His face turned from annoyance to puzzlement as he saw who it was. Before he could protest, she laid a finger on her lips and slid inside, shutting the door behind her.
Copanis's study was uncomfortably hot, even with the shutters open to admit the breeze from outside. A low table was scattered with scrolls and manuscripts, but everywhere were concessions to ornamentation that were not present in the rest of the house. A sculpted hand; a skull with glass jewels for teeth; an effigy of Naris, god of scholars and son of Isisya, goddess of peace, beauty and wisdom. All was a clutter, but it conveyed the intensity of its author.
'My, my,' he said. 'Mistress Mishani, daughter of my master's newly embittered enemy. I take it you have something very important you need, to come see me like this. And miss the council with the Empress, too.'
Mishani looked over the old man with an inner smile that did not show on her face. He always was quick, this leathery, scrawny walnut of a scholar. His clothes seemed to sag off his lean frame, as his flesh did; but his eyes were still feverishly bright, and he was capable of running rings round intellectuals half his age.
Mishani decided to dispense with the preamble. She drew out the mask. 'This belongs to a dear friend of mine,' she said. 'Our need is most pressing to discover all we can about it. I can tell you no more than that.'
Copanis scrutinised her for a short while. He was making a show of deliberation, but it was not hard to see how his eyes were drawn to the mask. He was too cantankerous to fear to balk the authority of his master, and he was never one to hoard his knowledge when he could share it. With a mischievous quirk of one eyebrow, he took the mask and turned it around in his hands.
'You take a great risk, coming here,' he murmured.
'I seek to right a grave wrong, and aid a friend in desperate straits,' she replied. 'The risk is little, weighed against that.'
'Indeed?' he said. 'Well, I won't inquire, Mistress Mishani. But I dare to say I can help you in my small way.'
He placed the mask in a small wooden cradle, so that it faced the sunlight from the windows. After that, he found himself a small ceramic pot of what looked like dust. This he sprinkled over the face of the mask. Mishani watched with fascination – disguised, as ever, behind a wall of impassivity – as the dust seemed to glitter in the sun.
'Draw the shutters,' he said. 'Not this one; the others.'
Mishani obeyed, darkening the room until only a single shutter remained, shining light on to the mask's dusty face. After a time, Copanis shut that one himself, plunging the room into darkness. He turned the mask so they could both see it. The dust glowed dimly, phosphorescent in the darkness – but its life was momentary, and it faded.
Copanis harumphed. He told Mishani to open the shutters again. She did so, enduring his peremptory tone because she needed his help. After that, he sat cross-legged at his desk and brushed the dust off the mask, then turned it over in his hands and studied it. He held it near to his face without letting it touch. He closed his eyes and spent a short time chanting softly, as if in meditation. Mishani waited patiently, kneeling opposite him with her hair pooled around her.
Eventually he opened his eyes. 'This is indeed a True Mask,' he said. 'It has been infused with witchstone dust, and there is power here. However, it is very young. Less than a year old; I would estimate no more than two previous wearers, neither of them possessing any remarkable mental strength. It is valuable, of course; but as far as the True Masks go, it is weak, like a newborn.'
'You can tell all that? I am impressed,' Mishani said.
He shrugged. 'I can only tell you in the vaguest of terms. A True Mask picks up strength from its wearers… or, rather, it saps it from them. There are ways to tell a True Mask from an ordinary one, and guess at its age; but little else can be done. There is a simple way to learn more, of course, but I cannot counsel it.'
'And that is…?'
'To put it on, Mistress,' said Copanis with a sour smile.
'Surely anyone who did that would die, unless they were a Weaver and trained in the arts.'
'Ah, not so. A common misconception,' Copanis replied, stretching. His vertebrae cracked like fireworks. 'The older the Mask, the greater the peril; but one as young and weak as this… why, you or I might put it on and suffer no ill effects. Nightmares, maybe. Disorientation. That said, I repeat I cannot counsel it. There is still an element of risk. Should the mind prove to be susceptible, insanity and death would surely follow. The chance is small, but it exists.'
Mishani considered this. 'Can you tell me where it comes from?'
'Ah, that is easy. The hallmarks are obvious. See this wave pattern in the wood on the inside? And the indentation here, to accommodate the wearer's philtrum? This comes from one of the Edgefathers at Fo; although from which part of the isle, I cannot say. I would guess at the north, simply because of the marked lack of mainland influences on the carving. The one who carved this either had little contact with the ports in the south of Fo and the people there, or he spurned the craft of the mainland Edgefathers.' He passed it back to her, the red and black face seeming to grin mockingly. 'That is all I can tell you.'
'It was more than enough,' she replied, bowing. 'You have my gratitude. Now I must go; I've put you in peril already.'
He stood up, knee joints popping, and cackled. 'Hardly peril,
Mistress. Here, I'll help you get out,' he said. 'Let me spy out the lie of the land for you, then you can make it to the servants' gate. You know where it is?'
'I know,' replied Mishani, standing also, her hair cascading around her.
'I thought you might,' he replied.
Kaiku was unused to spending the summer months in the city; her father had always sent his family to their cooler property in the Forest of Yuna while he worked. Though it was only just climbing the slope towards the truly miserable heat of midsummer, Kaiku had become drowsy and felt the need for a siesta, and she had slept while she waited for Mishani to return.
In her dreams, the shin-shin came.
This time they were even more dark and nebulous than she remembered. They stalked unseen in the corridors of her mind, fearful presences that emanated dread, which she could not see but sense. She fled through a labyrinth that resembled her father's house in the forest, but seemed infinitely bigger and endless. She found doors, hatches, corners that brought her shuddering to a stop, for she knew with dream-certainty that death was lurking there, felt them waiting just beyond with a terrifying, hungry patience. And each time she came up against one of these invisible barriers of fear, she turned and ran the other way, her skin clammy with the proximity of the end. But no matter how far she went, they were everywhere, and inescapable.
Flailing helplessly, trapped forever, she knew there was no escape for her, and still she tried. At some point, she became aware of another presence, one even more malevolent than the shin-shin. This one lived inside her, in her belly and womb and groin, and it grew whenever she thought about it, feeding on her attention. She desperately tried to distract herself, but it was impossible not to feel the thing inside her skin, and she sensed its mad glee as it suckled on her terror. Desperate, driven by some illogical prescience that she had to get out of the house before this new entity consumed her, she raced onward, trying new routes with increasing panic, finding all blocked against her by the lurking, unseen shin-shin. Her chest ached, and her heart pounded harder and harder, but she could not stop even though her body burned with fatigue, and suddenly it was all too much and-