The Shattered Mask

by Richard Lee Byers

  “That pinhead!” one of the onlookers exclaimed.

  “Quiet!” Avos snarled, then gave Thamalon a malevolent smile. “I can’t imagine how you’d ever be able to repeat anything I say, but I suppose I should deny everything just as a matter of principle.”

  “That would be prudent, though futile,” Thamalon said. “The assassination of two of the most prominent nobles in the city is a grave matter. Should your involvement become common knowledge, Selgaunt might rouse itself and do whatever’s necessary to eradicate the Quippers. Fortunately for you, however, Lord Karn understands you fellows were acting for someone else, a peer from a rival House, most likely, and that’s the man he particularly wants to chastise. So I propose a bargain on his behalf. Give up the person who hired you, and the House of Karn will keep your secret and leave you in peace. We’ll even pay you.”

  Avos’s piggy pale blue eyes narrowed. “Why didn’t you seek me out right off if you wanted to make a deal like that?”

  “Because we didn’t actually want to,” Thamalon said. “The Karns would have preferred to learn their enemy’s identity without having to spare you the retribution you deserve, let alone compensate you. But my partner and I are realists. Our current situation being what it is, we’d much rather reach an accommodation with you than have you kill us.”

  Avos grinned. “But that’s what I ought to do. It would send a message to everybody else who might want to come sniffing around my little fiefdom.”

  “It’s not a message that will deter Lord Karn. He has plenty of other agents.”

  “Maybe so, cully, but we’re not afraid of any of them. Lots of high-and-mighty merchant nobles have tried before to wipe out the Quippers, and we’re still here.”

  “But I imagine life is pleasanter when you’re spared the necessity of defending yourselves against such a siege.”

  “That’s doesn’t mean we’d turn traitor or informer to keep it from happening.”

  “Of course not,” Thamalon said dryly. “I’m sure you’re a steadfast band of brothers. Loyal as paladins in a romance, but only, and this is the key point, to one another. I suspect that any outsider who opts to trust you takes his chances. Am I right?”

  “No, you’re not right,” the big man growled, “not always. But … I didn’t altogether like the way this particular job went down. Oh, Uskevren and his lady dying, that was grand. That was fine as cakes and wine. But too many of the lads have been killed or hurt, lads I need to attend to my business, and nobody bothered to warn me what we were getting into. I don’t appreciate that. So, Balan, swear by your god that Lord Karn will abide by any agreement you make, and then tell me how much gold you’re offering.”

  “No!” shouted one of the onlookers, a small man with a pointed black goatee, and lines of gold piping running up the legs of his breeches and the breast of his doublet. “You can’t set these snoopers free. She killed some of our mates! That woman there!”

  “Shut up, Donvan!” Avos roared, and the little man quailed. “If a female could kill them, we’re better off without them.”

  Shamur could tell from his subordinates’ expressions that some resented their leader’s cold dismissal of the deaths of their comrades, but no one saw fit to voice another protest.

  Her heart raced with exhilaration. Against all rational expectation, Thamalon had succeeded. His glib trader’s tongue had won them their lives and even the information they had sought.

  Or so it seemed until someone shouted, “Hold it!”

  She turned and saw a plump, unhealthy-looking man in a costly but hideous mauve and chartreuse doublet, the same would-be coxcomb who had stood with Master Moon and the shadow creature at the edge of the clearing, scurrying forward. Evidently he’d entered the brownstone unnoticed a moment or two before.

  “What do you want, Garris?” Avos asked, an edge of impatience in his voice.

  “Look at them!” Garris cried. “Everybody look! Don’t you recognize them? Avos, I know I said I watched them die, but somehow, these people are Lord and Lady Uskevren themselves!”

  The room fell silent as everyone gawked at the nobles. Shamur looked at the armed men clustered all around her and decided it would be pointless to try to break for the door. Finally, Avos exclaimed, “Umberlee’s kiss, it’s true!”

  His composure unruffled, Thamalon gave Garris a nod. “You have a keen eye, sir.” He turned back toward the giant on the throne. “I see no reason why this revelation should spoil our negotiations. I’m still willing to pay for the name of the man who hired you, and now, of course, to ransom my wife and myself as well.”

  Avos laughed. “You’ve got brass, old man, I’ll give you that. But I don’t suppose you truly believe we’d ever turn you loose. You’ve always gone out of your way to persecute the Quippers, and now we’re going to return the favor. Then later, after we’ve had our fun, I’ll sell what’s left of you to your secret enemy. You can find out who he is when you look him in the face, that is, if we let you keep your eyes. Grab them, mates!”

  So be it, Shamur thought. Thamalon’s gambit had failed, and now she must try the ploy she had conceived on the walk to the outlaws’ lair. One of the toughs who were moving in to seize her was half a step in advance of the others. Rounding on him, her bruised limbs protesting, she shouted, “Bring a waste, cove!” Then she kicked him in the groin.

  Someone tried to grab her from behind. “Shamur knows that cog,” she growled.

  She thrust her elbow back into his gut, stamped on his foot, and then, when his grip loosened, pivoted and smashed her forearm into his jaw. His front teeth broke, and he reeled backward.

  She spun back around to face the rogues rushing up behind her. “Come on!” she screamed. “You capons! You cousins! Shamur will bash out your crashing-cheats! She’ll curb out your glaziers and eat them like grapes!”

  Since she knew she had no chance of fighting her way free, her resistance was in one sense a sham. But she had to buy herself sufficient time to let them hear her rant. For all she knew, they might have intended to stuff a gag in her mouth before commencing whatever torture they had in mind.

  Now, plainly, they had heard her. They were hanging back and staring, some with more comprehension than others. “She speaks Cant,” Donvan said.

  Cant was the secret patois of the most professional of thieves, useful both for confounding eavesdroppers and as a means of mutual recognition. Shamur had mastered it in her youth, and still remembered most of it though she hadn’t had occasion to use it since her displacement in time.

  “You’re damn right, copesmate,” she said. “Of course, Shamur talks Cant. She pledged to Mask when she was only a rumpscuttle lass, before any of you flicks and ferrets were even born. She’s practiced the figging law, nipping purses with a cuttle-bung. She’s been a charm and a cony-catcher, a foin, a padder, and a prigger of prancers, a warp and a stall. Later, she married that gentry cove there.” She jerked her chin at Thamalon, currently standing battered and helpless in the grip of two of his captors. “But slipping on his fambling-cheat didn’t change what Shamur was inside.”

  “You’ve led a colorful life,” Avos drawled, “but so what? Did you think we’d spare you just because you were once a fellow rogue? Not likely!”

  “I was more than a rogue,” Shamur replied. “I was a Quipper.”

  The bravos and doxies babbled to one another. Avos said, “Nonsense.”

  “It was more than thirty years ago,” she replied, “before your time or that of anyone in this hall.” And since she was lying, thank the gods for that! “But I can still give the sign: Sharp eyes, sharp blade. Still tread, still tongue.” In her mind, she blessed the lovesick, drunken Quipper who had once whispered the gang’s secret protocols in her adolescent ear.

  Some of the blackguards were visibly impressed by her recitation. Avos simply scowled and said, “I still don’t believe you were ever one of us, but if you were, you’re now a traitor for slaying some of your own brothers, and we have e
ven better reason to hurt you.”

  “I slew them in self-defense,” Shamur said, “as our rule permits. But we don’t even need to debate that, and I’ll tell you why. We say, once a Quipper, always a Quipper, do we not? Even death can’t break the bond; the shades of our predecessors are waiting to welcome us into the chapter of the brotherhood they’ve established in Hell.”

  Avos grinned. “Then if you’re telling the truth, you’ll be seeing them soon.”

  “Not necessarily,” Shamur replied, “because it is likewise our tradition that any of our members accused of wrongdoing has the right to demand a trial by combat against the chieftain of the gang, and go free if he prevails.”

  The big man laughed. “You want to fight me?”

  “Yes,” she said.

  “Do it, captain!” someone shouted. “We haven’t watched you scrap in a while.”

  Shamur could see enthusiasm for the idea running through the crowd like a fever. In all likelihood, a number of the rogues simply craved the spectacle of a bloody duel. Some seemed to think it a splendid joke that the slender captive would think to challenge their enormous and no doubt formidable leader. While others, perhaps, wanted to see Avos annoyed and inconvenienced, because they still resented his indifference to the slaying of their fellows, or disliked his bullying ways in general.

  “Don’t be stupid,” Avos said to his followers. “The wench is lying. How many female Quippers have there ever been? Damn few!”

  “She knows Cant and the Quipper signs,” said Garris, and then flinched when Avos scowled at him.

  “Who cares if she was a Quipper or not?” cried another ruffian. “Let’s have a little sport!”

  “Yes,” Donvan said ironically, “why not? After all, Avos, if you can’t defeat a female, we’re better off without you.”

  The blond hulk snorted. “All right, mates, if that’s how everybody wants it, I suppose it doesn’t matter if Lady Uskevren here”—his sneering tone turned the title into a mockery—“dies quickly. It’s her man I truly want to pick apart, just as he’s the package our associate will really want to buy. But I can’t promise you much of a show. Not only is the prisoner a woman, she’s well past her prime.”

  “I wouldn’t be surprised if the Quippers I’ve already killed thought that very same thing,” Shamur replied. “Give me back my broadsword, and I’ll do my best to make our contest as interesting as possible.”

  Avos sneered. “If you truly were a Quipper, you should remember that in a duel like this, he who was challenged has the choice of weapons.”

  In fact, Shamur hadn’t known, and now she felt a twinge of apprehension. “Oh, of course,” she said lightly. “What did you have in mind?”

  “I’ll show you,” he said.

  Avos snapped his fingers, gave the galltrit a final caress, then set the creature gently on the arm of his chair. As he rose and stepped down from the dais, one of his underlings hurried up with two unusual sets of weapons, each composed of a short sword and a fishing gaff, a sturdy, four-foot shaft of wood with a barbed steel hook at the end.

  Shamur had never heard of anyone fighting with such a tool. She wondered if Avos had invented this particular mode of combat, and was its sole master. That would certainly tilt the odds in his favor whenever any of his fellow Quippers dared to challenge him.

  “Look them over,” Avos said, “then choose the ones you like.”

  She took him at his word, hefting the weapons to check their weight and balance and finding little to choose between them. She settled on the gaff that was a hair lighter and the short sword with the narrower, sharper point. “These will do,” she said.

  “Good,” he said. “Now, just so we’re clear: Your husband doesn’t claim to be a Quipper, and even if a god reaches down and smites me, which is about the only way I can see you winning, Thamalon stays with us.”

  “Fair enough,” she said. “Let’s do this.”

  “After you, milady.” He waved her toward a circle sloppily painted on the concrete floor. Judging from the rusty stains inside it, it had served as a dueling arena on a number of previous occasions.

  Shamur and Avos took their places at opposite ends of the ring. The other ruffians crowded around its border. Garris, assuming the director’s role, declared, “The fight will continue until one duelist yields or is unable to continue. Fighters, come on guard.” Shamur copied her opponent’s stance, slightly crouched, with the gaff in the lead hand. “And … begin!”

  The two combatants circled, sizing one another up, looking for openings. Shamur was likewise trying to figure out how one fought with this particular set of weapons. The essential principle seemed clear enough: Use the long gaff to snare an opponent, either by hooking one of his limbs or snagging his flesh with the barbed point, then yank him close and thrust the short sword into his vitals. With his superior reach and strength, Avos could no doubt execute all the variations on the basic maneuver very well.

  Still, she could envision an effective counter. Parry her enemy’s gaff with her own, then hold the parry to keep his weapon at bay while she closed the distance, bringing them both well into short sword range before he was expecting it. Caught by surprise at such close quarters, Avos would have a hard time defending against a low thrust to the belly.

  The Quipper chieftain stepped forward just far enough to flick his gaff’s hook behind her shoulder. Beginning the sequence of actions she’d devised, she parried, but her weapon never made contact with that of her opponent.

  Instantly, with a quickness phenomenal in so huge a man, Avos dropped into a squat. He slipped the gaff around the calf of her lead leg and yanked it toward him. Shamur kicked frantically to free herself, and by sheer good luck more than anything else, her leg came out of the hook. The point caught in her leather boot for a second, then tore free.

  Now she was reeling and in imminent danger of toppling backward. Avos surged up out of his squat and rushed her, his short sword leveled at her breast. Some of his comrades cheered in anticipation of the death thrust.

  As well they might, for, utterly bereft of balance as she was, Shamur could neither parry, dodge, nor attempt a counterattack. She reckoned that all she could do was finish falling, and so she endeavored to do so as quickly as possible, hurling herself down to the cold, hard concrete floor.

  As she’d hoped, Avos blundered right over the top of her. She tried to hook his ankle with her gaff before he could wheel back around to face her, but she missed.

  She grinned as she scrambled back to her feet. Sometimes, for some perverse reason, it struck her funny when she cheated death by a hair, and this was one of those occasions.

  “Very good,” she said to Avos, “you nearly had me. But I think I’m starting to get the hang of this game. Feint, deceive, then attack, just like in ordinary fencing.”

  He sneered. “Got it figured out already, have you?” Advancing, he swung his gaff like a war club, whipping the head in a backhanded strike at her face.

  She stepped back out of distance and kept on retreating around the circle, counterattacking and riposting vigorously enough to keep him from pressing her as hard as he might have otherwise, but essentially remaining on the defensive while she waited for him to use the same high feint, drop, and hook to the leg he’d tried before. She reckoned it was only a matter of time. The combination had almost won him the fight. Eventually he was bound to try it again. She just had to stay alive until he did.

  Actually, that wasn’t turning out to be an enormous problem. He was discovering the same thing she had learned while chasing Thamalon about the clearing. It was difficult to hurt an opponent who constantly gave ground. Indeed, she began to enjoy thwarting him, and grinned at the frustration in his ruddy, sweaty face and porcine eyes.

  At last he threatened her shoulder, and her instincts told her he was attempting the compound attack she wanted him to make. She parried anyway, to convince him the trick was working and to protect herself in case she was mistaken, and he dropp
ed to one knee. His gaff swept at her leg.

  Having anticipated the attack, she hopped to one side and easily avoided it. Before he could come back to any sort of guard, she lashed her own gaff at his head.

  She meant to set the barb in his flesh, but, perhaps because of her unfamiliarity with this peculiar weapon, that didn’t happen. Still, clanking against his skull, the steel hook split open his scalp.

  The spectators roared. Shamur aimed her short sword and lunged. Avos blindly swept his gaff up in a blow that, though it failed to connect solidly, brushed her back and gave him time to lurch to his feet.

  Blood streamed from the scalp wound, trickling down the ruffian’s face. Shamur relished the sight of it, and his shocked expression even more so.

  “I told you I was getting the hang of it,” she said.

  Avos shouted and rushed her. She retreated, waiting for the right opportunity, and, thirty seconds later, bashed him again.

  Thamalon supposed he should have been too concerned about the fundamental question of their survival to dwell on lesser matters, but once again, as at other moments during the past two days, he found himself marveling at Shamur’s deportment in the face of danger.

  The Uskevren lord had done plenty of fighting during his long and turbulent life. He liked to think he had seen it through with reasonable fortitude. But while he had certainly savored his victories, and taken pleasure in fencing and jousting for sport, he had never enjoyed the actual experience of mortal combat. That chilling awareness that if his opponent proved the better warrior, or perchance merely the luckier one, his life was quite possibly going to end.

  Shamur, on the other hand, clearly did delight in it. Though she must be sore from the beating she’d taken, her pleasure was manifest in her smile and the gleam in her eyes, a show of vivacity such as he had seldom seen from her in over a quarter century of marriage. Ilmater’s tears, now and again she even laughed, generally immediately after a close call that would have left many people white and sick with shock.