Masquerades

by Kate Novak

  The boy looked at Alias with suspicion. He withdrew into himself and would not reply.

  Alias shook her head as she studied the boy. While nothing about his appearance attracted attention, making him the ideal delivery boy, he was obviously neglected and abused. His dark brown hair had been trimmed crookedly, probably with a knife, and certainly hadn’t seen a comb within the last month. He was rail thin and smelled heavily of unwashed flesh. His clothes, ragged gray trousers, a dingy white shirt, and a moth-eaten vest, were probably washed only when their wearer was caught in a rainstorm. Only his good eye, shining with savvy and cunning, set him apart from a zombie.

  “Who was it?” Alias asked again.

  “Leave me go,” the boy muttered. “I’m fine.” He turned and spat out some blood.

  “You’re the picture of health,” Olive retorted. “Don’t let him bolt,” she warned Alias. “He’ll be right off to the head man to warn him about us.”

  Knowing Olive was right, Alias positioned herself so that the boy could not slip past her. She couldn’t bring herself to play the bully, though. She pulled out a gold coin from the money belt beneath her tunic and held it out, twisting it so that it glittered in the late afternoon sun. “Tell me who gave those men orders to hurt you, and this is yours,” she offered.

  The boy eyed the coin longingly but remained firm. “You think I’m stupid?” he asked. “One-Eye’d kill me if I told you anything. There’s nothing she don’t find out.”

  “One-Eye?” Alias repeated.

  “She?” Olive added.

  Realizing he’d let slip this information, the boy muttered another string of curses. Then, apparently deciding he would be safer betraying his rescuers to One-Eye, he suddenly began shouting, “Help! Help!”

  Alias shoved her hand over the boy’s mouth and pressed him against the wall. The boy struggled, trying to push her arm away, and when that failed, nipped at the swordswoman’s hand. “Be still and stop shouting,” she hissed. With her free hand she yanked her scarf off her head and shoved it in the boy’s mouth.

  “Hold him tight,” Olive warned in a whisper. “Someone’s coming out.”

  The back door swung open, and a short, dark-haired woman stepped out. She was dressed all in black leather, and her severe haircut and sharp facial features gave her a hawklike appearance. When she turned to look down the alley, Alias and Olive could see a black patch over her right eye. She held the straps of a heavily laden backpack, which clinked like chain mail when it bounced against her black-clad legs. She looked very annoyed.

  “Knost!” she called out, then more uncertainly, “Marcus?” She looked up and down the alley, tapping her black-booted foot impatiently.

  Alias noticed the boy had ceased struggling and had begun shaking with fear.

  “Damned fools,” the black-clad woman muttered. She went back inside the tavern.

  “One-Eye, I presume?” Alias asked.

  “Undoubtedly,” Olive replied.

  One-Eye reappeared in the alley, this time with the muscle-man, who doubled as a bouncer.

  “—damn fools probably went too far again,” One-Eye was saying. “They’d better pick a better spot to dump the body this time. Come on,” she said, handing the muscle-man the backpack. He shouldered the pack and followed on One-Eye’s heels.

  “You’ll have to hold onto the kid,” Olive said, “so I can follow the money.”

  Alias nodded. “Be careful,” she whispered.

  “You never let me have any fun,” the halfling sniffed. Then she sneaked off after the pair of Night Masks.

  After a few minutes, Alias released the boy, prepared to grab him again at the first sign of trouble.

  The boy pulled the gag out of his mouth, but he made no trouble; he was too intent at staring, his eyes wide as saucers, at Alias’s sword arm.

  Alias followed his gaze. In his struggles the boy had pushed up her tunic sleeve, revealing the azure tattoo, which seemed to swirl of its own volition.

  “You’re her—that Alias witch,” the boy gasped finally. “Oh, Cyric-on-a-stick, I’m really dead.”

  Alias shook her head, insisting, “You’re not dead.”

  “You kill Night Masks,” the boy said in a trembling voice. “Knost said you sliced up fifteen men last night.” Behind his fear there was a hint of curiosity in his voice, as if he hoped she would confirm her bloody spree to him.

  “Knost is a liar or a fool, probably both,” Alias retorted.

  “You’re not going to kill me?” the boy asked in a small voice.

  “I just saved your life,” Alias pointed out.

  The boy shrugged as if that didn’t mean much in his line of work.

  “What’s your name, child?” the swordswoman asked.

  “I’m not a child,” the boy insisted. When Alias did not respond, but waited patiently, he answered her question, full of bravado, “My name’s Kel, like in Kelemvor the death god.”

  “As in Kelemvor the judge of the dead,” Alias corrected. “He was a hero before he was a god. Anyway, you look like you were born before the Time of Troubles. You’re too old to have been named for him. Where are your folks? Do they know you work for the Night Masks?”

  “Mom took off when I was little. Don’t remember her. Dad was a collector for the Masks ’til he got stuck with a dagger in the back by a poacher after his take. Knost gave me a job carrying, but said I was too small to collect—yet. You gonna let me go?” Kel asked.

  Alias considered his request. She didn’t think she could trust him to keep his mouth shut. He might start bragging that he’d escaped as soon as her back was turned. One-Eye might have Kel brought in and beaten into confessing he’d identified her. One-Eye would then know she’d been followed by the halfling and would warn whoever she was taking the extortion money to.

  Then there was the question of the boy’s condition. His left eye was swollen shut, and he was still spitting blood. No one was looking after him, and he needed looking after more than ever. When One-Eye found and released Knost and Marcus, they’d go looking for the boy.

  “No, I’m not going to let you go,” the swordswoman replied. “I’m going to have to take you into custody.”

  “Nay, ya can’t. Ya got no proof I did nothin’. Not even old Durgoat’d hold me just for bein’ beat up.”

  The boy’s arrogant grasp of Westgate’s justice system made Alias’s hackles rise. “I didn’t say I was turning you in to the watch,” she retorted. “I said I was taking you into custody.”

  When Alias arrived at Mintassan’s, Jamal and Dragonbait were in the midst of a lively discussion. Jamal did most of the speaking, but the heavy table was littered with paper covered with Dragonbait’s tiny script, indicating that he was keeping up his end of the conversation. Mintassan was sitting at the desk, counting and measuring the feathers of living pigeons he pulled from a cage. When the sage finished with a bird, he recorded the numbers in a log, then let the bird loose. Freed birds fluttered around the back and front room of the shop until they found the open half of the front door and made their escape.

  Kel, who’d boasted all the way to the sage’s home that Alias would never be able to hold on to him, looked around dumbfounded at all the dead things cluttering Mintassan’s workroom; the boy even looked a little nervous.

  “What have we here?” Jamal asked.

  “I brought Mintassan a specimen,” the swordswoman explained. “Westgate human juvenile—descendant of the Night Masks.” She smiled at the sage and asked him, “Think you could have him mounted for me, so he doesn’t run off?”

  Mintassan grinned fiendishly. “Hanging or freestanding?” he asked.

  “Freestanding, I think,” Alias said. “It’s creepier.”

  Dragonbait, who eyed the boy with disapproval, asked, “If he’s one of them, why did you bring him here?”

  “He’s given Olive and me a little information. I thought I might return the favor.”

  “She’s lyin’,” Kel snarled. “
I didn’t peach on no one. She tricked me into it. Hey! You never did give up that gold piece,” he complained to Alias.

  “Two Night Mask leg-breakers worked him over. He could be hurt even worse than he looks,” she said to the paladin. “Would you help him, please?”

  The saurial rose and approached the boy, but Kel, terrified of the saurial, backed into Alias.

  “He won’t hurt you,” Alias said, holding him still.

  “Murf,” Dragonbait commanded, holding a clawed finger up to the boy’s face. He placed his hands on the boy’s shoulders and began reciting his healing prayer.

  Kel relaxed as he felt his battered flesh mending. His eyes widened in surprise. “He a priest?” the boy asked.

  “Sort of,” Alias replied.

  “Alias,” the paladin said, “I know he is only a child, but the Night Mask’s have twisted his soul. In time you might fix what is wrong, but for now you cannot trust him.”

  “I know, but I need to keep him off the street so he doesn’t talk to his boss. A few days should do it, I think,” Alias said in Saurial. She turned to Mintassan and asked, “You wouldn’t happen to have a dungeon, would you?”

  “Not exactly, but I’m sure I could arrange something,” Mintassan said. “I suppose you’ll want him fed, too?”

  “Gruel and water at the very least,” Alias replied.

  “I hate gruel,” the boy muttered.

  “Well, I was just thinking I could use a hand tidying up around here. If you’re willing to work for your supper, I could arrange some roast pigeon,” the sage said to the boy, holding up the bird in his hand.

  “Pigeon’s good,” the boy agreed.

  Mintassan, not expecting his joke to be taken seriously, paled. “There, there, girl,” he said, stroking the bird in his hands. “He didn’t mean it.” He let the pigeon go free.

  “You can’t be serious, Mint,” Jamal argued. “Letting a child loose in a sage’s home is like giving a necromancer the keys to the crypt. It’s a recipe for disaster.”

  “As long as he doesn’t touch any boxes labeled ‘Danger’ or ‘Keep out’ or ‘Hope,’ he’ll be fine.”

  “Can’t read,” Kel said.

  “What do you mean, you can’t read?” Mintassan asked.

  Kel shrugged. “Never learned. No need.”

  “How can you grow up in Westgate and not learn to read?” the sage demanded.

  “How can you grow up in Westgate and not realize it’s full of people who can’t read?” Jamal snapped at Mintassan.

  “Yeah!” Kel seconded.

  Mintassan looked taken aback. “Well, I guess I’ve been told.” He looked Kel over. “I suppose we ought to get you cleaned up before we let you sit on the furniture. Come on, boy. Follow me.”

  Kel looked uncertain, but Alias gave him a shove toward the sage, and the boy followed Mintassan up the stairs.

  “I’d better get back to Blais House and get cleaned up myself,” the swordswoman said. “It’s not too long till sunset.”

  “What happens at sunset?” Jamal asked.

  “Victor Dhostar’s sending his carriage for me. He’s invited me to a party on his family’s new ship.”

  “Ah, mixing with the Westgate snobs. How—” Jamal stifled a mock yawn “—exciting.”

  “Victor is very nice,” Alias said. “He stood up for your theater the other day.”

  “He was just trying to impress you with his power. He’s a merchant, my dear, to the core. Granted, he’s a very good-looking merchant, and possibly a good-humored one, but he’s still a merchant.”

  “What do you have against merchants?” Alias demanded.

  “Ah, well, that’s a long story. It boils down to the fact that merchants know the price of everything and the value of nothing. Rather like this ship you’ll be on—The Gleason, named for the family of Luer Dhostar’s late wife. The Dhostars spent a fortune on a ship to protect their goods from pirates, but they can’t protect the people of Westgate from the Night Masks.”

  “They’ve paid me a good deal to try,” Alias pointed out.

  “The price of a set of The Gleason’s oars would cover your retainer,” Jamal retorted. “Not that I want to encourage you in this ill-fated fraternization, but what are you wearing?”

  “Victor said it was semiformal, so I bought a full-length silk tunic. It’s blue with silver embroidery. I thought I’d wear it over my leather britches.”

  “Ah,” Jamal sighed blissfully, “they are so egalitarian about dress up north, aren’t they? Let me give you some motherly advice. You can’t do that. First of all, the slightest whiff of leather will get you shown to the back door with the bodyguards. Secondly, the ladies of Westgate wear inconvenient, uncomfortable clothing to semiformal affairs to remind them how perilous social arrangements are in this city. You’ll want to wear an undergown. I have a white bliaut that should fit you and goes with blue. You’ll want to double gird the tunic with two silver belts. I’ve got a set I’ve just polished. One can hold your scabbard, peace-bonded of course.”

  “I don’t want to impose,” Alias insisted.

  “You don’t want to embarrass Lord Victor either. Trust me on this. A tunic over a gown will look a little old-fashioned, but anyone who’s really worth impressing will find that charming. The rest you shouldn’t care about. Come with me. We’ll get you fitted,” the actress ordered, rising to her feet. Alias followed Jamal up the staircase, noticing that the older woman was no longer limping.

  Jamal pulled Alias into a back room lined with boxes of costumes. Alias stripped off the clothing she’d worn as a disguise while Jamal rummaged through the boxes and pulled out a plain, short-sleeved gown of white silk.

  “What were you and Dragonbait discussing?” the swordswoman asked as she slipped the gown over her head.

  “Oh, old times. Cassana, Zrie, you.”

  “Me?” Alias asked, suspicious.

  “You look too much like Cassana to be a distant relative, as you said,” Jamal replied as she fastened the clasps at the gown’s side. “I thought you must be a daughter or a niece. Dragonbait explained how he stole you from Cassana when you were young—that you felt no loyalty to her.”

  Alias nodded slowly. Dragonbait had stolen her the day she’d been created. “I hated Cassana,” she assured the actress.

  “That’s what your friend said.”

  “What else did you talk about?”

  Jamal shrugged. “Nothing much.”

  “The Dragonbait effect,” Alias noted. “Everyone talks to the silent saurial. Tells him things they won’t tell other people.”

  “Just boring stories of an old woman’s life. Nothing that could interest you.” Jamal pulled two glittering silver belts off a hook on the wall and handed them to the swordswoman.

  “But they do,” Alias insisted. She struggled for some way to explain why Jamal interested her, without giving away the feelings she had for the woman, feelings that Finder had implanted in her for some reason. “My father,” she said, “was in Westgate in the Year of the Prince. He died two years later. He told me about a woman he’d met here—an actress named Jamal with red hair.” Finder had never actually told her any such thing, but he had to have known Jamal. “I thought you might have known him.”

  “Who was your father?” the actress asked.

  “Finder Wyvernspur. He wouldn’t have used that name, though. At the time, he called himself the Nameless Bard.”

  Jamal sat lightly on a trunk, looking a little stunned.

  “The Nameless Bard was your father?”

  “You did know him?” Alias asked.

  Jamal nodded. “It was the Year of the Prince, like you said, in the spring. I was running from a squad of Night Mask muggers, and he stepped out of an alley with his sword and saved my neck. Then he saved my spirit.”

  “Your spirit?” Alias asked. “How?”

  Jamal took a deep breath and sighed. Then she explained, “I’d lost my daughter the year before. I nearly grieved my
self into the grave beside her. Nameless … he convinced me I still had things to live for.”

  Alias felt her throat drying. “You had a daughter?”

  Jamal nodded. “She died in Deepwinter, in the Year of the Worm.”

  The year before I was created, Alias thought.

  “She was murdered by a vampire when she was twelve.”

  “I’m so sorry,” Alias said.

  “The vampire was a merchant noble’s daughter, and they shielded her whereabouts from Durgar and the watch.”

  “Which merchant noble?” Alias asked.

  “It doesn’t matter which one. All the merchants knew about it.”

  “So the vampire escaped?” Alias felt sick with horror.

  Jamal shook her head. “I hired an adventuring group to do what the watch couldn’t. They tracked the vampire down to its lair and killed it, then brought the body back to Durgar. When Durgar realized that the nobles had kept him from investigating the area of the lair, he was ready to quit. Luer Dhostar had an awful time convincing him to stay.”

  “So you and Nameless spent some time together?”

  Jamal grinned. “Only two weeks, but they were a good two weeks. Then he disappeared without a word.”

  “Cassana had him locked in her dungeon,” Alias explained. “Then the Harpers ordered him to Shadowdale.”

  “He’d told me he was a Harper,” Jamal said. “Later I’d heard he had some falling out with them, but after he died, they cleared it up.”

  Alias nodded. “So how close were you and Nameless?” she asked.

  “Well, actually, that’s none of your business,” Jamal said with a sly smile. “But he was a fine figure of a man, no doubt about it.” She handed Alias a pair of white silk slippers embroidered with silver thread. “Try these on.”

  Alias pulled the slippers on. They fit snugly, but well enough for a few hours leisure. “My tunic is sleeveless. Do you think I need to cover my tattoo?”

  “Not unless you’re attending incognito. They all know you have one. There’s no point in hiding it. They’ve seen plenty of foreign merchants with markings. What jewelry are you wearing to this party?” the actress asked.