by Ed Greenwood
"Masked man," Tantaerra said sharply, bared now down to the belt she was undoing, "what by the First Vault are you talking about?"
"Your obvious reluctance …right after I suggested…"
Tantaerra stepped out of her breeches, then looked up into his silence. It was obvious what he was staring at. Both of them.
She put her hands on her hips and faced him challengingly. "Yes, they're breasts. Men have them too-the gods alone know why-yet I manage to keep from staring. Somehow. If you want to feel equal in awkwardness or, I don't know, plain rudeness, take out your manserpent and I'll have a good stare at that."
The Masked laughed. "Your tongue is sharper than many a sword."
"It has to be. I'm shorter than most swords. Now, have you had a good look?"
She swayed, stretching and swiveling like a tavern-dancer. "How about now?"
"I, uh …was asking you a question. Which you've avoided answering by talking about my looking at your …upperworks. Tantaerra?"
The halfling thrust one leg into the bath, winced, and drew it out again hastily. "Rutting hot."
"I don't doubt it. Most people heed the obvious warning-all this steam, you know."
"Stop staring, come around here, and wash my back," she commanded, striding into the bath. Wincing, she went hastily to her knees, gasped, shuddered all over, then snarled, "Vault, that's hot!"
"Too hot to-?"
"Wash," the halfling commanded. "Soap-flakes, bristle brush …I'm filthy."
The Masked wrinkled his nose. "I'd noticed."
"Congratulations, masked man-you've discovered the secret: that stale, sweaty halfling women smell just as musky as human women. We also tend to be just as touchy about it. So please wash my back and refrain from saying anything that could get you killed."
"Tantaerra, answer me," The Masked said quietly, starting to wash her back gently, recalling how the maids in the most expensive inns he'd stayed at went about this. First, use the brush to lift all of her unbound tresses over her shoulder, to hang down her front …
"Leave my hair," she said sharply. "I'll see to it."
"With your combs?"
"With my combs. Later." She sighed, and he could feel her relaxing under the brush. When he worked his way down to her tailbone, she slid smoothly right down into the bath to lie on her back amid the growing scum and look up at him.
"To tell the truth, Tarram Armistrade," she said quietly, "I was-no, am reluctant to be parted from you as we explore the city. It seems …imprudent. Dangerous, even. We're stronger as a team."
"Yet if the Watchguard, after last night-to say nothing of eager prowling Mereir and Telcanor swordsmen-are seeking a masked man accompanied by a halfling?"
"We'll deceive them," Tantaerra said tartly, "by confronting them instead with a halfling accompanied by a masked man!"
She held out a hand for the brush. "Seriously, Masked One, why don't we work together? I'll keep to rooftops, peering and eavesdropping, and you dress as a crone, keeping your hood up and wearing the best mask for that-and hobbling about slowly, mind-and we'll take our measure of Braganza that way."
"That should work," The Masked agreed.
Tantaerra gave him a sly look, then used both hands to thrust her upperworks out of the water at him. "We'll just have to work up a false pair of these for you, with wadded-up clothes and all that cord."
"Or you could reprise your role as my pregnant belly, only tied across me higher up," he suggested, his hands shaping an imaginary bust line.
"That," she told him flatly, "is an entirely inappropriate suggestion."
"It probably won't be my last," he warned, making a mock grab for her.
She submerged hastily. "Sir Armistrade, do you mind?"
"Not yet," he said, leering through the eyeholes in his mask. "In fact, not at all."
Tantaerra found the brush and hurled it at him.
He caught it out of the air deftly. "You do want your legs washed, don't you? Half the filth of Braganza seems to have joined what you brought from Halidon …"
"Masked man, you say the most charming things."
"That's why I'm still alive. For now."
"For now," Tantaerra agreed meaningfully, sliding farther down into the bath.
Luraumadar, the mask commented approvingly.
∗ ∗ ∗
It took them most of the morning to learn the extent of the Mereir-Telcanor feud, and the current mood of the city. A lot of Braganzans were willing to mutter a fervent desire that the two warring families would exterminate each other or just go away, but those mutters were neither loud nor firm. Both families, it seemed, were apt to treat neutral folk as foes, threatening such citizens into obeying, aiding, or joining them-or tasting a swift dagger or a fire kindled out of seeming nowhere, usually in the dead of night while the abstainers were asleep.
As The Masked and his patron returned to Thaener's with new-bought clothes, so those they'd been living in for days could finally be washed, a thought struck him.
Luraumadar, the mask said approvingly, in the depths of his mind.
"I'm curious," he murmured to the innkeeper, sliding two coins-good Absalom mintings that had ridden his belt for months now, awaiting just such a need-covertly across the counter. The man's hand came down on them with practiced casualness, his expression changing not a whit. "Do Mereirs or Telcanors look at guest registers in this inn? Daily? All inns in the city?"
The innkeeper turned away from The Masked to look at some tankards he'd been polishing that suddenly seemed to now need polishing again, and nodded. Thrice.
The Masked strode unhurriedly to the stairs, affecting not to notice a glowering man leading two others-all of them armed-up to the innkeeper.
Tantaerra was waiting for him in the room, a dagger ready behind her back. "Well?"
"The Mereirs and Telcanors examine all inn registers in Braganza. Daily."
"Then we're not sleeping here. Better rats than dead."
"Agreed," The Masked replied, and turned on his heel to look down the stairs. The three men were coming up, and looked quickly away from the stare he gave them.
"Out, right now," he hissed at his patron. "Back stairs, swiftly!"
Tantaerra rolled the new clothes into a bedsheet in a trice and joined him at the door. They raced along the passage, practically hurled themselves down the servants' stair, and burst out through the kitchens, ignoring a shout from a cook.
Another trio of armed men was lounging against a nearby wall, but The Masked and Tantaerra strode right past and sought alleyways.
A handy drainpipe got them aloft in time to see their pursuers hasten out that same scullery door-and come to a sudden halt, as the lounging trio unfolded themselves from the wall in a menacing line of men who held casually drawn daggers in their hands.
The Masked looked up and down the alleyway they now stood above, and at the mouths of other alleys opening off it.
"What a cesspit," he said, almost admiringly.
∗ ∗ ∗
He and Tantaerra soon found an empty mansion where they changed into their new clothes. Then they set about learning the streets of Braganza and finding possible lairs to spend the night ahead in. The city was a crowded, noisy hive of builders at work, with carts of supplies rumbling everywhere and the Watchguard directing traffic. They soon became aware that a growing group of interested observers-all apparently independent of each other-were following them, but there was nothing they could do about that.
"So," Tantaerra asked grimly, as they paused for breath on a lofty rooftop and surveyed all of the oh-so-casual folk who just happened to be looking back at them, "do we try to get out of Braganza before dusk?"
"No," The Masked replied. "If we try, we'll just be handing our friend from Halidon an easier task of reaching us. Assuming we aren't arrested at the gates or just taken down by Mereir or Telcanor bowmen while still within range of the walls."
Tantaerra sighed. "I hate it when you're so bleakly right ab
out things."
"So," The Masked told her, "do I."
He headed along the ridgepole. "Like it or not, we've plunged ourselves into the heart of this feud. If Mereirs and Telcanors both see us as having taken sides, and try to employ or manipulate us, we'd best play along. Doing some manipulating of our own, rather than remaining the bewildered, beset 'played.'"
"A noble and wise resolve," Tantaerra observed, joining him in a decorative but useless cupola that had no way down into the building beneath it, "but just how will we manage that? Or have you secret powers you haven't shared with me yet? Behind that mask, you don't happen to be one of the General Lords of Molthune, do you? Or something worse?"
Even in his own ears, The Masked's reply sounded rather bitter. "Something worse."
Luraumadar, the mask contributed helpfully, in the back of his mind.
"A rather powerless something worse, unfortunately," he added.
His halfling patron eyed him thoughtfully, obviously wondering what he meant, but said only, "I'd like to know more about that, masked man, but …later."
"Agreed," The Masked replied tersely, heading back along the ridgepole.
It was almost comical, how quickly startled faces disappeared from behind nearby windows. He hoped the Braganzans who lived in those houses were as sick of Mereirs and Telcanors bursting in to climb their stairs and peer out of windows as he would have been.
He and Tantaerra dropped down onto a heavily laden stonemason's cart and rode it for several blocks, just to irritate their pursuing spies. The Masked never caught sight of a certain pair of brown eyes among their observers, but he knew better than to assume the man from the temple roof in Halidon had been taken care of by the Telcanors last night. That sort of foe was never so easily gotten rid of.
The light was fading fast now.
"Do we pay Thaener's a late-night visit to do our washing?" Tantaerra asked, as they crossed yet another roof, this one adorned with silently screaming carved stone gargoyles.
"No. Someone will be waiting for us, well armed and in force."
They discussed various possible lairs for spending the night, and agreed on the best refuge-a tall, many-floored open skeleton of an unfinished building that had enclosed stairwells they might be able to barricade the tops of.
The Masked startled a cart-vendor by dropping down, apparently from the sky, to buy buns filled with cheese and spicy meats, to eat after dark.
Then they made for their chosen refuge, by as roundabout a way as they dared take in the gathering gloom.
It seemed deserted and ideal, as they huddled in dark silence, ate, and then settled down. The Masked never knew just when he dropped off to sleep.
∗ ∗ ∗
Luraumadar, the mask said urgently.
The Masked came awake out of a dark dream of finding himself in a vast, cold, soap-scummed bath with Tantaerra floating to the surface right beside him-drowned, dead, and staring at him reproachfully, her face frozen in her last despairing scream.
He blinked in the night-gloom, chilled and sweating, but relieved to find he'd been dreaming.
Relief that ended all too abruptly.
Tantaerra was trembling against him, and for good reason. As they lay together on the bare, unfinished floor, sword points gleamed down at them on all sides.
More than a dozen.
Splendidly armored men had somehow silently reached their rooftop and ringed them. One stood forth from his fellows, looming above The Masked and Tantaerra like a mighty statue in plate armor. He was tall and broad-shouldered, and what could be seen of his face in his magnificently crested helm was hard and cruel.
"Yield me your weapons," he commanded, reaching down an empty gauntleted hand.
Tantaerra gave him her first dagger with a hard throw, right at his face.
She was too close to miss, too close for him to move or strike it aside in time, too-
That gauntleted hand snatched the whirling dagger out of the air, then tightened around it. There was a sudden, shrieking snap from within that great fist.
The armored giant took a step forward, his armored fingers opened, and the shards of the halfling's broken dagger rained down into her disbelieving face.
Then he bent and took hold of their shoulders. His grip was like iron, grinding at The Masked's bones.
"Come, fools," this fearsome man announced coldly. "Your presence is required by a lord of Telcanor."
Chapter Eight
A Lord of Telcanor
Tantaerra tried not to whimper. She was cold-thanks to being carried dangling and naked through the night, by cold metal gauntlets-and felt bruised all over. Every act of resistance had been rewarded by a hard, metal-shod punch to a joint, until she'd hurt too much to struggle. The Telcanors had stripped them then and there in that unfinished building, taking every last thing from them-except, she'd seen through tears of shame and pain, that The Masked must have somehow managed to get one of his fleshy masks in place, because when she managed to catch glimpses of him, he had a normal-seeming face, with a nose and cheeks and eyebrows instead of a melted ruin.
All else was gone, even the lockpicks and little knives in her hair. Naked before the gods, as some priests said. Bared and weaponless, in this chilly stone city of empty mansions and half-built future mansions …
They'd been carried-or, in The Masked's case, dragged-a long way through the sleeping streets of Braganza from where they'd been captured, ducking aside hastily from time to time to avoid Watchguard patrols. The patrols carried so many lanterns that Tantaerra was beginning to think that this was perhaps the point: to give large lurking bands of men and women plenty of warning to keep clear, so patrols would face a minimum of fighting and dying.
Whenever Watchswords were within earshot, the cruelly tight grip on her shoulders or neck became a stranglehold around her throat, quelling any shrieks or calls for help she might have been moved to make.
They'd crossed most of Braganza, she thought dazedly, as they turned through a tall, wide doorway at last. Guards stood aside and heavy bronze doors swung ponderously open, the cobbles beneath their striding captors' boots giving way to polished tiles. Huge low lamps-great castles of shaped glass and dangling ornaments, such as graced many high Canorate ceilings, only here their lowest teardrops were about the height of a short man's waist off the floor-blazed ruddily in a room paneled in dark woods and adorned with weapons hung on the walls. Walls that lofted up far beyond the highest spot she could twist around to see.
So this was either a palace, or a soaring city mansion indeed.
They left the lamplight and its countless ruby reflections behind, their captors hastening deeper into the vast building. More tall double doors, and more gleaming-armored guards, then a wide, curving stair of shallow steps that looked like smokeshot white marble, climbing and curving around to the left, a long way up, to a hallway floored in sheets of bright-burnished copper.
The warriors' boots hissed and slid on the polished metal as they strode down a dim and high-ceilinged passage to another set of stairs, this one narrow and steep and straight, with soft wine-red cloth underfoot. Then another hallway ascended to pair of huge high doors, which parted under the hands of formidable plate-armored guards to reveal a grand upper room that at last seemed to lack any additional stairs.
They had reached the top of this mansion, Tantaerra saw. The domed ceiling above had a great oval opening in its center, an intricate many-paned skylight that was all curlicues, brackets, and gilded glass. Rose-hued light flooded down on its edges from four directions, coming from lamps on half-seen roof spires that thrust up into the night sky.
All very impressive, even beautiful, if she'd felt in the least like appreciating it. So they were here, wherever here was, and their armored captors were seating them in huge stone chairs, chaining their throats so tightly to the backs of these seats that they could barely breathe.
The armored men then promptly departed back the way they'd come. All, that is, b
ut the huge armored mountain of a man who commanded them, who strode to one of the row of doors Tantaerra could see along the back wall of the room and smote a metal panel on it with his gauntleted fist, causing a muffled boom.
Almost immediately, another door in the row swung open. Two servants in identical uniforms stepped out, faced each other across the doorway, and bowed low. Between their bent heads swept a burly, red-faced man whose shoulders were broad, whose jaw was large and heavy, and whose face was haughty, lip curled in a sneer. His hair was swept into a flowing peak, no doubt by the dint of much servants' primping and wax, and he wore a flared tunic that looked like a military uniform made by a ladies' gown designer.
"You two," this grandest of men boomed, sweeping up to the helplessly imprisoned Tantaerra and The Masked, "are foul Mereir spies! You shall die, but not before you've yielded up all you know, and every last villainy you'd planned-and you shall yield everything, under the tortures my experts shall inflict upon you, regardless of how sternly you resist me now! Know this, and despair! Yet I am munificent, I am, and can be so generous as to offer wine, and an evening of civil converse-if you speak freely!"
With every sentence he uttered, this large and florid man strutted back and forth in front of his prisoners, his chest bulging and arms gesturing grandly. His voice was almost deafening, and he was practically spitting.
"Let us begin," he said, suddenly stopping and bending to thrust his face almost into Tantaerra's, "with your names!"
"Uh," she stammered, terrified and ashamed of being frightened, her face warmed by his breath and spittle, anger rising in her as his gaze dropped from her face to her bare body. "Ah …"
"You are unsubtly vicious and ambitious," The Masked interrupted crisply, "which leads me to suspect that of the Telcanors, you must be Krzonstal Telcanor. Excuse me-Lord Krzonstal Telcanor. Am I correct?"
Tantaerra tried to turn her head to look at the man she'd hired. He was bluffing-he must be-drawing on some of the replies he'd had from citizens earlier in the day. And with torture and death promised, why not bluff? What was there to lose?