The Wizard's Mask

Chapter Twenty

She ran out of wind again, staggered, and fell.

Tantaerra got up, shaking her head. She was fleeing to she knew not where, trying to run from the vivid image that would not, would not go away.

Tarram Armistrade was a monster. Truly a thing. He'd tried to control her again, to enslave her. In the end, he was just like everyone else.

Yet with every step her resolve and strength ebbed, and her anger and horror too, until she stopped, turned around, and looked back.

The Masked was still standing there, a tiny figure in the distance. Alone, his hands empty.

Tiny. Alone. Empty.

Just like her.

Tantaerra drew in a deep, shuddering breath. Then she gathered her courage and started the long, long walk back to him.

∗ ∗ ∗

"Tarram," she began, to his unmoving back. "I…I'm sorry. I reacted poorly."

The Masked stood like a statue, facing away from her, looking out over the rolling hills of Molthune. She waited, but he said nothing.

"I'm sorry," she said again, hesitantly walking around to face him. Forcing herself to walk close to him, to reach up her hand to his.

"I should have trusted you," she whispered, finding herself again on the verge of tears. "After all we've been through, after what you've done for me …I should trust you."

She reached for his hand.

He did not take it, but merely looked at it, his face unreadable again behind the mask. Not that there was much of it left to read if it had been bare.

"But you didn't." he said softly.

Tantaerra felt tears begin to leak down her face. "No, I didn't." She gripped his hand. "But I can learn."

The Masked looked down at her, blank. At last, with a great sigh, he hauled her up into his arms. "I'm sorry, Princess Tantaerra. I'm used to working alone. I shouldn't have tried to control you. Not even to help you."

Tantaerra nodded, but their heads were so close to his that she merely bumped his chin.

"I forgive you," she said, "if you'll forgive me. Will…will you take your mask off now?"

"You don't really want to see that, do you?" he asked.

"No," she admitted. "But maybe it's time we both started getting used to it."

Tarram held her silently for a long time, then told the darkening sky, "Well, this is awkward."

"Agreed," Tantaerra said. "So will you unmask?"

Tarram sighed again. "In time. Not now. I don't think Braganza is ready for what my face looks like-and neither are you, just now. Later, when we've both eaten and stepped past worry and danger, and you're bored again and back to carving me with your tongue. Then it will be time."

"I don't carve-well, I do, don't I?"

Tarram laughed. "You do. You most certainly do. And the mask stays on."

Tantaerra found herself chuckling as well. "Then put me down, please. I've been humbled enough."

Tarram Armistrade set Tantaerra gently on her feet, and bent over so they could hold hands.

They walked on together.

∗ ∗ ∗

Silence had fallen between them, but it was an easy, companionable silence again.

They walked and walked, through the now still and deserted night. It was getting darker as the moon sank low and clouds stole in, heading for the handful of lights on the horizon.

Lights that seemed somehow to have very quickly multiplied, atop walls and towers looming over them in the night.

"Braganza," her masked partner pointed out, unnecessarily.

In reply, Tantaerra waved her hand back behind them. "The inevitable pursuit," she said dryly. Then she pointed at the gates ahead. "And the inevitable armed welcome."

The Masked chuckled mirthlessly. "Let's get this over with."

"Let's," Tantaerra agreed.

The gates were closed and guarded, and in response to the sharp challenge, they demanded entrance in the name of the General Lords.

This met with the usual disbelief, but The Masked merely took a confident step forward, drew himself up to his full height, and waited in expectant silence. Tantaerra stole a quick glance at him, then did the same.

After a few cold, slow breaths of waiting, toe to toe with the commander of the guard, one of the other guards rather doubtfully pointed out, "There're only two of them. Once they're through the foregate, we have them penned, and can find out what they're really up to."

The commander wasn't about to verbally retreat from the cold refusal he'd just given, but nodded curtly. The foregate opened.

Tantaerra and The Masked were ushered into sixty feet or so of cobbled passage between the foregate and the still-closed inner gate, the massive stones of the gate-keep all around and above them, complete with firing ports everywhere.

As the foregate started to creak closed, an armored Molthuni rode up out of the night, yelling, "Stop them! Stop them! That explosion? They did that! Stop them before-"

With a grim smile, Tantaerra pointed a finger of the Fearsome Gauntlet, and smashed the man into silence.

Then she whirled at the thunder of onrushing boots, to blast down the gate guards charging from the inner gate-but The Masked hissed, "Trust me" into her ear, put his hand on the gauntlet, and snarled, "Luraumadar!"

A racing wave of magic flashed out of the magical gage. It shook Tantaerra and her partner, numbing their very teeth-but the onrushing guards fell or stumbled dazedly along the walls, then dropped to the ground. Unseen weapons clattered behind walls, and an arm appeared through one of the firing ports overhead, dangling limply.

Eerie silence fell.

Beyond the unconscious guards, the inner gate stood ajar. Tantaerra and her partner peered through it.

More silence, and no one to be seen. Cautiously they ducked through it, into Braganza. They were met by cartwheels rumbling, some echoing footfalls, and the smaller sounds of a large city largely asleep.

A door stood open, near at hand. The Masked peered into the room beyond, then stepped into it. Frowning, Tantaerra followed.

It was a guardroom, empty of people. A lit storm-lantern on the table showed them a chair overturned, among several chairs arranged around a table strewn with cards and dice, oiled rags, and whetstones. Through another open doorway they could see light-and smell food.

Boar stew, steaming in bowls on a table where men sat slumped and silent, with tankards of what looked like small beer, and handloaves of hardbread. No one in the bunkroom moved, save for quiet snores.

Suddenly ravenous, Tantaerra and The Masked rushed to the table and ate, Tantaerra taking up a great jug of beer and pouring it slowly down her throat in delight.

The belch that tore out of her after her last swallow was thunderous, and her partner's flat stare set her to giggling. He shook his head. "The gauntlet didn't kill them, you know. We don't have long."

Tantaerra promptly snatched up a full bowl and spoon, and muttered, "So eat and walk, masked man. Eat and walk."

She headed for the door, and her partner swiftly drained a handy tankard and claimed his own bowl.

∗ ∗ ∗

Night-shrouded Braganza wasn't as asleep as they'd first thought. The distant explosion had roused many, and the Watchguards on duty were concerned and frowningly alert, but no hue and cry was raised for two figures striding purposefully along with no trace of furtiveness. And what sort of thief strides the streets eating stew?

Tantaerra was almost done when they arrived at the great door of the soaring stone mansion of Lord Krzonstal Telcanor. The house guards stirred at their approach, readying weapons.

"Yes?" the guard commander snapped coldly, as The Masked strode up.

"Lord Telcanor bade us speak to him the moment we returned to Braganza," Armistrade snapped right back.

"You can wait until morning, whoever you are," the commander said flatly, eyes flickering as he took in the bowls and spoons-and the halfling. "He's asleep, and I'm not waking him."

"I'll be needing your name, then," The Masked told him calmly. "So the General Lords know who to punish. Lord Telcanor may, of course, not wait for whatever Canorate may want to do to you. He may want to appease them by doing it to you first."

The commander frowned and stepped back, making a hand-signal. In response, a row of gleaming spears were leveled to menace them.

"Well," Tantaerra murmured, "you tried. Some things never change."

"Aid, here!" the commander barked sharply, as boots scraped the cobbles behind her.

A Watchguard patrol had come by.

She and The Masked both risked looks over their shoulders, and were treated to the sight of competent-looking Watchswords spreading out carefully to block their escape.

"Your names and lawful business," the Watchguard patrol leader demanded in almost bored tones, advancing on them from behind.

By way of reply, Tantaerra whirled and flung her empty bowl into his face. The Masked threw his-still laden with enough stew to make it stick to the man's face-at a hulking Watchsword right behind the patrol leader.

There was a general roar and charge.

"You down, but Gauntlet up," The Masked told her firmly in the midst of the din, going to the street and dragging her down with him.

The gauntlet flashed under his direction, his mask echoing that burst of light-and charging Molthuni fell on their faces in a great clattering of spears and clanging of armor.

Followed by …silence.

Tantaerra looked all around. House guards and Watchswords alike had fallen, slumped and silent.

"Was it something I said?" she joked, as Tarram hauled her to her feet and headed for the front door of the Telcanor mansion.

A lone night porter was standing between the two grand rows of show armor and looking bored when they stepped inside, but he was so astonished to see a female halfling in his entrance hall that he actually bent down to peer at her.

The uppercut Tantaerra delivered snapped him right back into The Masked's roundhouse punch. It knocked him cold, but he wavered on his feet just long enough for Tarram to catch him and slow his journey to the floor into something near silent.

"The Lord might be asleep, but I'm thinking he's far more likely to be two floors up," The Masked commented. "In that audience chamber of his."

Tantaerra smiled crookedly. "Front stairs, or back?"

"Back. Fewer people for us to fight, or who can raise the alarm before we can get to them. Oh, and we leave the gauntlet here."

"And you were made Imperial Governor when, exactly? No, seriously, Tarram, I agree about the back way, but why stash the gauntlet? And where's 'here,' exactly?"

"With this," The Masked told her, tapping his mask, "I can call on its powers without them seeing it on one of us-the one of us who'll immediately be the target for anything they can hurl. And 'here' is …here."

He tapped the closed helm of the nearest suit of armor.

Tantaerra looked up and down the two impressively gleaming rows, pivoted to scan the hall and make sure no second servant was peering at them from anywhere, and asked, "What if they're enchanted? The armor, I mean. Then they can go prancing off anywhere, the gauntlet with them, and we're beyond roasted."

Her partner pointed. "Animated? With that many bolts holding them to those frames to keep them upright? Hardly."

"I am convinced," she granted, and surrendered the Fearsome Gauntlet. In a trice The Masked put it inside the helm, lowered the visor again, and stepped away. No trace of it could be seen.

"Right," she sighed. "Off we go to what's almost certainly going to be a rather unpleasant meeting. He'll try to trick us."

"He'll try to kill us," The Masked replied. "No one's succeeded yet."

"It only takes one success," she muttered back. "Lead on, Masked Fool."

He grinned, and did so.

∗ ∗ ∗

Around them, the House of Telcanor was dark and silent. They tried to keep it that way.

They saw no servants along the route they took through the vast mansion, and although they weren't certain exactly where the upper passage they ended up in gave into the rear of the audience chamber, they needn't have worried. Long before they reached it, they could see light, and hear voices and the trudge and scrape of many booted feet moving about.

As soon as he saw the open door the light was spilling through, The Masked stepped to the side of the passage and stood to attention against the wall, like a guard. Tantaerra joined him, and followed as he sidestepped his way along that stretch of the passage.

By the time they reached the doorway, they could hear that someone was angry. Someone confident, male, and not young.

The audience chamber was ablaze with light. Lord Krzonstal Telcanor stood inside, fully dressed and with a large metal goblet in his hand, looking grim. So did the handful of his guards who stood with him.

Striding back and forth before them was the owner of the angry voice: the advisor Tartesper.

"I've just come from the Bailiff of Braganza, who is…upset. He and Lord Cole Ravnagask are suspicious that the rival houses of Mereir and Telcanor might have some involvement with the recent explosion not far outside the city walls. We must be very careful to do nothing in the days ahead that might add to their suspicions."

Lord Telcanor shrugged. "They seem suspicious of everything I do. Shall I take up gardening, perhaps? Or will they think that a mere cover for burying inconvenient bodies, or some such?"

At that moment, two guards turned a corner in the distance, and came along the passage. They saw Tantaerra and The Masked listening at the open door, shouted, and snatched out their weapons.

The Masked strode through the doorway into the audience chamber as if it were his own. Tantaerra hastened to follow.

Lord Krzonstal Telcanor gaped at them, then smiled in triumph and told his advisor, "Behold! The two investigators from the General Lords I persuaded to undertake a certain mission for the glory of Braganza!"

"I do recall, Lord. Yet I look upon them now, and see no Fearsome Gauntlet."

Telcanor winced, then glared at Tantaerra and her partner. "Well? Did you recover it?"

Tantaerra glared back. "We have not. Yet."

"Yet you dare to return? You're traitors! You must have been merely posing as investigators reporting to the General Lords. Guards, kill them!"

"No, Lord!" Tartesper snapped. "These two alive protect your neck! These two dead will be dismissed as mere fabrication on your part! They must be taken to the Bailiff for questioning!"

The guards hesitated, swords half-out, and looked to their master.

Who sighed and said reluctantly, "Tartesper, you are right. As always." He waved his guards back.

Whereupon the advisor confronted Tantaerra and The Masked. "The time has come," he told them coldly, "for you to tell us who you truly are."

"Lord Investigators, reporting directly to the General Lords," Armistrade said boldly.

Tartesper shook his head, his disbelief clear, then asked quietly, "Tell me: what sleeps beneath the white tomb?"

"The greatest secret in Canorate," The Masked told him promptly.

The advisor lifted an eyebrow.

"What gate does the black key unlock?"

"The gate to Molthune's heart."

"Who was the seventh?"

Tarram's answer came a shade more slowly this time. "The Red Dragon."

Tartesper sneered at him. "A clever thief may buy or overhear one pass-phrase, or even two, but I've not found one yet cleverer than me."

He looked at Lord Telcanor. "They're no 'Lord Investigators.'"

Then he turned to the Telcanor bodyguards, and ordered, "Disarm and arrest them."

"I'd not try that, if I were you," The Masked warned, backing toward the east wall and drawing a dagger. Tantaerra moved with him, wishing she still had two hands so she could have two daggers right now.

Unimpressed, the guards drew swords and advanced.

"Keep back," The Masked warned them calmly.

One sneered, and none of them paused in their menacing advance.

Tantaerra saw her partner's mask flash; he'd called on the gauntlet. A moment later, with a sound like parchment tearing, only as loud as thunder, a rift opened across the floor of the audience chamber.

And swiftly widened, amid rumblings that grew louder and louder.

Some lamps below exploded like shattered stars as ceilings fell and walls crumpled. Several floors beneath the audience chamber were collapsing into a chasm.

Three of the bodyguards fell into the gulf with startled shouts, tumbling down through torn timbers, falling wall stones, and plaster dust. The others scrambled back from the edge of the rift.

"My home!" Lord Telcanor howled, his goblet falling forgotten from his hand to bounce on the floor, ringing like a bell-until it fell into the rift, and was lost in the widening destruction below. He swelled up in fury and pointed across the gulf at Tantaerra and her partner as if his fingers could stab them across half a room. "Arrest them!" he bellowed, "and break their arms and legs! They don't need to be able to run and fight to answer the Bailiff of Braganza!"

The Masked's mask flashed again.

One wall of the audience chamber tore open from top to bottom, leaving the room open to the night. As Lord Telcanor gaped in disbelief, a cool breeze wafted in.

Through the gap, another wing of the mansion could be seen across a courtyard, soaring and grand in the light of its many lanterns.

"It would be unwise to continue to demand such things, Lord Telcanor," The Masked told their shaken host, and pointed at that grand wing of Telcanor House.

It promptly groaned, shed a few roof slates, then slowly, but with a quickening, growing thunder, leaned forward and collapsed before their eyes, a huge swath of its front wall falling into the courtyard.

Leaving five floors of rooms torn open to the air-and Lord Telcanor aghast and in tears.

"We can kill everyone, and destroy Braganza, if we must," Tantaerra informed the Telcanors on the far side of the wide chasm that now stretched from one end of the audience chamber to the other. "Don't force us to do so."

She shot a look at her partner, lifted her hand to shield her face, and behind it hissed, "How did you do all this?"

"Badly built, this place," he muttered back. "Make the right pillar vanish, and all the rest follows."

The advisor hurled a spell at them, shouting, "Abadar demands your destruction!"

Purple flames roared out of nothingness to sear Tantaerra and her partner-but vanished right in front of their noses, leaving them standing unscathed.

"Abadar does nothing of the sort," The Masked retorted. "Just as you're no priest, of Abadar or anyone else!"

He lifted his hand, and the Fearsome Gauntlet rose into view, up through the chasm.

The advisor swiftly snapped out another magic.

Tarram Armistrade smiled. The mask pulsed, the gauntlet drank the advisor's spell-and went dark. It shuddered in midair, and with an audible groan cracked from one end to the other.

As its fragments started to fall, Tantaerra shot a look at her partner. He stared back at her, aghast.

They fled for the back passage door together.

The advisor hurled another spell after them, but succeeded only in blasting down the door and the wall that framed it. The flying fragments of that blast crushed the foremost bodyguards, who'd taken another door out into the passage to get around the rift and reach The Masked and Tantaerra, spattering the passage walls with gore.

"After them!" Lord Telcanor bellowed, his voice terrible with wrath. "Kill them!"

His surviving bodyguards hesitated for a moment, but he ran out into the passage after them, his eyes ablaze with fury.

Not waiting for him to catch up, they resumed the chase.

Too enraged to fear for his own safety, their master followed. They pounded past the smeared bodies of the fallen guards and along the passage, where Lord Telcanor flung open the door of his treasury and roared at the duty guards inside to join him, so loudly that they flinched back.

They rushed out into the passage, and their master led them, following Tantaerra and The Masked, pelting down the back stair, where-

Lord Krzonstal Telcanor came to an abrupt halt, to gawk at carnage.

The staircase below him was choked with the broken bodies of his guards. Just in time, he saw their doom and his peril-as long, wormlike arms reached down from the sloping underside of the stair, seeking to rend.

A tentacled monster was clinging to the ceiling above him, reaching for them.

Telcanor and his guards stumbled hastily back up a few steps, out of reach, as the tentacled monster clinging to the ceiling grabbed at them.

Below them on a landing, Tantaerra and Tarram put their backs to the wall.

"It's Voyvik!" Tantaerra shouted unnecessarily. "Use the mask, or something!"

Next to her, The Masked spread his hands helplessly.

Then a door on another landing opened, and blue bolts of magic streaked out, missiles that swept up and unerringly into the monster.

The terrified Lord Telcanor sobbed and clawed his way back a few steps higher.

The tentacled monster convulsed, writhing in pain. Another volley of magical missiles raced from behind the door to smite it, and it shuddered and shrank back-but when the blue radiance faded, the weakened, maddened creature reached out again angrily.

Its tentacles still couldn't reach either Lord Telcanor and his guards or Tantaerra and her partner. After straining to do so several times, they flailed about in frustration.

Then the thing of tentacles began to slowly descend the wall, moving as if it was in great pain, heading for the door where Tantaerra crouched.

"Ah, yes," came a sardonic comment from the other doorway on the landing. "That's the problem with letting the ignorant play with magic. They don't know what they're doing. Or when, for instance, they'll expend the last of an item's power. The gauntlet was a wonderful thing-but not endless."

It was Telcanor's advisor Tartesper, but his face and body were …changing. He looked more and more different with every step he took, as he strolled out onto the landing and gave Tantaerra an unpleasant smile.

She stared at him. "Karm?"

"Who else?" he replied smugly. He now looked exactly as he had when meeting Voyvik in the forest. "It's a shame that Voyvik was unable to complete his mission, but now here you are-and with my mask, I see. How convenient."

He peered up the stair at Lord Telcanor. "So, Krzonstal, would you care to negotiate your rescue? At a price of, say, half your Braganzan properties? Fitting hire, I'd judge, for your staunch new ally, the most powerful wizard in Molthune."

"Who's that?" Telcanor snapped warily.

Karm's smile vanished. "Me. I can save you-but I've no interest in prolonging the lives of headstrong fools. Or the indecisive. So make your mind up. Now."

There came a thunder of booted feet from below. All eyes turned down the stair. A door had opened at the very bottom, and a handful of Telcanor house guards had come through it. Looking up the stair, they drew their swords.

Karm regarded them calmly, then glanced at Tantaerra and The Masked.

"Now, Lord Telcanor," he repeated.

Tantaerra stealthily raised her dagger to throw at Karm, but as the blade moved, she saw the air between it and the wizard start to glow and swirl. He was not unprotected against such attacks.

Karm gave her a coldly triumphant smile. "I've never much liked halflings," he announced, raising his hands to weave a spell.

Behind him, the monster on the wall gathered its tentacles under itself and launched itself at him.

Tantaerra sprang desperately aside. Karm's smile widened as he watched her.

He was still smiling when the monster hit him.

He staggered, tentacles flailing at him, tearing and rending. Karm got his spell off, his magical missiles gutting the falling beast even as his hands were dashed down by its descending bulk-but its tentacles were already wrapped around his body, and in its agony it tore him apart. One wrenched his head around sideways with a crack, others tore off hands or fingers still glowing blue-and then the great bulk came down on the wizard's body with a wet thud.

Tentacles lashed and quivered, then started to change.

Before their eyes, the tentacled monster shrank back into a broken-limbed, sprawled Orivin Voyvik.

The Nirmathi laughed weakly. "I guess this was what Mahalagris really wanted all along."

Tantaerra advanced on him, her dagger ready, but the Nirmathi gave her a crooked smile. "I'm no harm to you, little heroine," he gasped, through bubbling blood. "I'm dying. If you haven't noticed." He shuddered, blood running freely from his nose and mouth now. "Dying with honor, at least."

"Oh?" she asked warily, as The Masked, dagger drawn, came to stand protectively beside her.

"I betrayed my country by taking Karm's pay," Voyvik gasped. "I thought I could bring him to our side. Get him to use the gauntlet to end the war. But it doesn't matter now. I've cleaned up my mess. I can die a true Nirmathi."

"You can," The Masked agreed firmly.

Voyvik managed a bloody smile. "Nirmathas forever!" he shouted.

And died.

Tantaerra looked at his staring eyes and the blood still running from his slack mouth. Shivering, she shook her head and turned away-only to catch sight of Karm's face. The wizard's eyes were still moving, though his twitching lips made no sound. He was still alive!

Well, she could do something about that. Her dagger flashed down, again and again.

The Masked let out a startled shout behind her-half astonished, half delighted. Tantaerra looked up, wiping gore from her eyes.

Tarram Armistrade was holding out his mask, his nightmare of a face clear for all to see. The mask was crumbling, little glows flaring and fading all over it, darkening as the mask itself darkened.

"Look!" he cried delightedly, waving it at Tantaerra. "Karm must have bound this to himself, somehow! It's dying with him!"

The mask crumbled away into dust, and the man who'd worn it for so long threw back his head and roared out incoherent exultation.

Happily, Tantaerra collapsed, falling into waiting oblivion.

∗ ∗ ∗

Tarram hastened out the front door of Telcanor House with Tantaerra in his arms, and hastily peered up and down the street. Telcanor's guards had been too stunned to react as he'd barreled through them, but that wouldn't last for long. And with all the noise he'd made destroying parts of Lord Telcanor's mansion, he could hardly dare hope that no one else in Braganza had-

Oh, they'd heard, all right. What looked like most of the garrison of Braganza was hastening down the street right now, lanterns swinging in their haste. Some of them had been roused in such a hurry that they'd forgotten the spears they loved so much.

Tarram drew back against the wall and looked around for cover. Some of the rubble had fallen clear across the street, and there was a huge heap of it flanking the door, where part of the front wall of the grand house had collapsed outward. Builders, these days …

He ducked behind it, stretched himself out on the ground with the unconscious halfling in his arms, and played dead.

From under his arm, peering out beneath his eyelids, he could see the mountainous armored form of Onstal Zreem hastening along the street, at the head of what seemed like a small army of Braganzan soldiers.

Zreem peered up at the devastation, shook his head, strode up to the open front door-and was almost bowled over by a wild-eyed Telcanor house guard who came sprinting out of the ruined mansion.

"What's happened here?" the giant bodyguard demanded sharply, catching hold of the panting and terrified Telcanor and halting him effortlessly in mid-run.

"We're …all doomed!" the guard panted. "Tentacled thing! Everyone dead! Halfling and man in a mask-magic-hurled down half the mansion!"

He tore free of Zreem's grip and fled out into the night, right past the astonished soldiers.

"Well, now," Zreem growled, waving an imperious hand for the soldiers to follow him as he stepped inside. They did, all sixty-some of them.

Halfway through that procession of clanking men and swinging lanterns, Tantaerra came to and quietly slapped her way free of Tarram's grasp. "We need to get back inside!"

"What?!" The Masked whispered incredulously.

"I have to see what happens," she whispered back.

Tarram stared back at her. Then his horror of a face twisted in a grin. "We could join those soldiers as a rearguard."

"Yes!" she agreed, and they did, keeping to the shadows behind the tail end of the procession. The bodyguard led the way warily, calling for Lord Telcanor from time to time and finding the occasional bewildered servant. It took some time of crossing grand chambers and shattered ones, dim in the waning moonlight, but eventually they came upon a few house guards standing on a body-strewn stair comforting the terrified Lord Telcanor, who sat huddled on a step, staring at the darkness with terrified eyes.

"Zreem?" he asked, almost disbelievingly.

The bodyguard looked down at the humbled man on the steps. "Well, Lord," he said rather disapprovingly, "you give me the night off, and I return to find your house in some disrepair. You might have told me you were contemplating redecorating."

He turned to look at the soldiers behind him-and his eyes immediately locked on Tantaerra and The Masked, staring straight through the concealing shadows. "I see your Lord Investigators have returned as well," he added dryly. "I hope you gave them a suitable welcome."

Lord Telcanor covered his face with his hands and collapsed into sobs.

∗ ∗ ∗

It was a bright and breezy day, and the unmarred guest bedchamber high in the Telcanor manor looked grand.

Onstal Zreem had firmly closed the door and ordered the soldiers outside to take themselves out of earshot.

Then he'd turned back to the man with the ruined face and the halfling with one hand, and ordered them to tell him everything.

Tantaerra could tell he knew he'd get far from that, but in the end, he seemed satisfied with what he'd heard.

She held up the rings they'd taken from the Shattered Tomb, hoping they'd be payment enough for a priest of Braganza to restore her missing hand.

Zreem gave the gems a wry smile. "These are pretty finger adornments, not magic. Nor are the stones worth more than the cost of a few good meals."

Wordlessly Tarram handed the giant a few blackened pieces of the gauntlet he'd found, but Zreem handed them right back.

"Very little magic left there," he said. "You didn't take very good care of it."

He peered at Tantaerra's exposed stump and rubbed his chin. "Not much magic-but maybe enough. Get the pieces you've got reforged, and resized in the doing, and it might make a handsome replacement, jointed and mated to your tendons so it can hold things at your bidding. It'll be expensive; I hope you've saved your coins."

"We-" Tarram blurted out, then ran out of words.

The man-mountain of a bodyguard favored him with a calm, cold gaze, and waited.

Tarram chose his words carefully. "We slew a dangerous monster, we killed Mahalagris and his traitorous apprentice … we saved this city."

"Did you?" Zreem asked coldly.

The silence that followed was long and tense. The bodyguard broke it almost gently. "Don't push, Tarram Armistrade. In case you haven't noticed, the powerful push back."

Tarram opened his mouth to reply, then slumped down dejectedly, not knowing what to say.

"However," Zreem continued, "what I told you about spells that would kill you if you abandoned your mission, back when you rode out of Braganza? An utter lie. And with Tartesper gone, there's no one left to twist it into truth."

"Why are you telling us this?" Tantaerra demanded. "You're Telcanor's bodyguard!"

To her surprise, the big man smiled.

"Am I?" he asked. "Then I suppose I'd best go find his body."

With that he turned and left the room, leaving Tarram and Tantaerra staring astonished at the closed door.

∗ ∗ ∗

Tantaerra held her new metal hand up to the light. It would take a while to learn to control it, and her forearm ached with the unaccustomed weight and effort, but …she had a hand again!

She waggled her fingers. They clattered, just a little. She'd have to steal some oil.

Or, no, they could buy some, now. The smith and priests who'd crafted it had taken most of their reward money, but they still had a bit left over.

Laden with food, Tarram couldn't see her waggling her fingers.

Poor Tarram. With Mahalagris and Karm both dead, the curse might well be broken, but the damage it had done remained. She'd wanted to try getting his face healed by the priests, but there had only been enough money to fix one of their disfigurements, and he'd insisted that she be first. After all, he said, they could earn-or steal-the rest of the money they needed faster with four hands than three.

"There remains," he was saying, "the prudent matter of getting out of Braganza before the Bailiff can have all his guards find us and flay us alive, or whatever is customarily done to people who falsely claim to be investigators working for the General Lords."

"I'm sure you'll think of something," Tantaerra replied happily. "Then we can-"

She stopped abruptly.

A familiar looming armored figure was blocking their way, leaning casually against the frame of the doorway they'd been heading for, massive arms folded across an even larger chest.

"One task remains," Onstal Zreem told them calmly. "There's something I need from you."

Tantaerra felt her stomach drop. She'd known it was too good to be true-the reward, the exoneration. All from this Zreem. Neither she nor Tarram had seen Lord Telcanor since the staircase.

"Of course there is," she spat. "You damned Braganzans and your games. Have you come to conscript us for Telcanor again?"

"No," Zreem said simply. "For Imperial Governor Teldas himself."

"Hah!" Tantaerra scoffed-then stopped as she saw his expression. Slowly, she asked, "Who are you?"

"The Imperial Governor has lately grown irritated with Braganza's wastefulness," he said. "Telcanors, Mereirs, Lord Ravnagask's ceaseless building. As such, he's taken the prudent step of quietly placing people of his own in positions of influence."

Tantaerra's mouth dropped open. "You're a Lord Investigator. A real one."

"Yes," Zreem said. "And you can be as well."

"Both of us?" Tarram interrupted sharply.

"Both of you," Zreem confirmed. "As a team. Reporting to the General Lords, and fairly well paid to travel Molthune and search for foreign spies and disloyal Molthuni."

Tarram and Tantaerra gaped at him, then at each other.

"I should point out," Zreem continued, almost to himself, "that both the Telcanors and the Mereirs still want you dead. And Lord Ravnagask is likely to be looking for a politically convenient scapegoat for the recent troubles. Naturally, anyone truly working for the Imperial Governor would be beyond their reach."

Tarram eyed the mountainous bodyguard. "I'm curious: why does your master-your true master, I mean-allow all this? Why did you let us reach Braganza with the gauntlet?"

Zreem's smile widened. "Ambitious men become a nuisance if they go too long untested. And every ruler has his critics, but the ruler of Braganza needs testing every bit as much as the most ambitious men who dwell in his city. It would not do to leave a city so close to Nirmathas in the hands of someone …inadequate."

"He lets them all kill each other to keep them from challenging his authority?" Tantaerra asked. "And to see if Lord Ravnagask is any good at his job?"

"I see," Tarram replied slowly. He looked at Tantaerra. "Well? What do you think?"

"Becoming a Lord Investigator?"

"Yes."

"What do you think?"

"I believe I'd enjoy it very much. If we're together."

Tantaerra's smile was slow in coming, but dazzling when it arrived.

"Then, Tarram Armistrade," she announced, "I believe I feel the same way."

∗ ∗ ∗

It was another clear, dry night, of a steady breeze and bright moonlight.

Tantaerra looked back, but Braganza was lost behind the hills, a good day's ride west of them now, on good, formerly Telcanor horses.

She and Tarram had eaten dinner and banked their fire, and were about to bed down. First watch was his.

She raised the dregs of her last mug of broth to him. "All hail Tarram Armistrade, newly ordained investigator for the General Lords."

He gave her back the same toast, and they drained their mugs in unison.

Tantaerra reached for her blanket, then stopped and turned back to her partner. He was wearing a new mask.

"Tarram," she asked quietly, "won't you take your mask off?"

He looked at her. "Would you go naked if I asked you to?"

She blinked. "Yes. Yes, I would." She started to pull off her jerkin.

He put out a hand to stop her, shaking his head.

"It was a metaphor! I was asking about your limits, not making a request."

She looked at him, then murmured, "Unhand me, you fool." Then she unscrewed her metal hand and held up her stump, thrusting it challengingly into his face.

He regarded her silently, then pointed at his mask in a silent question.

"Please," she whispered.

He reached up and took it off. Eyes steady, she took a good long look at his ruined face.

Then carefully, deliberately, she caught hold of his hand, drew him down to her height, and kissed him.

When at last their lips parted, he was the first to speak. "Tantaerra-"

She thrust her empty mug into his hands, then spun away and returned to her bedroll. "You have first watch," she reminded him. "Good night, friend."

"Good night, little one," The Masked replied fondly.

"Little one?" she snapped.

He chuckled. "Little one," he proclaimed, pointing at her, then pointed at himself. "Faceless one."

She snorted. "Good night, jester. Or rather, Lord Investigator!"

"At least until we're safely across the border," he agreed, and they laughed together.