Kate Novak: Masquerades

Alias, breathing the slightly cooler, slightly less smoky air, was suddenly bent over with a coughing fit. When she recovered a minute later she looked up at the room's inhabitants-a family of halflings. They'd gone silent at her arrival, but once she stopped coughing, they ignored her and returned to squabbling and rushing about.

There were seven of them-no, eight, Alias corrected, trying to count them as they dashed about like fish in a pond. They were dressed in their nightshirts and engaged in packing all their worldly belongings into a trunk so large that even a hill giant might think twice before lifting it. Mama Halfling was overseeing everything that went in, rejecting things she did not consider worthy of the limited space-pipe collections, mug collections, rock collections, bottle collections. This resulted in the squabbling, since Papa Halfling and the Junior Halflings insisted their contributions were invaluable.

Alias felt the door warming at her back and saw the smoke winding up her legs as it crept beneath the door and between the floorboards. She staggered forward, pushing Mama Halfling and most of her brood away from the chest, toward the window.

"Have you gone nuts?" Abas cried. "This isn't moving day! You haven't got time to pack! You're going to be troll meat any minute now!" She scooped up the closest halfling child, a girl no higher than her knee, and slammed open the window shutters.

The room overlooked an alley, where a crowd had already gathered. In the center of the crowd Dragonbait kneeled over a prone human. Alias gave a shout and caught the saurial's attention. On her signal he strode to the window, set down the staff, and waited. One by one, Alias dropped halfling children into the paladin's arms. Dragonbait caught them easily, as if he fielded plummeting children every day of his life, and handed them off to others in the crowd. The children shrieked with delight, and the crowd applauded each catch.

There was a brief argument between Mama and Papa Halfling over who would go down last. Alias eyed the door anxiously. It's shellac veneer was bubbling and steaming as the wood on the opposite side was consumed in the hallway. Alias picked up Mama and, with not a little pleasure, tossed her out the window to Dragonbait below.

As she reached down for Papa Halfling, who clutched his pipe collection to his chest, the door broke off its hinges and fell to the floor. A monster of yellow and white fire leaped into the room, making for the fresh air coming from the window and the last victims it could claim.

Alias half jumped, half fell out the window, dragging Papa Halfling with her. She managed to twist enough so that she broke the halflings fall with her own body, but nothing broke her fall. She landed seat first on the hard-packed dirt, and the pain that sliced up her spine brought tears to her eyes.

Papa Halfling rolled off the swordswoman with a wink and a tip of an imaginary hat and proceeded to help Mama Halfling gather their brood. A bucket brigade had formed, but the workers were concentrating on wetting down the roofs and walls of adjacent buildings. The used clothing shop had been abandoned to its fate. Alias suspected that the brigade did not want to be seen putting out a fire started by the Night Masks.

Mama Halfling took a last look up at the window where the family's possessions were now being devoured by the beast fire. She sighed. Then, without so much as a good-bye, the family disappeared down the street and into the darkness. Alias wondered idly where they would go, but since she'd also noted that both Mama and Papa had bulging money belts strapped around their nightshirts, she didn't feel obliged to worry about their future.

She was seized with another coughing fit, and every hack sent a jarring stab of pain down her lower back. When the fit subsided, she was aware of Dragonbait kneeling beside her. "Are you going to be all right?" the paladin asked.

"Took too much smoke," Alias replied, unclasping her cape, hoping the cool night air on her back would relieve her sense of suffocating. "And I really hurt my tail when I landed."

"I think you lost your tail when you landed," the saurial teased, pretending to look around for a detached appendage. "If I lost it, it couldn't hurt this bad," Alias complained.

Dragonbait laid his hands on her back and began whispering a prayer to his god for the gift of healing. Alias remained politely silent. Praying generally left her uncomfortable, as did anything to do with the gods. After ten years in the paladin's company, though, his healing prayer felt to her more like a lullaby, summoning in her spirit a sense of being cherished.

The paladin's hands began to glow gently with a blue light, which slid down along her body. The tenseness in her lungs eased, and the pain in her posterior region subsided. She still felt as sore as a landshark tunneling through the walls of Waterdeep, but now at least she could stand without agony.

Dragonbait helped her slowly to her feet. He made a face as he caught sight of her jaw, which had turned purple and swollen. "What happened to your face?" he asked with concern.

Alias tried to explain, but with the paladin's hands pressing about her chin, her words came out, "Ikodda-joorybuck." She paused and waited as more blue light flowed from the saurial's hands, this time to her face. In a moment, the swelling had subsided, and she repeated her words more clearly, "I caught a jewelry box under the chin. Did you see an old woman come out. Housecoat, scarf, one slipper?"

Dragonbait shook his head, "I had to come out the back door. The fire was too strong. They'd set pine tar torches in the clothing and oil on the floor." He bent over and retrieved the staff.

"With a touch of smoke powder for a big bang to make sure everyone knows it wasn't an accident," the swordswoman added.

"I take it this old woman wears the mate to the slipper tucked in your belt?" the saurial asked.

Alias looked down in surprise; she'd forgotten she'd hung on to it. "For some reason she was frightened of me," the swordswoman explained. "She attacked me and ran. I hope she got out alive."

"This is the one I sensed," Dragonbait said, nodding curtly at the human form sprawled in the alleyway. "He died before I could help him."

Alias forced herself to look down at the man Dragonbait had tried to rescue. To her relief, it was not Old Mendle. From the gaudy clothing the man wore she guessed he had been the current shop owner. The fire had barely touched him, and he hadn't died from breathing the smoke. There were great splotches of red on his yellow silk shirt and in one of his gashed hands he clutched a domino mask with a torn string.

"Stabbed," Alias said. "He must have come in on them while they were setting the fire."

"I do not like these Night Masks at all," Dragonbait declared.

"No one does, but they're too afraid to do anything. You can see what happens to their enemies." Alias looked around at the crowd. They were watching for the clothing shop to collapse. No one came forward to collect the body of the shopkeeper. Now that the heroics were through, no one wanted to be seen talking to the heroes. And of course there was no sign of the City Watch. "A typical Weetgate evening," Alias muttered.

"The Night Mask agents shouted that Jamal was marked," the paladin reminded her. "Do you think he is Jamal? Or the old woman is?"

"Well, it's hard to imagine they had it in for the halflings. The old woman-" Alias hesitated. She switched to the Saurial tongue. "She's my mother. Finder left me a memory that she's my mother, but I don't know her name. She must have thought I was nuts, calling her mama." Alias kicked furiously at a hunk of smoking timber that had fallen from the shop, spraying sparks through the alley.

Dragonbait plucked her cape from the ground. It was scorched and smoke-drenched, but he hoped she would take comfort in the feel of its weight on her shoulders. "We should leave this ghost home. There is nothing for you here."