Page 10 of The Mask Falling

He was intelligent and perceptive in conversation, solicitous, a good listener, with a bone-dry wit that I was never wholly sure was intentional. I told him things I had never told anyone—about my childhood in Ireland, on my grandparents’ dairy farm, and about my time with the Seven Seals. We talked about music I had saved from piles of salvage at the black market, about books he had discovered in the colony. He told me stories Scion had erased.

He described the Netherworld, so I could almost sketch a map in my head. He conjured its buildings in exquisite detail—colossal, carved from iridescent stone, cities that shone like shattered glass— and described the river, the Grieving, with its bed of pearl-like pebbles.

“Your river was called the Grieving?” I raised an eyebrow. “The Netherworld sounds like a riot.”

“It is a poor translation.”

We shared an interest in languages as well as music. One evening, he asked me if I might consider teaching him my mother tongue.

“You realize almost nobody speaks Gaeilge these days,” I said. We were playing chess, and I was waiting for him to make his next move. “Not in public, anyway.”

“All the more reason to learn it.”

We were into our endgame. There were more black pieces on the board than white, which definitely meant I was winning.

“Scion made a concerted effort to destroy all evidence of the Irish language after the Molly Riots,” I said. “You won’t find many books, and you’re not likely to be able to talk to anyone but me.”

“I enjoy our conversations very much.” Arcturus moved one of his pawns. “And I would like to be fluent in another human language.”

“How many do you already have?”

“Six,” he said. “English, French, Swedish, Greek, Romanian, and Scion Sign Language.”

“Only six?” I slid my black queen across the board. “You’ve been here two centuries, lazybones. I already have half as many as you and I haven’t had unlimited decades to learn.”

“Clearly yours is the superior intellect, Paige—”

“Well, I didn’t want to say—”

“—but you still cannot best me at chess.” He set down his white bishop. “Checkmate.”

I stared at the board. “You . . . infuriating bastard.”

“You only had eyes for the king and queen. Remember not to overlook the other pieces.”

With a sigh, I sat back. “Well played. Again.” I shook his hand. “Fine. I’ll teach you Gaeilge if you teach me Gloss. Deal?”

“Humans cannot learn Gloss. It is the language of spirits.”

“Polyglots can speak it.”

“They do not learn it. They are born with it.”

“Try me,” I pressed. “Say a word in Gloss and I’ll copy you.”

He humored me and made a soft, chime-like sound, which I had a stab at mimicking.

“Wrong,” he said.

“How?”

“You are not Gloss-articulate. Even if you were to perfectly imitate the sound I made, you would only be speaking with your vocal cords, not your spirit.”

I tried not to look crestfallen. Gloss was beautiful, and I would have liked to call him by his real name.

Still, the thought of holding a real conversation inmymother tongue was tempting. My grandmother had been born on an island where Gaeilge had once been spoken daily, and had passed it onto me—a bright jewel, a shared joy, that I had kept buried for years.

Scion had outlawed all the Celtic languages during the Molly Riots. They would die out soon; now families were too afraid to teach them to their children even in secret. I liked the idea of a Rephaite knowing mine. Through him, it would be immortal.

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