Masquerades

by Kate Novak

  The saurial sighed and ambled forward, but the halfling grabbed his tunic and jerked him to the side. “Stand in the shadows,” she hissed. Feeling a little foolish, and a little guilty, but also a little anxious, the paladin did as instructed before looking down on the street. He shifted nervously, made uncomfortable by the sight below.

  Victor’s carriage stood outside the hotel door. As Lord Victor helped Alias down, she slid into his arms, threw her own around his neck, and pressed her lips against his. The pair remained embracing, lips locked against each other for an embarrassingly long period to witness.

  Dragonbait pulled Olive away from the window, back to the chessboard and made her sit down opposite him. They both stared at the chessboard without seeing the pieces, waiting for Alias’s return.

  When Victor finally released her, Alias drew in a deep breath and giggled.

  “You make me feel so good,” Victor whispered.

  “Good as in virtuous?” Alias teased, gently nibbling at his ear.

  “Lucky, happy, fortunate, fated, delighted,” the young noble burbled. “I’ve never had anyone I could really talk to. Knowing you understand, that you’re with me—” He faltered for words. “Are you sure you have to go?”

  The swordswoman nodded. “It’s late. We both have a lot to do tomorrow.”

  “It’s already tomorrow,” Victor murmured, sliding his hand up and down her back.

  “Exactly,” Alias retorted, and she slipped gracefully from his grasp and began climbing the steps to the hotel door.

  Lord Victor reached out and grasped her wrist. “Alias?” he entreated her.

  “Yeeesss?” the swordswoman answered, making no attempt to pull her captured arm away.

  Lord Victor moved closer, standing on the step just beneath hers. He looked up into her eyes. “Give me a token,” he demanded with a grin, “or I shall never let you go.”

  “A token?” Alias replied with a little laugh, not certain she’d heard him correctly.

  “A token to show your regard for me, at least, that is, I hope you have some regard for me, for my feelings, for what you mean to me. Please. Some trinket to remind me of you when we’re apart.”

  Alias thought of her new earrings, but somehow they didn’t seem enough a part of her. “I don’t think I have …” she started to say, then she thought of something appropriate. “Wait. You have to let go of my hand first, though.”

  Victor released her and held out both his hands cupped together, waiting for his boon.

  With a deft motion Alias released the peace-bond knot tying her sword to her scabbard. She drew out her sword and raised it to her head. She held out the strand of hair she wore in an ornamental braid and sliced the braid off with the blade of her weapon.

  She slid her sword back into its scabbard. After curling the braid into a tiny loop, she laid it in the young noble’s palms. “Your token, milord,” she whispered.

  “Accepted gratefully, milady,” Victor replied, bending briefly to one knee. He tucked the red ringlet into his shirt, then his arms snaked out again and grasped the swordswoman about her waist. He pulled her toward him until they stood lips to lips.

  They kissed again.

  Finally the young noble released the swordswoman. Alias ran up the steps and into the hotel. Lord Victor climbed back into his carriage and urged his horses forward.

  As the carriage rolled away, the halfling and the saurial could hear Alias moving toward them in the hallway, singing a love song.

  “Oh, yeah. She seems really guarded to me,” Olive mocked the paladin. She sat back down beside the chessboard and righted her overturned king. “Your move, Dragonbait,” she said.

  The paladin sat across from the halfling, his brow furrowed as the hamlike scent of his anxiety wafted out the open window.

  Fourteen

  Melman’s Place

  It took the swordswoman only a few minutes to change from her finery back into her armor, but in that time the weather had turned. Clouds rolled in from the east, veiling the moon, and mist rolled up from the bay and the river, shrouding the streets. Despite the cover this provided the three adventurers, Olive insisted they take one extra precaution to elude any possible Night Masks who might be spying on them—leave the city via the Thalavars’ secret underground tunnel.

  Once outside the city, Olive crept southward, keeping in the shadow of the city wall, with Alias and Dragonbait following behind. Since only the halfling had been both conscious and free of the sorceress Cassana’s magical controls when they’d last used the tunnel that led to Cassana’s former home, they had to rely on Olive to lead them to the outside entrance. They sneaked over the fence into the Ssemm family stockyards and made their way to the eastern end of the yards.

  As the halfling rustled through an overgrown dry wash searching for the entrance, Alias and Dragonbait kept watch at the wash’s rim. The moon broke through the clouds for a few moments, and then Alias could make out seven mounds to the southeast.

  There was a good deal of activity in the stockyards to the west of the dry wash. Caravans were being readied for departure in the morning. Alias shifted nervously, worried that she would be discovered trespassing, and Orgule Ssemm would add his complaints to those of Ssentar Urdo, further annoying the croamarkh.

  “Olive,” she whispered. “What’s taking you so long?”

  “I’ll bet the passage hasn’t been used since Finder and I came through it. The gully is really overgrown,” the halfling whispered back.

  An eternity of heartbeats seemed to pass before Olive called out to report her success. Dragonbait, able to detect the heat of the halfling’s body in the dark, took Alias’s arm and led her to Olive’s location. The halfling crawled out from beneath a thicket of wild raspberry. “I don’t think either of you could get through like I could,” Olive reported. “You’ll have to hack at the brush some.”

  The two warriors drew their swords and cut into the briars until they’d cleared a path into a tributary of the gully.

  “There!” Olive whispered excitedly, pointing into the hillside.

  The doorway was partially blocked by mud and rock carried by heavy rains, but the door was still visible. Fortunately it opened inward, so they weren’t required to do any digging. Alias pushed up the latch with the tip of her weapon and nudged the door open with her foot. The door’s hinges made an alarming squeal, and a decade’s worth of dust assailed the swordswoman’s nostrils.

  Dragonbait whispered “Toast,” in Saurial, causing his enchanted blade to blaze. Igniting a straw from the paladin’s sword, Alias used it to light a conventional lantern. Dragonbait took the point; Alias followed behind him. Olive, after one last look down the dry wash to be sure no one had observed them, slipped through the door behind the warriors.

  The passageway beneath the city wall was so narrow that the adventurers had to go single file. Olive’s nose twitched in the dusty, sepulchral air. “Smells like Zrie Prakis,” the halfling complained.

  Remembering the lich’s smell, Alias shuddered in spite of herself. Prakis had been among the alliance of evil beings who’d created her. Each being had had some evil purpose for the swordswoman, but it was Prakis’s purpose that had unnerved Alias the most. Prakis had had a long-abiding love-hate relationship with Cassana, even after he’d become undead. He wanted an enslaved Alias to replace Cassana.

  “That’s good, though,” Alias said, “if it means that no one has been using the passage since then. Look, ours are the first footprints in the dust in years.”

  “Maybe because it’s haunted,” the halfling suggested unhappily.

  Spiderwebs across the passage crackled and fizzled away, ignited by Dragonbait’s fiery blade as they moved forward, but there was nothing they could do to keep the dust from swirling up into their faces. Olive, who was closer to the floor, had to put up with more, and she muttered nonstop complaints all the way down the passage. Alias began to sense that the shorter woman was fighting a growing sense of panic. The h
alfling had also been a prisoner in this house, in all but name.

  “They’re all dead, Olive,” Alias said, trying to reassure the woman. “Nothing but dust is left of them,” she added, then realized as Olive puffed at the dust in the air that that probably wasn’t the most reassuring thing she could have said.

  Olive laughed, a little nervously.

  They reached a dead end in the passage—a wall of solid rock. Dragonbait sniffed at the blockage, trying to discern any breeze or whiff of fresh air that would reveal a hidden mechanism.

  “Allow me,” the halfling said, stepping forward. “Coming out of Cassana’s, the catch to move this wall was on the right. We can probably reach it from the left going in this direction.”

  Olive ran her hand along the wall until it disappeared into a hole in the rock. There was a click, which echoed down the secret passage behind them. Olive stepped back. “I’ve done my bit. Now it’s your turn. Push here on the right side. The wall pivots. You’ll have to put some muscle into it to get it started, but then its weight swings it around.”

  Alias set down the lantern and began shoving at the wall. After a moment, she felt it begin to move, but something seemed to be jamming it on the other side. Dragonbait held his sword out for Olive to hold. The halfling took the heavy weapon with some trepidation. The paladin put his back into the labor along with Alias. The door moved another inch, then another.

  “Just like old times,” Olive said in an excited whisper. “My brains, your brawn. A dusty dungeon, the hint of danger. Now all we need is—”

  The door rotated a full ninety degrees, and something clattered to the ground behind it. Gold coins glinted in the lantern light as they rolled across the floor.

  “—treasure,” Olive concluded, handing Dragonbait back his weapon. With a squeal of delight, she pressed her way past the two warriors.

  The cellar floor was carpeted with a layer of shifting gold coins and a smattering of silver utensils, bowls and tea services. It appeared that a mound of treasure had been piled up against the secret door. Olive went scuffling through the coins like a child kicking up fallen leaves in the autumn, humming happily. Her practiced eye made a quick survey for gems, jewels, or particular stunning pieces of silver, but there were none of those. She contented herself by rolling about atop the coins and washing her hands in them with a laugh.

  “Not bad at all,” the halfling said with a sigh. “It doesn’t appear that the current owners know anything about the secret passage, or this treasure wouldn’t have been left so conveniently in our path.”

  Alias frowned as she peered at the glistening walls around the dungeon. “Olive,” she whispered, “do you remember the walls down here being damp?”

  “Bound to be some seepage in a basement this deep,” the halfling replied, scooping handfuls of coins into her pockets. The halfling giggled as she moved down the corridor. “I can just picture whoever settled Cassana’s estate trying to sell the old place. Yes, Madam, the walls of the basement do leak, but that’s a minor inconvenience when you consider the value. Four bedrooms, single bath, prison cells in the basement. The previous owner was a notorious sorceress. She lived here quietly with her undead lover. Did I mention the secret passageway—”

  Olive froze in her tracks, literally, one foot poised over the ground in a step that never came down. She remained motionless and, even stranger for Olive, speechless.

  Dragonbait took a step toward the curiously immobile, suspended halfling, but Alias caught him by the arm. She bent down, grabbed a handful of coins, and flung them down the corridor. The air about them seemed to ripple and surge for a moment, then the coins hung in the air, just as did the halfling’s foot.

  Realizing now what caused the walls to glisten, Alias raised her sword and sprang forward. “It’s a gelatinous cube!” she shouted. “It’s swallowed Olive. We’ve got to cut her out before she suffocates!”

  The scavenging monster had been practically invisible in the lantern light, but the adventurers could now see it rippling as the creature, alerted to their movements, slithered toward the secret door in an effort to engulf them. It had no intelligence, so its attack was purely instinctual, and it towered over them and blocked the passage completely.

  Alias struck first with a sweeping semicircular cut along one side of the cube, wide enough to miss the imprisoned halfling but close enough to loosen the monster’s grip. Dragonbait began slicing at the jellylike creature with his flaming sword, creating great scorching gashes in its side. The smell of burning flesh permeated the air. With her free hand Alias grabbed Olive’s shirt collar and pulled hard. There was a soft sucking sound as the cube attempted to draw the halfling deeper into its digestive interior.

  Knowing that the gelatinous cube exuded a slime capable of paralyzing even the largest of prey, Alias shifted backward to avoid contact with the creature and nearly lost her grip on the halfling.

  The warrior woman stabbed the creature and released the hilt of her sword. With both hands clenched on the halfling’s shirt, she yanked with all her might.

  There was a squishing noise, and the slime-encrusted halfling erupted from the side of the cube. Alias slipped on the carpet of coins and fell over backward, Olive landing on top of her. A layer of clear ooze still covered the halfling, but separated from the host body the goo could not survive and began to evaporate in a thin mist.

  The creature sent out a protrusion that crested over the heads of the two woman like a wave. Before the wave could overwhelm them, the saurial slashed it from the body of the gelatinous cube.

  The wave, cut off from its parent, began to steam into nothingness before it hit the ground. Alias’s sword clattered into the coins as the creature, damaged beyond its ability to hold its shape, slumped to the ground in a puddle of steaming goo.

  Alias rolled Olive on her back and pushed on her stomach. The halfling gagged and coughed up a slimy bubble, then took a gasp of air. Alias breathed a sigh of relief.

  “Is she all right?” the paladin asked as the halfling stirred feebly while ooze steamed off her body.

  Alias nodded. “She walked into it with her mouth open,” she explained. “Probably paralyzed her vocal chords. Maybe we’ll get some quiet for a while,” she said with a grin.

  “That’s not funny,” Olive retorted in a hoarse whisper.

  They took the time to investigate the rest of the cellar. Dragonbait stood staring thoughtfully into the prison cell where he’d once been chained awaiting death, the cell where he’d sworn to the Nameless Bard that he would protect Alias. Except for the glistening slime left by the gelatinous cube, everything was just as he remembered it.

  Alias, who had no clear memory of the place, was busy investigating bits of litter on the floor mixed in with the gold coins and the remains of the jelly creature. Several old rat skeletons, the skull of a very large cat, fruit peelings, moldy cheese, some bloody bandages. The swordswoman studied the ceiling. There was a hole overhead.

  “Melman must be using the cellar as a midden,” Alias guessed. “If it weren’t for the gelatinous cube cleaning up down here, we might have had to wade through garbage. Melman probably threw the poor creature down here when it was just a bud.”

  “The door between the house upstairs and the cellar is secret, too,” Olive explained. “Melman may not even realize that there’s anything down here. He may think there’s just an old well or sewer. I’ll bet this treasure is all Cassana’s original horde. Prakis said she stored it down here. Probably in there.” The halfling pointed to a side room with a missing door. The hinges remained suspended from the door frame. “The door must have been wood. After several years the gelatinous cube dissolves it, slips into the treasury, drags the coins around beneath it, leaving them piled in front of the secret passageway.”

  Dragonbait extinguished the flame of his sword, and Alias covered the lantern so that only the faintest light showed. Then the trio climbed the spiral staircase leading to the first floor of the house. At the top,
they halted and listened for any sounds that might indicate they’d been heard. The house seemed preternaturally still. Alias wondered if perhaps Olive had been spotted tailing One-Eye to the house, causing Melman to bolt. Olive, her ear to the secret panel, looked suspicious, but she finally pushed on the section of wall that released the secret panel. The curved section of wall slid easily enough until it caught on something in the alcove on the other side.

  Olive was just able to slip through the crack in the secret entrance. There she discovered the obstruction immediately In Cassana’s time there had been on display in the alcove a stone statue of a particularly voluptuous succubus. The new owner had replaced it with a brass sculpture of a masked warrior driving a spear through the heart of a maggot-ridden mastiff. The end of the spear was blocking the secret panel from sliding all the way open.

  Grunting and shoving with all her might, Olive found she could not shift the sculpture. She solved the problem by hanging on the end of the spear until it bent downward, out of the door’s path. On the halfling’s signal Alias shifted the panel open all the way and she and Dragonbait stepped into the hallway beside Olive.

  The three adventurers moved down the hallway until they stood at the base of the staircase to the second floor. There was a light on in a room upstairs, and voices drifted down the stairs. It sounded like a man and a woman arguing, but Alias could not make out any distinct words. She frowned anxiously. If the shouts came from the master of the house and some female friend, it was likely there were also servants awake and about.

  As the shouting grew closer, Alias motioned Dragonbait into the hallway behind the stairs. Olive had already faded into some other shadowy recess of the house.

  “And you call yourself a healer!” the man above bellowed.

  “There are limitations to every craft,” the woman snarled back. “You are lucky I could ease your pain. Perhaps after it scars I can help further, but not now. The wound’s magic is still too strong!”