Кейт Новак - Masquerades

In the center of the room, a big man sat on the arm of a red velvet sofa directly beneath a globe. He wore a billowing cotton shirt and baggy pants, both white, and a powder-blue vest embroidered in gold thread. His long chestnut-brown hair was pulled back into a ponytail with a leather thong. His back was turned to the door, so Alias could not see his face. In one large hand he held up the bare, shapely leg of someone lying on the sofa, and was currently rubbing something on the sole of the foot belonging to the leg. The high back of the sofa also blocked Alias’s view of whoever was lying there, but whoever it was was no doubt the source of the first shriek, for a moment later a second shriek rose from the sofa, followed by a woman’s voice crying, “Ow, ow, ow.”

“The pain’ll be good for you,” the man said. “Remind you not to go fire-walking without both your slippers. Personally I prefer heavy boots when I run around burning buildings. Now don’t fidget. It takes a moment for the salve to work.”

“It wasn’t my idea to go barefoot,” a woman’s voice argued from the sofa. “It was that witch. I told you, the slipper came off when she grabbed my leg. She nearly had me. I was lucky to escape with my skin still on.”

Even if Alias hadn’t recognized the situation described, she would have recognized the voice. It was a little sharper and more nasal than her memory recalled, but it sounded like her mother, the phony mother Finder had given her.

“Jamal, be reasonable,” the man requested. “She’s dead. She’s been dead for years.”

“Since when’s being dead slowed down a wizard?” the voice on the couch argued. “I’m telling you, Mintassan, Cassana’s come after me. The Night Masks set the fire, of course, but she was there, too. She’s trying to kill me for that rude skit we did about her and that lich-boytoy of hers.”

Mintassan gave a long-suffering sigh and insisted, “Cassana’s dead, Jamal.”

No, she isn’t,” Jamal retorted, sitting up straight on the sofa and waving her finger in Mintassan’s face.

“Well, actually, yes, she is,” Alias said, turning the handle of the lower half of the door and letting herself into the shop. “I cut through her staff of power myself up on the Hill of Fangs ten years ago. I survived the blast that killed her only because I was half standing in another plane. Cassana was burned to ash. And if she came back by some fell sorcery, I’d know immediately, but she hasn’t. She’s still dead.”

Jamal’s complexion went as white as an underfed vampire’s as she stared wordlessly at the newcomers, one a dead ringer for the sorceress Cassana, the other a lizard creature resembling a monster from a tale of darkest evil.

“Cassana was a distant relation,” the swordswoman explained as she circled the sofa and stood before Jamal and Mintassan. “Alias the Sell-Sword, at your service,” she introduced herself with a sweeping bow, “and this, I believe, is yours,” she added, holding out the slipper she’d taken from the woman in the burning building.

Mintassan shook his look of surprise at Alias’s self-announced entrance and smiled broadly. “There, Jamal, see. There was a perfectly rational explanation. Pleased to meet you, Alias. I’m Mintassan the Magnificent, though my friends call me Mintassan the Mad.” Mintassan offered his hand, and Alias accepted it in her own.

Mintassan was tall with broad shoulders, but somewhat overweight—his gut parted the center of his vest. Nothing, Alias thought, that a few laps around the Sea of Fallen Stars couldn’t take care of. Perched on the sage’s nose was a pair of gold-rimmed spectacles made with glass as thin as soap bubbles. Alias wondered if the spectacles were magical or if Mintassan wore them to give himself a look of erudition. In his baggy white pants, billowing shirt, and bright-colored vest, he really looked more like a merchant than a sage. Aside from the glasses, the only other clues to his scholarly interests came from the sigils embroidered in his vest and a tiny ornament fastened to the vest’s lapel—what appeared to be the skull of a tiny mammal.

As Alias shook hands with the sage she realized his eyes lingered over the azure tattoo emblazoned on her right arm. Alias pulled her hand away self-consciously and turned her attention back to Jamal.

Jamal remained frozen, staring at the swordswoman, trying, as she fought off her obvious terror of a long-dead sorceress, to take in all of Alias’s and Mintassan’s words.

Alias set the slipper down on the floor in front of the sofa and stared back at the other woman. Jamal was older than the “memory” that Finder had given the swordswoman, with wrinkles etched about her eyes and her neck, but she looked almost regal with her posture straighter than a schoolgirl’s and her flowery housecoat draped dramatically over the sofa. She remained unbowed by the pressures of Westgate life or the sordid attacks of its underworld. Yet there remained something comic about her appearance, the frayed sleeve of the housecoat, the singed hem, the scarf half falling off, the missing slipper. Alias was reminded of meeting an artist’s model once. The painting looked just like the woman, but the woman was nothing like the painting; without the brush strokes, she was less romanticized, but much more real.

“I’m nobody, also at your service,” Dragonbait whispered in Saurial.

Alias shook herself from her reverie. “Oh, and this is my companion, Dragonbait,” she said, indicating the saurial with a wave of her hand.

“Yes, of course,” Mintassan said, nodding and offering the paladin his hand as well. “Dragonbait the Saurial Paladin. Companion to Alias of the Magic Arm. We’ve heard a halfling bard tell of your exploits down at the Empty Fish. Haven’t we, Jamal?” the sage asked, nudging the older woman.

Alias fidgeted slightly, but kept her agitation in check. The only thing she disliked more than strangers knowing details of her life was when the strangers were spellcasting sages like Mintassan.

Jamal finally overcame the shock of Alias’s resemblance to the sorceress Cassana and was able to concentrate on Mintassan’s words. “Ruskettle,” Jamal said. “Milil’s Mouth, can that woman ramble.”

“Exactly,” Mintassan agreed. He turned back to Alias. “The tales, however, do not do justice to your loveliness.”

Alias fidgeted again under Mintassan’s appraising eyes. He had a bold gaze that she found rather forward.

Jamal sighed and slapped the mage’s leg. “Mind your manners,” she reprimanded.

Mintassan grinned and asked, “Please, allow me to present to you my current charge, a patient singularly lacking in patience, that talented and fearless righter of wrongs, Jamal the Thespian, Jamal the Lady of Cheap Heroes and Cheaper Theatrics—”

“Jamal the Slightly Parboiled,” Jamal finished, as she picked up her recovered slipper and slid it gingerly over her wounded foot. “So what were you doing in my burning house?” the woman asked, her distrust obviously not completely allayed by the fact that the swordswoman was a character in the halfling Ruskettle’s tales.

“Um—We just happened to be passing by when we saw the Night Masks run out of the building and toss a torch back in,” Alias explained.

“And then you followed me here just to return my slipper?” Jamal asked suspiciously.

“Well, no. We have business with Mintassan,” Alias said defensively.

“What business?” Jamal insisted.

“Grypht’s business,” the sage replied with a theatrical grimness. “And for such dark work we should retire to the back room.” Mintassan strode off behind the shop’s counter and through a doorway hung with a curtain of glass beads. “You might as well join us, Jamal,” the sage called back over his shoulder. “I’ll make tea. You can be mother and pour. You can serve as a witness to our transaction, too.”