Кейт Новак - Masquerades

Jamal rose slowly and motioned for Alias and Dragonbait to go before her. Alias suspected she did so more out of caution than courtesy. Jamal did not want them at her back.

Alias moved cautiously through the curtain, into an extraplanar graveyard. While the trophies in the front of the shop had an air of respectability by virtue of their mounted settings, the remains of the dead in the back room gave the place a grisly appearance.

Fur and hide pelts of every color hung from the ceiling. Work tables all along one long wall were covered with boxes of bones and skeletons in various stages of being pieced together with pins and wires. Pickled internal organs filled jars on the shelves over the work tables. The ceiling was covered with strange insects stuck there with pins in their thoraxes. A box at Alias’s elbow contained red eggshells and the remains of three baby birds. Snake skins and feathers lay out on the writing table beside a sketchbook. There were piles of boxes and crates beneath all the tables and all around the perimeters of the room. Alias did not want to know what was inside any of them.

“Wonderful what he’s done with the place, isn’t it?” Jamal said with sarcasm as she noted Alias’s discomfort. “Early Abattoir—a Sembian style you don’t see displayed much in the finer homes of Westgate.”

“Grypht gave us to understand that your specialty was transmutation, which, if I recall, excludes the necromantic arts,” Alias said, treading as politely as she could into what Mintassan’s business was with so many dead things.

The sage looked back at the swordswoman with a gleam of curiosity in his eye. “My, my. Heroism, sword skill, beauty, and brains all in one. Where, I wonder, did you learn about the art?”

Alias flushed, but did not reply. Finder had filled his creation with everything he’d known, and she could forget none of it. It wasn’t the first time she’d embarrassed herself with a demonstration of more knowledge than she ought to have.

“Yes,” Mintassan replied to the swordswoman’s comment when he realized she wasn’t going to reply to his query, “you’re quite right. Specializing in transmutation does exclude necromantic studies. But while other transmuters choose to study the more mundane and commercially lucrative transmutations, straw to gold, salt water to fresh, sow’s ears to silk purses, and so on, I prefer investigating the mutation of nature itself—or herself, as your religion requires.”

Mintassan stood beside a massive table, which dominated the center of the room. The table, some castoff from a Westgate festhall, judging by its thick legs and velvet-covered sides, was littered with various scholarly debris: maps of the inner and outer planes, tomes with mildewing leather covers, diagrams and sketches of creatures, calipers, rulers, magnifying lenses. The sage picked up a hunk of amber larger than his fist and held it out for Alias to see.

“I am seeking the secret,” Mintassan said, “of how the descendants of a creature like this—”

Alias peered into the amber and could see an animal that resembled a bat embedded within.

“—become a creature like this.” With a flourish the sage yanked a black cloth cover off a second specimen—the mounted, mummified head of a tanar’ri, a powerful denizen of the Abyss.

Alias and Dragonbait drew back, startled. The next moment, though, Alias’s eyes squinted in disbelief. Mintassan was teasing them, or testing them somehow. “And whose ancestor is that little fellow?” she asked, pointing to the tiny mammal skull Mintassan displayed on his vest lapel.

Mintassan stroked the tiny skull almost reverently. “My own,” he declared, but a moment later he looked just a little doubtful, “I think,” he amended. The sage picked up the tanar’ri head, looked around with a frown for another empty flat space, and finally set the grisly trophy in an empty crate labeled, “Spell keys and other darks.” From Finder, who had traveled in other planes, Alias knew those were planar slang for magic components and mysteries.

“Please, have a seat,” the sage said as he pushed all the remaining junk on the table to one side. “Excuse me while I get the tea things together.” He disappeared into a side alcove, leaving Alias and Dragonbait alone with Jamal.

“Planar travel has scrambled his wits, but he’s really sweet and harmless,” Jamal said matter-of-factly. There were eight completely mismatched chairs set about the table. The actress flopped into an overstuffed chair of worn and tattered brocade and put her feet up on a rocker of woven cane.

Alias settled into a wooden chair with a wolf skull mounted atop its straight, high back. Dragonbait’s choice was limited by his massive tail, so he perched on a three-legged stool carved from ruby quartz.

From the alcove came the sound of rattling pots, the squeak of a hand pump, and a magical cantrip, followed by the whoosh of an enchanted flame igniting. Mintassan was singing a bawdy version of “Lie Down, Ye Ladies” in a passable baritone.

An uneasy silence had settled over the occupants at the table. Jamal watched Alias with the attention of a fox watching a wolf. Alias held her smile until it felt like a brittle, dried leaf.

Jamal tilted her head from side to side, studying Alias. Finally, she said, “I remember you now.”

Alias felt her chest tighten. “You do?”

“According to Ruskettle’s tale, you’re the one who popped in over Westgate with the mad god Moander, chased by your friends, riding a red dragon.”

Alias felt her heartbeat slow to its normal rhythm.

“I saw that battle,” Jamal declared. “Moander puffed up like an overproofed loaf of bread. The dragon spat flame at it. Boooom! Fried dragon and chunks of rotting god rained on the city. Took out a piece of the city wall, the Dhostar warehouses, and a lot of the northwestern slums.”

Alias felt the heat return to her face. “It was an accident. If there was something we could have done to avoid damaging your fair city, we would have. Cassana and her crew jumped us right afterward, and after we killed Cassana, we ended up in another plane, so we never got a chance to apologize.”

Jamal laughed raucously. “Apologize? Whatever for? That crash shook out this town like a dirty rug. The town’s merchant nobles thought a new Flight of Dragons had arrived! There was total chaos while they all tried to save themselves and, of course, their merchandise. All of them had egg on their faces when the furor died down, especially Ssentar Urdo. Family Urdo called in a marker with some old Thayan necromancer to protect its docks. The necromancer was inebriated at the time, centered his spell too low, and teleported a squad of skeletons into the dock itself. Little rib cages and arms and skulls waving around, trying to pull the rest of their bodies through the wood. Mintassan collected a specimen as I recall. He really wanted the dragon’s skull, but someone else snatched it up before he reached the scene of the crash. He was so disappointed.”

Alias shuddered to think what someone in Westgate would want with the skull of the dragon Mist. While the ancient wyrm had been an ally at the time of her fiery demise, the beast had hated Alias. The swordswoman would have preferred to hear Mist’s remains had been laid to rest in their entirety.

“Kids were playing ‘Dragons and Warriors’ in the streets for weeks afterward,” Jamal continued, “and everyone talked about what cowardly leeches the merchant nobles were when push came to shove.” Jamal sighed. “But, alas, when you did not return with more dragons, the merchants and the Night Masks reestablished their grubby holds on everyone’s lives. Ah, well. I got three months worth of material for my street theater even if I had to invent a cheap hero for it.”