Masquerades

by Kate Novak

  “Alias, please, don’t—” Dragonbait called. Now he wished he had not teased her. When her memory betrayed her like this, it often ended in pain for her.

  But Alias was now in another world, one of nostalgia for a past she didn’t really own. “Come on,” she called back over her shoulder. “It shouldn’t take us too far off our route.”

  “Boogers,” Dragonbait muttered. It was one of the foulest curses Olive Ruskettle had ever taught him. He shouldered the ashen staff and loped after his companion.

  “Around the corner” turned out to be one corner, three blocks, a second corner, an alley, and another corner. The part of the city they traveled through had seen better days. The cobblestones were intermixed with potholes and bald patches where locals had quarried the street to patch up their chimneys and walls. The paint on every door was peeling. Trees and shrubs in the gardens were all overgrown. Still, there was the occasional streetlamp made of a utilitarian post of iron with dimly glowing, smoking oil in a small bowl at the top.

  All of the shops on the ground floor were shuttered and locked tight, but there were a number of small lights in the upper stories—constellations of candles, lanterns, and the occasional magical light stone.

  “There,” Alias announced in an awestruck tone, as if she had discovered the lost city of Shandaular.

  She pointed to a small, two-story building sandwiched between a stable and a dressmaker’s establishment. According to a weathered old sign over the door, the shop on the first floor specialized in second-hand clothing. The original proprietor’s name had been painted over, but no new moniker had been posted to take its place.

  “Very nice,” Dragonbait said, as gently as he could muster, “We’d better be going, though.”

  Alias scowled, “You don’t understand. I was born here. I grew up here. I have memories of this place.”

  Dragonbait sighed, “I know, but they’re memories sung into you by Finder. You were never here, really here, before tonight. If you’d like, we can come back tomorrow when its light and ask if anyone here knew Finder. I think for now, though, we’d better—”

  Dragonbait’s words were cut short as the front door of the shop smashed open and three humans barged out of the building—a man and a woman both with slight frames and close-cropped hair and a second man large enough to be a bouncer at a very rough bar. All three wore domino masks and were dressed in velvet dyed a black so deep that it absorbed light, as if they were chunks of the Abyss loose in the Realms. The big man carried a blazing torch. The smaller man banged a nail into the doorjamb. The woman hung a black domino mask on the nail, then nodded curtly at the big man. The big man flung his torch through the doorway, back into the building.

  The black-garbed woman shouted up at the houses all around, “Jamal is marked!” then all three figures dashed down the street.

  Alias raced forward and started to shout, “Fire! Bring water!” but her words were lost to the boom of a great explosion. The entire front of the store bulged outward, then tore loose in a gout of flame, knocking Alias and Dragonbait to the ground and covering them with burning rags.

  Two

  Victims of the Fire

  Alias staggered to her feet. The smell of burning cloth, mingled with a complicated mixture of odors from Dragonbait, stung her nostrils. The saurial stood beside her, apparently unscathed, emitting the scents of brimstone and violets, then baked bread and ham, as his confusion and fear gave way to anger and worry. He stood before her, holding his hands on her shoulders, but it was several moments before she realized by the occasional clicking of his tongue that he was speaking to her. She’d been partially deafened by the blast.

  Uncertain whether the saurial’s hearing was any better than her own, the swordswoman signed with her hands, I’ll be all right. We have to help the people inside.

  She lurched toward the flame, then took a second step. By the third stride she had shaken off most of the bone-jarring effects of the blast, and by the fourth she was running into the blazing shop, Dragonbait hot on her heels.

  Most of the planking that made up the front wall of the shop and the shutter that had covered the shop’s front window lay smoldering in the street, while the frame that remained standing blazed ferociously. Alias plunged though the wreath of flame about the doorway and paused a moment in the foyer. The entrance matched her “memory.” The door on the right led to the clothing shop, now an inferno of burning cloth. A few feet beyond the shop door was the staircase to the apartments above; the staircase handrail was draped with fiery clothing, and the steps gleamed with burning oil.

  Dragonbait stood in the doorway on the right, peering into the shop. Alias signed, Don’t go in there, it’s too dangerous, but the paladin signed back, Someone’s in there.

  Alias grabbed her friend’s arm to hold him back. She remembered Old Mendle, who ran the shop long ago, when she was a child. He used to let her play dress-up among the bins of garments he had gathered from the better homes, and which Mrs. Mendle had then sewn or knitted back into serviceable shape. He lived in the back of the shop now, alone since Mrs. Mendle had died. Alias released her hold on the saurial warrior and gave him a nod to proceed.

  As she hurried up the stairs, using her cloak as a shield against the smoke and heat, she realized there probably was no Old Mendle. He was an invention Finder had put in her memory—unless he had drawn the indulgent clothier from some other, real, little girl’s life.

  Whether the fire’s victims were those she remembered or not made no difference to the swordswoman. She was angry that her remembered home was burning. The stairway rail, from which she remembered having led imaginary attacks on invisible dragons, collapsed into the hallway below, and her craw knotted in fury. She paused on the landing where she had—no, where she remembered having had scribbled pictures with a charcoal stick. By the light of the fire, she could see there were scrawls on the wall still, but she hadn’t time to examine them.

  She turned on the landing and dashed up the second flight of stairs; the steps had begun to list inward from structural damage. The smoke was thicker up here, and she bent down to stay beneath its lethal embrace. She turned again and peered down the hall at the doors leading to the three apartments. The arsonists had piled rags before each door and lit them.

  Alias pulled her sword and used it to thrust aside the pile of burning cloth in front of the door nearest to her. The door led to the apartment overlooking the streets, the apartment Old Mendle used to rent to transients with money to waste on the view. The Company of the Swanmays, an all-female band of adventurers, had once rented it, or so she remembered. Alias put her hands against the door. It was cool to the touch. She touched the knob. It, too, was cool, but it would not turn. The swordswoman stepped back, drew a lungful of smoky air, and gave the door a hard, sharp kick.

  The doorjamb, already weakened by the fire, splintered, and the door swung inward. Alias peered into the darkness. She grabbed up a burning rag on the end of her sword to use as a torch. The room held four beds with straw tick mattresses, all empty. As she stood there, reassuring herself that the room was vacant, Alias heard a grumbling noise, and a section of the room’s floor near the front wall collapsed into the shop below.

  Alias leaped backward just as a serpent of flame swept up the wall and kissed the room’s ceiling. The swordswoman thought of Dragonbait. His scales gave him some protection from the fire, but not from a floor falling on him. Hopefully, with the aid of his shen sight, he’d already found his quarry and had pulled him out.

  She could hear shouts below—the locals had not been so far gone in their sleep that they could ignore the explosion. If they started a bucket brigade to the nearest water trough quickly, they might keep the structure from collapsing, though their main concern would be to keep the fire from spreading to their own homes.

  The sound of something heavy falling farther down the hall brought Alias’s attention back to her task. The door to the second apartment was opened, and someone
had unfurled a rolled-up carpet over the pile of burning rags. A human shape, dressed in a flowing house robe, lurched out of the apartment, clutching a box the size of a wizard’s tome. A woman, Alias guessed, as the figure collapsed over the carpet, seized by a racking cough.

  Alias rushed forward and bent over the woman, noting the gray and red curly locks that escaped from beneath her garish silk head scarf. There was something familiar about that scarf, those curls. Alias pulled on the woman’s arms until she had risen. The swordswoman was just about to ask if there was anyone else in the building, when the robed woman turned around. The words caught in Alias’s throat as she caught sight of the face of the other woman.

  “Mama?” Alias gasped. Immediately she realized how foolish she was to think such a thing, yet she could not stop the squeezing ache in her heart caused by all the false memories Finder had given her of this stranger.

  The stranger’s eyes widened, and she gasped, “Gods!” as if she recognized Alias in return. Her reaction, though, took Alias completely by surprise. With a sudden, panic-induced energy, the older woman slammed the heavy wooden box she carried into Alias’s chin, smashing the swordswoman’s jaw back and sending her sprawling down the hall.

  Alias could taste blood in her mouth and realized that the floor was uncomfortably warm. It took her several moments to shake off the stunning effect of the blow. As her attacker dashed past her, the swordswoman grabbed at the other woman’s leg, but came away with nothing but a leather slipper. She pulled herself back up to her feet and caught a last glimpse of the woman crashing down the charred and broken staircase. Her hand flung upward to toss the slipper after its owner, her mind insisting, “She’s not your mother,” but her fingers did not let go of the slipper.

  From down the hallway Alias heard someone cry out. She shoved the slipper into her belt and retrieved her sword from the floor. The cry had come from the third room, the one at the back of the building. Once again Alias used her weapon as a pole and brushed aside the pile of burning rags planted in front of this apartment door. The heat from the hall behind her was now unbearable; the flames shooting up the stairwell were more white than red. Alias was sure her cloak would burst into flame at any moment, but still she felt the apartment door to be sure it was cool. From within she could hear high-pitched squabbling. The swordswoman steeled herself against what she was certain she would find and rushed into the room, slamming the door behind her.

  Alias, breathing the slightly cooler, slightly less smoky air, was suddenly bent over with a coughing fit. When she recovered a minute later she looked up at the room’s inhabitants—a family of halflings. They’d gone silent at her arrival, but once she stopped coughing, they ignored her and returned to squabbling and rushing about.

  There were seven of them—no, eight, Alias corrected, trying to count them as they dashed about like fish in a pond. They were dressed in their nightshirts and engaged in packing all their worldly belongings into a trunk so large that even a hill giant might think twice before lifting it. Mama Halfling was overseeing everything that went in, rejecting things she did not consider worthy of the limited space—pipe collections, mug collections, rock collections, bottle collections. This resulted in the squabbling, since Papa Halfling and the Junior Halflings insisted their contributions were invaluable.

  Alias felt the door warming at her back and saw the smoke winding up her legs as it crept beneath the door and between the floorboards. She staggered forward, pushing Mama Halfling and most of her brood away from the chest, toward the window.

  “Have you gone nuts?” Alias cried. “This isn’t moving day! You haven’t got time to pack! You’re going to be troll meat any minute now!” She scooped up the closest halfling child, a girl no higher than her knee, and slammed open the window shutters.

  The room overlooked an alley, where a crowd had already gathered. In the center of the crowd Dragonbait kneeled over a prone human. Alias gave a shout and caught the saurial’s attention. On her signal he strode to the window, set down the staff, and waited. One by one, Alias dropped halfling children into the paladin’s arms. Dragonbait caught them easily, as if he fielded plummeting children every day of his life, and handed them off to others in the crowd. The children shrieked with delight, and the crowd applauded each catch.

  There was a brief argument between Mama and Papa Halfling over who would go down last. Alias eyed the door anxiously. It’s shellac veneer was bubbling and steaming as the wood on the opposite side was consumed in the hallway. Alias picked up Mama and, with not a little pleasure, tossed her out the window to Dragonbait below.

  As she reached down for Papa Halfling, who clutched his pipe collection to his chest, the door broke off its hinges and fell to the floor. A monster of yellow and white fire leaped into the room, making for the fresh air coming from the window and the last victims it could claim.

  Alias half jumped, half fell out the window, dragging Papa Halfling with her. She managed to twist enough so that she broke the halfling’s fall with her own body, but nothing broke her fall. She landed seat first on the hard-packed dirt, and the pain that sliced up her spine brought tears to her eyes.

  Papa Halfling rolled off the swordswoman with a wink and a tip of an imaginary hat and proceeded to help Mama Halfling gather their brood. A bucket brigade had formed, but the workers were concentrating on wetting down the roofs and walls of adjacent buildings. The used clothing shop had been abandoned to its fate. Alias suspected that the brigade did not want to be seen putting out a fire started by the Night Masks.

  Mama Halfling took a last look up at the window where the family’s possessions were now being devoured by the beast fire. She sighed. Then, without so much as a good-bye, the family disappeared down the street and into the darkness. Alias wondered idly where they would go, but since she’d also noted that both Mama and Papa had bulging money belts strapped around their nightshirts, she didn’t feel obliged to worry about their future.

  She was seized with another coughing fit, and every hack sent a jarring stab of pain down her lower back. When the fit subsided, she was aware of Dragonbait kneeling beside her. “Are you going to be all right?” the paladin asked.

  “Took too much smoke,” Alias replied, unclasping her cape, hoping the cool night air on her back would relieve her sense of suffocating. “And I really hurt my tail when I landed.”

  “I think you lost your tail when you landed,” the saurial teased, pretending to look around for a detached appendage.

  “If I lost it, it couldn’t hurt this bad,” Alias complained.

  Dragonbait laid his hands on her back and began whispering a prayer to his god for the gift of healing. Alias remained politely silent. Praying generally left her uncomfortable, as did anything to do with the gods. After ten years in the paladin’s company, though, his healing prayer felt to her more like a lullaby, summoning in her spirit a sense of being cherished.

  The paladin’s hands began to glow gently with a blue light, which slid down along her body. The tenseness in her lungs eased, and the pain in her posterior region subsided. She still felt as sore as a landshark tunneling through the walls of Waterdeep, but now at least she could stand without agony.

  Dragonbait helped her slowly to her feet. He made a face as he caught sight of her jaw, which had turned purple and swollen. “What happened to your face?” he asked with concern.

  Alias tried to explain, but with the paladin’s hands pressing about her chin, her words came out, “Ikoddajoorybuck.” She paused and waited as more blue light flowed from the saurial’s hands, this time to her face. In a moment, the swelling had subsided, and she repeated her words more clearly, “I caught a jewelry box under the chin. Did you see an old woman come out. Housecoat, scarf, one slipper?”

  Dragonbait shook his head, “I had to come out the back door. The fire was too strong. They’d set pine tar torches in the clothing and oil on the floor.” He bent over and retrieved the staff.

  “With a touch of smoke powder
for a big bang to make sure everyone knows it wasn’t an accident,” the swordswoman added.

  “I take it this old woman wears the mate to the slipper tucked in your belt?” the saurial asked.

  Alias looked down in surprise; she’d forgotten she’d hung on to it. “For some reason she was frightened of me,” the swordswoman explained. “She attacked me and ran. I hope she got out alive.”

  “This is the one I sensed,” Dragonbait said, nodding curtly at the human form sprawled in the alleyway. “He died before I could help him.”

  Alias forced herself to look down at the man Dragonbait had tried to rescue. To her relief, it was not Old Mendle. From the gaudy clothing the man wore she guessed he had been the current shop owner. The fire had barely touched him, and he hadn’t died from breathing the smoke. There were great splotches of red on his yellow silk shirt and in one of his gashed hands he clutched a domino mask with a torn string.

  “Stabbed,” Alias said. “He must have come in on them while they were setting the fire.”

  “I do not like these Night Masks at all,” Dragonbait declared.

  “No one does, but they’re too afraid to do anything. You can see what happens to their enemies.” Alias looked around at the crowd. They were watching for the clothing shop to collapse. No one came forward to collect the body of the shopkeeper. Now that the heroics were through, no one wanted to be seen talking to the heroes. And of course there was no sign of the City Watch. “A typical Westgate evening,” Alias muttered.