Chapter 158 The Faces Come Back?

Night found the Pearl Doves’ clinic glowing with pearl light, every window open to the smell of rain. Six beds waited in a row along the ward, each one holding a sleeper with a blank oval.

Nilo sat on a stool at the first bed, tears still sliding down his cheeks into his collar.

"Your hour is almost finished, child, the sleepers will keep their sorrow from here," Matron Ilse said, smoothing a blanket.

"Good, I was running out of sleeves," he said, wiping his face with a wrist.

She pressed a steaming cup into his hands, "Drink every drop before you faint on my floor, hydration is the one real price nobody writes in the ledger."

Ilse laid the drawer on a rolling cart, lifting the first face out of its tissue with two fingers. It looked like warm wax and weighed nothing at all, its edges curling slowly toward the nearest waiting sleeper.

"Pearl Doves have mended bones, fevers and broken hearts, but never a face that was kept in a drawer."

"A Steelhorn carried them as carefully as a Steelhorn can," Bruno said, standing straight on his split pauldron, "I trust that is adequate."

"Can the Doves give back the masks too?" Nilo asked, blowing steam off his cup.

"A mask cut from a living Hunter does not die, child, it waits on a hook with the Seat’s name still stitched inside," Ilse said.

"Then the Seats could still call them home."

"In theory, yes, in practice you would need the hook, the thread and a very great deal of luck."

Matron Ilse stroked the nearest sleeper’s forehead, her fingers glowing faintly with the same pearl light as her doves. In forty years of healing she never once saw a single wound that left nothing at all to mend.

"Let us begin with the youngest, he looks the most frightened," Ilse said, rolling the cart to the first bed.

Ilse hummed one note, lifting a dozen birds of light from her apron to circle the first bed. The face rose from her palm like a petal, settling onto the sleeper with a long soft sigh.

"Hold still, dear, the face knows exactly where it belongs," Ilse whispered.

Bruno pressed a fist to his chest with enormous dignity, "I find I am unaccountably moved, I wish to be left alone with that."

Brows came first, then the line of a nose, then lashes darkening one by one against the cheeks. Tomas Reeve of the Night Vipers sat upright, pressing both hands to the face he feared was gone.

"Pipa, tell me this is real, tell me my nose is back where it was," Reeve croaked.

"Chat, the nose is back, it is a very good nose," Pipa said, polishing her glasses on her hoodie.

Reeve laughed until he cried, then cried until he laughed again, rocking on the mattress like a boy. Behind him the other five faces rose slowly from the cart, the birds circling each bed in turn.

"It asked me to smile, so I smiled," he whispered, "I smiled the whole time he was cutting."

Zinnia leaned against the bed rail with a gentleness she rarely showed, "You are safe now, nobody here is cutting anything."

The three guards woke together, each patting his own cheeks like a man checking a coat for missing buttons. One whispered his daughter’s name, another begged for water, the last one only laughed at the ceiling in wonder.

’Faces back and not one mask between them. He returned the packaging and kept the gifts.’

Dessa Crane woke last, the Foxes’ champion rising onto her elbows with her dark hair stuck to her forehead. She touched her cheek, her chin, the arch of her brow, then stared down at her own empty palms.

"My wings," she said, her voice cracking like thin ice.

"The Doves restored your face, Dessa, the mask was never in the drawer," Ilse said softly.

"Then give me the mask."

Nobody answered her, the silence stretching across the ward like a rope pulled too tight.

Dessa swung her legs off the bed, reaching inward for the wings with her whole body braced for the glow. Nothing came except a thin shiver along her shoulders, like a draft through a house she no longer lived in.

"Her Seat is open, nothing is sitting in it," Ilse murmured.

’A door with nobody behind it. I know exactly how that feels.’

A Dove stepped forward with a brass scanner, sweeping it slowly down the length of the ward. The panel at her wrist showed the same two lines over every sleeper as the beam passed.

[ MASK SCAN ]

[Seats: 1]

[Mask: none]

"A Seat without a mask is a door," Nilo said slowly, remembering Tink’s voice in the pawnshop.

Zilch’s flat voice slid out from the rack like a key in a lock, "Door needs key."

"Or a very large crowbar," he muttered.

"What does that mean for them?"

"It means someone can walk through it again, if there is something waiting on the other side."

Dessa turned toward Nilo, her eyes red-rimmed and blazing with a fury that found nowhere else to go. The champion of the Foxes crossed the ward in four strides, stopping a hand’s width from his chest.

"You got our faces back and I thank you, but what good is a face to a Hunter?" she said, her jaw tight.

"None... not by itself," he answered.

"Then where are the wings, Seatless?"

He rose from the stool, tears still sliding down his face, the whole ward going quiet around him.

"I will bring every mask back, every single one," he said, his voice low and level.

"You can’t promise that."

"I just did," he said, not blinking.

The last tear slid off his chin and fell, leaving his face dry for the first time in an hour.

"The hour is done, child, the grief goes back to those who own it," Sorrow said, soft as a lullaby.

[ LEDGER ]

[Sorrow: tears ended]

[Carried: the grief of six, released]

His phone buzzed against his hip with a message from Tilly, "Heard you cried, the Collector kept my fake Jingles, so I am billing him."

"She bills you by the tear now?" Zinnia asked, reading over his shoulder.

"She bills me by the breath, the tears are a surcharge."

Cold Read settled over the ward like snow on a roof, Bruno straightening beside the cart. Even Pipa lowered her slate, the light on her lens dimming to a thin red thread.

"Chat, I am not typing anything, there is nothing I could type."

"I would like to say I am relieved, but mostly I am hiding under a pillow," Jingles whimpered from the rack, his voice muffled by the leather.

Dessa searched his face for the joke, the grin, the hustler’s wink, finding nothing she could argue with. Slowly she stepped back, the fight draining out of her shoulders in one long shaky breath of relief.

"Then do it before I forget what flying felt like," she said, wiping her cheek with a knuckle.

"I counted ten moves in our duel, you know, so you owe me a rematch when the wings come home."

"Nine," Dessa muttered, though the corner of her mouth twitched.

"Ten."

’Nine moves or ten, she needs something to fight for. So do I.’

The door banged open behind them, Captain Venn striding in with her heavy glove clenched against her thigh. She crossed the ward without a word, dropping at once to her knees beside the very last bed.

"I am still breathing, Captain, you don’t need to hold my hand so hard," Pike mumbled.

"Shut up, Pike."

"Yes, Captain... I will be quiet right after I thank the boy who cries," Pike mumbled, grinning at the ceiling.

Venn pressed her forehead against his shoulder for three heartbeats, then rose and wiped her eyes with her glove. When she faced Nilo again, her expression was the blade-flat mask he knew from every duel they ever fought.

"The Night Vipers owe Squad Nine a favor, we do not forget favors," she said.

"I’ll hold you to that."

"Good... I would hate to think I bled for nothing."

"The Steelhorn infirmary has forty beds and a cook who weeps over soup, you are welcome to all of them," Bruno offered.

Reeve cleared his throat from the first bed, one hand still resting on his restored nose. He stared at Nilo as if he just remembered something terribly important from the very dark.

"He spoke to us while we slept, I heard every word," Reeve said.

"What did he say?"

"He told me to tell you, the boy with no face in the mirror, that the seventh hook is the only one that matters," Reeve whispered.

"What else did he tell you?"

"That the thread was sewn before the shears were ever opened—"

Zinnia seized his wrist and turned his hand over in the pearl light of the window. The silver thread around it glimmered once, patient and fine, as though it listened all along.

"Then we cut it off right now," she said, reaching for her rapier.

"It is not a leash, child, it is a sizing, he is learning how much of you there is to cover," Sorrow said.

"He cannot cut me, so he needs me to cut it for him."

’That is exactly what he wants. I just have to figure out what comes after.’