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There are few places that are busier than the marketplace of the kingdom’s capital. Hundreds of hawking vendors lined up on the edges of wide streets, each brilliant and vibrant in an attempt to attract as many people as possible. There was a distinct scent in the air—thick and heavy, a concoction made up of cooking food, of fresh fruits and vegetables, of sugared pastries and candied treats, of spices from all over coming together. Voices intermingled in the air, fragments of conversations and comments in a vast array of different languages from scattered corners of the kingdom. The harsh afternoon sun shone through the dust kicked up from passersby, floating high due to a forgiving breeze. Smudge has been to many marketplaces all over the kingdom, some even outside its borders, if Zaba is feeling lucky and adventurous enough. But this one—Cervabaun—is his favorite. The capital attracts those from all walks of life so he blended in well. And the city is so big that despite having visited several times, he doubted he’s seen even half of it. But if there’s anything he’s learned from his ventures here, it’s that it’s quite easy to thieve.
Smudge decided it was his sign to leave when the shadows cast by the towering buildings bordering the marketplace began to grasp at his feet. Slinging a (suspiciously) bulging canvas bag, Smudge resisted the urge to parade the streets with his accomplishments and instead chose to join the throng of people that traveled steadily down the center. In doing so, he spotted a vendor that he reckoned must be new. The strict attention to orderliness and the shiny, unmarred silks adorning the stall were always the tell. From a glance, it seemed to sell primarily carved masks, from wood or bone or otherwise. Their features were elaborate and exaggerated—clearly of fine craftsmanship, with each mask unique in appearance. Smudge watched a Baunian child joyfully hold one up to her face, the curled lips and wide eyes lending her the appearance of a mischievous cat. He felt a twang of something unidentifiable, and reached up through his heavy cloak to lightly touch his own mask.
Made from aspen, Smudge’s circular mask had two slanted ovals that served as eyes, with dark mesh that enabled him to see outwards, but made it difficult for others to see inwards. Adorned on the temples of his mask were two antler-shaped protrusions, one a little more crooked than the other. Smudge had had it for as long as he could remember, not sure if there was even a face behind it at all. Even with the tight black curls framing it and giving him a human likeness, the mask’s uncanny emptiness and his own silent nature often managed to earn him more suspicion than most.
The mask stall stayed on his mind long after he had left it, but soon he was forced to file it away for the time being. Smudge arrived at his destination—a shabby but sturdy tent decorated with Cervabaun’s signature green and white colors. There was no defined theme to what the tent was selling; it boasted every sort of bauble and gizmo, from buckets of screws and bolts to wooden whittled toys to stacks of rare books and journals. An enthusiastic man waved his hands animatedly at the people milling about. Smudge slipped through the crowd and ducked through an opening to the inner chamber of the tent. He straightened his back at questioning eyes—he never got tired of the gleeful feeling of showing off that he belonged here. He tried to don an air of professionalism as he began emptying his bag onto a table near the back. Acting as though he hadn’t just plucked everything off the shelves of unsuspecting vendors, he began neatly placing every object for display. A silver-chained necklace embellished with a ruby gem by the jewelry, a bundle of rare herbs by the medicines, small metal-worked charms by the trinkets…everything had its place and price (which was, of course, twice as expensive as originally set—but the real deal, unlike those other fakes!).
Satisfied with his placements, Smudge leaned back with a pleased sigh just as a meaty hand clapped his shoulder. Glancing back was Zaba, the shop’s owner. The man smiled triumphantly at Smudge’s work, fine lines forming around his dark eyes. “Another good haul today,” he commented cheerily. Zaba’s face told Smudge all he needed to know—the customers had been eating it up. Certainly, some people who had been watching Smudge curiously were inspecting the items he had just sat down.
There was a call, and as Zaba flitted away from him to welcome another potential buyer, Smudge allowed himself to melt into the background of the comfortable chaos and nursed a small bloom of pride in his chest. He watched as another familiar face came into view, emerging from the crowd of people with the exhaustion of the sun on her face. It was Eris, who acted as their traveling salesperson. She shrugged off her pack, which looked like the smaller, moving embodiment of the tent, and went to speak with Zaba. Smudge cocked his head as they shared an uproarious laugh at both their successes of the day, causing more than a few heads to turn.
“Smudge!” Eris called out brightly as she effortlessly slipped further into the tent, back into the safety of the shade. She stretched her back. “Welcome back, little fawn!”
Smudge preened as Eris dropped a chaste kiss on the top of his head. Her joyful air was infectious, and Smudge always felt more at ease with her around. She opened her mouth to say something more, but was interrupted as a shout rang out from down the street. The previously lively atmosphere fell flat like silt in water, voices halting in an inquisitive silence. What followed was the heavy thumping of hooves on packed ground, as thunderous as storm clouds linking arms on the horizon. Smudge leaned over Eris just in time to see bright flashes of white traveling down the center of the street; they were of horses clad in elegant metal armor with equally elegant riders. Emblazoned proudly on the armor and banners was a stag, its empty eyes promptly returning Smudge’s stare, stark against the otherwise light colors.
Smudge shared a look with Eris as the riders seemed to carefully survey the area with a burning gaze. Their horses trudged along uncomfortably slow. As traffic resumed and conversation began again, albeit hesitantly, Zaba turned to face the two. His previously merry expression had turned sour at the arrival of the knights.
“They’re looking for rebels,” he explained gruffly. Smudge suddenly understood, and turned to look silently after the receding backs of the riders. Before they had arrived in Cervabaun a week or so prior, the rumor of a rebellion had already spread far and wide like a blight. Smudge hadn’t been interested at the time, already too preoccupied with finding money for his next snack and scouting out his next victim. As was his daily routine for so long now. And besides, rebellions were nothing new. His travels told him that they hardly ever worked out no matter where they began—and were usually quashed before they could truly flower. But if he was honest, he didn’t particularly care for the royals of this kingdom. And it seems he wasn’t the only one. It was everywhere, if you knew how to look for it—there was a distinct brand of hatred visible in the beggars lining the streets, the glances at the gallows that saw far too much blood, the outer city that was just tents and planks. There was contempt for his knights laced into the way muscles tense at streaks of green and white, the tightening of sword-belts and pulling children closer.
Smudge unconsciously shuffled closer to Eris as the knights threw one last dismissive glance in their direction before disappearing from sight. In their wake was a new uncertainty.
Eris ran a bronze hand over her closely-shorn head. “I think I’ll stay here until pack-up. No sense running these wares into the dirt.” She chuckled, but Smudge felt his heart sink at her nervous undertone.
Zaba bumped his shoulder with hers. “All in a day’s work, Ris,” he said, his scratchy baritone a salve of reassurance. Smudge nodded and lightly touched Eris’s arm, offering her what he hoped was an encouraging thumbs-up. Zaba laughed and ruffled Smudge’s hair again before being called off by a customer. Eris and Smudge watched him go. His gray hair turned silver in the dying light of the sun, and Smudge couldn’t help but to ruminate how tired he looked. He tilted his head.
…
Where the fierce heat of the afternoon brought iron-fisted knights from the shadows and dusty travelers to the marketplace, the evening laid a gentle hand on the chaos of the day. That’s how it usually went.
Smudge sat on top of a wooden box stored at the back of the tent, surveying the nearly empty counters. He took pride in the fact that many of these things came from his hand, now in the care of another. He even saw someone purchase the metal-worked charms and weave it into their hair afterwards. Eris and Zaba, amidst friendly banter, began packing up the shop at a practiced pace like a well-oiled machine. The streets were still busy, but not nearly as packed as when guided by the watchful light of the sun.
Smudge stared at Eris and Zaba and tightened his cloak around him. The day they had found him, all those years ago, they had been teasing each other just like this. It seemed like they didn’t even find it odd that a young teenager with nothing but an eerie mask and tattered clothing had been standing in the middle of the road, staring off into nothing. The warmth in his chest grew at the memory—when Zaba had plucked him from the ground like a kitten and sat him on the back of their traveling pony, sparing him little more than a few lines of light questioning. It had been so natural and fluid a change that Smudge still remembers how shocked he had been. But they had never elaborated to him why they decided to do what they did.
As they were working, Smudge noticed something about Zaba’s garments. The tight sash that he usually kept around his waist had gained a tear. Smudge hopped off the crate and trotted over to Zaba, who had his back turned. He tapped him and raised his hands, using looping, intricate motions to spell out a phrase: Your sash was torn. Smudge pointed at it, and Zaba looked over in surprise. I will mend it .
Zaba smiled at him and untied the long, sheer sash. “Thanks kid, I didn’t even notice. Must’ve looked all unprofessional-like, walking around with that.” Smudge took it and hurried back to his crate, much to Zaba’s amusement, and quickly searched for a needle and thread. It was a worthy skill to have when one travels so much. He quickly got to work, and the three of them settled back into their rhythm.
The moment was quickly shattered, however, and replaced with rising fear when the sound of shouts broke out yet again. Only this time, they sounded more urgent, more pointed. Smudge pushed himself off the crate and hurried to join Eris and Zaba, who had also stopped their work to view the commotion. What would he see this time?
And then—“You stay back,” Eris suddenly instructed in a stiff voice. Confused but obliging, Smudge stepped back and found himself peering out from behind a wall made up of her and Zaba. He clutched Eris’s dusty brown coat in one hand while a strange, unidentifiable feeling coursed through him. The five white horses from before came barreling from the crowd in a much more violent fashion than previously. They were like white lances with their unyielding riders, uncaring of those who stood in their path and knocking many to the side. Smudge felt that fire in his gut rise to his throat, licking at his insides in increasing panic as the nickering horses halted in front of their tent.
His breath stuttered when a woman leisurely dismounted the lead horse. The clatter of her silver armor sounded like the crash of cymbals to him, and the reflected moonlight gave her the appearance of some otherworldly star. Smudge felt more than saw Eris and Zaba tense, their stances instinctively shifting.
The lead knight wore a helmet that obscured her eyes, but unlike the others, it sported an impressive pair of metal antlers that seemed more a symbol of status than for practicality. Smudge’s gaze traveled down until he spotted something in her hand, which she gracefully tossed onto the ground before them. The silence afterward was nearly deafening, the tension as palpable as whatever laid bare on the ground. Smudge couldn’t see it and his legs were too frozen to carry him to look, fear paralyzing his muscles. They had never met with much trouble before, despite their less than authentic way of trade. With how often they traveled from place to place, Smudge never had much reason to fear anything too serious catching up with them. But this new fear was almost overwhelming, if it weren’t for the sudden current of burning curiosity so intense Smudge didn’t know how to contain it. It only grew with the looks and murmurs he knew he was receiving from the loose crowd that had formed. He played absentmindedly with his inlain pockets. He felt as if the kicked up dust had returned, only with ten times the density. Suddenly, he decided that Cervabaun wasn’t his favorite place anymore.
“And what would you like us to do with this?” Zaba asked the woman to break the pregnant silence. Despite his large stature that towered over her, the way the lead knight carried herself made him seem small in comparison.
She snorted with a hint of amusement. Instead of answering his question, she raised her voice as if to appeal to the crowd. “An assassination attempt was made on King Hydreus less than two hours prior to this.” An outbreak of exclamations. Her tone was etched in authority, clear and ringing, rendering the marketplace mute. “During the aftermath, the palace was searched. And what do you know? Masks.” There was a peculiarity about her that made Smudge’s skin crawl. “Several of them. Fashioned in the same style as the one you attempt to protect from me.”
A numb sensation spread throughout Smudge like a sickness. Her words fed his morbid curiosity, and he wriggled his way out from behind Eris’s solid barrier. Leaning over the counter, he found it was indeed similar. Instead of one of the intricate masks he saw earlier, lying face-up on the dirt was a crudely cut circular mask made from wood with oval mesh eyes—only this one sprouted small horns instead of antlers.
The blood rushing in his ears made it hard to hear the back-and-forth of the knight and Zaba. It shouldn’t make sense. He had spent countless hours staring at his mask. There could be thousands of their likeness out in the world made by a thousand different people with just as many functions—this shouldn’t mean anything at all. And yet. He could hardly pay attention to anything else other than the mask— there are more? —boring holes through him, past him, beyond him into an unfamiliar world that he had, maybe, once known. One whose roots had been stunted when he was left on a dirt road and then privately resumed when gentle hands had laid his own on the rough mane of a chestnut pony. He knew this mask before he even knew his own, he knew the culture it belonged to before the culture of thievery he’s part of now.
His revelation wouldn’t last long, however, as he was suddenly yanked backwards by his hood and out of his stupor. Smudge choked and stumbled into a firm chest. He looked up to see Zaba focused intensely on a furious Eris swiftly advancing on the woman that had apparently been mere seconds away from snatching Smudge. The crowd didn’t help, of course, still watching in barely contained thrill. The other knights shifted on their feet.
It was hot. Overwhelmingly so. Smudge didn’t know whether he felt suffocated or liberated.
“He has nothing to do with this! That’s hardly any implication and you know it,” Eris cried out. The back of her shoulders were bunched, ready to spring. There was a fierceness in her voice. She was focused wholly on the woman before her. But Smudge could see it. The unnerving, dead calm of the lead knight, the hand on the pommel of her sword that trembled minutely with poorly masked excitement. It was a death sentence waiting to be executed.
With great effort, Smudge wrenched himself out of Zaba’s grip, ignoring his frantic calls. If being a thief gave him one skill, it was the slipperiness of a serpent, and it felt wrong to be used against Zaba. He rushed towards Eris, leaving the relative safety of the tent for the open air. Starlight and dust, fear and a strange wonder at the mask he easily sidestepped. Smudge stopped in front of Eris. He looked up at the knight and her fake antlers, at the muscled horse the color of milk that shone faintly under the moonlight, at Eris and her crumpled expression.
Quiet disappointment radiated from the knight for a mere heartbeat before it vanished entirely, so quickly Smudge almost thought he was mistaken. “Well isn’t this quite the turnaround,” she drawled. After a moment of studying Smudge, she stepped closer towards Eris and Zaba, who had come to stand beside her. “Listen…people like to talk,” she said in a quieter voice meant for their ears alone. “It’s in our nature. And whether it’s about a masked boy running around town, or a certain vendor stall with supposedly illicitly acquired items—it’s all the same to them. As long as there’s a reward.”
She leaned back, and it felt as though a great shadow had receded with her. Smudge’s heart constricted at the devastation hanging heavy around Zaba and Eris, their own personal cloud set to rain by her cutting threat. Their ruined glance at him was enough of a sentence, and Smudge swallowed thickly. He remembered the road and steady hands. The ease of assimilating into their dynamic. The bond hammered into him after years of stretched days spent traveling from place to place, from peaceful nights where they spent curled protectively around one another. They deserved peace.
But then he saw the mask. One just like his that rang a distant memory. Smudge had never seen someone that resembled him before and had given up searching after the first dozen cities. It was like a drug, the way he wanted to turn back again and just study it for hours on end. It was almost laughable—the first real sign he had been looking for, had been found as the most damning of evidence. Even if it was unfounded. He wanted to cry.
In the end, he had to be taken. It took every bit of strength in him not to break down in front of Eris and Zaba. Zaba, who had looked ten years older, guilt and pity warring fruitlessly in his eyes. Eris, whose despair manifested itself into electric resistance even as the tears came heavier. Even though he knew they understood, Smudge decided that he wouldn’t allow himself to be uprooted anymore. Smudge hoped that at this point they’d know that he wasn’t one to just hand himself in so easily. He’d see them again. That much was guaranteed.
He learned that the knight’s name is Pharas, Captain of King Hydreus’s Royal Guard. Sitting in front of her with his hands bound, Smudge felt his heart ache more and more with every plod of the horse’s hooves and every snap of the banner the other knights carried.
“You made the right choice,” Pharas said to him icily. It was worse not being able to see her. “We will ensure that their secret is well kept. You, however.” She paused. Dirt turned to cobblestone underneath. The buildings became more tightly packed, the streets cleaner. “Well, we will see. That’s up to King Hydreus, but allow me to be frank—I don’t imagine your fate is sunny.”
The breeze had picked up again. But it was harsher now, icicles dragging across Smudge’s mask. He resisted the urge to lean back and headbutt Pharas in the face, even if it would probably hurt him more than her.
Eventually, Cervabaun’s jewel came into view. A soaring palace, center of all things. Tall spires clawed into the sky, arching bridges curved to meet dramatically in the middle, hulking towers and parapets dwarfed their surroundings and commanded only the utmost attention. He didn’t know much about this rebellion, but just the castle alone was oppressive in its own right. They passed through the raised gate leading to the courtyard. The guards stationed there looked as bored as Smudge was terrified. Without a word, they left their horses and entered the castle on foot.
Firelight blazed inside the walls. Shadows stretched long and flickered from the wind, casting wildly dancing shadows across the cobble. He thought of Eris and Zaba and how they’d always have a fire going when it was time to sleep. The firelight made Pharas’s overkill antlers look strange, like twisting tendrils on the ground, or a network of roots. But the longer the silence stretched and longer they continued their walk, the more his anxiety and anticipation grew. Here, the connection between his mask and whoever attacked King Hydreus felt more tangible than ever. The first sign of his heritage just barely brushing his fingertips. The interior of the castle was much like the outside—high ceilings of dark beams coming to a point, a thousand different hallways and doors that made Smudge dizzy, and expensive furniture and incomprehensible painted portraits that bordered each side of them.
It was clean and orderly, clearly being kept by a staff, and yet there were few souls around. Smudge could spot an abundance of reward posters for rebels strewn about the chaises and tables, some faded by the elements and others clearly just printed, but they saw no guards besides the ones at the gate. Not even their horrible clanking armor could be heard or even any semblance of voices. Even Pharas seemed to hesitate as each hallway turned out to be just as empty as the last, her stature straightening and her hand returning to her pommel.
The gates leading into the throne room were massive. Intricate details swirled in mesmerizing shapes, but when Pharas called out, they seemed to take an eternity to open. Smudge thought he could feel every bead of sweat on his body, the subtle trembling of his hands, his heartbeat screaming to be set free. He pictured what would lie beyond—a king draped in the luxury and toils of the commoners, the throne appearing to stretch to the heavens to look down on any who enter. The creak of the doors was booming. Smudge stared. The weight of his decision came crashing down on him. He hoped his death was quick.
But when they finally opened to reveal what lay behind, his heart skipped a beat. Nausea quickly rose and threatened to overtake him, for the sight before him stunned them all into silence—save for the rattling of the knights’ weapons falling to the ground in shock. He smelled the acrid stench of someone retching behind him.
The throne room was empty except for its centerpiece. Slouched on his throne was the king, feared and hated, the kind of king whose death would be celebrated instead of mourned. The same king whose elaborate and polished throne room had been turned into a bloody, gory canvas at the mercy of its brutal painter. The same king who now had no eyes, only concave holes with crimson mess still glistening. In lieu of a crown sat a wooden triangular mask, much like Smudge’s own and the one Pharas had shown him. It had a grand set of crooked, stabbing antlers. Their very make seemed to be ripped straight from the earth. A single pike was buried deep into his royal chest. The job was done messily and poorly with streams of blood still spilling from the wound and down the throne, either the work of the inexperienced or the uncaring. But what commanded the most attention was the flag, bloodless amidst the carnage and waving furiously from the broken windows’ wind on the end of the pike—bearing the very insignia it pierced. And the heavy glare of the stag seemed to stand in for the king’s own, offering either a declaration or a condemnation.