Kate Novak - Masquerades

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 anjusing 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."

"Ill 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 sale 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 just need 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.