by Kate Novak
“About tonight’s dinner—” Victor said, looking down at the ground.
Alias sensed his discomfort and remembered the croamarkh’s sharp commands. “I’m afraid we’ll have to decline your offer,” she interrupted hastily. “Dragonbait reminded me we have a previous engagement. I will keep in mind your suggestions about the Gateside district, though.”
Victor looked up at the swordswoman with a sheepish grin. “You heard Father dressing me down, didn’t you? That’s very gracious of you to provide me with an out. Still, I ought to apologize for extending an invitation I could not honor.”
“I’m sure there’ll be another chance to honor it,” Alias replied, offering Victor her hand.
Victor smiled with delight. “More than one, I hope,” he replied, clasping her hand in both of his own.
The swordswoman blushed. “We’ve kept you from your work too long,” she said. “Please, don’t feel obliged to see us back to our inn. We need to familiarize ourselves with the streets, and we really do have a previous engagement.”
Victor held her hand a moment longer. “In spite of what Durgar says, I have a good feeling about you. You’re just the hero this town needs. I know you’ll succeed.”
“I’ll do my best,” Alias promised.
The young merchant released her hand and bowed. Without further words, as if he might become overwhelmed with emotion if he spoke again, Lord Victor climbed into his carriage, took up the reins, and drove away.
“So do we have another engagement?” Dragonbait queried with amusement. “Or did you only say that so Lord Victor would return your hand?” he teased.
“I guess there’s no way around it,” Alias said. “I’m going to have to go back to Mintassan’s with you and wind up playing ‘Ask-me-another’ about the saurials.”
“So you can grill him for information on the Night Masks,” Dragonbait guessed.
“You know my methods,” Alias replied.
“Then?”
“Then, although they don’t know it yet, we have an engagement with the Night Masks. With any luck, more than one engagement.”
Eight
Engagements
Timmy the Ghast had not earned his appellation from any kinship to the undead or for his revulsion of the clergy, but rather for the simple fact that he smelled as bad as (some said worse than) a ghast. Timmy’s unique personal scent was the result of his chosen career and his less-than-fastidious attitude about his personal hygiene. Timmy was a midden man. He broke into townhouses and family quarters through the kitchen waste pits. While the thief occasionally gained access from a wood or coal cellar, the contents of the kitchen refuse never deterred him from making an entry if the midden was his only choice. Unlike other midden men, however, Timmy never felt compelled to bathe after a night’s work; the closest he came to washing was being caught in a drenching rainstorm. Consequently, while Timmy the Ghast had many coworkers, he had very few drinking companions.
Tonight Timmy had begun his evening’s work on a burglary assigned to him by the Night Masters. He was to steal a certain necklace from a certain courtier’s daughter. Although Timmy wasn’t given the necklace’s history, he assumed it had been a gift from a wealthy merchant who had imagined himself enamored of the gift’s recipient. Now, no doubt, the relationship had cooled, and the gift giver wanted to dispose of the gift so that it could not haunt him—or his wife—in the future. Timmy would be paid five hundred gold for the necklace and was free to keep any incidental plunder that came his way.
According to Timmy’s sources, the family was at a dinner engagement, the servants had been given the night off, and the household had no dogs. Timmy slithered through the tunnel he’d dug into the refuse pit and waded his way to the access door, unperturbed by the stench, the bugs, or the rats. Timmy had had two friends who had suffocated trying to sneak into a house through a chimney and one who’d broken his neck climbing into a second-story window. Timmy preferred the safety of the refuse.
Timmy climbed up into the kitchen. There was a low glow from the fireplace, and the thief let his eyes adjust to the dark. Two young children, scullery help, were curled in front of the fire, in an exhausted sleep. As he made his way out of the servant quarters, Timmy’s boots squelched along the passageway, leaving filthy tracks on the carpets. The midden man wasted no time finding the young debutante’s room and her jewelry box. The necklace, a diamond-and-ruby chain, was concealed rather amateurishly in the box’s lining. There was an inscription on the clasp, but Timmy could not read, which he realized was probably his best qualification for being hired to steal the necklace.
Timmy tossed the chain into a sack, then dumped the remaining contents of the jewelry box in with it. He slipped into the master’s bedroom and added the contents of the debutante’s mother’s jewelry box to his sack. Timmy did not bother searching for any other treasure. “Portable property only” was his motto. The bounty on the necklace and his earnings for this job, even with the fence’s cut and the tax to the Night Masters, were sufficient to keep him in comfort for weeks.
Timmy headed back for the kitchen. His teacher had gotten nicked once when he bumped into the house’s owners coming in the front door. “You won’t meet the owner in the midden,” was another of Timmy’s mottoes.
Timmy snitched a peach from the kitchen larder, wolfed it down, and left the pit on the kitchen table before he slid back into the refuse pit. He peered out of the tunnel. Slick Jack, his lookout, was not standing by the hole, which was odd. Night Masks did not abandon their posts. Timmy popped his head out of the tunnel, like a turtle from his shell, and looked around. He spotted Slick Jack across the alley, resting comfortably, unconscious, his wrists and ankles tethered with leather thongs.
Timmy the Ghast tried to back into the warm, moist darkness of the midden, but his retreat was too late. Clawed fingers grabbed him by the shoulders and pulled him from the tunnel. The thief found himself nose to muzzle with a snarling monster with a lizard’s hide and the glowing red eyes of a fiend, or so he told his mates later.
The monster, unprepared for Timmy’s overripe odor (freshened by his latest foray), began gasping and gagging and dropped the culprit.
The break-in artist didn’t hesitate, but hit the ground running. Unfortunately, he got all of three steps before someone else tripped him with a scabbard between his legs. As he tried to get his feet beneath him again, a hand grabbed him by the collar and slammed him into the wall of the house.
“Phew! This one reeks!” his captor cried. She was a muscular woman with red hair and a blue tattoo along her right arm. Her companion, the lizard monster, snarled something, and she replied, “Hang on, let’s do a little cleaning up before we wake the house.”
When the watch arrived, summoned by one of the scullery maids, they found Slick Jack tied up in the alley and Timmy the Ghast naked in a rain barrel, muttering about the unfairness of being not only nicked, but forced to wash as well.
Bandilegs collected the loot while Sal and Jojo held their dagger tips steady at their prey’s throats. It was a moxie pinch, smooth and easy. The swells, foreign traders from Turmish, had obviously assumed from Westgate’s size and prosperity that it was an outpost of civilization where they would be immune from attack. They’d been strolling the streets with their airs and their purses and their rings and had been shocked by the three youths who’d popped out of an alleyway and demanded at dagger-point that they hand over their valuables.
Bandilegs ran back down the alley with the purses and what rings could easily be pried from nervous fingers. Even with the cut for the Night Masters, there would be plenty for everyone.
Jojo and Sal backed away a few steps from the terrified merchants. Sal gave the high sign to their lookout, who faded into the darkness at the end of the street. Then she and Jojo spun on their heels and dashed after their companion. They’d traveled half a block before the merchants regained enough of their voices and their spines to begin shouting. No doubt they shouted, “Th
ieves!” or “Help, watch!” but since they shouted in Turmish it was hard for the thieves or anyone else within earshot to tell.
Bandilegs, with her long legs, was a blur, far ahead of her two mates. Sal was the muscle, and Jojo could pick the marks, but Bandilegs was their runner, the one who ensured the goods made it clear. She was the main reason theirs was the most effective “import” team in the Gateside district.
At least until tonight. As she fled, Bandilegs saw a slender but well-muscled arm jut out in front of her. Then the arm, ending in a wrist bracer and a gloved fist, caught Bandilegs right at her throat. Sal and Jojo heard a thwack and saw their runner’s legs fly forward and up, as the rest of her body fell backward to land with a solid smack on the packed earth. They made a half dozen steps toward their runner before they, too, saw the arm. It came, they realized, from someone standing in one of the innumerable two-foot gaps between buildings that laced Westgate’s neighborhoods.
The pair thought at first they’d become prey to a poacher, a thief who robbed other thieves, but when Bandilegs’s assailant stepped out of the narrow passageway, Sal, at least, realized they’d come up against something more dangerous. Sal enjoyed Jamal’s street theater, so she recognized the red-headed, blue-tattooed swordswoman. Jojo reacted as he would to any lone poacher. He drew his blade and snarled, expecting Sal to back him up. Sal was backing up, all right, backpedaling as she calculated her chances at escape if she were to run back out the alley, past the Turmishmen they’d just robbed, and keep going. She spun around, but immediately abandoned her plan to flee.
Behind him Jojo heard a roaring noise as a light flared brightly enough for the thief to see his own shadow. Sensing that Sal was no longer behind him, Jojo shot a glance over his shoulder, then did a quick double take. Sal was laying her weapon down at the feet of a small, dragonlike man who clutched a flaming sword in his paws. Jojo looked back at the armored swordswoman, then again at the dragon man. He sighed and laid his dagger on the ground. He added his boot knife for good measure.
The Turmish merchants were at their inn, bemoaning their fate and trying to figure out how to recoup their losses, when the innkeeper knocked on their door and handed them their stolen valuables. A woman and lizardman had dropped them off with the request that the Turmishmen stop at the Tower tomorrow to identify their attackers, who were now in custody.
Big Edna wiped tankards with the dry end of her bar rag and rehearsed her lines. “It’s been a tough week,” she murmured. “What with so many Night Mask muggers in the area, many of me regulars are afraid to go out at night.”
No, it’s no use, she thought. Littleboy didn’t care that her business was slipping. All he cared about was getting his regular cut of what he claimed her profits should be. Littleboy would not listen to reason.
Edna surveyed her little establishment, such as it was—a bar made from a few planks laid across some barrels, a stock of whiskey, brandy, and ale of questionable origin, empty barrels and crates serving as stools and tables, five dozen pewter tankards, and a cracked mirror mounted on the wall so that she could watch the customers. Tonight her only customers were four old fishermen, a one-handed pensioned dockworker, and a pair of cloaked and hooded adventurers. Were Edna one to gossip, she might guess the adventurers were priests of some outcast religion, like Talona or Cyric. Edna, however, did not gossip. That was one of the attractions of her little hole-in-the-wall: You could drink in quiet without being disturbed by the chatter of the owner or the other customers.
The door crashed open, and Littleboy waddled in, flanked by his two toughs. A careless observer might mistake Littleboy for a bald halfling or a shaved dwarf, for the hairless Night Mask was short and barrel-shaped. His round face and apple cheeks gave him a cherubic look, but one that was quickly belied by his unpleasantly cruel attitude. Littleboy dressed in a heavy, open-fronted cloak and a great slouch hat. His supporters were two lantern-jawed lunks who looked as if they had hobgoblin blood sloshing through their veins.
Littleboy climbed onto one of the barrel stools and rested his elbows on the bar. His boys remained standing and silent. “So, Edna,” he said.
Edna threw a small pouch of coins on the bar without a reply. Littleboy picked it up, hefted it, and frowned. “You’re light,” he noted.
“Not a lot of customers,” Edna replied, trying a casual shrug.
“Then you don’t need a lot of furniture,” Littleboy said. He tucked the pouch into his cloak pocket and snapped his fingers. One of his boys moved off. Littleboy heard the satisfying sound of one of the barrels smashing over one of the other barrels. His eyes never left Edna’s face. Her eyes widened for a moment, then became slits.
“Let this be a warn—” Littleboy began. He was interrupted by two thumps behind him and startled by the ghost of a smile on Edna’s face. Littleboy looked up in the mirror behind the bar.
The Night Mask collection agent was once again flanked by two figures, but they weren’t his boys. One was an armored woman in a scarlet cape, the other a big lizard. “Kezef’s blood and bladder!” Littleboy muttered, recognizing the pair from the stories that had been coursing through the grapevine.
Littleboy did not need to look around to know his own boys were sprawled on the floor. He laid both his hands on the bar, one resting over the ornate ring of the other.
“Is there something I can do to help you?” he asked coolly.
“You can close down your little extortion racket,” the swordswoman said. The lizard made a chuffing noise.
“I have no idea what you’re talking about,” said Littleboy. “I have a business deal with Edna here. My boys do some of her heavy lifting and serve as bodyguards to protect her and her establishment from the city’s more unsavory elements. Isn’t that right, Edna?”
The swordswoman looked at Edna. The bar owner’s face was a study in uncertainty and fear. While everyone’s attention was focused on Edna, Littleboy removed the face of his ring, uncovering a small needle, which wept a single greenish drop of venom.
“No,” Edna announced, possessed by some wisp of courage. “He’s been shaking me down, like you said.”
The swordswoman pulled Edna’s pouch of money out of Littleboy’s cloak pocket and tossed it back to the bar owner. To Littleboy she said, “I suggest you leave this place and not come back.”
“You shouldn’t interfere in my business,” Littleboy said. “I have powerful friends.”
“Then you should stay with them for a while,” the swordswoman replied.
Littleboy sighed and twisted as if he were about to hop down from the barrel stool. A second later, he thrashed out with his right fist to slash his poison needle across the swordswoman’s face. The lizard snarled, and the adventuress reacted with lightning quickness, grasping the extortionist firmly by the wrist and bending his arm backward.
“That hurts,” Littleboy gasped. The lizard brought a pewter tankard down on the Night Mask’s head, and blackness claimed him.
“Now what?” Edna asked.
“Call the watch,” the swordswoman said, as if it were simple.
“It’ll only be Littleboy’s word against mine,” Edna complained. “And, like he said, he has powerful friends.”
The adventuress held out the extortionist’s ringed hand. “Carrying poison will get him hard labor and banishment from the city, no matter who his friends are,” she pointed out.
“So it will,” Edna said. She took the tankard back from the lizard and started wiping it clean again, only now she wore a grin. “Fritz,” she called to the pensioned dockworker, “fetch Durgar’s boys round, will ye?” With an uncommon flash of festive generosity, she added, “There’s a free ale in it for ye.”
The pair of adventurers followed Fritz from the bar. Edna began going through the unconscious Night Masks pockets, pulling out the money pouches of all the other businesses Littleboy had terrorized tonight. There would be enough, Edna noted, to buy a new bar, maybe even an inn.
Just then, the red
-headed warrior woman poked her head back through the door and said, “Edna, my friend wants me to remind you that everyone else Littleboy shook down was hurting like you, and could really use their money back. Since you know the neighborhood businesses, could you please see to getting the money back to the right people?”
Big Edna nodded wordlessly. The adventuress left again. Big Edna stared longingly at the pouches of gold. With a long sigh, she began making a list of the other neighborhood businesses she knew had been paying protection to Littleboy.
By the time Alias woke up the next morning, Dragonbait was gone. By nature, the saurial was most active at dawn and dusk, and he never seemed to need much sleep in the warm season. Alias, on the other hand, felt most active after dark and would sleep the morning away whenever she had an excuse. She wondered which of her creators had established this pattern in her. Finder, as an entertainer, would have kept the same sort of hours, but so would the Fire Knives, who had expected her to become an assassin like them.
Alias rolled over and sat up. Someone had set breakfast on the table. The swordswoman vaguely recalled having heard a knock on the door and Mercy’s voice earlier in the morning. The young half-elf must have lost her fear of the saurial. Alias padded over to the table. Once again breakfast consisted of tea, fresh-baked muffins, and fruit, but today she had time to admire the details she’d missed yesterday. The china teapot and teacup were nearly translucent and gleamed like mother-of-pearl; the butter was molded into clamshell shapes; decorating the bowl of berries were pieces of melon cut and shaped like dragonflies. There was a fresh-cut red rose in a bud vase of frosted glass. Alias could see why this particular inn did not advertise among adventurers; they generally wolfed down food without looking at it and were notoriously hard on china and glassware.
Alias sat down to eat, musing over yesterday afternoon’s events, starting with the meeting she and Dragonbait had had with Mintassan. The experience had tested her patience and her conversational skills to their limits. They’d started with the requested conversation about saurials. The sage had asked Dragonbait so many questions, even Alias had learned things about saurials she hadn’t known before. When, after at least an hour, Mintassan had shifted the topic to Alias’s background, she’d turned the tables and started grilling him about his theory on the transmutation of creatures into other creatures. Finally, when she felt she’d learned enough about the beasts of the Prime Material and Outer Planes to qualify as a sage’s apprentice and had Mintassan at ease, she’d shifted to the topic of the Night Masks.