Black, Grey, Brown, Red, Yellow, Blue, Green. Nothing, nothing, nothing, nothing.
They weren’t enough. No single color would obey me or blend. I didn’t know how to be an Igniter. I didn’t know how to be a Keeper. I had no mask.
Let me be your mask.
My heart stilled. I wasn’t sure what that meant, but with a deep, powder-filled breath, I said one final name. “White.”
Fire burst inside my core, and for a wild moment, I thought the gunpowder had been ignited. It pressed against my chest from the inside, like some growing ball of flame trying to push its way out. My ribs were going to snap. My breath died. What was this madness?
A deep-throated yell scratched my throat.
Blind pain.
Pressure built behind my eyes. Was I having another seizure? My cheek split open with a crack. I screamed. Heat swept down the right side of my face. Blood? Bile? I couldn’t even lift my hand to check.
Stone on stone and cracking sounds joined the fiery agony. My face was splitting apart, my eyes bursting from my head, my throat soldering shut. This was it. This was death.
Light blinded me—so bright, I felt it in the center of my skull. I slapped my hands over my eyes, trying to shield myself from the needles piercing every bit of me.
Then, in a breath, the pain evaporated.
I lay panting, palms pressed to my eyes. Only then did I realize they were no longer bound. The skin around my wrists burned and hissed from each bump against wood. Raw. I kept my hands over my eyes until my mind could cool.
White . . . what did you do?
The danger was real.
My palms rubbed against stone cheekbones, but something was off. I removed one hand and something slipped from my face. Something thick, solid, and stone. It landed on my leg and I blinked away the dust.
Wait. I blinked again, rubbed my eyes, and took in the barrels inches from my nose. I could see them plain as daylight. Every grain of wood, every crack, every seam.
My sight had been returned. I touched my face with the tips of my fingers. Skin. Supple, soft, healed skin. It didn’t feel like when Dee healed me—no stiffness or fear resting in the pores. No threat of the plague returning. No, from both the inside and outside, my skin felt cleansed.
Then I looked down into my lap at the weight that had fallen from my face.
Fragments of bleached stone bound by fire and light, forming an oval. I flipped the curved piece of art over and saw two eye holes, a nose space, and a firm-set expression.
It was a mask.
A mask made from the plague that White Light had purged from my body. But it wasn’t like any of the masks I’d ever seen before.
This one was White.
I yanked the gag from my mouth, and when I tried to straighten, the wood above me adjusted with my force. It was no longer under Father’s command. I picked up the mask in my lap—my mask. There were no ribbons on the side to tie it to my face.
I almost didn’t want to touch it to my skin—what if it stayed there and I was plagued again? Having my sight back, my skin back, was enough reward for me. I could be content.
But my task wasn’t over yet.
Now I’d been equipped to do what I must.
I pressed the mask against my face. It fit perfectly. Comfortably. And when I let go, it stayed there—held on by some other force. The mouth and nose area allowed me to breathe easily. Nothing impeded my vision. Every color voice welcomed me with a hum. Waiting to join in action. I felt them around me rather than saw them.
I must say, you look stunning. Very manly and intimidating and all that.
I grinned.
Okay, but really—how do you like it?
The mask felt both separate from me and yet a part of me—a tool. The White Light, however, had become part of my identity. “It’s perfect.”
When I lowered my hands from the mask, I realized my veins were glowing, which was why I could see the barrels and wood around me. I looked at the barrels on each side. “Move.”
The word had barely passed my lips before they obeyed. And I knew it wasn’t because of me. It was because of the White Light in my veins, on my mask.
I untied my ankles, brushed the gunpowder off me, and stood, barely able to see over the piles of wood into the undercroft. The torch Father left behind had almost gone out. The main source of light came from beneath my skin. But with each breath, it diminished. I remembered when Emma looked this way after moving the prison cart.
I retrieved my rapier.
The door creaked open and I ducked behind a barrel.
In walked Father, but he no longer wore his servant clothing. Tall black boots clung to his calves, with sharp spurs at the heels. He wore his cloak and wide-brimmed black hat. Sword at his side, mask tight against his face.
John Johnson was gone.
Tonight Father was the warrior, Guy Fawkes.
And I would have to fight him.
Forty-One
“What have you done?”
I hovered my hand over my sword as a response to Father’s question. “Father, please listen—”
“You are truly lost.” His voice broke. “I wonder if there was ever really a chance of saving you.”
“I’m not lost! I have wrestled with this for the past year and made the decision to bond with White Light out of my own clear mind. You never even gave White Light a chance.”
“It’s too dangerous.”
“Since when have you feared danger?”
He slid his rapier from its scabbard. “I don’t want to have to do this.”
I left my sword undrawn for a moment longer. “You don’t have to. I am trying to save lives, Father. I am still against the oppression of Keepers. I’m not a power-hungry Igniter. I just know that this act of murder will not result in restoration.”
I caught the droop of his arm. The sag of his shoulders. As though he actually considered my words for a moment. But then a deep resolve seemed to fill his chest and he took his stance. “En garde.”
I barely slipped my sword from its sheath before he attacked. My throat burned, but not as hot as my muscles were about to. I deflected his cut, allowing the years of training and practice to flow back into my limbs.
The irony of fighting the man who gifted me my sword was not lost on me.
His movements were swift and sharp—honed by years of battle. He had always boasted Jack’s talent with a sword, but already I knew Father was beyond my skill.
I thrust with my anguish.
I parried with my despair.
I cut with my resignation.
Father and I would never be father and son. Not the way I’d hoped for so many years. Not the way it was supposed to be. It was as though we were born to have a draw. Neither one of us willing to kill the other. And neither one willing to back down.
How would this end?
The bells chimed one in the morning. We had a mere six hours before Parliament and the most I’d done was tire myself.
Father had the stamina of a soldier in battle. He never relented. Never took a breath. And when my rapier tip glanced off his guard and pierced his shoulder, he spoke his first color command.
My boots tore from my feet and flew across the room as I tumbled onto my back. I tucked into a roll and came up on my feet again, my cloak tangled around my head. I threw up my sword with one hand as the other hand yanked the fabric away.
My sword met metal.
I willed up some sort of color command, but I didn’t know how to use it. All right, White, how do I do this thing? I parried Father’s attacks while I looked for something to send flying his way. I didn’t want to risk the torch lighting the gunpowder, so I asked a bundle of wood to lurch toward his head. He deflected it with barely a word.
“You can’t stop me.” Father popped forward, and with a twirl of his blade and a command from behind his mask, my sword went spinning from my hand.
I stood stunned, his blade against my chest.
Th
en the fight went out of me. I took my mask from my face and dropped my arms to my sides. If he was going to run me through, I would at least allow him to see my face—something he never granted me.
He’d won.
Why did White Light do nothing? When I’d first stood from Father’s bonds in the sea of gunpowder, I thought it would be no contest. I had White Light in my veins, I had a mask unlike any other and I was fighting for the right cause.
“Your White Light didn’t help you.”
Then I understood. “That’s because its battles are not physical. It’s spending too much time fighting for your loyalty. For your heart.”
“You sound like a woman.”
I swept into a bow, the sword point pricking my sternum. “Why, thank you.” I liked being compared to Emma, even though Father intended it as a petty insult. “I see now that this plot is more important to you than any lives—mine, innocents’, even your own.”
“I won’t kill you, Thomas.”
“You buried me beneath the gunpowder!”
“I wouldn’t have left you there—”
“Catesby would have. He wanted to let me die.”
Father shook his head. “I didn’t let him.”
“But you trust him.”
“Why shouldn’t I?”
How could Father not see? “Because he’s not of stable mind! Don’t you question all the new men he’s added to the plot these last few months? He doesn’t care who dies or who lives. He collects our stories and uses them as blackmail.”
“You don’t know him.”
It was my last chance to talk Father down from this treason and murder. “He added John Dee to the plot. And Dee is the one spreading the plague.”
Not just spreading, Thomas.
So my suspicions were correct. “He controls the plague, Father. And Catesby knows this.”
Father stared. “That can’t be true.”
“It was Dee who cut me that night. How else would he ‘cure’ me at the masquerade? It’s a color Compulsion that he reverses. He was on the bank during our rowing. He has sent color Compulsions to the grains he feeds the pigeons. And those pigeons spread the plague to the rats, who spread it to the water, which spreads it to us.”
“No. Catesby can’t have known.”
That was his response? I just told him Dee. Created. The. Plague. And Father was defending Catesby. “Don’t you hear yourself? You’re more concerned about Catesby’s innocence than the plague of all England! You really think Catesby would have added Dee to the plot without interrogating him about his control over the plague? Catesby knew, and he allowed you and the other plotters to continue with this scheme under the lie that it would heal England of the plague and save the Keepers.”
“No—”
There came a pounding at the door. Both Father and I jumped, and I instinctively stepped to his side, retrieving my sword. The action surprised me, but what stunned me even more was Father sweeping me behind him as though he was protecting me.
The pounding came again, solidifying the suspicion that it was not one of our own. It was an enemy of the plot, and even though I welcomed their entrance, I didn’t want Father to be caught.
I grabbed his arm from behind. “You need to leave. Get out of here, Father. They’ll kill you.”
He paused for a moment and then shoved me behind the barrels. “Stay out of sight.”
“No! I—”
“You have to warn the others if this goes poorly. Especially if what you say about Dee is true. You’ve done enough to condemn them already. Save their lives if you can.”
He sent my lost boots into my chest with a quick command, then stepped away as the door burst open. I crouched behind the piles of wood. Four men entered—the first of whom was a knight I’d seen before at the masquerade. Then the Baron. Then Henry.
And finally . . . John Dee.
The sight of his multicolored mask and belt of strange stone daggers boiled my blood. His traitorous nature was confirmed.
An odd group for an attack. Judging by their unceremonious topple into the undercroft, swords still sheathed and torches lit, I gathered they hadn’t expected resistance.
This was a search party.
A search party that had found an armed warrior with a Black mask, two wheellock pistols, and a sword in hand.
Henry gave a shout and drew his sword before the others registered the threat. “Who are you?” Henry didn’t recognize Father. All this time he tried to get me to introduce him to Guy Fawkes, he never actually knew what Guy Fawkes looked like. Father had done well to keep his fame linked to his name but not his mask.
“I might ask the same thing,” Father responded with a tone of utmost surprise.
The knight stepped forward, wearing a mask of Brown. “I am Sir Knevett. What is your business at this hour of the bell?” Knevett looked him up and down. “And with such weaponry?”
I could already tell that he would challenge Father. “I am merely a servant,” Father said.
Dee remained silent—because to expose Father would allow Father to expose him.
Dee had never been loyal to the plot. He’d been loyal to whatever would further his status at court. And exposing a plot of regicide would surely endear him to King James.
“Whom do you serve?” Knevett demanded.
Father hesitated.
“This is the same man who was here earlier.” The Baron pointed a finger. “But now dressed for battle!”
“Bind him,” Knevett said.
“Nay!” Father sheathed his sword and held out his hands. Even I believed him to be a nervous servant. “I am but a footman—John Johnson—startled by your intrusion. What do you want?”
His act didn’t deter them. Both the Baron and Dee carried coils of rope. Dee sent them swirling toward Father. Father shouted a command and the ropes twitched but didn’t stop. I had exhausted him.
Why didn’t he expose Dee?
“You cannot undo my commands,” Dee said smugly.
Father’s voice turned to steel. “Your death will undo any Compulsion you’ve ever set, Dee. You know that, don’t you?”
“All masked know that.” With a jerk of Dee’s chin, the ropes rose into the air.
“Dee, you know this man?” the Baron inquired.
“Is that why you’ve been training an apprentice?” Father asked. “To further your practice of sending the plague into the blood of weak and helpless people?”
So he believed me.
Dee’s eyebrows shot up so high, they popped over the top of his mask. “I don’t—”
“You ought to be sent to the Tower for what you’ve done to our people!” Father screamed—all nervous servant act gone.
“I think I do recognize this man,” Dee said in a dangerous voice. “He’s Thomas Percy’s servant.”
Father and I tensed. Percy’s name had been given. He was now implicated.
“You know nothing of me.” Father’s tone was deadly. “Least of all whom I serve.” Then he turned to the knight. “This man, Dee, is the cause of the plague, Knevett! It is him you should be arresting—” A coil cinched around his neck, cutting off his air.
“Didn’t I see you with another man recently?” Dee continued. “Robert Catesby, was it?”
Dee was giving away the names of each plotter. Soon they would all be exposed. And they would all be hunted.
“I said bind him!” Knevett shouted.
Dee resumed his command of the ropes and they coiled around Father. Father writhed away from them, brandishing his rapier. Henry fiddled with the bundles of wood and I ducked farther behind the piles. It didn’t take him long. “There’s gunpowder.” He threw a bundle of sticks to the side and exposed some of the barrels. “Barrels and barrels of gunpowder!”
“I’m taking you to the Tower,” Knevett said.
The ropes tugged Father forward and he stumbled to keep his feet. He slashed his rapier at the ropes with his free hand. “This alchemist cut my son. Sent
the plague into him and blinded him—because my boy saw what he was doing and tried to stop him.”
The rope around his throat cinched again, and this time didn’t loosen.
For once, being called a “boy” didn’t anger me. It was the first time Father had claimed me as his own. I choked back a cry.
“Ah yes, you do have a son, don’t you?” Dee tapped the chin of his mask as though thinking.
Father stilled.
“What was his name again?”
Father shook his head violently. They were going to give my name. And then I’d be a dead man, no matter that I sent the letter or tried to stop the plot.
“It started with a T, didn’t it?”
Finally, Father dropped his sword and they contained him. Worst of all, once his back was turned to me and they hauled him to the undercroft door, Dee ripped Father’s mask from his face.
“No,” I cried, but my voice was lost in the slam of the door. I didn’t see his face. They had torn his pride and honor from him. And he let them.
Because of me.
I hadn’t defended him. I hadn’t joined the fight. But that was because Father gave himself up for me—to keep my name anonymous. So I tightened my sword belt.
I had a new target.
Forty-Two
“I will look for this Thomas Percy.” Dee handed Sir Knevett Father’s mask. They headed along the Thames toward the Tower. I followed close enough to hear but not be caught. Not yet.
I kept my White mask on my face—neither Henry nor Dee would recognize me with it on.
“I’ll have a warrant for his arrest soon.” Knevett tossed his cape over Father’s head to increase Father’s disorientation. “Report your findings, Dee. And thank you for volunteering your help. Your color skill has been invaluable this night.”
With Father so disarmed and unmasked, he would be no match for Knevett or the Baron. Or anyone, for that matter. I hated seeing him so subdued.
Dee bowed, shook hands with Henry, and then left. I bounced on the balls of my feet, ready to follow, but one step into my pursuit I caught a glint from Henry’s fist. He curled his fingers around one of Dee’s plague-inducing daggers.