Karen Chance - Masks

Mircea hesitated, torn between the desire for freedom and the desire not to be stupid. He had to get away, but the Watch had caught him flat-footed and he was completely unprepared. And he would only get one chance at this. If he screwed it up, if he landed back in that cold cell . . . he might well never leave it.

But damn, he wanted to try.

“Don’t be a fool!” Bezio said, yelling to be heard over the crescendo of sound outside. “Come back with me. I promise, you won’t regret it!”

“Auughhhh!” Bezio screamed, looking down at his chest.

“The Venetian ideal is hairless,” a sadist named Marte said, holding a strip of cloth covered in pine resin—and a good deal of Bezio’s chest hair.

“Regretting it yet?” Mircea asked evilly, as Bezio stared in disbelief at the swath of skin that had just been uncovered.

It was a day since the fiend of a tailor had left, but the transformation continued. Albeit in another venue. The beautification routine was taking place in a large, burnt-out edifice across the small canal behind the house and down a little way.

The once-elegant structure had been built by a sugar merchant, one of Martina’s former clients, who had designed it as a home and warehouse combined. Not a great idea, as it turned out, since the sugar had been stored in the attic. And, when a fire started in the house, it had melted and dripped down, spreading the flames to the point that it gutted the whole interior.

The sugar merchant died before he could rebuild, leaving Martina her current house and a sum of money in his will, the latter of which she’d used to snap up the decaying hulk behind her.

Mircea assumed she had some sort of long-term plans for it, but for now, weeds were growing in what had been the elegant atrium, the plaster walls were flaking off in chunks, and half the roof was open to the sky. Only a few rooms were still usable, including the one they were in, which had been an office. It was now filled with shelves of strange-smelling ingredients and tables of innocuous-looking implements that Mircea didn’t trust at all.

Like the massive pile of cloth strips lying innocently on the table between him and Bezio.

Mircea looked at them, and then at the acreage left to go, most of which was on display since they were “dressed” in small linen towels. Which, in Bezio’s case, showed off a vast forest of hair on his chest, back, legs, and thighs. Most of which was doomed, if Marte had her way.

“You—you can’t mean to do it all like that,” Bezio said, his eyes flickering from her to the pile.

Marte smiled.

She was a petite brunette Mircea would have described as cute rather than beautiful. She had dimples and merrily bouncing ringlets and tinsel earrings that fascinated him as he’d thought that type of jewelry was only worn by gypsies and strange foreign traders. But they suited her, shimmering whenever she moved, which was often since she hardly ever slowed down. But she was unfailingly good tempered—if a bit overly enthusiastic about the waxing.

As she demonstrated when her eyes lit up at Bezio’s comment.

“Oh, no. We can try other things if you like.”

“What other things?”

“Well, let’s see. There’s the Egyptian way, with beeswax, sugar, and lemon—”

“Does that involve any yanking?” Bezio asked warily.

“Of course. You make a paste that is slathered on the skin, and then cloth strips are pressed into it, which removes the hair when pulled off.”

“So the same thing we’re already doing?” he demanded.

“Oh, no. The recipe is quite different.”

“Is there a method that doesn’t call for removing most of my skin along with the damned hair?”

Marte thought about it. “Well, the Romans used nut shells back in the empire . . .”

“Nut shells?” Bezio looked faintly encouraged. “That doesn’t sound so bad.”

“Oh, it’s a really interesting process,” Marte enthused. “You heat the shells red hot and then singe off the hair—”

“Singe?”

“—but, of course, if your hand slips you can burn yourself rather badly. Which can be, er, unfortunate, considering our flammability—”

“Anything else?” Bezio asked, sounding strangled.

“Lots of things. We usually use bat’s blood or tweezers for eyebrows,” she said, sliding a look Mircea’s way.

He stared her down, and she sighed.

“And then there are pastes designed to soften the hair, so that it just sloughs off.”

“Sloughs off?” Mircea asked, perking up. Because he was next.

“Mmmhmm. You paste it where you want the hair to fall out, leave it for a short time and then just wash it off.”

“That doesn’t sound so bad.”

Bezio didn’t look convinced. “And how does that kill me?” he demanded.

“Well, they do use arsenic in the mix—”

“Arsenic?”

“—along with quicklime and rock alum, but it’s the arsenic that does the trick. Well, as long as you wash it off soon enough. Otherwise you can burn yourself there, too—”

“Burn myself, hell!” He stared at her. “I can die! Are you trying to poison me, woman?”

“You’re already dead,” Mircea pointed out.

“And don’t want to get any deader!”

“My point was that I don’t believe we can be poisoned.”

“Oh, we can be, yes,” Marte said, nodding enough to make her curls bounce. “Although it’s really rare. You’d have to ingest a great deal.” She glanced at Bezio. “Of course, considering how much hair we’re talking about here—”

“Just rip the damned stuff out,” Bezio said, scowling. “It may hurt, but at least I’ll survive the process!”

“Well, that’s what I was doing,” she said, looking disappointed that he wasn’t as enthusiastic about her hobby as she was.

“Why not just use a glamourie?” Mircea asked, talking about the spells that vampires, and some mages, used to change their appearance. “And dispense with all of this?”

“Sure, why not?” Jerome asked, a little desperately.

The slight-built blond currently had no fewer than three attendants hovering around him, probably because he was the closest of them all to the Venetian ideal. And the slender, youthful body and thin, boyish face didn’t appear to have plumped up much, even after feeding. Of course, it was hard to tell. Since it currently had cold cream slathered all over it, while some noxious smelling substance was being combed through his hair.

“It’s only lye,” a severe-looking woman told him, when he protested.

“B-but they washed me last night—”

“And you’ll wash every night, from now on.”

“ Every —” he looked horrified. “My skin will come off!”

“It’ll be another few layers before we hit skin.” The voice was dry.

“This isn’t about getting you clean,” Auria told him. She was in charge of this operation, with Marte being there, Mircea had gathered, for her hirsute expertise. “It’s to take that awful color off, so we can replace it with something better.”

“W-what color?” Jerome asked, a tentative hand going to his head, only to get it smacked by the attendant.

Auria motioned to one of the other women, who had been mixing something in a small pot. “Let me see.” The pot of stuff was brought over for inspection. “More saffron,” she said determinedly. “It’s not like we can sit him in the sun until it bleaches properly.” Bright blue eyes narrowed on him. “And what about those teeth?”

The blond put a hand up to cover his discolored front teeth, only to have it smacked again. “We’ve already tried tooth powder—twice,” one of the attendants told her. “But it’s not a stain; the teeth must have been going bad when he was Changed, and now the color’s fixed. We can try again, but—”