Masquerades

Eleven Stalking From the Outside In

Back in her room at Blais House, with the money she’d just been paid, Alias planned what to do next. She wanted to work in the afternoon to make up for the time she’d lose tonight at the party. In the daylight she’d have to rely on a disguise, which would be easier if she went without Dragonbait. She returned to the market, where, once she’d purchased a new tunic to wear to the party, she started picking through second- and thirdhand rags. She found a stained, long-sleeved tunic to cover her tattoo, a pair of badly patched, baggy trousers to hide her scabbard, and a scarf to cover her red hair. With the addition of some mud and a layer of dust, she would pass for a drover. Back at Blais House, she lay the outfit for the party—a blue silk tunic trimmed with silver embroidery—on the bed with her new earrings and changed into her newly purchased rags. Then she headed for the Shore via the Water Gate.

The city wall made more or less a half-circle around Westgate, but owing to a steep cliff in the northwest, it turned inward sharply, running along the top of the cliff until the cliff reached the shoreline. The Water Gate opened over this cliff onto a steep staircase and a path leading down to the Shore. While the Outside, the district of Westgate surrounding the city wall, was predominantly open grassland for grazing herd animals, with the stockyards of the leading merchants pressed against the city wall, the neighborhood of the Shore, wedged between the cliff wall and the sea, was a slum.

It was, as Victor had said, populated mostly by transients, unable to afford the silver for board and lodging within the city walls: drovers, day workers, and down-on-their-luck adventurers. The Shore offered flophouses for a few coppers a night, and food stalls in the neighborhood sold stale bread and bruised fruits and vegetables for less. Many of the inhabitants relied on the sea for added nourishment. As Alias made her way down the steep cliff staircase, she could see hundreds of them on the beach, digging for clams and crabs.

The buildings were cobbled together from lumber scavenged from broken-down carts and driftwood from shipwrecks. None of them looked as if they could withstand a serious storm. Lean-tos, tents, and tarps filled in the spaces between the buildings. Sewage meandered through fly-lined trenches to a creek, which spilled into the sea.

What with the steep staircase and the stench, Alias could understand why the watch did not make a regular patrol of the area. Although Finder had given her detailed memories of Westgate, she had no recollection of the Shore, beyond the fact of its existence. Not even the curious, adventurous Harper bard had come down here.

Despite her costume, Alias couldn’t have felt more out of place if she’d come down in a white coach pulled by six horses. People scurried ahead of her in fear, and she could feel jealous eyes following her down the street. It couldn’t be her hidden weapon people feared or her rags they envied, but something she couldn’t pinpoint.

From a low pen beside a ramshackle hovel came a vicious-sounding skronk. Alias peered into the pen. Inside was a mother pig and six piglets. Two of the piglets were fighting over a moldy cabbage stem. None of the piglets was plump (apparently there wasn’t even enough garbage to feed them), but the two piglets fighting were just a touch less scrawny than the other four who lay, like their mother, in an exhausted slumber brought on by too little to eat and no hope of more.

I don’t fit in because I look well fed, Alias realized, and willing to fight for my food if I get hungry again. The swordswoman slouched, shuffled her feet, and kept her eyes down in an effort to dispel her warriorlike appearance. She joined some people at a well and waited her turn for a scoop of water. After she drank, she sat down near a lean- to where three drovers were playing dice, with penny stakes.

As she stared up the cliff at the city wall, Alias could pick out the newer stone in the section that had been rebuilt after the corpse of the dragon Mist had collapsed on top of it eleven years ago. The wyrm had been enlarged by a magical spell at the time, and Alias shuddered, imagining how much damage the dragon must have caused when it toppled over the cliff and landed on the slum below.

She was wondering who had scavenged the ancient dragon’s skull when she noticed a lean but aggressive-looking young man approaching her. He wore a new tunic of brilliant green, and Alias thought he was handsome enough to serve one of the merchant houses, until he smiled and spoke. Only half of his teeth were still in residence, and his manner and his speech were too uncouth to recommend him to such a post.

“Ya jus’ get ta the city?” he asked her.

Alias nodded, keeping her eyes down.

“Gotta pay the visit tax,” he said.

“Not staying in the city,” she answered. “Sleeping under the stars.”

“Don’t matter. Gotta pay the visit tax. It’s a copper a night.”

“Suppose I don’t have a copper?” she asked.

“Then ya gotta stay out past the ’ill of Fangs, wit’ the beasts and goblins. Wanna be safe near the city, gotta pay the visit tax.”

Alias made an elaborate display of pulling the copper coin from her boots, secretly pleased that she’d managed to convince him she was just another victim. The man dropped her coin in a sack he wore about his neck. “Anyone else bother ya, tell ’em ya paid Twig,” he said, then moved off.

It wouldn’t be worth it, Alias thought, to bring him in for extorting a copper. She watched Twig “tax” the camping drovers, then move toward the hovels around the well. At each hovel he demanded coin for every inhabitant he saw. The tax was two coppers for those in a “real” house. Even the day workers who weren’t new to the region paid Twig, though their money was probably labeled a “residence tax” or “insurance.”

Rather than stop Twig, Alias wanted to get a feel for how far his dealings reached. The Night Masks, she realized as she followed Twig from a discreet distance, had found a way to draw blood from stone. Even if Twig collected for a tenth of the district and paid as much as a fifty percent cut to the Night Masters, he’d earn at least two gold a day, twice the salary Dhostar paid a watch guard, all that for no more labor than the asking, collecting, and, no doubt, the occasional act of violence.

Alias had no trouble keeping Twig’s bright green tunic in sight. He did not seem concerned that he might be followed. The watch didn’t come down here, and the inhabitants weren’t about to challenge the Night Masks. Alias kept waiting for some show of resistance, but no one made any trouble for Twig. After half an hour, the collector turned and made a beeline due west. Alias paused at the outskirts of the neighborhood and watched Twig cross an empty field. Across the field, in front of a thick woods, was Lilda’s, a large festhall with a reputation for tolerating rowdy customers.

Alias moved toward the woods and crept up on the building from the rear. One wing had suffered a recent fire. Scorch marks ran from windows up the plaster walls of the building, and charred bits of wood, the remains of the shutters, hung beside the windows. The smell of smoke was still strong. Piled in the rear were remnants of Lilda’s business, which someone had managed to rescue from the fire: scorched feather-filled ticks, bedsteads covered with soot, tapestries stained with smoke, a painting of a female sphinx reclining like an odalisque.

Recalling the arson of Jamal’s home, Alias wondered if the Night Masks had been involved in this fire, too. The damage here wasn’t extensive, but perhaps the thieves guild had meant only to frighten Lilda into making “insurance payments” more promptly, without actually destroying her lucrative business.

The sounds of hammering and sawing echoed inside the building. Lilda apparently had enough stashed away to cover emergency rebuilding.

Alias slid along the end of the burned-out wing and peeked around the corner. Twig stood on the front porch, shifting his weight impatiently from foot to foot as another man, seated at a table, counted it out. The counter was a tall, skinny man with a long braid of gold hair hanging down his back. Twig’s boss, Alias guessed. He shoved some coin back at Twig and poured the rest into his swelling belt pouch. Twig’s cut was smaller than Alias had supposed; he received only a quarter of the take, one gold worth of copper coin, but that was still a lot for a few hours of unskilled “labor.”

After Twig left, his boss yanked a knife out of the porch floor boards and proceeded to whittle a small stick into a smaller stick. A few minutes later, a pair of children showed up with their collection. The pair were maybe twelve to fourteen years old, a brother and sister by the looks of them. They brought in somewhat more than Twig, but received the same quarter share. The boss whispered something to the girl, which Alias did not hear, but from the girl’s weak smile and uncomfortable squirm and the boss’s lewd wink, the swordswoman could guess the content. She fought off the temptation to blacken the boss’s winking eye, deciding it could wait until sometime later, but not too long from now. The girl noticed Alias watching from around the corner, and for a moment Alias worried that the child might point her out to the boss. The girl remained silent, though. She pocketed her and her brother’s cut, then the pair ran back to the Shore. The man resumed his whittling.

The next collector came three whittled sticks later. He was a powerful-looking man, made mean and miserable by personal neglect and overconsumption of ale. The whittler growled at him for being the last one to arrive, as usual, and the collector snarled something back to the effect that the boss had nothing to do but sit on his rear end and wait. He turned his collection over, sullenly pocketed his take, and stomped into the undamaged section of Lilda’s festhall.

The boss rose, threw away his stick, sheathed his knife, and strode west, toward the road. Alias wondered if it would be possible to follow the money all the way up to a Night Master.

Guessing that Twig’s boss would take the road back into the city, the swordswoman dashed southward, climbed a fence, and cut through the Dhostar stockyards. Two yard hands approached her as she reached the southern stables, obviously intent on bringing her in for trespassing, but after identifying herself, they let her pass without further challenge.

Spotting her quarry heading farther south, the swordswoman cut through the Thorsar stockyards as well. She reached the city wall in time to see Twig’s boss heading toward her. She passed through Mulsantir’s gate just ahead of the man. As she strolled idly down the main street, the Night Mask passed her, and she followed him through the city. There was just enough foot traffic for her to blend in with the crowd, but not so much that she couldn’t keep her eye on her quarry’s blond braid. Twig’s boss entered a tavern within spitting distance of the Ssemm sheds. The tavern’s sign read “The Rotten Root,” and pictured a particularly malevolent-looking treant.

Alias adjusted her scabbard so that it could be seen, took a deep breath, and plunged into the tavern’s smoky darkness. Her eyes adjusted to the dimly lit common room just in time to see Twig’s boss being escorted into a private room in the back by a large man with gnoll-sized biceps.

Alias slid into a booth with a view of the back room door. The muscular man returned to his post a moment later. He wore an apron over his leather armor, leading Alias to believe he served not only as a guard for the Night Masks, but a bouncer for the bar as well.

None of the regulars seemed to give her a second glance, but Alias was quick to establish a reason for her presence. When the barmaid came by to take her order, Alias help up two fingers, telling the woman she was expecting a friend. Two ales looking suspiciously like harbor water arrived. As the swordswoman sipped at the beverage, she thought harbor water might have been tastier. The barmaid stood waiting for payment, and Alias handed her some copper from a pocket of her boot.

Alias nursed first one drink, then the other, with the diligence of a condemned man lingering over his last meal. Twig’s boss spent about five minutes in the back room, then returned to the common room. He ordered an ale and downed it without paying. He was either well-known enough to run up a tab, or the Night Masks had an arrangement with the tavern to serve free refreshments to their collectors. More importantly, Alias noticed that the collector’s belt pouch slapped nearly empty against his thigh.

So the watering hole was the next drop-off point for scam and protection operators. Alias remained while Twig’s boss disappeared out the tavern door.

Every few minutes, someone would arrive and approach the door to the private room and the guard would escort the person in or, with a jerk of his thumb, make him or her wait in the bar until the previous arrival left. Occasionally someone would leave the room looking chagrined, but most left smiling.

The visitors to the back room were mostly rough-looking men, a scattering of women, and a few children too young to be collectors themselves, no doubt working as runners for the collectors. Save for one dwarf, who muttered a string of curses as he entered and another as he exited, the visitors were all human.

After about a half hour, midway through her second, carefully nursed ale, Alias noticed that the guard let a visitor in before the last had left. Then it happened a second time. Either the master of the back room was keeping them for a reason, Alias realized, or, more likely, there was a back exit.

Alias gladly abandoned the last of her ale and left the tavern just as the guard was escorting a new arrival through the door. She headed right, down the street, counting the buildings until she hit a cross street, then made another right. She slipped down the alley and counted buildings until she’d reached the rear of the Rotten Root. She slowed as she approached.

Ahead of her she spied someone already watching the doorway from behind a stack of crates. Although the watcher had her back turned to the swordswoman, she seemed familiar. Alias slowed and increased her stealth.

“Hello, Alias,” Olive whispered, without even turning around. “Duck behind these crates before someone spots you.”

Alias stepped into the shadows behind the crates. “How did you know it was me?” she demanded.

“I saw you in the tavern common room, when I peeked in the front door. Since you were watching the front of the counting room, I thought I’d keep watch over the back. I saw you slip into the alley. Even at that distance I recognized your amusing drover’s costume. You’re not as noisy as your average human being, but you’re still not stealthy enough to sneak up behind me. How’s the house brew?”

“Miserable,” Alias reported. “They’ll have to improve it once we break up this operation, or lose their clientele.”

“I think we should hold off on breaking it up,” Olive said. “I followed my money from a young shake-down artist to a local tough to here. I’m very curious to see if I can follow this loot to its final resting place.”

“I had the same thing in mind,” the swordswoman admitted. “How about if I keep watch back here and you sit it out in the common room? Your cast-iron stomach could probably handle their ale better than mine.”

“I’ll give it a go, but they may not welcome halflings,” Olive remarked. “If the climate seems too frigid, I’ll be back in a few—”

Olive halted in midsentence and stepped deeper into the shadow, pulling Alias with her. The iron-clad back room door banged open, and someone within tossed out a teenaged boy.

The boy slid along the damp alley until he hit the wall of the building behind the bar with a thud. Two large men followed him out the door. They were dressed in leather armor like that worn by the muscle-man guarding the room’s front door.

One man closed the door firmly while the other grabbed the boy by his arms and pulled him up from the ground. The boy struggled, but the man gripped him more firmly and slammed him hard into the wall.

The boy let out a whimper, which made his attacker laugh. He slammed the boy twice more before presenting him to his companion. The second thug had just finished wrapping his knuckles with a leather band.

“Following the money’s just lost priority,” Alias said as she slid her sword from her scabbard.

“I can’t disagree,” Olive replied.

The second thug backhanded the boy once across the face before Alias managed to cross the alley. He would have noticed the swordswoman, but he was too engrossed in his mayhem against the boy to warn his companion of her presence. Alias brought the hilt of her weapon down on the back of the first Night Mask’s skull. He slid to the ground with his prisoner. Meanwhile Olive had run up to the boy’s other attacker and smacked him in the knees with a war hammer. The attacker crashed to the ground, and, with a blow from Alias’s sword hilt, joined his companion in unconsciousness.

Alias knelt beside the boy and helped him sit up. It looked as if the thugs had worked him over before they had brought him out to the alley. One of his eyes was nearly swollen shut, blood trickled in a thin stream from his mouth, and his uninjured eye appeared unfocused. “Are you all right?” the swordswoman asked. The boy waved his hand in his face as if to ward off a blow.

“He’s not going anywhere,” the halfling said. “Let’s get Brothers Bane and Bhaal here trussed and hidden just in case someone else comes out,” she suggested as she pulled out a ball of thick twine and began hog-tying one of the Night Masks.

Alias sheathed her sword and dragged the thugs down the alley, stashing them in the well of a basement door. When she returned, Olive was helping the boy rise to his feet. From the way he hopped and leaned, it was obvious he’d injured a leg, too.

“Easy, child,” Alias said, holding the boy’s upper arm to steady him. “You’re safe now.”

“Na’ a chil’,” the boy retorted and shook off Alias’s grip, but he was so disoriented that he began to fall backward. As Alias steadied him, he insisted, “I jus’ nee’ a minute. I’ll be fine.”

Alias guided the boy back to their hiding place behind the stack of crates. After a minute of steady breathing, he seemed to regain his balance and his senses. He touched his sore jaw and let out a string of curses—an imaginative array of gods’ names coupled with parts of the human anatomy that might have been amusing were he not so young.

“So what’s this all about?” Olive prompted the boy, all the while keeping her eyes fixed on the back door.

The boy shrugged. “Nothin’. My fault. There was some foolsilver in my payments, some bogus coins. They said I had to be made a ’zample for th’others.”

“Made an example? Who said that?” Alias demanded. “Who ordered those men to hurt you?”

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 myself 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.

“A pair of silver earrings—three interlocking stars.”

“Over a wagon wheel?” Jamal teased. “A gift?”

“Just stars, no wheel, and I bought them myself.”

“At least you don’t have to wear Dhostar livery. That tawny color looks awful on us redheads.”

“Very sweet,” a high-pitched voice said from the doorway. “I’m out tracking down evildoers, and you decide to play dress up.”

Alias and Jamal turned to Olive Ruskettle. The halfling looked as if she had run halfway across Westgate and still had a full head of steam up.

“Our warrior is mixing with high society tonight,” Jamal explained.

“From the back alleys to the castles in a matter of hours, eh?” Olive said. “What a whirlwind life you lead.”

“What did you find out?” Alias demanded.

“Well,” the halfling began, “I followed One-Eye and her bodyguard south to a big manor house right on the edge of the city. She went in, spent about ten minutes, just enough to count that sack of money. Then she and her friend left and parted company.” Olive paused for dramatic effect.

Alias glared. She hated these pauses. “And?” she prompted.

“I didn’t see the occupant,” Olive replied, “but I asked around. “The house belongs to a wealthy vintner named Melman. Melman bought the place ten years ago, after the former occupant died. Guess how.”

“Night Masks?”

“Nope. Guess again.”

Alias let out a sigh of exasperation. “Olive! Spit it out! How did the former occupant die?”

“She took a blast from a staff of power. Her name was Cassana.”

“Melman’s living in Cassana’s house?” Alias asked, a smile of glee creeping across her face.

“Yep. The same place we all knew and loathed.”

“The one with the secret tunnel into the secret basement,” Alias said with a twinkle in her eye.

“The very same,” Olive said, rubbing her hands together.