Kate Novak - Masquerades

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. Та 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 jiot 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, Abas 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.