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The navy knew Svir's face, but that hardly mattered when it was hidden behind a ceramic mask, marked around his right eye with a gleaming silver polestar. Now, in this ballroom, he was Ravi Sharksfin's betrothed. Baru was unused to seeing Svir's long red hair so tightly braided, his poison-green eyes framed with dark formal eyeliner in the Falcresti style, peeking out from behind pearly white porcelain.
Baru wore her own blue-tinted mask over Ravi Sharksfin's face. Faces over faces over faces. But then, wasn't that the whole point of a masquerade? Of the Masquerade? Baru tugged irritably at her white satin glove as they wove through the mingling guests - with a few clever tricks, a seamstress could hide her missing fingers from everyone but Baru herself (and Svir, she supposed, but he didn't have to put up with any constant, itching reminders).
Svir's elegant horse-archer heels clicked against the marble floor, pale as the winter-touched skin beneath his mask. He was like an albino peacock - a flawless performance of Falcresti masculinity, albeit with fewer feathers. And for all his petty insults Baru couldn't imagine any man better suited to playing the role of her betrothed - what better husband for a tribadist than a sodomite, after all? Baru was fairly sure she'd heard a joke that began that way, but it was more appropriate for a tavern of ill-repute than an imperial masked ball. The other thought that came to mind was hardly better.
"By Stakhieczi law," she murmured, keeping her expression bland enough to match her mask, "which one of us would be the groom?"
"Oh, fuck you," Svir hissed back, though Baru was certain that she detected a note of amusement wrapped up in all his venom. She suspected he enjoyed being needled almost as much as he enjoyed needling...and that was rather the sticking point, was it not? "King's balls, I'm too sober for all this." He reached into the distorted darkness on her blind side to produce what looked to be two glasses of water, ice-cold. Baru was close enough to smell vodka. Her throat burned with anticipation, with gratitude. With feelings she couldn't name.
Indeed, there was no man in the world she'd rather pretend to marry for political gain, but she'd keep that to herself for now - they had important work to do and Svir did so despise it when she got sappy.