by Kate Novak
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.
The second raccoon edged forward and whispered something in the leader’s ear. The lead raccoon waved him back in annoyance. “Well, y’know those boys at the dock are so overwarked, they get careless,” the leader said. “For instance, your pet—”
“He is not a pet,” Alias snapped, her smile becoming brittle. “He’s my companion.”
“—carries an interesting staff,” continued the raccoon leader.
“My companion uses the staff because he is lame,” Alias argued, her tone now more severe.
“Nonetheless, we’ll have t’zamine it, prob’ly take it back to our superiors for—um—” The thief fumbled for the word. No doubt he was new to the shakedown trade, more accustomed and suited to the mindless violence of muggings.
“Proper evaluation?” suggested Alias.
The thief nodded. “Prop’revaluation,” he agreed and flashed a gap-toothed smile.
“I see,” said Alias. “Dragonbait, show the nice man your staff.”
The saurial limped forward, looking like a tired, lost, wounded puppy. He held his arms out with his palms upward, the staff resting across them. The raccoon leader towered over him and reached out to snare his prize with a free hand.
Dragonbait arched his tail around and slapped the ornamented end of the staff. The thick ash of the lower portion of the staff swung upward and smashed the thief square in the face. The thief dropped his sword and grasped his nose and mouth with both hands. Sputtering blood and bits of teeth, he fell to his knees.
Alias tensed, listening to the shuffle of heavy boots behind her and, without looking back, swung an elbow upward sharply. There was a cracking sound as her elbow guard connected with something solid. A rearguard raccoon gasped and groaned, having discovered that grabbing the swordswoman from behind was not as simple as it looked.
Alias spun about, launching a kick in the direction of the groan. She struck her assailant in the hip, and he crashed to the ground. From behind him came a fourth raccoon, wielding a blade.
The swordswoman retreated a step, pressing her back briefly against the saurial’s as she drew her slender sword. Dragonbait’s hand slid back and patted her hip, indicating that, although he’d dropped the staff, he had no intention of drawing his own enchanted blade from the swordswoman’s second scabbard. For such dishonorable opponents he preferred to go hand to hand.
The paladin hopped onto the kneeling raccoon leader’s shoulders, driving the thief into the ground, then used him as a springboard to leap, snarling and clawing, toward the leader’s companion. A trained fighter might have had the presence of mind to meet the charge with his sword, but the companion reacted instinctively, raising both arms to protect his face from what appeared to be a raging beast. Dragonbait landed hard on his foe, sending him sprawling back into the brackish green sewage flowing through the center of the alley, knocking the wind out of the thief. The last thing the human saw was the saurial’s gleaming, sharp white teeth, then Dragonbait snapped his jaw shut and head-butted him in the face. The human remained motionless as the water dammed up behind him and finally flowed around him. Dragonbait rose, pawing and sniffing with distaste at the evil-smelling, oily liquid splattered on his tunic.
The last assailant, the one facing Alias, had the wisdom to hang on to his weapon, but not much experience in its use. He led with his sword, lunging at Alias, who neatly sidestepped the thrust and brought the heavy pommel of her own blade down hard on the back of his neck. The raccoon-faced man sprawled forward and did not rise.
The entire battle took only thirty seconds.
“No fatalities,” Dragonbait observed as he kicked away their felled opponents’ weapons.
“We can find the local watch and send them in to—” He hesitated, noting how Alias stood stock-still, scanning the rooflines of the buildings surrounding them. “Problem?” he asked.
Keeping her eyes on the rooftops and switching once again to the Saurial tongue, Alias explained, “The Night Masks guild is the strongest criminal organization in the west; some say it’s the real power in Westgate. They didn’t get there without more cunning than our humbled ‘customs agents’ here possess. The guild assigns watchers to spy on their thugs—to make sure they don’t skimp on reporting their loot and to provide backup in case of emergencies. I’m looking for this group’s nanny.… There!” Alias declared, pointing up at a roof to the north.
Dragonbait snapped his head upward, but caught sight of only a fluttering cape disappearing beyond the roofline.
“He’ll go for reinforcements. Let’s get moving,” Alias suggested.
Dragonbait picked up the staff, inspecting it hastily to be sure its sudden impact with the Night Mask’s face hadn’t damaged it. Then he hurried down the alley after Alias.
A second alley crossed the one they traveled in, and they hurried through the intersection with all their senses on the alert. From ahead came the sound of music, singing, and shouting.
Dragonbait and Alias exchanged glances and headed toward the sound. Their ears led them to a small paved street that opened into a plaza dominated by a fountain just like the one where the lovers had sat. Probably both had been built by the same works project to bring more water to the commoners, Alias guessed.
A local street fair was just getting started all about the fountain. Paper lanterns swayed in the trees. A bonfire crackled on a patch of flagstone before the fountain. An old woman with a yarting and little boy with a drum were playing reels for girls who whirled about in the street and taunted boys on the sides to come dance with them. Tavern owners were setting up chairs and makeshift bars of sawhorses and planks. Dwarves rolled great barrels of ale and mead through the street to supply the bars. A couple of halflings were already halfway through one of their never-ending drinking songs. The air was full of laughter, shouts, mild curses, and the smell of spit-roasted fish.
Alias and Dragonbait hung at the fringes of the growing crowd. With so many witnesses, the Night Masks were unlikely to try an ambush, but Alias fidgeted with impatience and anxiety. Hanging around a celebration, while amusing ordinarily, was not getting them closer to their destination, and the Night Masks could employ more subtle methods of reprisal. With so many people about, an assassin could stand right behind her, and she might not notice until she felt a
dagger between her ribs.
Fortunately, Dragonbait had other senses available. The saurial paladin scanned the crowd, squinting his eyes in the manner of a buyer trying to discern the fine print of a merchant’s bill of sale.
“Well?” Alias prompted.
Dragonbait snarled testily. Elminster had once told him that human paladins detected the presence or absence of only evil, a less elegant and simpler sense, but certainly better suited to crowds. When the saurial paladin used his shen sight in a random gathering of humans like this, he was bombarded with more information than he could analyze. So many individuals, so many colors of souls and spirits and intentions, cascaded past him, around him, and through him.
Alias held her breath. An eternity seemed to pass before Dragonbait motioned with his muzzle toward the timbers being assembled into a makeshift stage. “That skinny human in the leather leggings and vest,” the paladin said.
Alias locked glances with the lanky man lounging against the piled timbers, and the man quickly looked away.
“There and there,” Dragonbait added with another jerk of his muzzle. “Beneath that apple tree. They may or may not be Night Masks, but they have the darkest readings of any among this rainbow of souls, and they definitely don’t like our presence.”
“They’re Night Masks, all right,” Alias said. “A reprisal squad, by the look of them. They’ll be packing poisoned knives. Standard guild operating procedure requires they teach us a lesson for hanging on to our own property. They intend to corner us somewhere, poison and gut us, and leave a calling card on our corpses.”
“Calling card?” Dragonbait queried.
“A domino mask,” Alias replied. “To remind the populace that they really rule here, not the noble merchant families. The Night Masks do not like people standing up to them. It’s bad for business. Makes it harder to intimidate the next mark.”
“Shouldn’t we alert the watch?” the paladin suggested.
“We are not in Suzail or Shadowdale. This is Westgate. The watch is safe inside at this hour. What we should do is a little reprisal work of our own. Come on.”
Dragonbait followed after the swordswoman, though he was certain he did not like the glint in her eye. Alias weaved her way through the crowded plaza, stopping to admire the roasting fish, the musicians, the dancers, buying a loaf of bread from a baker and a bag of produce at a fruit and vegetable stand, and chattering in the dwarvish tongue of the south with an old dwarven brewer who was doing a brisk business among the crowd from his wagon of beer kegs. She pressed some platinum coins into the brewer’s gnarled paw. The dwarf smiled broadly and turned to shout at his workers.
Dragonbait furrowed his brow in confusion; he knew how much Alias hated ale. No doubt she was enlisting the dwarf’s aid, but the saurial couldn’t imagine what the brewer could do to help them battle assassins. He turned his concentration back onto his shen sight to fix the positions of the three supposed Night Masks. The thieves circled around their quarry, following them through the crowd, stopping when they stopped, looking the other way whenever Dragonbait looked at them.
Once Alias reached the far edge of the plaza she nudged the saurial and, free of all human interference, the pair broke into a run. The three stalkers, no longer worried about remaining undetected, hurtled after them.
The chase was short, less than half a block, to a passage so narrow that Alias had to turn sideways to slip along it. By the light of the bonfire in the plaza, Dragonbait could see that their pursuers now had their knives out, and, as Alias had predicted, the weapons dripped with green ichor. The saurial dodged after Alias, annoyed that she had not shared with him whatever plan she had, no doubt because she knew he might not approve of it.
It was dark in the passage. The only light came from the entrance where they’d come in. In a moment, that too was in shadow as the Night Masks slid in after them. The thieves were laughing now, certain that they were about to make their kills. With his shen sight, the paladin noted that their evil was stronger when they were together than when they stood apart.
Alias stopped in front of him. In Saurial she ordered, “Hand me the staff and take your own sword. Stay low and give me a light on my signal.”
Dragonbait passed the ashen staff and took his own enchanted blade into his hand. Behind him he heard one of the assailants curse as he realized his night vision was no better than his prey’s.
“Now,” Alias commanded.
The thieves heard a deep growl in the passage before them. They halted, and a moment later cried out as the saurial’s sword burst with a great roaring noise into a brilliant blue-white flame that temporarily blinded them. When they finally adjusted their vision to the now lighted passage, they were much less certain of their victory. Dragonbait crouched before them holding out his fiery blade. The passage was already warming from the energy the weapon gave off. Behind the saurial, Alias stood with her cloak thrown back and her sword at the ready. Dragonbait could smell the green ichor that dripped from Alias’s blade, and he gave a low chuckle, which sounded quite ominous to their opponents.
“Come on, boys,” Alias taunted. “Are we going to fight or not?”
While the Night Mask enforcers were not unused to resistance, their opponents were not usually equipped with such deadly weaponry. Raw steel did not frighten them, but they had no desire for a taste of their own poison, and the fiery sword made them cringe instinctively. There was also something unnerving about the fey tone in the swordswoman’s voice. They were assassins, not warriors, and they’d come to kill, not be killed. They began backpedaling down the passageway.
They found their way blocked by a larger-than-man-sized ale keg seated upright. It became clear to the paladin what Alias had purchased from the dwarven brewer. With a grin, Dragonbait closed in on the assassins. Alias followed just behind him.
“Surrender now, and I’ll let you leave with your lives,” Alias said.
The Night Masks looked back at Alias and Dragonbait, then at the keg, then back at their would-be victims.
Dragonbait rotated his wrist so the point of his weapon traced little looping circles of light in the air.
The lead Night Mask dropped his poisonous weapon, and the other two followed suit.
“I don’t think you have the paperwork for any of those weapons, boys,” Alias said. “Better leave them all with me so I can evaluate them.”
The Night Masks hesitated. Dragonbait growled and ran his fiery blade down the side of the building to his right so they could see the scorch marks left on the stone. Soon there was a pile of Night Mask weaponry lying at the saurial’s feet.
“Keep stripping, boys,” Alias ordered. “I’ll tell you when to stop.”
Out in the street the dwarven brewmaster had set up a second bar to handle the spreading crush of party-goers. The red-headed swordswoman had paid him to block the alley with the large keg once he saw the Night Masks follow her in. Then, as per the swordswoman’s additional instructions, he announced that he would be giving out free samples from the great barrel of Chondath Dark Ale. He waited until he had a sizeable crowd about him, then tipped over the great keg standing across the passageway and knocked a tap into the end.
From the passageway beyond, the old dwarf heard the redhead say, “You’d better get moving, boys. I may not give you a second chance.”
The dwarf moved back from his tap as three men came rushing toward him and clambered over the keg of ale. The crowd howled with laugher, for all three men were naked save for their domino masks. These they clutched in a desperate effort to conceal what modesty they had left. The trio bolted through the crowd as fast as they could and disappeared into the dark streets. No doubt they stopped eventually to steal some new clothing, but they were not seen in Westgate again.
As Dragonbait and Alias climbed over the keg, the brewmaster offered them both a mug of ale from the barrel Alias had purchased. Alias declined, but insisted that Dragonbait enjoy a pint.
While the saurial sipped
his beverage, Alias drew out the loaf of bread she’d bought and began using it to wipe green goo off her sword. She offered the paladin a bite first.
“You know I hate avocado,” he replied.
Alias shrugged. “I’ve gotten quite fond of it. It has that rich, buttery flavor. The flavor of revenge.” She popped into her mouth a chunk of the bread spread with green fruit.
“Was there a point to all of that, other than to amuse the crowd?” Dragonbait asked.
“A point?” Alias repeated. “We don’t need a point. They tried to rob us, and we got even. It was a good joke. Humor, remember humor?” She finished polishing her sword and sheathed it next to the saurial’s enchanted blade.
Dragonbait sipped his ale, looking at her over the top of his mug with a sad, paternal stare.
“All right,” Alias snapped. “There was a point. Those three may actually reconsider their lives of crime. At the very least, they won’t be leaving their masks behind tonight.”
Dragonbait blew the air out of his cheeks with a harrumph. “Three tiny leaves plucked off the tree of evil.”
“The axe hasn’t been forged that’s big enough to cut down the Night Mask tree in Westgate,” Alias argued. She took another bite of avocado and bread.
“Then one must dig out the roots,” the paladin replied.
“Dig out the roots. What’s that supposed to mean? We came here to make a deal with Mintassan the Sage, not go into the tree-pruning business.”
“I thought you might want to help the people of Westgate, free them from the shadow of the Night Masks.”
“Why would I want to do that?”
“You grew up here, after all,” the saurial said with a sly grin.
Alias glared at her companion, uncertain if he was trying to get her to renounce her false memories or really hoped to get her entangled in the web of treachery that made up Westgate’s power structure. “I did grow up here,” she insisted. She looked up at the buildings around her. The memories felt so real, so fresh. She’d been on this street before, when she was just a little girl, chasing a cat she’d hoped to keep as a pet. “As a matter of fact,” she declared, “our house was just around the corner. I can show you.” She slid off the keg of ale and headed down the street.
