Кейт Новак: Masquerades

Alias gave a derisive grin and snort, “We are in the middle of Westgate, my friend. Crime is this town’s hobby, vocation, and major export. Didn’t you read the sign at the port entrance—‘Welcome to Westgate, Home of the Deadly Night Masks’?”

“I saw no such welcome sign,” Dragonbait stated.

“I’m joking, Dragonbait. Remember humor?”

“I do not understand the humor. Maybe because I’m saurial.”

Alias shook her head. She switched to the Saurial tongue, “Or maybe because you’re a paladin,” she suggested. “Haven’t met the paladin yet who could catch a joke on the first bounce.”

“How many paladins have you met besides me?” the saurial asked.

Evading the question, Alias declared, “We should get going. The sooner we find this sage Mintassan, the sooner we can unload that staff and escape this wretched city.”

Dragonbait nodded in agreement. The saurial wizard Grypht had arranged for them to meet the sage Mintassan and exchange the staff for a scrying device to help protect the saurials from attack. If not for the importance of the mission, the paladin never would have agreed to travel to Westgate. His two previous trips to this city had been fraught with peril, and he did not harbor any fondness for the merchant town.

Alias surveyed the six streets leading away from the plaza. “This way,” she instructed, pointing down the least grand of the thoroughfares.

The two adventurers left the plaza and the young couple behind in the gathering shadows. The westward sky had turned the crimson of dragon’s blood, coloring pink the mounting clouds over the bay to the east. As if in response to the dangers of the darkening city, the clouds were fleeing southward, leaving only starlight to shine over the city below.

The buildings surrounding the plaza, homes to merchants and taverns catering to traders, while not of the most recent or expensive designs, were neat and well scrubbed, and the roads immediately adjacent were spacious and relatively uncluttered. As the two adventurers probed farther into the city, the quarters became more tightly packed, the alleyways narrower and strewn with the debris of civilization. Alias, taking one shortcut after another, dragged her companion off the main flagstone roads and down alleys of hard-packed earth until the saurial paladin had seen more backsides of buildings than front.

As they stepped onto another main artery of the city, Dragonbait noted that the merchants were pulling down the great overhanging wooden shutters that provided shade from the sun during the day and protection from criminals at night. Lanterns were already alight outside the bars and slophouses, though their weakly flickering flames served more for advertisement than to chase away the gathering shadows.

Dragonbait mewled once with consternation and pulled from his belt a folded piece of paper. He grasped the edges, and the sheet unfolded like a delicate Turmish paper sculpture. Dragonbait paused beneath a lantern pole, squinted at the human letters and lines scrawled in octopus ink, looked around for a landmark, then squinted again at the map. He growled.

Alias had already crossed the street and was about to plunge into a wide alley before she sensed that her companion was no longer in tow. With a huff, she stomped back across the street and tugged on the paladin’s cloak. “Will you come on?” she demanded. “I’d like to make this exchange and find decent quarters before midnight.”

Dragonbait did not look up from the map. “I do not recognize this area,” he said flatly.

“Don’t worry,” Alias reassured him breezily. “We’re on Silverpiece Way, north of the market. We cut down this alley, cross Naga Way, go left on Southgate Market Street to where Fishman’s old place was before the fire, go right, and we’re there.”

“This alley is not on the map,” he countered.

“Of course not,” replied Alias, “You think an ink-stained mapmaker is going to risk his hide in this neighborhood? Anything you see sketched in the poorer sections of town—it comes from a cartographer’s imagination—it’s just doodles. The poor don’t buy maps, and the wealthy never come this way. Come on. I know where we’re going. I grew up here, remember?”

“You did not. You were born—” Dragonbait began arguing, but stopped when he realized he was addressing Alias’s back as she headed for the alley.

He refolded the map hastily, shoved it into his belt, and chased after his companion, emitting clicks—the saurial version of grumbling.

Alias had not grown up in Westgate. She had not grown up anywhere. She was a magical creation designed by an alliance of evil beings who tricked the great bard Finder Wyvernspur into building her. Their intent had been to use her as their personal assassin, but she had found the strength of will to turn on them and destroy them. A swirling azure tattoo graced her right arm from elbow to wrist, a constant reminder of her previous enslavement, and of her quest for freedom.

Nonetheless, in order to complete the illusion of a real human, Finder had invested Alias with memories of growing up in Westgate. Although the memories were total fiction, they provided her with an intimate knowledge of the city—a knowledge that, so far, seemed infallible.

The shortcut Alias took now plunged through an even more decaying quarter of the city. The alley was wider, as if the buildings on each side did not want to get too close to the greenish sewage that flowed down the center of the lane. The walls had been blackened by decades of grime and colored with graffiti. Any windows or doors that had once opened to the alley at the ground level were walled over with mismatched stone only slightly less dirt-encrusted than the surrounding stone.

Dragonbait ambled after Alias with a growing feeling of anxiety. He concentrated on his shen sight, the ability to perceive good and evil, a gift from his gods to aid him in his duties. Although he could see nothing in the darkness, he could sense trouble up ahead on the right, two souls pricked by constant greed and rotted by a disgusting pleasure in the pain and humiliation of other creatures.

First one, then the other—hulking brutes, human, but a head taller than even Alias—stepped from the shadows. They were dressed in dark leather jerkins and trousers. The satin capes that hung over their shoulders fit so poorly that Alias suspected the capes had been acquired from much smaller and no doubt weaker persons. They had kohl-marked eyes and a broad swipe of soot running from temple to temple. They reminded Dragonbait of raccoons—with unsheathed swords.

The leader held up a gloved hand and thundered, “Hold, trav’lers. You need to answer a few questions.”

Dragonbait growled, and Alias gave a short, almost imperceptible nod. She didn’t need shen sight to realize the pair meant trouble. “Who’s doing the asking?” the swordswoman inquired politely.

“We are humble customs agents,” said the lead raccoon, and his companion stifled a grin. “It is our duty to make sure trav’lers have the proper paperwork for items they bring in t’ sale in Westgate, transactions they revoke here, and material for exportating—ah—taking out.”

Alias, who could hardly check her own amusement, wondered who had taught this thief his patter. She heard the scrape of boots on hard earth behind her, and guessed there were more “agents” blocking escape from the mouth of the alley. Dragonbait would be aware of them with his shen sight.

“Ah,” said Alias, throwing back her cloak in a gesture to show that her hands were empty, and incidentally giving her easy access to her scabbard, “but as you can see, we have no such paperwork. Your fellow customs agents at the watch dock determined that we carried nothing of sufficient value to warrant any fees. As you can see, we carry only personal property. So you need waste no more of your time on us.” She smiled sweetly.