Maskbound: The Ultimate Hunter

Dawn crept over the Gilded District while the broken Hall of Mirrors dripped glass from its window frames. Six stretchers waited in a row along the front steps, each holding a Hunter whose face lay smooth.

Nilo sat on the bottom stair wrapped in a blanket, watching a medic lift a lantern over the nearest sleeper.

“His pulse is fine… his eyes follow the light, but there is nothing left for a mask to grip,” the medic muttered, “it was cut out of him like a stone from a plum.”

He crouched beside the stretcher, tilting the lantern until it caught a hairline seam running across the sleeper’s brow. A single silver thread lay inside the seam, finer than any wire, glinting once before it crumbled into dust.

‘Stitched. Somebody hemmed him like a pair of trousers.’

Zilch spoke from the rack for the first time all night, “Clean seam, patient hands.”

Ganzo lumbered down the steps, rubbing the last of the dust between two fingers, “That is thread, kid… who in the world hems a face?”

“Somebody who left me a card about a seventh hook,” Nilo said, “and I’d like to know whose.”

Pipa lowered her drone until its red light touched the grass, “Chat… there is no stream today, none, I am only a girl with a very quiet camera.”

Behind them three black cars rolled up the empty avenue in a line, their doors opening with slow ceremony. The Master of the Gilded Foxes stepped from the first, silver at the temples, gold flashing on his sleeve.

Out of the second car came a man built like a vault door, brass collar buckled to the chin.

Bruno stiffened on the step above Nilo, his jaw working as though the sight of his father had a flavor.

“The Hall of Mirrors is a Foxes’ house, Steelhorn, yet the guest list was written by your steward,” the Master said, drawing off one glove.

“My steward wrote a list of names, not a list of invitations, so it was your mirrors that opened the door,” Steelhorn answered.

“Are you suggesting the glass betrayed its own Guild?”

“I am suggesting your glass was polished for years by people who never looked into it.”

Zinnia came down two steps, planting herself between the men with her ears already flushed, “Father, six Hunters are lying on this staircase with their faces gone, so perhaps the insults can wait until they are carried somewhere warm.”

“You brought a Bureau squad into my hall, daughter, and one of them split a reflection in half.”

“Your mirrors split six faces, Father, my squad only split a door.”

For one breath the Master studied her the way a man studies a lock he cannot pick. Then he turned his glove over, saying nothing, which counted as a loud retort in his family.

“The Bureau handed a Seatless boy a captain’s privileges, yet the butcher arrived the very same week,” Steelhorn said.

“The Collector reads guest lists, Father, not promotions, so the real question is who sold him yours,” Zinnia replied.

“No Fox would sell a guest… not in a thousand years.”

“Then perhaps a Fox’s mirror did it for free.”

The Master’s glove tightened in his fist, “You will withdraw that remark, Steelhorn, or I swear I will—”

Ganzo’s heel came down on the top step with a crack like a rifle shot, silencing them both.

He lumbered between the families with his hammer slung across his back, “Gentlemen, I would hate to charge you both for damaging the steps, so let us skip the swinging and spare ourselves any more reflection tonight.”

Nobody laughed at the joke, the Captain’s smile slipping a little at one corner.

A third car stopped behind the others, a long black one with a viper coiled across its door. Venn climbed out in her night cloak, the green on her shoulders a ragged hole in Nilo’s vision.

She walked straight to the nearest stretcher, “Two of these Hunters wear Viper black, so the Night Vipers will be asking the questions this morning,” she said, her jaw tight as a drawn wire.

“Questions to whom, Captain, when both of our Guilds are standing on the same steps?” Steelhorn asked.

“To whoever cuts a bound mask out of a living face without leaving a scratch… no blade I know can do that.”

Bruno stepped forward, the brass on his shoulder ringing like a struck bell, “Father, a Steelhorn does not accuse before he has counted the wounded.”

Steelhorn turned to him slowly, the whole avenue seeming to lean closer.

“A Steelhorn does not stand beside a Seatless thief while his own House is insulted on a public step.”

Bruno opened his mouth, closed it again, then stared down at his shoes as if they owed him money. Something small and brass cracked inside him, a sound that only Nilo heard clearly from the very bottom stair.

‘He isn’t afraid of the Collector. He’s afraid of that one sentence.’

Nilo rose with the blanket sliding away, the avenue going quiet around him all on its own. His voice dropped lower than anyone expected, every last trace of the patter gone from his words.

“Count the stretchers first.”

The Master of the Foxes frowned, “Young man, you are not a party to this conversation, nor will I be lectured by a—”

“Six faces are missing, yet nobody on these steps has said one name.”

Steelhorn’s jaw tightened but he said nothing, his gaze sliding to the nearest stretcher and staying there. Even Venn glanced aside, as if the hush were a weight she could feel on her cloak.

Zinnia’s hand drifted away from her rapier, her eyes following the line of stretchers to the last.

Inside the bandolier Jingles stopped in the middle of a pun, Clangor forgetting to clear his throat. Cadenza lowered her voice to a murmur that only Nilo could hear, trembling slightly on every syllable.

“Darling, the whole street is listening to you, yet you have not even raised your voice.”

“Each of them has a family waiting for a call nobody has made,” Nilo said, nodding at the stretchers one by one, “so which of you will say their names out loud?”

Nobody answered until the medic began to read from his clipboard, the first name catching in his throat. He named a Fox, a Rhino, a Dove, two Vipers, then Dessa Crane who once counted moves kindly.

The Master and Steelhorn stood at opposite ends of the steps, both staring at the stretchers instead of each other.

“Bruno, the car is waiting, the House expects you at breakfast,” Steelhorn said without turning.

“I will follow after I have helped carry the wounded, Father,” Bruno answered.

Steelhorn turned his head a fraction, studying his son as though measuring a stranger.

Then he folded his hands behind him and stayed exactly where he stood.

Bruno lowered himself onto the stair beside Nilo, the brass on his shoulder gone dull in the morning light.

“I wished to answer him, but every word I own is a Steelhorn word,” he said quietly.

“You answered him by standing there, that counts for more than a speech.”

“Hmph, you are being kind, it is deeply unsettling.”

“Don’t get used to it, it’s a limited offer,” Nilo said, bumping his shoulder.

Venn drifted to his side while the Masters glared at the pavement, “My guildmaster is sending the Vipers’ quietest knife after this thing, if you meet someone who isn’t there, don’t wave.”

“Why would I wave at a person who isn’t there?”

“You wave at everything, it’s one of your worst habits.”

Zinnia slipped her notebook from the satchel, flipping past the columns of his lies without a glance. She wrote six names in a clean new column, then pressed the page flat against her chest.

“Chat, I am going to be sick,” Pipa whispered.

“Then be sick quietly, Pipa, and keep the drone low,” Zinnia said.

She stopped beside Nilo afterward, speaking under her breath so only he could hear, “My father said the word daughter three times in front of strangers.”

“Is that good, or should I check the cutlery for traps?” he asked.

“It is the Foxes’ version of a hug, an extremely rude one.”

“Then I’d like to withdraw my seat in the front row.”

“Withdrawal denied, you are on the tally either way,” she said, her ears turning pink.

“I am a decorative drone and I recorded absolutely none of that,” Pipa whispered from behind her lens.

“Your lens is pointed at the sky, Pipa, which is the only reason you survive,” Zinnia murmured.

Ganzo cleared his throat with a sound like a landslide in a cellar, “The next time a Guild master tells me the Gilded District is safe, I intend to bring a very large hammer to the conversation.”

Down the avenue the engines died together all at once, as if the whole city forgot how to breathe. A tall woman in a violet coat walked the center of the road, a mask clipped at her belt.

‘Crown never walks anywhere. She arrives.’

Every Guild master on the steps took half a pace back, none of them noticing he did it.

Crown did not hurry or call out, ignoring every car as though the avenue were a completely empty hall. She studied each of the six stretchers first, then held her gaze on Nilo for one very long moment.

“Masters, I require the names, the addresses and a quiet street, in that order,” she said.

“Director, the Council has no authority inside a Guild’s own—” Steelhorn said.

“I am not asking the Council about six missing faces, Steelhorn, I am telling you.”

The two masters stood stiffly with their gloves in their fists, arguments dying in their throats. Bruno rose from the stair to his full height, shoulders squared, then stepped to Nilo’s left.

“Squad Nine, you will come with me at once,” Crown said, turning toward the waiting car.

Behind them the six smooth faces on the stretchers turned gold in the climbing sun.

“Director, am I being hired or arrested?” he asked.

“Both are possible, which is exactly why you should listen first,” Crown replied without breaking stride.

‘Hired or arrested, either way the car looks warmer than these steps.’