Book One – Chapter 19

The storm had torn through him. It had torn at Yu until all that was to him had ripped into the screaming part that went mad trying to unhear the , and the listening part that would give anything to hear more of her voice. He was simultaneously the hunted creature so terrified that it thought only of running, and the senseless thing that bent toward her still, craving, begging to be pressed into silence once more.

As Yu stood and stared and suffered the push and pull of these competing selves, he sought for something to bind them, to keep himself together. All he had was the faltering echo of his old self. All he had was the mask — the shell of a guard. It was the only thing he had ever tried to make of himself, apart from the faulty, fragile frame of hope that in another life might have developed into an educated wizard. And so he tried, violently, to force the guard-mask down, to pull the screaming and the craving under the same fabric, to smother both into a single, sensible, serviceable self.

He forced. He reasoned. He reconciled. They needed the mask. They needed to be the guard. Both of them.

We are no guards, and we will never be. We cannot stay here. It was true. But at the same time, the screaming self needed to understand that he could not run — not yet, not without a plan. We need the right moment, the right people, and the right chance. For that, we have to uphold our position and play the guard. While biding our time, we can’t fall on anyone’s bad side. Not on the guards’, and not on the ‘s.The mask was to hold, to obey, and to pretend until the path to flight opened —

She never said we were.

Despite the overwhelming display of her voice, the had given him no reason to think that she wanted to harm him. She was … simply … powerful. Her voice and her deflection pulse; they are proof beyond measure. She can protect us from anything. In that, the wanting self was right. But this half, too, needed restraining. Why resist? Did she not say that she was kind to those who are below her? Even then, the will not tolerate begging. Not unbidden pleas. Not senseless grovelling. She would despise it, surely. If her attention can be earned, it will be through obedience. She has already given us an order. She wants us to prepare dinner. Before she will speak to us again, she wants us to act our role as a guard. So if the wanting self craved her favour, it needed the mask just as much.