience, over.”

“Rooftop in position, two chimneys, one confused pigeon, nobody blink,” Ganzo rumbled.

Bruno cleared his throat over the static, “The front door is mine, a Steelhorn guards a threshold with total dignity.”

Zinnia’s voice crackled in, “My mirrors are strung along the entire street, I will bend whatever I am allowed to bend.”

“Copy that, I’m walking in with a fake jester and a very real sense of dread,” Nilo muttered into his collar.

Ganzo chuckled low, “Remember, kid, if the tailor offers you a suit, the correct reply is a firm shear no.”

“Captain, that one was awful, I am deducting a point from the whole squad,” Pipa murmured.

Bruno’s voice came back thin, “Door secured, a stray cat approached, I treated it with the respect due a witness.”

“Rooftop is quiet, kid, too quiet, I have always wanted to say that,” the captain added.

Midnight settled over Silk Row like a held breath, every shutter closed and every lamp turned low. Rain ticked against the awnings in slow beats, giving the street the feel of a waiting room.

‘Eleven windows, six friends, one forgery. If this goes wrong, I’m blaming the eyebrow.’

Halfway down the Row, the mannequins in a tailor’s window seemed to turn their heads slowly as Nilo passed. A gust off the canal tipped a hat on the nearest one, a startled squeak echoing from a rooftop.

“Nobody, that hat moved on its own, I am forbidden to scream about it.”

He kept walking, “It was the wind, mannequins do not have opinions.”

He walked down the middle of the road with the fake jester swinging from his belt like bait. Behind each shuttered window, he knew, a friend crouched with a radio, a rapier or an enormous hammer.

“I am extremely present and extremely small, please do not introduce me to the building,” Jingles whispered from his ribs.

Silk Row smelled of wet wool and old chalk, the scents of a thousand fittings lingering in the damp. Every doorway he passed held a dressmaker’s dummy tilted as though it was listening for a better offer tonight.

Cadenza sighed from the rack, “Darling, the street smells of old rehearsals, I find it deeply moving.”

Number one hundred and one stood at the end of the street, its sign long since rotted away. The door opened before he reached it, swinging inward on silent hinges like a mouth tired of waiting.

Magpie tipped an imaginary hat, “Free entry, my favorite price.”

The shop was larger inside than the building allowed, a long hall of tailoring tables beneath hanging cloth. Six mannequins stood in a half circle at the end, each wearing a face instead of a mask.

“They look asleep… all six of them,” he whispered.

Sir Clangor cleared his throat in the rack, “Young man, a gentleman does not stare at a sleeping face, but I permit it for reconnaissance.”

Nilo stopped three steps from the first mannequin, his stomach turning over like a dropped coin. The face on it belonged to Tomas Reeve, each freckle in place, eyes closed mid dream.

Pike’s chin, Dessa’s scar and the Fox sentinel’s crooked nose were stitched on with agonizing care.

‘They aren’t masks, they’re the actual faces, taken off like coats.’

[ WARDROBE ]

[Reading: six faces, one thread]

[Source: unknown]

Nilo counted the six faces again, slowly, pressing each name into memory like a coin into a closed palm. His grin was gone, his voice level as a ruler, every joke folded away where nobody could reach it.

“Reeve, Pike, Dessa, the sentinel, the lieutenant, the warder, every one of you is going home.”

Violet thread hung in loops from the rafters, thin as spider silk and humming faintly in the draft. Each loop ended at a mannequin’s brow, stitching the face to the wooden skull like a bad pun.

“The reflections on Silk Row have gone dead, I cannot bend a single thing in there, repeat, I cannot—” Zinnia said, the radio dissolving into hissing.

Calla stepped silently out of a mirror frame holding no mirror, her cloak settling like a closing wing. She stopped an arm’s length away, the red line on her pale mask catching what little light remained.

“Do not touch the thread, it remembers where it was tied,” she said, her voice dry as old paper.

“You’ve been inside the whole time?” he asked.

“Since dusk… the door only opens for people who intend to pay.”

Her gloved finger rose toward the thread above Tomas Reeve’s brow, stopping a breath away from touching it. Nilo felt every hair on his arms lift, the way they did just before a wire pulled tight.

“I tried to cut it for an hour, my knife bounced off, only his shears can cut his own work,” she said.

“Then we wait for him and make him do it.”

“No, then we leave, this room is wrong in a way I do not like.”

Calla’s mask tilted slightly toward the dark mirror, the red line on it sharp as a freshly drawn thread. Nothing looked back at her from the surface, neither the cloak, the hood nor the mask she wore tonight.

“Mirrors only show people, I stopped being one a long time ago,” she said softly.

“Funny, mine is about to do the same thing.”

“Then we are the two guests he cannot copy, that makes us dangerous.”

“Violet, that is the nicest thing anyone has said about my face.”

“You have no face, that was the point,” she said, and for a moment her mask tilted with something like a smile.

“Everyone keeps saying the fake is wrong, it’s a perfectly good eyebrow.”

She tilted her head a fraction, the way she did when she refused to be amused, “It is not the eyebrow, it is the crack, the real one flickers when you are afraid.”

The mirrors along the walls went dark, their silvering swallowed by something thicker than night itself. Nilo caught one glimpse of his reflection before it dissolved, a pale oval with no features.

Cadenza whispered from the rack, “Darling, the echoes are lying, I can hear this room answering before I sing.”

Pipa’s voice thinned over the static, “The door vanished from my side too, I have no eyes on you.”

“Kid, the chimneys just folded flat like paper, I do not like where this is going,” Ganzo said.

Zilch’s dry voice brushed his ear, “Many threads, a single needle.”

‘If my reflection is gone, he cannot copy me. That might be the only good thing my face ever did.’

The real Jingles trembled against his ribs, the crack in his porcelain flaring a bright warning gold. The fake at his belt stayed perfectly still, which was exactly what a prop should never do.

“He knows, he knows, it is over, I regret every pun I ever made,” Jingles babbled in a thread of a voice.

“Stay calm, I know that too,” he whispered back, tightening his grip on the bandolier.

He turned toward the entrance, one hand dropping to the bandolier, searching for the real jester’s cold porcelain. The door he walked through was gone, replaced by a wall of mirrors that showed an endless hall.

“Oh no, oh no, the door ate the door.”

Every mannequin turned its head in unison, smiling the very same smile they wore while still fully alive. Threads tightened across the ceiling all at once, a thousand violet strings drawing taut like a huge harp.

“Back to back, Violet, right now,” he said, the patter draining from his voice.

“I was going to suggest it myself,” she answered, sliding her shoulder against his.

The six faces opened their eyes together, each pupil holding a gold crack that glowed on his belt. A voice rolled out of every mirror in the hall, dry and courteous, a tailor greeting a customer.

“The bargain was a jester for six faces, I always honor my stitches, but you brought a copy,” the voice said.

“Every face on those mannequins was given willingly, in exchange for a mask that promised courage.”

“You cut them out in the middle of a dance,” he said, his voice flat.

“A dance is the best time for a fitting, everyone holds so still.”

“You never planned to hand anything over, did you?” Nilo asked, his hand closing around the real mask.

“I plan everything, Mister Nilo, even the hems of other people’s mistakes.”

“He is behind the glass, not in it,” Calla breathed.

The voice warmed, delighted, “Ah, my other guest without a face, how wonderful, I have a very special hook waiting for you, and do tell your friends on the roof that the roof is already folded.”

Calla went rigid against his back, the whole hall exhaling around them.

“Mister Nilo, your fitting begins,” the voice finished, and every thread in the ceiling began to sing.