Chapter 196: Blank State

The seventh hook split down its brass spine with a crack like a bell striking stone. Glass sky tore into long strips overhead, the whole mirror world peeling away from its seams.

"Dear boy, you are overflowing the cloth, do stop at once," the Collector said, tightening his grip on the shears.

Nilo sagged against the cracking hook as brass burned through his coat, his feet skidding across the shattered floor. Across the room Zinnia coughed in Calla's arms, her fox mask thrown back on, her gaze clear as glass.

"Nilo, whatever you are about to do, I am writing it down," she called, flipping open a stub of pencil.

Calla hauled her back from a widening crack, "Hold my belt, the floor is leaving without us."

A muffled voice shouted through the seam far overhead, "Hold the line, we are coming through the wall—"

'The hook was cut for seven hands, and my Seat is thirteen wide. Of course it cracked.'

Behind his eyes the blank room opened like a door left ajar, the plain chair waiting in the glare. A dry voice spoke from somewhere inside the room, close as breath against his ear, as it did before.

"You said names come last, so what do I call you this time?" Nilo asked, his teeth gritted.

"Call me the count, you will need me for the next ten seconds," the voice replied.

"What does letting go cost me, I would like the price before the sale?"

"One minute of your voice, last time it was a colour, cheap beside a face cut from a living reflection," the count said.

"Let go of the masks, doorkeeper, you were never meant to wear only one at a time."

[ BLANK STATE ]

[Status: relearned, price now voice]

[Duration: ten seconds]

[Price: your voice]

"Please do not, we are all very comfortable on the rack," Jingles squeaked, the gold crack in his face flickering.

Clangor's visor rattled, "Young man, a gentleman does not hide beside a door, he walks straight through it."

"Darling, the whole house is holding its breath, give them an entrance," Cadenza whispered.

Nilo pulled his hand off the hook and it dropped to the floor with a single dull clang. Every mask on the bandolier lifted from its peg together, dissolving into sparks that drifted along his cheek.

"Ten," the count murmured.

The sparks sank into his skin as marks, the old patchwork of Tin, Silver and Great Face glowing together. His coat, scarf and hair flowed through every Form he owned, one after another, until none of them held.

"Calla, please tell me that is supposed to happen to his face, or at least that it will stop soon?"

Calla shrugged, "I stopped asking what is supposed to happen to his face about a month ago, it saves a great deal of worry."

The Collector's shears flashed toward the reflection in the nearest strip of glass, snapping shut with a satisfied click. They closed on a pane of plain silver, because the glass held no reflection of Nilo anywhere at all.

"That is not possible, a customer always leaves a shadow in the cloth," he said, his smile slipping a stitch.

"Nine."

He took a single step and crossed the room, the floor tearing beneath his heel like wet paper. His face was a smear that nobody could hold, the Collector's eyes sliding off it again and again.

"Eight," the count said, as his fist rang the apron like a dropped tray of silverware.

Fifty hooks snapped loose as the Collector skidded backward across the tiles, his hat spinning away into the dark. Calla's daggers followed him in a silver fan, pinning a dozen hooks to the floor before they could rise.

'All of them at once. Nobody leads and nobody follows, it is one long breath.'

The Collector dragged himself upright, slashing the shears through the air in three wide cuts at three mirrors. Every strip of glass showed the room in a different mask, but none of them showed Nilo anywhere.

"Where have you gone, I fitted you not a minute ago—" he said, his voice cracking at last.

"Seven."

The Collector spun on his heel and lunged at Zinnia, shears gleaming toward the nearest mirror holding her face. Nilo caught the blades in his bare palm, the steel sliding through his skin without leaving a single mark.

"Impossible, I have cut kings out of their mirrors and you refuse even to bleed," the Collector hissed.

Zinnia pulled free of Calla's arms and raised her rapier, a copy of her stepping from each broken mirror. Ten foxes spread around the Collector in a ring, every one of them wearing her very calmest face tonight.

"Look at the page, Nilo, look at your face... I am right here," she said, her voice soft.

He drew Tilly's page from his coat and the pencil sketches stared back, a boy with a crooked nose. For one heartbeat the smear across his face sharpened into that boy, then blurred again like breath on glass.

"He is not hiding from you, there is nothing left for you to take," Calla said quietly.

[ PRICE PAID ]

[Voice: gone]

[Duration: sixty seconds]

Nilo opened his mouth to answer and nothing came out, not a breath or even a rasp. The silence was so complete that he felt his own name sliding slowly out of his reach.

'Don't let go of the page... don't let go of the page.'

Zinnia stepped to his shoulder to slide her hand into his, her fingers warm against his knuckles. She leaned close to his mouth, reading his lips as plainly as if he shouted every word.

"Three seconds left, I have you."

"Two," the count said, almost gently.

The marks faded from his cheek, the masks dropping back onto their pegs, each one cold as river stone. Jingles whimpered into the silence, Clangor murmured a soft prayer, Cadenza clutching an imaginary shawl to her chest tightly.

"Is it over, I would very much like to stop being brave now?"

Nilo flipped open the notebook he still carried and wrote two words across a clean page. The pencil tip dug deep, because the letters were all he still owned to shout with.

"Still here, you wrote, sixty seconds of you not talking, I will cherish every one," Zinnia read, her mouth twitching.

Calla tucked a dagger behind her ear, "Write faster, the tailor is taking off his apron."

Far above them the glass seam shuddered, Bruno's shoulder slamming against it with a sound like a dropped anvil. Dust sifted down from the cracks as Ganzo's hammer rang beside him, two giants pounding on one stubborn door.

Ganzo roared through the glass, "Push, Bruno, the seam is giving way, nobody in this squad waits outside!"

"I am pushing, Captain, with the entire weight of my bloodline and a small portion of my pride."

The Collector straightened his coat with shaking hands and laughed, a thin dry sound without any joy in it. He looked at the hundreds of silver hooks glittering across his apron and began to slowly undo the buttons.

"One."

"Then I shall stop trimming the cloth, dear boy, and simply tear down the tailor shop—" the Collector said.

He ripped his apron wide and every hook flew loose, brass wasps rising to fill the sky.