The Wizard's Mask Page 4

  She scooped it up gratefully and ran, fangs in both fists, heading for the nearest warehouse.

  It looked about as inviting as a fortress, high unbroken walls looming up in front of her, moonlight bathing the nearest one ...so the one beyond, then. Behind and around this fortress ...yes! It had neat stacks of barrels along its east wall, and—was that a vent-door, propped open?

  Gods be thanked, a whole row of open vents, and the same in the next warehouse, beyond!

  Using her daggers like climbing spikes, Tantaerra swarmed up and over the fence. Climbing the barrels was a series of swift, easy leaps, and then—

  She plunged through the nearest vent in a full, fast dive. If it was a long fall onto a hard floor within, so be it, she was—

  It was a short fall, onto a hard and unyielding crate, but she bounced, wincing, and skidded to a hard stop.

  Oh, but she was going to be sore in the morning. If, that is, she lived to see morning.

  It was dark, and her arrival had raised dust. She sat up on the crate and saw more of them all around her, dark and looming and silent.

  Resisting the urge to scramble, with the din of running bloodcoats growing nearer outside, she sat still, straining to hear.

  Nothing. At least, nothing man-sized on the move or breathing hard, inside this end of the warehouse.

  Tantaerra got down off the crate, sheathed her daggers, and felt her way cautiously along. She was in a loft, under the eastern eaves of the warehouse roof—there would be another loft facing her, that way, with an open gulf between where the pulley-hoists hung, with catwalks across where the trusses were doubled, for men with long hook-pikes to move crates like these about, to disturb the rats.

  "Rats like me," she murmured, heading for the end of the warehouse. Any ladders up and down would be there, and—

  There was a sudden roar from the other end of the warehouse, behind her, and the rattle of counterweights. Moonlight flooded in. The great end doors of the warehouse were being thrust open.

  "Lanterns first!" The voice was clipped and cold. "No one goes haring off into the dark—that just gives our little rat a chance to slip out. Lamps to the fore!"

  Lantern light flared, and Tantaerra saw dozens of helms and spears gleaming on that threshold. The bloodcoats were earning their coins tonight.

  "All doors and stairs guarded," a new voice called, from outside those open doors.

  "Good. Traevyn, guard these doors. No one not of us is to pass out. The rest of you: the lofts first. Search and secure, then look down to aid in searching the floor. Watch for crates that have been opened."

  A soldier who knew his business. Damn him.

  They were going to be slow, and careful, and thorough. She wasn't going to be able to escape.

  Unless clouds took the moon away, and this warehouse had what she was hoping for.

  It did.

  Her heart leaped in hope as she found the wall-rungs, and the oiled rope tied to the topmost one that held the roof-hatch firmly shut.

  The best warehouses had these; a way up onto the roof for repairs and for sun-drying damp sacks. The sun would bake her once day came again, but until then she might stay alive a little longer, if the moonlight wasn't good enough for bow-work. She was small enough to ...

  The knot undid with ease, kept from closing hard by a length of wooden branch shoved through the coils. The hatch opened almost soundlessly, and she eased herself through it, not daring to hope that moonlight flooding in wouldn't be noticed.

  Yet there'd been no shouts, yet.

  She let the hatch back down with infinite care, then rolled gently away from it, back from the roof edge, back south along the slope.

  And into something that shouldn't have been there. Something that stiffened.

  Tantaerra tried to roll away again, to get out a dagger—but a hand came out of nowhere to close like an iron clamp around her throat and haul her back again.

  Bringing her nose to nose with its owner, a man who'd been lying asleep on the warehouse roof in the moonlight.

  A man who was wearing a mask that covered his face from forehead to chin.

  "So," he whispered into her face as she struggled to breathe, his other hand pinning her arm in place, keeping her from reaching her dagger, "are you some sort of intrepid Molthuni agent? The Bloodsworn Halfling Strike Force, or some such?"

  Chapter Three

  Ten Silver Weights

  The mask didn't have to be on his face or next to his skin to whisper in his mind.

  It was covering his crotch right now, under his breeches, but he could hear it firmly and clearly. Which meant this halfling was important.

  Not that he could tell anything else about her. The mask was whispering the same word it always did.

  Luraumadar.

  Whatever that meant. The Masked was as sourly mystified as ever.

  "Well?" he hissed, giving the throat he had hold of a little shake, ere he loosened his grip from throttling to merely tight. "Will you answer me, or die?"

  "That's a hell of a way to begin negotiations," his tiny awakener croaked.

  The Masked found himself grinning. "Always begin from a position of strength," he said.

  So ...a halfling woman, probably in her late thirties, and with the lined face of someone who'd known hunger often enough, despite the fact that she still had plenty of chest and hip on an otherwise scrawny frame. From Nirmathas originally, judging by her accent, but likely gone for several years now, as the accent was only faint. Running from the local Molthuni soldiery, but who wouldn't?

  He let silence stretch to see what she'd fill it with. Shouts of bloodcoats calling to each other from the warehouse beneath them punctuated that waiting. Shouts that were getting closer.

  "Let me go," she said at last, preceding and following those words with swallowing that had to be painful.

  "And have you gut me with that knife you've been trying to reach? Or its cousin, hidden somewhere else about you? Not likely."

  "My quarrel is not with you, sir. I'm ...being pursued."

  "I am aware of that," The Masked said dryly. "I'm also aware that you've led your pursuers here, to me—and awakened me from a rather pleasant slumber that I'm in sore need of. It might be wise to be more persuasive."

  "It might be wise to let me go. Those men are out here in the night with their spears and lanterns not because of me, but because of you. You've not been subtle enough in your dealings, whatever they may be. There's a Lord Investigator come from Canorate to hunt you—because these dolts of Halidon have grown suspicious of you."

  The Masked tightened his grip a little, to remind the halfling that she was in no position to afford scorn. Nor to try for her knife again.

  "Keep your hand well away from your hilt—any of your hilts," he warned softly. "And just how is it that you know this?"

  "I listen at windows," she hissed, eyes flashing fury. "They were speaking of your dealings with Escolarr Tarlmond."

  "Have they found him, then?"

  "Was he lost? They said nothing of seeking him, only you. Tonight. And I warn you, that investigator is both smart and a winterstone-cold bastard."

  "So," The Masked told her flatly, "am I." When that drew no reaction, he asked, "I take it the warehouse below us is surrounded and being searched?"

  "You take it correctly," the halfling hissed. "They'll probably be out on this roof after us very soon now."

  "So my easiest play would be to open that hatch you came up through and toss you down to them."

  She tried to struggle, jerking and arching suddenly, seeking to slip out of his grasp with her small size, but The Masked had been expecting that, and tightened his grip cruelly. "Stop trying to get yourself killed, and give me a good reason to do otherwise," he snapped, and relaxed his grip enough to let her breathe again.

  The halfling panted for air, managing to gasp swiftly, "I'll pay you to hide me, to get me away from the bloodcoats!"

  "Oh? How much?"

 
"Ten silver weights," she spat.

  They locked gazes for a long time, as the shouts grew louder.

  Then The Masked nodded. "A paltry price for a paltry deed. I accept. With one condition."

  The roof-hatch squealed open.

  "What?" Tantaerra hissed.

  "Draw steel on me or threaten me—just once—and my fee rises tenfold," The Masked told her.

  She nodded. "I accept."

  "Good. Keep low."

  ∗ ∗ ∗

  The masked man let go of Tantaerra and rolled to pluck up something from the roof on his far side.

  It was a stone block the size of her head. He hefted it, waited, and as a soldier's head appeared under the raised hatch, threw it. Hard.

  Tantaerra winced at the dull thud of the helm crumpling, followed by a brief rattling that might have been teeth. The Masked was already clambering over her in deft haste to grab hold of his lolling-headed victim. He hauled on that head, dragging limp arms and shoulders up through the hatch far enough to let him hook the man's sword-baldric through the hatch handle.

  Then he shoved hatch and Molthuni back down, jamming the corpse in the narrow hole, and clambered back past her. "Come."

  Rubbing her throat, Tantaerra followed him. To the other end of the warehouse roof, where a ventilator thrust up into the night sky. There was a long spar tied to it, hanging down off the roof.

  "Where did this—?"

  "I put it here," The Masked interrupted her. "If you're in the habit of spewing questions, kindly hold them for a better time."

  Behind them, there were dull boomings from the hatch, then a louder, sharper one as someone slammed the butt-end of a spear against the roof from the loft below. Then a lot more of those louder, sharper booms.

  Tantaerra wrestled her attention back from them to the man she'd just hired. Rather than moving the spar to serve as a bridge to the roof of the next warehouse, he had hooked an arm around the ventilator and clawed a flint striker from his belt.

  Tantaerra saw an end of twine hanging out of the ventilator, swallowed the question she'd been about to ask, and joined him, holding her dagger against the twine so he could use the striker against it.

  With a nod of thanks, he set to work. Three tries produced sparks, and they almost banged heads together blowing into flame. And then the twine was well and truly alight.

  "Now we hurry," The Masked told his client, swinging the spar.

  "I'll go first," she told him. "I'm a lot lighter. I can tie its other end to the ventilator on yon roof."

  "With what?"

  She slapped at her belt. The Masked peered, and saw that its buckle was a clip, and the belt itself was dark cord wrapped around and around a trim halfling waist until its wearer looked a lot fatter than she truly was.

  "Go first," he agreed, "O Princess of Thieves."

  "I'm not—bah!" She waved away the rest of her protest and set off across the spar, hugging it with her arms and hiking her behind into the air so she could run along it. A shout and a hurled spear told them they'd been seen, but the spear came nowhere near the halfling, and its ascent didn't make her falter; she was across in the time it took The Masked, holding the spar steady, to look behind him once. Spear tips were bursting up through the roof back by the hatch, but the unseen soldiers below seemed to lack time and space enough to shift crates so as to let them thrust up hard anywhere else along the roof slope. Which was rather fortunate. The first wisps of smoke were drifting up out of the ventilator now, and the shouts from beneath the roof shifted into startlement and fear ...

  ∗ ∗ ∗

  The halfling was up by the next building's ventilator, unwinding cord from around herself with the grace of a dancer. The Masked set about untying the knot at his end of the spar, so they could haul it along with them to the next roof.

  More spears sailed up out of the night, to clang and clatter on the roofs well below them both and fall back into the night. It took practice to throw a spear up high with any accuracy, and it seemed this backcountry garrison hadn't done much high-hurling.

  Then his new client was beckoning him with a wave, and flattening herself down on the spar to steady it as he'd done for her.

  Not that she weighed much more than a sturdy dog, mind you. The Masked threw a last look at the loop of untied rope around his ventilator, shrugged, and started across, crawling and trying not to kick or do anything that might set the spar to sliding down the roof. This was no hero-ballad; he'd not be walking away from a fall from this height.

  More shouts, and more spears—but flames were leaping up behind him, now, and the shouting inside that warehouse was turning to screams.

  Down below, more soldiers were running. There'd be crossbows, soon.

  The spar started shifting when he was still more than an arm's reach from the roof he was heading for, but he simply abandoned all caution in favor of haste, clawing his way onto the roof before it dumped him. The halfling, Desna be praised, was clinging grimly to her end of the spar and the ventilator, straining to slow or stop its shift, and hissing an impressive stream of curses.

  "My thanks," he told her, joining her. "Let's get this untied; we'll need it to get to the next roof."

  "Now we're even," she replied, as they clawed at her cord together.

  "Oh?"

  "Taking down those three bloodcoats on the road yonder, so I could run past," she said, pointing with her chin.

  The Masked looked down at her. "What are you talking about?"

  The halfling looked confused. "You mean that wasn't you?"

  The Masked felt a sinking feeling deep in his gut. "Describe him." The words came out sharper than he'd intended.

  Taken aback, the halfling said, "I didn't get a good look, but he's got brown eyes. Why—do you know him?"

  All too well, The Masked thought grimly. That is, presuming his suspicions were correct. But explaining would only complicate matters. Instead, he said, "Lots of men have brown eyes. Come on and help me with my striker again."

  A sudden smile lit up her face. "You didn't!"

  "Yes, and the next warehouse, too. When my neck is concerned, I don't stint on diversions. If I hadn't needed them, I'd just have left them, not burnt all this down behind me. As it is, though, I've no hesitation at all in destroying Halidon's shipping district."

  His client was grinning widely now. "I'm no thief, sir, but you ...you are something of an army all by yourself."

  "You hired well, then."

  "So," he asked the halfling, "what should I call you?"

  Her grin turned impish. "'Princess' will do."

  The Masked gave her a long, steady look.

  She merely shrugged. "And what should I call you?"

  "The Masked," he told her simply.

  That earned him a long and steady look from her. Facing it squarely, he added, "It's what I've become. The name I had before is no longer important. To anyone."

  Behind them, with a sudden crackling roar, the roof of the first warehouse erupted in flame. Tongues that roared at the stars, bright gold but greenish around the edges.

  Greenish. Oils, tree oils. There must have been jars inside some of those crates in the loft.

  The Masked looked at his client, and the halfling princess looked back.

  Then in unspoken accord they turned and hurried to get to the next roof. Those flames would die down again, but right now they were more than enough light to aim crossbows by—and the soldiers who'd been searching that warehouse had already spilled back out into the night to point, and trot, and throw more spears.

  As badly as ever, but he'd only prepared one more fire, and Halidon wasn't so large that they could lose themselves in its warehouses, even if none of them had been burning.

  "This is ten silver weights I'm really going to earn," The Masked told his client grimly, as he braced himself atop the spar so she could set off along it.

  "I'm afraid so," was all she said, as she embraced the spar and started her run.

 
; Halfway across, a spear laid open the left side of her breeches as it snarled past, and she yelped—but kept right on going.

  The Masked winced. He was a much larger target.

  Behind him, the ventilator they'd just left was spewing smoke already.

  Yes, he was going to be earning this fee the hard way.

  ∗ ∗ ∗

  The masked man started across the spar before she'd had time to set herself and steady it, almost before she was off it and onto the new roof.

  Of course, it started to slip and slide, rattling down the roof he was busily departing, and not a halfling on Golarion could have held the spar once it started. Tantaerra only just had time to loop the cord lashed to the spar around the ventilator and under itself, then around her waist. She flung herself down and set her feet against the rusting metal—gods, but this warehouse was much older than the other two, roof and ventilator and all.

  The cord tightened cruelly around her as the spar slid off the roof and her body took his entire weight.

  "Urrhh," she told the stars, clenching her teeth. Gods, do not let him get feathered with arrows now, and leave me helpless, tethered to a dangling dead man, while cruel bloodcoats clamber up to drag me down before that ice-hearted Lord Investigator ...

  The cord tugged, then slackened, then tugged again. Which meant he was climbing, or kicking, or clawing his way up onto the roof.

  Her left haunch smarted where that spear had laid it open, but it was a shallow cut, a mere slice. She was more worried about her breeches—or rather, the likelihood that they'd tear further, laying bare more of her leg, and letting all the world see her anklet, where she carried her coins. Wrapped and tied, so each was held apart to prevent telltale clinking ...but anyone who'd seen a coin-anklet knew what they were at a glance.

  She'd better pay her rescuer his ten silver weights soon, and lighten the load enough that she could shift the anklet to her other leg, safely out of sight again. She'd better—

  "Agghh!" she groaned, as the cord tightened so much it felt like it was cutting her in half. She fought to breathe, fought to ...

  Suddenly there was no weight at all on the cord, and she heard the crash and hollow ringing bounce of the spar striking the ground far below.