Chapter 173 Six Masks Home

Morning light poured through the clinic's open windows, turning the pearl walls the color of fresh cream. Six beds stood in a row, patients staring at the ceiling, one hand over an empty Seat.

Nilo leaned in the doorway, turning the brass hook in his fingers while it tugged toward the Foxes' district.

"Matron Ilse says the masks may take an hour, a day, or never," Zinnia said, closing her notebook.

"I watched six of them fly through a wall, they know where they live."

"Then why are they lying on the pillows like napping cats?"

He rolled his shoulders against the frame, "Waiting for a proper invitation, probably."

Pipa came up the corridor with paper cups balanced on her slate, her hoodie rumpled by a night of rooftops. She slid a cup into every waiting hand, pausing at Reeve's bed to gently tuck his blanket under his chin.

"Chat, the clinic coffee tastes like warm soap, but it is free, so I am rating it generously," she whispered.

Behind her the tall windows rattled once, as if a cold gust were testing all the latches. Six small masks lifted off six pillows together, their empty eyeholes catching the sun like startled birds.

Calla's voice dropped from the ceiling vent, flat as a coin, "Incoming."

Nobody asked how long she waited up there, curled beside the grate with her pale mask turned to the glass. Zinnia carried a cup up the ladder without a word, setting it down gently within her reach on the tiles.

She wrapped both hands around the cup, "It is still warm."

The first mask sailed straight into Tomas Reeve's open hands, a black asp coiled across its narrow brow. It settled over his face before he finished lifting it, smoke curling off his shoulders in a hiss.

[ MASK SCAN ]

[Name: Tomas Reeve]

[Seats: 1]

[Mask: Asp, restored]

Reeve's voice shook as he stroked the lacquer, "Hello again, old friend... I am sorry I left the door open."

The second mask drifted to Pike, who caught it with the careless grin of a man who lost nothing. Captain Venn stood behind his bed with her arms crossed, her glove clenched tightly until the leather creaked loudly.

"Not on my ward, Captain, I have a policy against crying in corridors," Ilse said, sweeping past with linen.

"I have no tears, Matron, I am a Viper," Venn replied, wiping her cheek with a knuckle.

Pike whispered from his pillow, "Captain, for the record I did not cry, I only leaked."

"Then leak quietly, you are still on my ward," Ilse said.

The Fox sentinel took his mask with a bow, the Dove warder took hers with a laugh. The Rhino lieutenant saluted so sharply that the whole bed frame rattled beneath him like a drum.

"Eyes front, Lieutenant, you are wrinkling my sheets," Ilse warned.

Dessa Crane's mask hung over her pillow, two small pale feathers drifting down from its silent brow. She never reached for it, her body frozen as if one wrong breath might frighten it away.

"It does not bite, Dessa," Nilo said quietly, "it searched for you since midnight."

"Tell me what it cost to bring it home," she asked, her voice barely above a breath.

"A glove, a bruise, and one very rude comment from a man with scissors."

She laughed once, a short wet sound, then lifted both hands to let the mask settle into her palms gently. Gold light spilled over her shoulders, unfolding into wings that brushed both walls and knocked a pitcher off the sill.

"Aghhh, they are enormous, I forgot they were enormous," she gasped, ducking under a lamp.

"Mind the windows, the glass is older than your family," Ilse called.

Dessa spread the wings wide anyway, flooding the ward with drifting gold and scattering every cup off Pipa's tray. Every Hunter in the room went silent, watching a woman once robbed of the sky rise off the floor.

'That is what I am here for. Not the Ultimate anything, just that.'

She dropped back down, pressing a fist to her heart as she bowed so deeply that Bruno coughed in surprise.

"The Gilded Foxes thank Squad Nine, but I thank you most, a far rarer thing," she said.

"You owe me a rematch, nine moves or ten, you pick."

"Ten," she said, grinning, "I counted too, I only refused to admit it in front of a Steelhorn."

Bruno drew himself up to his full height, "I heard that, I forgive it, I wish both facts noted."

Pipa swung her slate toward the ward, narrating in a stage whisper to an audience of two million. Nobody objected, because the only face in her frame was Dessa's, and Dessa was wiping her eyes dry.

"Chat, a champion flew out of bed and the clinic has a new ceiling fan."

Ganzo's laugh rolled down the corridor before he appeared, hat under one arm, beard dusted with fine pale flour. A basket of steaming dumplings hung from his elbow, smelling of ginger so strongly that two patients sat up.

"Squad Nine breakfast, on the Bureau's budget, that is to say my personal shame," he called, thumping the basket.

"Captain, the budget is eighty thousand a month now," Zinnia reminded him.

"Then it is my personal pride, a far larger bill."

They ate on the clinic steps, six restored Hunters fussing over one another like cousins at a wedding. Calla sat at the end with a dumpling beneath her mask, tilting her head when he offered another.

"You turned your back last night... it was the kindest thing anyone did for me in years," she said, so softly that only he heard.

"You told me the rule, I memorized it."

She took the last dumpling and held it beneath her mask, her shoulders loosening by a single notch. Down in the street the Guild runners appeared, sprinting along the canal with satchels bouncing against their hips.

"Those runners are carrying a lot of urgent paper," Pipa said.

Zinnia sat beside him on the step, her notebook balanced on one knee, her silver pen resting idle. The brass hook lay between them in the sun, its point swung toward the Foxes' tall mirrored roofs.

"The stitching said the fifth midnight, in my father's hall," she murmured, "so we have days to prepare."

"It wants me there, you are only invited cause you stand next to me."

She snapped the notebook shut, "The hall is as much mine as his, he gets neither of us without a fight."

'Days to learn how to beat a man who cuts reflections. Easy, I will start with the mirrors.'

His phone buzzed against his hip with a message from Tilly, "Heard you saved six idiots, send me your relief and I will bill it."

Across the Gilded District a bell rang once, deep and slow, from a tower he did not recognize. A second answered, then a third, until every belfry in the whole city rang and every dumpling trembled.

"That is not a morning bell," Zinnia said, rising to her feet.

"It is the Guild alarm, every hall at once," Venn said, her hand already on her blade.

"Which hall is burning—"

"None of them are burning, they were emptied overnight, twelve halls while we sat in his shop," Venn said.

'He was never only in the shop. He wanted us busy. We obliged him.'