The Exorcist Doctor

Chapter 148 - Puppet Theatre // Master of Masks

Sixteen spotlights illuminated the path from the audience seats to the center stage in the middle of the theatre, and while nobody told Gael to get onto the stage, the request was implicit. Bright lights, creepy announcer, and an empty stage—he looked around at the empty seats and decided the silence was either hospitality or a threat, and in Bleakhearth those two things often shared the same mask. What part of this didn’t scream ‘get up there and perform your piece’?

The spotlights followed Gael like hungry eyes as he led his gang up onto the stage, and the polished boards under his boots felt too clean for Bharncair. He could smellthe theatre’s wealth in the air, which was some cocktail of perfume, velvet dust, and lots and lots of coins that never had to touch a beggar’s palm. It smelled nice enough, but the real show was just beginning. The far walls of the theatre lit up in slow bands as they walked onto the stage, and then the walls began spinning, spinning, and spinning, turning the entire theatre into what looked like the inside of a chemical mixer as a hundred wooden puppets lowered from the ceiling on strings.

Honestly, it was a little charming. Gael could see what the Three-Faces were going for.

And the moment all of them were standing smack dab in the center of the stage, ready to watch the show, a new voice—not the warm but generically excited announcer’s—floated down from the dark ceiling.

While it was a single voice, it did not sound like a single voice.

“... Once, in the high air where perfume is law, there dwelt a man whose face outshone the minted coins of any throne.”

The voice was layered. A hundred breaths braided into one cadence, velvet wrapped around iron. Every spotlight flicked off but for one, shining upon a single puppet right in front of all of them.

It was tall, robed, and crowned with antlered filigree. Around it, smaller puppets bowed deeply, while the light shining on the wall behind them took on the background of a gilded hall.

“No anvil forged his fortune bright, and no battlefield had carved his name,” the voice continued. “It was his brow, his sculpted light, that fed the court’s devouring flame. His cheek was cut as marble saint, his lips were bowed like prayer’s design, and when he smiled, the nobles faint with hunger dressed as gift divine. Banquets rose at his mere glance, contracts signed before he spoke; suitors knelt as if by trance beneath his symmetry’s soft yoke. His corridors were ribbed with praise, his mirrors framed in gilded lies, and in their depths, he watched himself through adoring eyes.”

The second spotlight flicked on as the first went out. A different scene: the handsome puppet reclined upon a dangling throne. Servants brought platters. Musicians played. A lover leaned close and whispered in their ear, making the man laugh.

“He did not read his ledgers. Why would he? Numbers were for lesser minds. He did not work a day in his life. Why would he? Work was for lesser bodies. He did not learn any arts. Why would he? Art was for lesser spirits. ‘My face is seal, my face is sword, my face is coin no debt may mar,’ he oft proclaimed. ‘I traffic only in accord, and beauty is my avatar. What need have I of the work and arts?”

The handsome puppet laughed even harder while masked courtiers bent like reeds, but Evelyn and Liorin tensed, because even the children knew what was coming.

Third spotlight.

“Yet observe how envy ripens slow and sweet beneath the perfume of acclaim, and how daggers whet in gloved grip while lips pronounce a loyal name.”

Behind the throne, new puppets in different garments appeared. A steward with a quill like a dagger. A banker whose spine bent too smoothly. A cousin whose smile cut deeper than steel.

“His steward’s bow grew fraction-thin. His banker’s quill wrote soft and sly. His cousins clasped his jewelled skin with pity glazed in pious lies. They measured him by candle-glare, they sketched the angles of his grace, and in their ledgers, cold and spare, they priced the marrow of his face. Not death they sought, for death is waste when merchandise may still be sold—they craved the bloom upon his taste. They craved the sculpted face that shamed their gold.”

The shadowed puppets lurked closer and closer, creeping up on the handsome puppet, and when they arrived with knives in hand—

“They carved his face in his slumber!” the voice roared, and the shadowed puppets yanked the throne back, tipping the handsome puppet back as a dozen hands wielding scalpels jabbed at his face. “His steward took his brows! His banker took his nose! His cousins took his eyes, his ears, his teeth, and everyone else took every left in between! Oh, but how he cried like a startled bird, and yet no man came to his aid. They stripped his flesh with courtesy drawn and left him gasping naked air, and by dawn, his empire built on a face was without a face.”

You could be reading stolen content. Head to NovelBin for the genuine story.

Fourth spotlight. The handsome puppet, now stripped of its face and stark naked, staggered forward into a new background: the crooked outlines of Bleakhearth’s earliest streets. They were eerily similar to Bleakhearth today with their narrow, uneven, jagged streets with creaking lanterns hanging from bent iron hooks, but the puppet didn’t look out of place.

Plenty of faceless men in Bharncair.

“... So down he fell from lacquered heaven to a cobbled ward where mothlight lanterns weep,” the voice murmured. “Old Bleakhearth spread its tarnished arms beneath a sky of ashen hue, and there the unskinned man believed he had lost everything. He believed himself diminished. He believed his worth had been cut away with the flesh they stole. And yet, that was when he glimpsed a truth he never knew, for mirrors in Bleakhearth are seldom kind: faces are but minted lies that markets may trade and thieves may prize. Faces are not sacred. They can be sold—and they can be bought.”

The faceless puppet bent over and lifted a full face mask from the street. It was simple, crude, and unfinished—barely even an expression on the mask—but if Gael had to identify it, he would say the expression was… content.

“And so the man stopped mourning what he had lost, and thought of what he could gain.” The faceless puppet put on the mask of content. He was now content. The fifth, sixth, and seventh spotlight illuminated the new few backgrounds in sequence, and the puppet staggered through all of them, picking up new masks on the way. “Another mask appeared in shadow—smiling. Then another—grim. Then another—joyous, then wrathful, then serene. He wore sorrow and found it useful. He wore charm and found it persuasive. He wore cruelty and found it efficient. He wore humility and found it disarming. He wore rage and found it cleansing. He wore kindness and found it profitable.”

As he put on more and more masks, more and more puppets lowered from the ceiling to join him on his march around the theatre. Each wore a different expression. Each walked with a different gait. All were following him.

“And in time, the exiles of Bleakhearth began to notice the man. They were all men and women who had been unmade by scandal, cast down from gilded heights. Stripped of title, favor, and trust, they hid behind masks to survive—and who better to buy reinvention than from than the man with a thousand faces?”

The faceless man finally finished a full revolution around the theatre, but as he reached the spot where he began—directly in front of Gael—he no longer wore a single face.

A thousand masks hung around him, and Gael sensed a question coming.

“... Once sorrowful, then content, then joyous. Now we are everywhere, and now we are nowhere,” the voice whispered. “Answer us this: what are we called again?”

A terribly easy question.

Gael looked straight at the puppet with the rotating masks and spoke.

“The Three-Faces.”

The masks stopped rotating, and a single one snapped over the faceless puppet.

Absolute joy.

“Correct!”

The ceiling suddenly cracked, and everyone flinched as a hundred mothlight lanterns lowered from the cracks, clicking and clacking and shining in the shape of a giant three-faced mask. It was happy on the left, neutral in the center, and sad on the right. The edges blurred together messily, but with the mothlight dimming and brightening to make the mask appear as though it was yawning and stretching, Gael couldn't call it anything but alive.

“Saintess…” Vivi’s hands flew to her mouth.

“What a way to show off,” Cara grumbled.

As the giant mask kept making faces to warm itself up, Gael leaned closer to Maeve.

“As the weird-as-fuck voice just told us, Bleakhearth’s population is mostly folks who got kicked out of Vharnveil or people trying to ascend to Vharnveil,” he whispered. “They wear full-faced masks and so nobody recognizes them, because if you’ve ever wronged someone up in the sky or down on the ground, you get dragged even deeper down into the gutters. You don’t want your old enemies knowing which gutter is yours, right?”

“Uh-huh?”

“So the Three-Faces specialize in selling ‘faces’ to people,” he said. “These faces are full names, identities, and backstories for people looking to run away from or get a new life. You won't find a single local who hasn't brought a face from them at some point. The Three-Faces then use their wealth to build and maintain a counterfeit Vharnveil—shit like fancy restaurants, important persons protection, opera houses, and theatres like these. By creating a wealthy environment, the locals’ noble spirits are kept intact, and they get to keep some semblance of a ‘peaceful’ life wearing whatever face they bought from the Three-Faces.”

Fergal narrowed his eyes at the exaggerated mask overhead. “I was under the impression the Three-Faces are also major investors in many sectors.”

“Yep. The Three-Faces are rich enough that they can even lend coins to small-time nobles up in Vharnveil who can't get financial support from the big households, so some people say their information web is cast even farther than the Spiders, who are—at the end of the day—mostly limited to Vharnveil and areas under their direct influence. I wouldn't be surprised if they already knew who Vivi was the moment she stepped foot in Bharncair.”

At long last, the giant mask above them finished warming up. It stretched its jaw one more time, yawned for good measure, and then it pried its dark maw open to laugh.

As usual, it was a thousand voices braided into one, and it was deeper than any voice Gael expected he'd ever hear in his life.

“We are the hinge of this Bleakhearth’s jaw. We are the clasp of its throat. We are the Great Mask of the Three-Faces. Answer us this, Gael Halloway of the Heartcord Clinic: what are we called again?”

Hearing his full name come from that voice almost made him shiver, but Gael managed to hold his ground and bowed with a smile instead.

“You are the Master of Masks,” he said, “and I have come with a business proposal."