Kate Novak - Masquerades

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!"

"So you say," the man shot back. "What good is a healer who will not heal?4 think you're in league with him!"

Someone now stood on the first landing, casting a shadow down the stairs and into the hallway. "If I were," the woman argued, "why would I come here in the middle of the night? Let it scar, then I'll call again. Until that time, I recommend you keep a very low profile. Good night."

Someone stomped very deliberately down the stairs and paused at the bottom. Alias peeked around the railing. It was a woman dressed in a tunic and leggings made from satin fabric printed with a harlequin diamond pattern. She wore a mask of black fabric that covered her face from her forehead to her nose. Around her neck was an iron necklace of a stylized mask-the unholy symbol of Mask, the god of thieves. The woman wrapped herself in a voluminous cape of wolf fur, nodded, and waved to someone down the hall, then let herself out the front door.

Alias waited anxiously for several moments, expecting a servant to come down the hall, but only Olive appeared.

"Did you see who she waved to?" the swordswoman asked the halfling.

"The sculpture we were pushing around. Its supposed to be of the god Mask stabbing Kezef, the Chaos Hound,"

Olive explained. Her voice was still a hoarse whisper. "Wishful thinking on the part of Mask worshipers. She's a priestess of Mask. She was just making an obeisance to the image of her master."

Alias nodded as she wondered what was wrong with Melman that he required a healer in the middle of the night, and why couldn't the priestess heal him?

Alias checked the door to what had once been Cas-sana's laboratory. The door was securely locked. Olive pulled out a tiny wire and began working at the lock as Alias and Dragonbait proceeded to investigate all the other first floor rooms.

It didn't take them long to ascertain that there was no one else in the other rooms. If there were servants in the house, Alias suspected they were quartered upstairs. Throughout their search she could hear pacing upstairs, punctuated by a man cursing occasionally.

Alias took the precaution of securing and locking the front door against any other evening visitors. Then she and Dragonbait returned to the entrance of the previously locked laboratory. The halfling stood within, her lantern propped up on an accounting table. A huge smile graced her face. With its window bricked up, the room had been converted to a treasure vault. All about the halfling were sacks, crates, and chests, each labeled with a tag. Alias read the nearest one. In a crabbed, tight handwriting was the notation, "500 gold, 100 platinum, Duck Statue stolen from Family Urdo for later ransom."

Quite a hoard for a simple vintner," Alias noted. "Grapes must have been exceedingly good these last few years."

Olive pointed to the last pages of a thin red leather-bound ledger lying on the accounting table. "According to these figures, Melman's profits are minimal. Not even enough to require payment of business taxes.

"So all this is just spare change he's found lying in the street," Alias commented.

Olive held up a finger for Alias to wait, then thumped deftly on the side of the accounting table and a small, secret drawer sprang out. Prom it the halfling pulled out a second ledger.

"This," Olive said, cracking open the ledger and taking several moments to peer down the page, "shows that our man Melman is a major player in Westgate. He's got his thumb in extortion, fencing, smuggling. It's all written down here."

"So we've caught ourselves a big Night Mask," Alias whispered with glee.

"Actually," Olive said, lifting a false bottom out of the secret drawer and pulling out yet a third ledger, "we've caught ourselves a big Night Mask who cheats. First ledger for the law, second ledger for his criminal cohorts and bosses, third ledger-well, that will have the numbers closest to reality. Melman was not only skimming off the top, but he was collecting outside his own territory. Here's today's entry from One-Eye in the second ledger. Two hundred gold, Gateside Protection, it says. In the third ledger it's entered as three hundred gold, Gateside and the Shore."

"Let's see if Melman is interested in talking about his books," Alias suggested.

Just as the adventurers began climbing the stairs, they encountered their man turning on the landing, coming down toward them. He was dressed in a long nightshirt and slippers, and oddly enough, a full cloak with a very deep hood, which concealed his features.

For such a heavy man Melman moved very quickly. The moment he spotted them, he grabbed from the landing a halfling-sized urn filled with dried flowers, tossed it down the stairs, and bolted back up to the second story.

Dragonbait dodged aside, but longer-legged Alias leaped over the obstacle and charged after her prey. Olive caught the urn and fell back down the stairs with a curse and a crash.

In the upstairs hallway, Alias caught sight of Melman disappearing into the only lit room in the house. He tried to slam the bedroom door closed, but he caught his cloak in the door frame and was forced to reopen it to pull the robe free. Alias threw herself against the door before the Night Mask could manage to lock it.

The force of the swordswoman's entry flung the vintner into the center of the room. His hood fell back, revealing his face, and Alias felt her throat constrict in horror.

This must be what Jamal had meant when she spoke of the branded ones, Alias realized. Melman's face was hideously burned all about his eyes, in the shape of a domino mask. The damaged flesh was covered with great white blisters and bright red all about the edges. Blisters even covered his eyelids, and in the brightly candle-lit bedroom his eyes squinted as if the light pained them.

Alias recovered quickly from her shock and leveled her sword at the man's chest.

"It's you! Alias the Sell-Sword!" Melman gasped. "When I saw you on the stairs I thought you were a burglar," he explained. Meekly, he raised both hands, shaking back his sleeves to reveal there were no weapons! concealed there.

"I'm glad to see you recognize me, Master Melman," the swordswoman said. "We have a lot to talk about."

"I haven't got anything to say to you," the vintner insisted. Dragonbait and Olive entered the room.

Olive whistled at the sight of Melman's brand. "I can see why he needed a priestess," the halfling muttered.

"The rest of the house is empty," the paladin reported in Saurial.

"I can summon the watch, you know. You're all trespassing!" Melman declared, his voice rising in pitch.

"It appears you've let all the servants have the night off," Alias noted. "Didn't want them to catch sight of your face? No matter. I'm sure Olive will be glad to fetch the watch for you… if you're serious. The watch will probably be fascinated with the trove of treasure you've got downstairs. Especially those pieces that are undeniably stolen property. Then, too, there are the ledgers. So many different accounting books."