Midnight's Mask

by Paul S. Kemp

  Jak elbowed Cale in the thigh. “Strange that I do not see a worship hall for Mask. Do you, Magadon?” Jak shaded his eyes with his palm and made a show of looking about.

  Magadon chuckled.

  Cale smiled and said, “Brandobaris seems to be similarly absent, little man.”

  Jak laughed and shook his head. “Ah, but that is where you’re wrong, my friend.”

  With the ease of the practiced expert, Jak casually lifted the coin purse from a passing pilgrim, a thin, middle-aged man with a scar running down one cheek. Jak’s skill impressed even Cale, who had seen seasoned Night Mask lifters operate.

  Jak held up the purse for Cale to see as the pilgrim went on his way.

  Jak said, “The Trickster’s temples are where I find them. Turns out, that’s mostly in the pockets of others.” He grinned at Magadon, who wore an appalled expression. “Never fear, Mags. I’m not in the mood to worship today. And I only take the Trickster’s Tithe from those who deserve their pockets emptied.”

  Jak turned and called to the pilgrim, “Goodsir! Goodsir! You dropped this.”

  The pilgrim turned, saw his purse in Jak’s hand, and patted at his empty vest pocket. He seemed too shocked to speak.

  Jak jogged up to him and pressed the purse into his hand.

  “My mother always said to keep your coin purse in your underlinens. Along with the rest of your jewels. That’s sound advice.”

  Leaving a speechless pilgrim in his wake, Jak sauntered back to rejoin Cale and Magadon, neither of whom could help but smile.

  “Now that, my friends—”

  Jak looked past them and froze in mid stride.

  Alarmed, Cale whirled, but he saw nothing other than the sea of faces and heads. He started to turn back to Jak, but then saw what Jak had seen.

  “Dark and empty,” he swore. He could not believe his eyes.

  “It cannot be,” Jak said behind him.

  Sephris Dwendon, Chosen of Oghma and likely madman, walked slowly through the crowd toward the low, stalwart walls of the Sanctum of the Scroll, Oghma’s temple. A group of somber priests surrounded him, forming a protective circle and keeping passersby from getting too close. All of the Oghmanyte bodyguards wore white shirts, white trousers, and black vests adorned with embroidered characters from a variety of alphabets—the typical outerwear of priests of Oghma. Each also wore a crimson harlequin mask over their eyes and an iron mace at their belts. They eyed the crowd warily but did not seem to notice Cale’s and Jak’s stares.

  Sephris wore a simple red robe and worn shoes. He carried a book in the crook of his elbow. The loremaster’s distant gaze carried sadness, and he did not seem to see those around him.

  Cale did not remember Sephris being so tall. The loremaster stood half-a-head taller than any of the bodyguards, almost as tall as Cale.

  “What is it?” Magadon asked, stepping beside him.

  “That man should be dead,” Cale said, and nodded at Sephris.

  “Which? The tall one with the Oghmanytes?”

  Cale nodded.

  Jak stepped beside them and added, “The slaadi killed him, gutted him. We saw his body.”

  “Then he could be a slaad,” Magadon said, eyeing Sephris coldly. “Shapechanged to resemble your man. Remember Nestor?”

  Cale remembered. Nestor had been a comrade of Magadon’s. One of the slaadi had killed him and taken his form.

  “I remember,” Cale said. “But we just saw both slaadi hours ago. You two killed the third. This … this would have required several tendays to put in place.”

  “They can teleport from place to place quickly, Erevis,” Magadon said. “They could have been moving between Skullport, the Sojourner’s lair, and here. Or there could be another slaad that we haven’t yet seen. We should be certain.”

  Cale nodded. Magadon was right.

  “If he is a slaad,” Cale said. “Then we kill him on the street. We’ll deal with the Scepters afterward.”

  To his surprise, Magadon and Jak both nodded, faces grim.

  Cale put his hand to the velvet mask in his pocket and whispered the words to a spell that allowed him to see dweomers.

  Once cast, the spell was indiscriminate in its application. Many trinkets, weapons, rings, and robes of passersby lit up as they walked through Cale’s field of vision. He ignored them and picked his way through the press toward Sephris, with Magadon and Jak beside him. The three circled wide and fell in beside and slightly behind the loremaster and his bodyguard priests.

  The maces of the bodyguards all shone a soft red, and two wore magical belts that glowed, but Sephris’s body did not show an aura in Cale’s sight, as it would if he were a shapechanged slaad. Only a single ring on his right hand radiated an aura.

  “He’s no slaad,” Cale said.

  Jak blew out a soft whistle. “Then they must have brought him back. He was dead and they brought him back. Dark.”

  Cale said nothing but his skin went gooseflesh. Not because Sephris had been returned from the dead, but because too many things seemed to be happening at just the right time, in just the right place. Had they not stopped to take a meal and re-equip, they would not have seen Sephris at all. Cale found it increasingly difficult to deny the presence of Fate in events. He felt as though he were being propelled toward something, something important, something he might not like.

  “Perhaps I should have thrown a copper into Tymora’s plate, after all,” he muttered.

  “What did you say?” Jak asked.

  “Nothing. Speaking to myself.”

  Like Sephris sometimes did, he thought, and he did not like where those thoughts started to lead.

  Any idea of asking Elaena and the temple of Denier for assistance vanished. If Fate had determined that Cale would happen upon Sephris, then Cale would consult him.

  Riven despised Selgaunt’s Dock District, always had. The alleys all stank of fish, puke, and urine, and with rare exceptions, the food served in the ramshackle inns along the waterfront smelled only mildly better. The whores were all too cheap and the sailors all too drunk. The place was a cesspit of human weakness.

  Beside him, Azriim, still in the flesh of a half-drow, walked along as though he might step in something unpleasant at any moment. Despite the slaad’s efforts, his otherwise shiny black boots had picked up a coat of road muck. Riven took satisfaction in the slaad’s unhappiness about that.

  Dolgan, once more in his guise as a bald, muscular, Cormyrean axman, stumped along beside Azriim. Unlike Azriim, with the prominent gray streak that cut through his hair, Dolgan’s new form showed no telltale sign that he had been partially transformed into a gray slaad.

  “We should not be walking the docks undisguised,” Riven said. “Cale may have returned to the city.”

  Cale had magically transported himself somewhere with Fleet and Magadon. Selgaunt seemed as probable a destination as any.

  “Why would he?” Dolgan said. “This place is a hole.”

  Riven thought the dolt’s words ironic, considering he had worn vomit on his clothes as though it were a badge of honor. But he kept his thoughts to himself and said, “He would return because he’s got nowhere else to go.”

  “Let’s count on him being here, then, shall we?” said Azriim as he surveyed the piers. “If he shows, grand. And if not, then not.”

  Riven grunted noncommittally. He still had not made up his own mind what he would do when the First of the Shadowlord showed. He had laid the groundwork to make Cale think him a possible ally. Riven was not yet certain that was his best play.

  “What type of ship are we seeking?” he asked, eyeing the wharfs.

  Ships thronged the bay and a forest of masts dotted the sky—schooners, carracks, longships, barges, frigates, caravels—and most of them flew a pennon denoting their country or city of origin. Dock hands shouted, cursed, and sang as they furled and unfurled sails, loaded and unloaded crates of cargo. The fat harbormaster and his agents prowled the piers, assessing cargo ta
xes, recording the names of berthed ships and their captains. Gulls squawked in the air above. Deckhands on a nearby caravel took shots at the birds with a sling. They missed every time.

  “Something in particular,” Azriim answered.

  Riven spit and said, “You won’t find one with silk sheets and a feather bed.”

  Azriim missed his sarcasm, or chose to ignore it. “I know. Isn’t that unfortunate? Sailors.” He tsked. “Oh. Here’s the very thing, now.”

  They stopped before a twin-masted, square-sailed cog. The blazing red and gold pennon dangling from the midmast declared its port of origin to be Bezantur, a city in Thay. Several other flags and pennons adorned the masts. Riven had no idea of their meanings. A stylized demonic face decorated the prow, mouth open, fangs bare. Riven could not read the writing on the hull and would be damned to admit as much to the slaadi.

  “Demon Binder,” Azriim said aloud. “What a quaint name.”

  Deckhands climbed the ship’s rigging, swabbed the decks, and formed a human chain to load barrels and crates from the pier into the hold. The ship would be setting to soon enough.

  Riven knew enough about the Thayans to think it likely that the ship carried more than barrels in its hold. Thayans were notorious slavers. Slavery and trafficking in slaves were technically illegal in Sembia, but the right coins in the right palms made enforcement lax, particularly when the ship carrying the human cargo was merely stopping in Sembian ports for a refit.

  “Thayan,” Dolgan observed, unnecessarily.

  “See the captain there, on the sterncastle?” Azriim asked. “My, he is a nice dresser. And that thin fellow beside him, with the earring, beard, and long hair, leaning on the rail? That must be the first mate.”

  Riven saw the two men to whom Azriim referred. The captain wore a fitted jacket with shiny buttons, black pantaloons, high boots, and a tailored, high-collared red shirt and vest. A cutlass hung from his belt. The first mate wore similar clothes, but without the jacket and cutlass. Instead, he wore a long fighting knife on his hip.

  Riven understood immediately what the slaadi proposed to do.

  “We could just purchase passage,” he said, not because he cared about the slavers, but because he was not sure how they could easily dispose of bodies. Besides, if the ship boasted one of the notorious and powerful Thayan Red Wizards as a passenger, things could get ugly very fast. Dolgan chuckled.

  Azriim grinned. “Now where is the enjoyment in merely buying passage?”

  Riven looked into the slaad’s mismatched eyes. “I did not realize that enjoyment was the object. Efficiency and effectiveness are the only things I’m interested in.”

  “Enjoyment is the only goal worth pursuing,” Azriim said, still smiling.

  Frustrated with the slaad’s unprofessionalism, Riven could not hold his tongue. “You and your boy here are sloppy. You’ll leave a trail.”

  “Boy?” Dolgan growled.

  Azriim’s grin widened. “Indeed we will. And that’s the very point. Now, I’m sure there’s something you can do in this city to occupy yourself for a time. At the very least, get some better attire. Really. I’m embarrassed to be seen with you. Return here tonight, say, around the tenth hour. You are to be a wealthy merchant with a secret destination. Dolgan and I will … relieve the captain and first mate of their duties and prepare the crew for your arrival.”

  Riven saw no point in arguing further. He shook his head in disgust, spun on his heel, and walked off. As he headed away from the slaadi and the docks, still stewing, he saw a trio of stray dogs slink down an alley. He thought of his girls and the anger went out of him.

  He would have gone to his old garret already to check on them but he had not had a moment away from the slaadi, and he had not wanted the creatures to know of his girls. He knew well that affection for anything was a weakness others could exploit.

  He wandered for a time, circling back a few blocks to ensure that neither of the slaadi was following him.

  Neither was.

  Relieved, he turned a corner and headed south and west, toward the Warehouse District. He would take a moment to check in on the girls.

  After the assassin walked away, Dolgan said, “I think we should kill him. Father is wrong about him.”

  “You have made your views clear,” Azriim replied, looking up and down the wharfs.

  Azriim needed to procure the services of a second ship. He agreed with Riven that the priest of Mask would not easily give up his pursuit, so he was planning a misdirection.

  “I just made them clear again,” Dolgan said, and spat a glob of saliva onto the street. “He called me ‘boy’.”

  “He certainly did,” Azriim said, and grinned.

  Azriim was fond of Riven. He regarded the human as a fosterling, not unlike the way in which the Sojourner regarded Azriim and Dolgan. It amused and pleased him to have a ward of his own. He turned and faced his broodmate.

  “He is an ally, Dolgan. He hates this priest of Mask, is that not clear? The Sojourner read his mind, is that not enough?”

  “But …”

  “Dolgan, of the two of us that are standing here now, one of us is stupid.” He let the meaning sink in; as he expected, it took a moment. “Let us leave the decisions to the other one, eh?”

  Dolgan’s brow furrowed and he showed his teeth in a snarl. “One of us standing here is the stronger, too.”

  “True,” Azriim acknowledged. “Which is why I leave the axe work to you. Now leave the thinking to me. Done?”

  Dolgan shrugged noncommittally and chewed his lip. Azriim decided to take that as acquiescence.

  “Come,” he said, and started walking the wharf. He did not seem able to keep mud from his boots, so he resigned himself to a layer of filth.

  “Where?” Dolgan asked.

  “You will see.”

  Azriim found what he wanted within an hour—a large, three-masted open sea caravel sporting the scarlet and green flag of Urlamspyr. He knew the Sembian caravel would be faster than the Thayan cog.

  An open-mouthed wooden porpoise adorned the caravel’s prow; it held in its jaws a representation of a coffer filled with gold coins. Azriim smiled. Everything in Sembia related back to coin in one way or another. He saw only a few crewmen on deck, tying off lines or climbing in the rigging. Most of the hands must have been on shore leave.

  “Remain here,” Azriim said. “I will return apace.”

  “Another ship?” Dolgan asked. “Why?”

  “Because I have learned to respect the doggedness of our priest of Mask.”

  “Huh?” Dolgan asked. “Doggedness?”

  Azriim patted his broodmate on his muscular shoulder. “Remember, Dolgan—I do the thinking. Remain here.”

  Though it galled him a bit, Azriim changed his facial structure to eliminate the half-drow features. As he walked, he lightened his skin, rounded his eyes and ears, and softened his cheekbones. Then, donning a businesslike smile, he walked down the pier toward the gangplank. He hailed the first sailor who made eye contact, a thin youth who had seen fewer than twenty winters.

  “Is the captain aboard?” he called up.

  The sailor rested his hands on the rail and squinted. “Who wants to know?” The human had a hole where one of his front teeth should have been.

  “I do,” Azriim answered, and flicked a fivestar up to the sailor.

  The youth caught it and the coin vanished into his sash belt.

  “He is,” said the youth, and he vanished from the side. From above, Azriim heard the sailor calling, “Lubber to see the Captain!”

  Azriim walked to the edge of the wooden gangplank and waited. He knew it would be rude to go aboard without an invitation. The other crewmen aboard the ship eyed him as they worked, laughing and making the occasional snide comment at Azriim’s expense. Azriim ignored them. He had business to do. And besides, they dressed like buffoons.

  With his left hand, he drew one of his wands—a finger-long shaft of ash capped with gold—
and palmed it.

  After a time, Azriim heard the call, “Captain on deck,” as it passed from sailor to sailor. Hearing this, Azriim deemed at least some of the crew, and probably the captain, to be ex-navy. He rebuked himself for not anticipating that. He could have adopted the form of a scarred veteran. Still, coin spoke with a loud enough voice to a Sembian crew.

  The captain appeared at the top of the gangplank. Black hair worn in a short helmcut topped a clean-shaven, pockmarked face. Bags hung under his piggish eyes. He wore fitted wool breeches, high boots, a broad belt with a silver buckle, and a stiff-collared blue shirt. A broadsword and dagger hung from his hip. He did not advance down the gangplank to offer Azriim his hand.

  “I am captain of Dolphin’s Coffer,” he said, his voice loud and resonant. “Captain Sertan.”

  Azriim made a bow and wasted no time. “Well met, Captain. I need your services and that of your ship.”

  The captain frowned. “You want a berth on my ship? You know where we’re headed, do you?”

  Azriim reached into his shirt pocket with his right hand and withdrew three rubies, each as big around as a fivestar. Several sailors in the rigging caught their sparkle and whistled.

  With onlookers focused on his extended right hand, Azriim used his body to shield his left hand. He surreptitiously pointed the tip of the wand at the captain and mentally activated its magic, which made the target open to suggestion. Azriim contained a smile when the captain’s expression slackened—a telltale sign that the magic had worked.

  Azriim said, “No. I want to reserve your entire ship into my service, and I want you to head where I request. No questions asked. This is half of what I’m willing to pay.”