Eva was silent a moment, then her voice dropped to a whisper. “He said there were discrepancies … and yet the proof of life you promised me never manifested. How am I supposed to trust you?”

Séverin was quiet. How am I supposed to trust you? he wondered.

Some twenty minutes passed before the Forged gondola stopped. Séverin heard the rustle of silk as Eva stepped out. He could hardly make out which of the neighborhood sestieri she had brought them to, but he could hear the hiss of cats in an alley and far away, the mournful note of a lone violin.

The black cloth fell away from his eyes, revealing a dimly lit street on the water’s edge. It looked abandoned. Nothing moved except an unpainted porcelain colombina mask. On a person, the half mask would have left the wearer’s face only partially concealed. But the mask was not for people. It dangled from a lonely iron hook in the wall beneath which lay a dingy window lit only by a stub of a candle. The candlelight shone through the eyeholes of the mask, and on the opposite plaster wall, the shape of a grinning face flickered in and out of the light not high above the cobblestone streets. There, just beneath the mismatched shadows … the faint outline of a door beckoning them to the mascherari salon within.

Inside stretched a chamber the size of a generous ballroom. Dozens of patrons wearing masks carved in the shapes of grinning tigers or human expressions of rigid joy and terror danced around the room. Forged platters bearing amaro in crystal cups next to bowls of ice floated through the crowd, perfuming the room with bitter aniseed and myrtle. Around Séverin, the voice of an unseen opera singer could just barely be heard over the rustling silks and muffled laughter of patrons in the corners. At the threshold of the salon, a person wearing a mask that was nothing but a large, black oval and a painted, toothy grin bowed low to Séverin and Eva at the entrance.

“Here, we remove the faces we show the world and submit to something greater,” said the individual. “Welcome, friends … may you find that which you seek. May you leave our sanctuary able to face the world anew.”

It was a strange sanctuary, thought Séverin as he studied the room. Far above him, dozens of metal beams rotated slowly in the air. Draped over the beams lay a constellation of silken threads, from which swung hundreds of sculpted faces. Some were unfinished, nothing more than a voluptuous mouth painted on plaster. Some were lifelike—the Forged plaster capable of grins and long lashes blinking back to reveal hollows for eyes. The traditional masks of Venice appeared amongst them: The bauta, with its protruding chin, the hollows of its eyes adorned with gilded diagonals. The colombina half mask, crushed pearls baked into its edges. In the recessed balconies of the chamber, the mascheraris worked furiously. On their faces, they wore clever shields that looked like liquid mirrors clinging to their features so that any who tried to guess at their identity would only see themselves reflected.