The Wizard's Mask Read online

  Like a pack of hungry dogs they swarmed after him, shouting and waving their swords.

  The Masked watched that pursuit dwindle into the night. He'd only just turned back to bid the litter-bearers farewell when shouts and the clangs of clashing swords arose from far down the street.

  "They've found the Telcanors," he announced with satisfaction, and led Tantaerra away down a handy alley.

  "Where're we headed?"

  "A rooftop that lacks Mereirs clashing with Telcanors—and sleep," The Masked told her flatly. "Before I start snoring as I walk."

  Tantaerra pointed into the gloom ahead. "That one, perhaps?"

  Ahead, the alleyway was scorched with soot and awash in ashes, many wagon-tracks crisscrossing through those heaps of tattered blackness. They spilled out of the gutted back of a tall mansion that had hosted a recent fire. Fresh planking and stonework shone amid the blackened ruin, where rebuilding had begun. Night-lamps glimmered high in occupied houses beyond, shining down on what looked to be an intact roof.

  "How sturdy?" The Masked wondered aloud. "Dirty work getting up there, too."

  "Ladders," Tantaerra replied. "I don't think even Braganzan builders can fly."

  The Masked shook his head. "Prudent builders stash their ladders high, out of reach, then take the last ladder away with them. Otherwise they'd lose every one the first night, and—"

  He came to a halt, staring at the neat stowage of a dozen ladders leaned together against one wall.

  "Obviously Braganzans aren't prudent," Tantaerra purred.

  Her masked companion sighed. "Or they trust in the Watchguard patrols."

  "That's what I said," Tantaerra said sweetly.

  It took more than a little grunting effort to haul the ladder they used up onto the roof after them, but that roof felt solid enough to sleep twenty masked men and a score of halflings.

  Sleep, that most elusive of Braganzan delicacies.

  This time, however, they found it.

  ∗ ∗ ∗

  Luraumadar.

  "Go away," The Masked snarled, or thought he did. Was he still asleep?

  Luraumadar. The mask's whisper was louder and more insistent than usual.

  The Masked blinked. It wasn't dark anymore. He turned his head to stare into the strengthening light, and found himself gazing across rooftops in a chill dawn. Smoke was curling gently up into still air from more chimneys than he could count. He felt stiff and cold.

  Except for just above his right hip, where he was very warm. He looked down along his body. His employer was curled up against him, her snores butter-soft, one hand over her nose. For warmth, of course. That hand had left fire-soot across her cheek.

  The Masked gazed at that smudged face. Tantaerra Loroeva Klazra. A little spitfire, to be sure, yet one that he just might start to become ever so slightly fond of, razor tongue and all.

  She murmured something inaudible in her dreams, stirred—and farted loudly enough to awaken herself.

  She came bolt upright to glare at him, hands darting to dagger hilts. "Well, masked man? What are you staring at?"

  "One of the more diplomatic patrons I've worked with," he replied, chuckling.

  "Keep me less hungry and closer to a handy chamber pot and a warm and private place to make use of it, and you'll find me even more diplomatic," she snapped, elbowing him in the ribs and kicking off against his hip to put distance between them. "Great stinking human."

  When he made no reply, and didn't move, she erupted. "Well? Am I going to have to find us something to eat? Who paid good silver to whom, hey?"

  Ten silver weights. Not enough, of course. A hundred times that wouldn't be enough for what he'd been through, and they both knew it.

  The Masked merely looked at her. She cocked her head to one side and gave him an exasperated glare.

  Ever so slightly fond, yes.

  ∗ ∗ ∗

  The builders, as it happened, had brought their own little row of covered chamber pots, and even a few filthy cloaks that could serve as a temporary privacy tent.

  They hadn't, however, been quite so kind as to leave anything to eat at their worksite, so The Masked followed his nose, leading his sharp-tongued client to where the nearest smells of frying and fresh-baked bread were coming from: a ramshackle joining of three former houses that were now Thaener's Fine Lodgings. With rumbling stomachs, man and halfling sought the front door, and a meal.

  Thaener was long dead, it seemed, surviving only as a benignly beaming portrait presiding over the feasting-room. He smiled down on the ravenous eating of the two guests who arrived much earlier than most, and his merry countenance changed not a whit as they sighed, patted now-full bellies and stretched contentedly, then rented a room and paid extra for a warm bath to be brought up to it.

  "Your masks, and my being a halfling, make us rather too easily remembered," Tantaerra said slowly, watching steam rise after the last small-keg of water had been poured into the bath and the keg-bearers had lurched out of the room. "We should do something about that before we set about exploring Braganza."

  "Such as split up and go separately?" The Masked suggested, as he securely bolted the door. "I have masks that look less like masks and more like battered old faces, if I keep a hood up to shade them."

  "I ..." Tantaerra's voice trailed off, and she turned away.

  His patron wasn't happy about something. Something she'd rather not admit.

  The Masked sighed, took off his cloak, and looked for some way to hang it to guard her precious modesty.

  "What're you—oh. Don't bother." Tantaerra straightened from sniffing at the little ewer of soap-flakes. She was already half unlaced, her hair-combs out and tresses tumbling about her shoulders.

  The Masked tossed the cloak aside. "So what's bothering you?"

  "What d'you mean?"

  "The princess," he announced to the nearest wall, "is reluctant. And even more reluctant to impart to me what she's reluctant about. In this, demonstrating that halfling women can be just as obstinate and foolish as human women."

  "Masked man," Tantaerra said sharply, bared now down to the belt she was undoing, "what by the First Vault are you talking about?"

  "Your obvious reluctance ...right after I suggested..."

  Tantaerra stepped out of her breeches, then looked up into his silence. It was obvious what he was staring at. Both of them.

  She put her hands on her hips and faced him challengingly. "Yes, they're breasts. Men have them too—the gods alone know why—yet I manage to keep from staring. Somehow. If you want to feel equal in awkwardness or, I don't know, plain rudeness, take out your manserpent and I'll have a good stare at that."

  The Masked laughed. "Your tongue is sharper than many a sword."

  "It has to be. I'm shorter than most swords. Now, have you had a good look?"

  She swayed, stretching and swiveling like a tavern-dancer. "How about now?"

  "I, uh ...was asking you a question. Which you've avoided answering by talking about my looking at your ...upperworks. Tantaerra?"

  The halfling thrust one leg into the bath, winced, and drew it out again hastily. "Rutting hot."

  "I don't doubt it. Most people heed the obvious warning—all this steam, you know."

  "Stop staring, come around here, and wash my back," she commanded, striding into the bath. Wincing, she went hastily to her knees, gasped, shuddered all over, then snarled, "Vault, that's hot!"

  "Too hot to—?"

  "Wash," the halfling commanded. "Soap-flakes, bristle brush ...I'm filthy."

  The Masked wrinkled his nose. "I'd noticed."

  "Congratulations, masked man—you've discovered the secret: that stale, sweaty halfling women smell just as musky as human women. We also tend to be just as touchy about it. So please wash my back and refrain from saying anything that could get you killed."

  "Tantaerra, answer me," The Masked said quietly, starting to wash her back gently, recalling how the maids in the most expensive inns he
'd stayed at went about this. First, use the brush to lift all of her unbound tresses over her shoulder, to hang down her front ...

  "Leave my hair," she said sharply. "I'll see to it."

  "With your combs?"

  "With my combs. Later." She sighed, and he could feel her relaxing under the brush. When he worked his way down to her tailbone, she slid smoothly right down into the bath to lie on her back amid the growing scum and look up at him.

  "To tell the truth, Tarram Armistrade," she said quietly, "I was—no, am reluctant to be parted from you as we explore the city. It seems ...imprudent. Dangerous, even. We're stronger as a team."

  "Yet if the Watchguard, after last night—to say nothing of eager prowling Mereir and Telcanor swordsmen—are seeking a masked man accompanied by a halfling?"

  "We'll deceive them," Tantaerra said tartly, "by confronting them instead with a halfling accompanied by a masked man!"

  She held out a hand for the brush. "Seriously, Masked One, why don't we work together? I'll keep to rooftops, peering and eavesdropping, and you dress as a crone, keeping your hood up and wearing the best mask for that—and hobbling about slowly, mind—and we'll take our measure of Braganza that way."

  "That should work," The Masked agreed.

  Tantaerra gave him a sly look, then used both hands to thrust her upperworks out of the water at him. "We'll just have to work up a false pair of these for you, with wadded-up clothes and all that cord."

  "Or you could reprise your role as my pregnant belly, only tied across me higher up," he suggested, his hands shaping an imaginary bust line.

  "That," she told him flatly, "is an entirely inappropriate suggestion."

  "It probably won't be my last," he warned, making a mock grab for her.

  She submerged hastily. "Sir Armistrade, do you mind?"

  "Not yet," he said, leering through the eyeholes in his mask. "In fact, not at all."

  Tantaerra found the brush and hurled it at him.

  He caught it out of the air deftly. "You do want your legs washed, don't you? Half the filth of Braganza seems to have joined what you brought from Halidon ..."

  "Masked man, you say the most charming things."

  "That's why I'm still alive. For now."

  "For now," Tantaerra agreed meaningfully, sliding farther down into the bath.

  Luraumadar, the mask commented approvingly.

  ∗ ∗ ∗

  It took them most of the morning to learn the extent of the Mereir-Telcanor feud, and the current mood of the city. A lot of Braganzans were willing to mutter a fervent desire that the two warring families would exterminate each other or just go away, but those mutters were neither loud nor firm. Both families, it seemed, were apt to treat neutral folk as foes, threatening such citizens into obeying, aiding, or joining them—or tasting a swift dagger or a fire kindled out of seeming nowhere, usually in the dead of night while the abstainers were asleep.

  As The Masked and his patron returned to Thaener's with new-bought clothes, so those they'd been living in for days could finally be washed, a thought struck him.

  Luraumadar, the mask said approvingly, in the depths of his mind.

  "I'm curious," he murmured to the innkeeper, sliding two coins—good Absalom mintings that had ridden his belt for months now, awaiting just such a need—covertly across the counter. The man's hand came down on them with practiced casualness, his expression changing not a whit. "Do Mereirs or Telcanors look at guest registers in this inn? Daily? All inns in the city?"

  The innkeeper turned away from The Masked to look at some tankards he'd been polishing that suddenly seemed to now need polishing again, and nodded. Thrice.

  The Masked strode unhurriedly to the stairs, affecting not to notice a glowering man leading two others—all of them armed—up to the innkeeper.

  Tantaerra was waiting for him in the room, a dagger ready behind her back. "Well?"

  "The Mereirs and Telcanors examine all inn registers in Braganza. Daily."

  "Then we're not sleeping here. Better rats than dead."

  "Agreed," The Masked replied, and turned on his heel to look down the stairs. The three men were coming up, and looked quickly away from the stare he gave them.

  "Out, right now," he hissed at his patron. "Back stairs, swiftly!"

  Tantaerra rolled the new clothes into a bedsheet in a trice and joined him at the door. They raced along the passage, practically hurled themselves down the servants' stair, and burst out through the kitchens, ignoring a shout from a cook.

  Another trio of armed men was lounging against a nearby wall, but The Masked and Tantaerra strode right past and sought alleyways.

  A handy drainpipe got them aloft in time to see their pursuers hasten out that same scullery door—and come to a sudden halt, as the lounging trio unfolded themselves from the wall in a menacing line of men who held casually drawn daggers in their hands.

  The Masked looked up and down the alleyway they now stood above, and at the mouths of other alleys opening off it.

  "What a cesspit," he said, almost admiringly.

  ∗ ∗ ∗

  He and Tantaerra soon found an empty mansion where they changed into their new clothes. Then they set about learning the streets of Braganza and finding possible lairs to spend the night ahead in. The city was a crowded, noisy hive of builders at work, with carts of supplies rumbling everywhere and the Watchguard directing traffic. They soon became aware that a growing group of interested observers—all apparently independent of each other—were following them, but there was nothing they could do about that.

  "So," Tantaerra asked grimly, as they paused for breath on a lofty rooftop and surveyed all of the oh-so-casual folk who just happened to be looking back at them, "do we try to get out of Braganza before dusk?"

  "No," The Masked replied. "If we try, we'll just be handing our friend from Halidon an easier task of reaching us. Assuming we aren't arrested at the gates or just taken down by Mereir or Telcanor bowmen while still within range of the walls."

  Tantaerra sighed. "I hate it when you're so bleakly right about things."

  "So," The Masked told her, "do I."

  He headed along the ridgepole. "Like it or not, we've plunged ourselves into the heart of this feud. If Mereirs and Telcanors both see us as having taken sides, and try to employ or manipulate us, we'd best play along. Doing some manipulating of our own, rather than remaining the bewildered, beset 'played.'"

  "A noble and wise resolve," Tantaerra observed, joining him in a decorative but useless cupola that had no way down into the building beneath it, "but just how will we manage that? Or have you secret powers you haven't shared with me yet? Behind that mask, you don't happen to be one of the General Lords of Molthune, do you? Or something worse?"

  Even in his own ears, The Masked's reply sounded rather bitter. "Something worse."

  Luraumadar, the mask contributed helpfully, in the back of his mind.

  "A rather powerless something worse, unfortunately," he added.

  His halfling patron eyed him thoughtfully, obviously wondering what he meant, but said only, "I'd like to know more about that, masked man, but ...later."

  "Agreed," The Masked replied tersely, heading back along the ridgepole.

  It was almost comical, how quickly startled faces disappeared from behind nearby windows. He hoped the Braganzans who lived in those houses were as sick of Mereirs and Telcanors bursting in to climb their stairs and peer out of windows as he would have been.

  He and Tantaerra dropped down onto a heavily laden stonemason's cart and rode it for several blocks, just to irritate their pursuing spies. The Masked never caught sight of a certain pair of brown eyes among their observers, but he knew better than to assume the man from the temple roof in Halidon had been taken care of by the Telcanors last night. That sort of foe was never so easily gotten rid of.

  The light was fading fast now.

  "Do we pay Thaener's a late-night visit to do our washing?" Tantaerra asked, as
they crossed yet another roof, this one adorned with silently screaming carved stone gargoyles.

  "No. Someone will be waiting for us, well armed and in force."

  They discussed various possible lairs for spending the night, and agreed on the best refuge—a tall, many-floored open skeleton of an unfinished building that had enclosed stairwells they might be able to barricade the tops of.

  The Masked startled a cart-vendor by dropping down, apparently from the sky, to buy buns filled with cheese and spicy meats, to eat after dark.

  Then they made for their chosen refuge, by as roundabout a way as they dared take in the gathering gloom.

  It seemed deserted and ideal, as they huddled in dark silence, ate, and then settled down. The Masked never knew just when he dropped off to sleep.

  ∗ ∗ ∗

  Luraumadar, the mask said urgently.

  The Masked came awake out of a dark dream of finding himself in a vast, cold, soap-scummed bath with Tantaerra floating to the surface right beside him—drowned, dead, and staring at him reproachfully, her face frozen in her last despairing scream.

  He blinked in the night-gloom, chilled and sweating, but relieved to find he'd been dreaming.

  Relief that ended all too abruptly.

  Tantaerra was trembling against him, and for good reason. As they lay together on the bare, unfinished floor, sword points gleamed down at them on all sides.

  More than a dozen.

  Splendidly armored men had somehow silently reached their rooftop and ringed them. One stood forth from his fellows, looming above The Masked and Tantaerra like a mighty statue in plate armor. He was tall and broad-shouldered, and what could be seen of his face in his magnificently crested helm was hard and cruel.

  "Yield me your weapons," he commanded, reaching down an empty gauntleted hand.

  Tantaerra gave him her first dagger with a hard throw, right at his face.

  She was too close to miss, too close for him to move or strike it aside in time, too—

  That gauntleted hand snatched the whirling dagger out of the air, then tightened around it. There was a sudden, shrieking snap from within that great fist.

  The armored giant took a step forward, his armored fingers opened, and the shards of the halfling's broken dagger rained down into her disbelieving face.