Faces by E.C. Blake Page A

should rest.”
    â€œI feel fine.”
    â€œI’m sure you do. But I am your teacher and your guardian.” She put a hand on Mara’s, to emphasize her statement. “Trust that I know best, Mara. Stay in the fortress.”
    Mara said nothing.
    â€œI will be back in time for our evening meal together,” the Lady said. She turned and walked back into the tower, leaving Mara alone.
    Mara stared out at the unMasked Army’s tents, fuming. “I feel fine,” she muttered again. In fact, she felt better than fine. She felt elated, thrilled, excited. She was gaining control of her Gift/curse at last. She wanted to tell someone about it, someone who would understand what that meant to her.
    She wanted to tell Keltan.
    The Lady would be using the waterwheel-driven lift to descend to the village. But Mara, true to her promise when she’d first arrived on that infernal device, had long since discovered the narrow trail that the wolves used. Filled with snow and ice, it had looked terribly steep and dangerous. But the snow and ice were mostly gone. And if the wolves could do it . . .
    She glanced at Whiteblaze.
But not him
, she thought.
Not this time.
It would be hard to sneak through the village with one of the Lady’s wolves at her side.
    She went into the tower and back to her room, Whiteblaze trotting happily at her side. She took her warmest cloak, which had the added benefit of having a large hood useful for hiding her face, and then went back to the door. “Stay,” she told Whiteblaze. Obediently, he lay down, tail thumping. But he whined as she closed the door on him.
    Alone, Mara hurried through the fortress’ labyrinth of corridors until she emerged into a courtyard on the west end of the fortress, where it overlooked a narrow ravine that opened between the spur of the mountain on which the castle stood and the vastly larger bulk of the mountain proper beyond. An opening at the base of the wall, too low for a human to pass through without crawling but just right for a wolf, gave access to the wolves’ trail, which zigzagged down the side of the ravine. Not
all
the ice had melted from it, and halfway down Mara slipped and fell painfully onto her rear, sliding a few heart-stopping feet before catching herself by jamming her boots against a boulder with a bone-jarring impact. Sore and shaken, she clambered to her feet again and made the rest of the descent at a snail’s pace.
    At the bottom she followed the ravine downhill to the right, emerging onto a stone-paved road that snaked up the mountain in one direction and led to a small side gate of the village in the other. The camp of the unMasked Army was on the other side of the river. To get to it, she’d have to enter the village and cross one of its three bridges, unless she wanted to travel miles down the valley, and she didn’t have time for that. The danger, of course, was that the Lady, who had forbidden her to come, was somewhere in the village, and Mara had no way of knowing where.
    She also had no way of knowing just how angry the Lady would be at her for disobeying her and sneaking out to see Keltan. She didn’t particularly want to find out.
Well
, she thought,
at least I’ve had lots of practice sneaking through streets without being seen, dodging Watchers after curfew in Tamita!
    Although to be sure that had been at night, not broad daylight . . .
    Steeling herself, she pulled the hood of her cloak up over her head, though it was really too warm for it, and slipped through the gate.
    She wondered where the road she had followed led, up the mountain—a mine, perhaps? She had seen no one on it, and the street on the other side of the gate from it was likewise empty. She slipped along that street, splashing through puddles and dodging the drifts that still clogged the shadows. The stone buildings, sturdy and warm and well-built, would not have looked out of place in the