Maskbound: The Ultimate Hunter

Night settled slowly over the Sunken Quarter in layers, lantern light pooling on the canals like spilled tea. Squad Nine bedded down in a boathouse that smelled of tar, rope and wet planks left to rot.

Bruno unbuckled his pauldron with great ceremony, “A Heron fought beside you, Captain, you never once mentioned it at our table.”

“She was eighteen, sang the tide table when she was nervous, cried whenever a Wearer fell,” Ganzo said.

Ganzo stared at the stove for a long time, the firelight carving deep lines into his big weathered face. Nobody asked another question, every Hunter in that crowded room understood exactly what a captain’s long silence was worth.

“Squad Six had four Herons, the best divers in the Bureau, the hall sank the winter the sky opened and none of them came back.”

“You never said Squad Six was Herons, Captain,” Zinnia said softly.

“I said a squad, Quartermaster, I never said whose, nobody asked until tonight.”

Nilo turned a dumpling in his fingers, “Do you think any of them are still down there?”

“I think the water keeps what it loves, kid.”

Zinnia sat on an upturned crate beside Nilo, her tail scarf drying over the stove like a sleeping animal. She did not say a word about the ribbon on his bandolier, although she plainly looked at it twice.

“You were quiet at the water, as if you were listening for someone,” she murmured.

“For about ten seconds I thought it was singing my name.”

“That is the first honest thing you have said all day, I am writing it in the other column.”

Ganzo pointed at the cots with his hammer, “Nobody goes near that water until Tink arrives at dawn, that is an order and a pun I am saving.”

Bruno slept sitting up against a coil of rope, one hand clutching the oar he was never allowed to use. Pipa slept in a hammock of fishing net, murmuring chat rules to a very lumpy pillow shaped like a pigeon.

“Chat… no more tailors… I am a pigeon now,” she mumbled in her sleep.

Nilo lay awake on a cot between Bruno’s snoring and Pipa’s sleep-talking, listening to the weeping through the walls.

‘The weeping stops sounding sad if you listen long enough. It starts sounding like a question.’

“Are you awake, I am awake, I wish I were asleep,” Jingles whispered from the rack.

“Yeah, it’s hard to sleep next to a lullaby with a sad ending,” he whispered back.

“It is not a lullaby, it is a name, I nearly remember it, then it slips away like a coin down a drain.”

“You can tell me if it gets loud.”

“It is always loud, you are simply too brave to hear it.”

“Young man, I implore you to wake the Captain before you wander off alone,” Clangor added stiffly.

He climbed through the skylight onto the roof, where the canal wind carried the weeping like a distant rumor. A figure in a violet cloak sat on the chimney with her legs dangling, braid stirring in the breeze.

He sat on the next chimney, leaving a polite gap, “I left your pin on the bridge rail, in case you were wondering about my manners.”

“You tied a bow around it,” she noted.

She turned the silver pin over in her gloved fingers, studying the bow he tied around it. It was a clumsy bow, loose on one side, yet she left it exactly as it was.

“A thief returns things with style.”

“A thief returns things with a receipt,” she replied, pinning it back onto her collar.

From the roof the Sunken Quarter looked like a quilt of black water stitched with lantern light. Far to the north the Bureau tower glowed against the clouds, a lit finger pointing at nothing.

“Do you ever get tired of people looking at the mask instead of you?” he asked.

“People see a mask when they look at me, people see nothing when they look at you, we are very restful company.”

Nilo laughed softly, “Restful, I’m putting that on a card.”

Up close her mask was an oval gap in the dark, its red line glowing like a sleeping ember. He could not find a single feature to hold on to, which felt strangely like looking into a mirror.

“You do not look away from the gap where my face should be,” she said.

“I’m used to gaps, I see one in the mirror every morning.”

She tilted her head a fraction, “That is the saddest joke I have ever heard.”

“It’s my best material.”

“Someone draws my face every night, a girl named Tilly, she keeps the sketches in a notebook so I stay remembered.”

“I saw one in her stall window, it was very good, she gets the ears right,” she murmured.

Nilo grinned, “Tilly is the best of us, she charges interest on everything.”

“Someone who remembers you every day is a luxury, hold on to her.”

For a while neither of them spoke, the weeping from the water rising and falling like a slow tide. She drew her knees up beneath the cloak, as small as a cat folding itself into a window sill.

“I tried to draw my own face once, I could not get past the eyebrows.”

“I’m sorry… I did not mean to make that heavier.”

“Do not be, it makes the mask lighter,” she said, her voice steady.

“The Vipers sent me to catch a tailor, so I stayed to watch the way he keeps looking at you.”

“He looked at me through the whole fight, I assumed it was my sparkling personality,” he said.

She tilted her head, “He looked at your rack, there is a difference.”

“What difference?”

“A person looks at a face, a collector looks at hooks,” she said.

“The Collector does not hunt strength, he hunts fit, every mask he took suited the face it left,” she said at last.

“He wrote about a seventh hook on his card, you carry seven masks, so what does he plan to hang there?”

“My face, probably.”

“You do not keep a face to hang, I mean that as a compliment.”

‘He doesn’t want another mask. He wants the hook itself.’

Below the roof the canal shivered, every ripple stilling at once as if the water held its breath. The weeping stopped for the first time all night, the silence that followed somehow much worse than sound.

“It stopped… why did it stop, I preferred the crying,” Jingles whispered from the rack.

The canal bed split down the middle like a book, a door of pale ribs opening beneath the roof. Water poured into the gap in a slow silver spiral, lanterns blooming along its curved walls like drowned stars.

“It is opening for someone, I do not think it means me,” she said.

Inside the bandolier Jingles’s crack flared gold, light spilling between the leather straps like warm honey. The humming from the water rose to meet it, two notes tuning themselves into one chord.

She stood on the chimney, her cloak snapping, “Do not go down alone, bring someone who remembers your face.”

“Wait, you still have not told me who you—”

She rose from the chimney without a sound, her cloak folding around her like a closing book. Then the night swallowed her, leaving only the lavender scent and the soft click of a heel.

‘Gone like a rumor again. At least this time she left the scent behind.’

The skylight creaked open behind them, a pair of copper fox tufts rising into the moonlight. Zinnia stood in a blanket cape, ears flattened, surveying the empty chimney where a stranger sat.

“Who were you talking to?” she asked.

“A friend of the roof,” he said.

Zinnia folded her arms, “Does the roof have a name, or should I guess?”

“She has several, none of them my business,” he said, rubbing the back of his neck.

She sniffed the air and her tail scarf twitched, “Lavender, I am saving seventeen for later.”

“Whoever she is, she sews a better knot than I do,” she admitted, stiffly.

“Is that a tally entry?” he asked.

“It is an observation, observations are free.”

She pulled the blanket cape off her shoulders and dropped it over his, “You will catch a cold before the sea eats you.”

“You gave me your blanket, so I’m putting that in your column, the short one,” he said, pulling it tight.

His phone buzzed once against his ribs, a single line from Tink glowing on the cracked screen.

He read it aloud, “I am coming, wait for me at the water, touch nothing, trust nothing.”

“Too late for that, the water is touching us first, I dislike that,” she murmured, glancing at the spiral below.

Cadenza sighed from the rack, “Darling, how tender, a blanket and a prophecy within the same minute, I weep gently for the poetry.”

Far below, the boathouse windows lit one after another as the sleepers woke to the sudden silence. Ganzo’s bellow rolled across the water, demanding to know who dared touch his hammer in the dark.

“Whoever opened that door did not ask permission, so nobody goes through it without a rope, a plan and a pun,” he shouted up.

The squad piled onto the boathouse dock in nightclothes, Bruno clutching his oar and Pipa dragging her pillow. They all stared at the open canal, where the water spiraled down into a ring of golden light.

“I volunteer to hold the rope, that is a Steelhorn honor,” he called, hopping on one foot.

Ganzo cupped his hands around his mouth, “Rope on the dock, Bruno holds it, Pipa watches with the lantern, nobody goes below the third window until Tink arrives and tells us what we are afraid of.”

“And if something down there pulls the rope, Captain?” she asked.

“Then Bruno lets go, we think of a pun.”

Bruno wrapped the rope twice around his wrist, “A Steelhorn never lets go.”

“Chat… if I die in a boathouse, please keep my channel running and my pigeon pillow fed.”

“Chat… tie me to the Captain, I am the weight,” Pipa mumbled from below.

The pale ribs of the door yawned wider, a cold current rising from the dark to tug at him. Down there something vast was waking up, something that already knew the old name hidden inside the cracked jester.

“It isn’t calling the thief,” Jingles whispered, trembling against his ribs, “it is calling me.”