The Wizard's Mask

Chapter Six

Tantaerra wasted no time in cursing, but made for the window, sneezing hard-only to find three grim-faced men had appeared outside on the roof. Heavily armored and menacing, they held hand crossbows. Cocked, loaded, and pointed at her.

She skidded to a halt, then sighed and waved at The Masked to open the door.

He did so.

In the narrow passage outside, bearing a hooded lantern that gave off even less light than the innkeeper's lone-candle lamp had done, was a grand-looking armored warrior with half a dozen armored fellows at his shoulders-all aiming more loaded hand crossbows past him at The Masked.

"Yes?" The Masked asked gently. "Can I help you?"

The man took a step forward. The Masked held his ground.

The man took another step forward, bringing them chest to chest, almost brushing noses.

"I am here," he announced grandly, "to recruit you."

His gaze slid to Tantaerra, now standing truculently on the bed with hands on hips, face half-hidden behind netting. "Both."

"Recruit us into-or for-what?" she asked boldly.

The warrior regarded her for a moment, then turned back to The Masked.

"It talks," he told the masked man, almost resentfully.

"It's something of a princess," The Masked told him calmly. "Recruit us for-?"

"To stand with House Mereir."

"Ah. Mereir or Telcanor, I see. The problem is, I don't see."

"We don't see," Tantaerra corrected crisply.

The warrior frowned. "Your deaths would be regrettable," he murmured, "seeing as they could be avoided …"

"Sir," Tantaerra said quickly, before The Masked could speak again, "we know Molthune to be a land of order, and of law. In that spirit, we'll agree to nothing until we know what we're agreeing to. Before standing with House Mereir, we insist on being told what's going on in Braganza."

"Indeed," The Masked continued smoothly, as Tantaerra's breath ran out. "We are successful traders, able to sway many allies-other traders, across Golarion-to the side of Mereir. Yet we won't do so unless we understand the true state of affairs here in Braganza. Do not all Braganzans obey the Imperial Governor, and the General Lords?"

The grand warrior's face tightened. "But of course."

"What, then," The Masked asked, "does Lord Cole Ravnagask think of this rivalry?"

"Lower your bows," the warrior ordered curtly over his shoulder, ere asking politely, "May I come in?"

The Masked bowed and stepped back, waving him into the room.

Tantaerra shot her hireling a dubious look, but the warrior's entrance did bring him within reach, where he could be snatched to serve as a shield if bolts started whizzing about.

"You request answers, so permit me candor," the warrior began, stepping past them to the far end of the room. Turning to face them, he hung his lantern from a ceiling-hook obviously intended for that purpose, raised his hands, and launched into what sounded like a speech he'd given many times before.

"There have arisen," he announced, "two rival families in Braganza-ambitious, capable, and militarily accomplished, risen in power far above others. I speak of the houses of Mereir and Telcanor, who hate each other heartily. Yet many of both families detest and despise Lord Cole Ravnagask still more. As do most Braganzans, if truth be told. The Lord of Braganza is widely thought to be …crazed."

"Because?" Tantaerra prompted.

The warrior raised a quelling hand, and went on. "Though workers hired by Mereir and Telcanor do most of the ceaseless construction work ordered by the Lord of Braganza, and so enrich both houses, we and the Telcanors both see Ravnagask's mania for building as an endless leeching of the wealth and power of Braganza. How is Holy Abadar exalted by this raising of empty grandeur? The dust and din, the streets closed or cluttered with wagons and building stone, all this wasted work …it drains our wealth, and robs Braganza of its rightful greatness and preeminence in Molthune."

"So if Mereir and Telcanor are agreed about this, what is there to choose between them?" Tantaerra asked, trying to sound bewildered rather than letting any hint of her rising anger into her voice.

The warrior frowned. "No one who dwells or toils in Braganza can be neutral. Those who claim to stand with neither Mereir nor Telcanor face the ire of both, and last not long. So let me acquaint you with the bright nobility of House Mereir-and the bottomless villainy of the Telcanors."

Tantaerra bent forward as if eager to hear every word, and saw The Masked doing the same. Like her, he was really shifting so they could trade silent glances with each other.

They were well and truly trapped. If they wanted to live to see morning, they would have to convincingly declare themselves for Mereir.

The grand warrior was a good, stirring speaker, and wasted little time in recounting the staunch and patriotic loyalty of House Mereir and the cynical falsity of the rival Telcanors, who would do or say anything to gain more coin and wielded their power in petty ways, like a cruel slaver fond of the whip.

It was some time before he ran out of breath and florid phrases-and Tantaerra lost no time in loudly and firmly declaring herself for Mereir, trying to sound deeply inspired. The Masked echoed her with a hasty urgency that seemed to convince the warrior that he'd truly won them both over.

"So the city shall know we stand with House Mereir?" Tantaerra asked, one hand raised to her breast and throat as she'd seen Canorate's aristocratic ladies do, to demonstrate that they were so moved as to be on the verge of swooning.

The grand warrior bowed low to her. "Indeed, youn-er, exquisite lady. Well before first light, I assure you."

"Good, good," The Masked said heartily. "Yet pray tell us, sir-by the Master of the First Vault, I don't even know your name-why us? Surely not every newcomer to your city receives this welcome."

"No," the man admitted. "Indeed, educating travelers, or even conscripting the lower classes, is rarely worth the effort. Yet the most perspicacious innkeeper downstairs recognized you from one of your previous stays as a man of …particular talents, shall we say, and informed us of your presence, so that we might persuade you to stand with House Mereir."

"Ah," said The Masked flatly, losing some of his boisterous persona. "And perhaps you could tell us exactly what standing with House Mereir entails?"

"Of course," the warrior replied. "This-" He made a very brief and swift gesture with three fingers. "-signals you are of Mereir. Whereas this-" He made a far different curving, slicing gesture. "-is the mark of Telcanor. You must not do business with anyone of Telcanor, and aren't to consort with them or even converse with them. Be aware that Braganzans know who stands with whom, and will be watching you to make sure-"

The Mereir recruiter broke off abruptly as someone struck him from behind-one of his own armsmen, toppling like a felled tree. The others were also falling, some struggling to use their handbows, bolts peppering the low ceiling beams as they collapsed.

The Masked flung himself aside, seeking the floor with enthusiasm. The hail of handbow bolts that had felled the Mereirs hummed into the room like a swarm of angry hornets.

Tantaerra dove under the bed, snatching at the chamber pot to swing it around behind her like a shield, because the roof outside the windows had abruptly become a savage battlefield of struggling men. A rude interruption no doubt supplied by a force loyal to House Telcanor, who seemed to well outnumber the Mereirs.

That window wouldn't hold for long. Tantaerra hastily wormed her way forward and found herself nose to nose with The Masked-at about the same moment the window shattered with a deafening crack, wooden frame and all. Two men, wrapped around each other and furiously stabbing with already blood-drenched daggers, fell through it into the room.

"Let's get out of here!" Tantaerra hissed.

"Trying to stay alive long enough to do that," the masked man replied cheerfully, watching men of Telcanor stream along the passage and into the room, stabbing down viciously at the Mereirs underfoot. "Our way out'll have to be the roof, unless-"

A charging warrior of Telcanor reached down to gut him, forcing The Masked to thrust a hasty boot low into the man's belly and loft him helplessly forward into a wall. The resulting room-shaking crash abruptly cut short the Telcanor's rising cry.

Tantaerra viciously smashed another warrior's ankles out from under him with the chamber pot, precipitating a helpless fall into the edge of the bed, ending in another mighty crash as both bed and the head that struck it collapsed. "Battle rages," she murmured. "As usual."

A Mereir-or was it a Telcanor? — swung a sword at her with a snarl, and she sprang aside and into a panting whirlwind of ducking and dodging amid the brawling mayhem as sword after sword thrust at her.

The room seemed to be full of more men than it should be able to hold, even with the bed down and broken and the window a gaping hole out into the night. There was a lot of sharp steel, blood everywhere, and soldier after soldier going down. Which meant she and The Masked might soon be the only targets left.

Tantaerra flung herself across the room to where The Masked was taking down Telcanors with deft efficiency.

"You promised to hide me," she reminded him, slamming the chamber pot down on the foot of one assailant. "Well, look at all these brawlers! I want my ten silver weights back!"

The only reply she got was a short, derisive laugh as The Masked fenced with one warrior and tripped the man clutching his chamber-pot-injured foot into a fall that made the Telcanor's head bounce off the floor right in front of Tantaerra. Gleefully she landed on that head and helped it to bounce several times.

The Masked shoved the warrior he'd been crossing blades with back over the one Tantaerra had just rendered senseless, then spun to pluck her up under one arm and bounded to the window. Or rather, to where the window had been.

Shouts arose from Telcanors who saw the incipient escape, but the men in their way out on the roof were too busy grappling and stabbing each to intercept the masked man ducking through them.

The Masked shouldered one aside, knocked another sprawling, and sprinted up the gently sloping roof into the night. The adjacent roof was lower and an easy leap, but his landing was thunderous, and caused muffled crashes in the unseen rooms beneath him-as well as a certain sagging unsteadiness under his boots.

The Masked hastily relocated to the ridge-run of this older and less sturdy roof, where he set down a cursing, spitting Tantaerra and hissed, "Lead the way!"

Still snarling protests at being snatched up like a toy or pet, Tantaerra found a drainpipe that seemed sturdy enough to support a man-at least briefly-and swarmed down it.

Ahead of her was a great dark stretch of Braganza, probably empty building after empty building, and although she very much wanted to keep to the roofs and so avoid Watchguard patrols, she just couldn't see well enough to safely judge distances and the slope and condition of roof tiles-especially with a larger, heavier human lumbering in her wake.

"Seek dark places," she murmured. Of course, the thief's maxim wasn't just advice to someone wanting to hide-it was also a lure to make those trying to hide stray within reach of deadlier creatures who dwelt in the darkest places.

"But then," The Masked murmured in her ear, "perhaps we are two of those deadlier creatures, hmm?"

Tantaerra gasped, not realizing she'd spoken aloud.

They left the drainpipe behind and sprinted along a dark and unfamiliar alley. On all sides, crashes from nearby rooftops marked the heavy-booted landings of pursuing warriors.

They fled into the darkness, The Masked letting Tantaerra choose their route. Despite the ever-nearer footfalls behind them, she slowed enough to make her hastening quiet. More or less running blind, she avoided any lights she could, and tried hard not to let the unfolding choices of streets and turns force her into circling back toward Harl's Hearth.

"Patrol," The Masked panted abruptly, dragging her back from a corner she'd been about to duck around.

Tantaerra's temper flared-if he knew Braganza so well, why wasn't he leading? — but she set her teeth, kept silent, and chose another way, this one a narrower, reeking back alley.

Behind them, a sudden shout marked one of their Telcanor chasers blundering into the midst of the Watchswords on patrol. The ringing clang of clashing swords arose, then more shouts.

The alley opened out into a street that lacked unpleasant smells, but seemed full of heaps of lumber, building stones, and not-yet-erected scaffolds. "Seemed" because it was too dark to see anything properly.

Thanks to the Prince-Archbanker's endless construction, entire blocks of Braganza were evidently sprawling mazes of mostly empty buildings. Which if they weren't guarded or patrolled, probably served as temporary lairs for local thieves, fugitives-and perhaps exhausted builders, or visitors who didn't want to declare for Mereir or Telcanor.

All of this lumber and stone should be guarded, and Tantaerra reached out a hand to tap The Masked's thigh in warning.

He bent to murmur into her ear, "There'll be night-guards at either end of a stretch of this street, likely. I think we just waded through their privy."

"So?" she muttered back.

"Shall we hide among some of these builders' heaps, and see if some of our pursuers find the guards for us?"

Not such a bad idea. She seemed to have chosen her hireling well.

"We shall," Tantaerra told him. "Choose our hiding place."

Without word or hesitation The Masked turned left, felt his way past a long heap of roof slates and a row of barrels, then found a hard-trampled path that hooked around behind the barrels and ended in a little area with a table and some upended half-buckets obviously serving as chairs. There was a faint smell of spilled wine and strong cheese.

"Sit," he suggested. They sank onto adjacent buckets, sagged into silence, and waited.

"What if this place gets searched properly?"

The Masked shrugged. "Too many 'what ifs' keep you from doing anything in life. Think less, and do more. The gods can decide who lives and dies without any help from our over-careful planning."

"A life-view I've heard a time or two before," she replied-and yawned, suddenly tired. "And would be more interested in hearing again after I'd had a good night's sleep. Hopefully somewhere that wouldn't end with me spied upon, or clapped in chains, or branded on my behind for Mereir or Telcanor."

"Forehead," The Masked corrected her. "Insolent slaves get branded on their foreheads."

Tantaerra yawned again. "More fascinating lore, masked man. Tell me in the morning."

∗ ∗ ∗

A prodding finger found her ribs a long and silent time later, and she struck it away sharply. "No, I'm not asleep. I just want to be. It's quieter; have they finished killing each other yet?"

"No," The Masked whispered. "In fact, they're searching the stree-"

"More here, sir!" came a crisp, loud voice that rang with satisfaction, startlingly close, as a suddenly unhooded lantern flared blindingly. "Hiding back around-urrrkh!"

Satisfied that a Watchsword communicates far less articulately with the end of a freshly cut floorboard thrust hard into his throat, The Masked used the plank to ruthlessly drive the gurgling defender of Braganza over backward, loudly shattering the lantern. He and Tantaerra sprinted out of their hiding place and across the now dimly lamplit street.

"There!" someone shouted. "After them!"

"Again?" Tantaerra sighed. "Don't any Braganzans ever sleep? Or do they save their snoring for broad day when they're up ladders and scaffolds, raising fresh edifices to stand empty to the greater glory of Abadar?"

The Masked was loping along just ahead of her, familiar worn bootheels flashing, and she contented herself with following him, dodging when he dodged.

He ran right past a pile of stained wooden forms, mallets, and old rope, then a cluster of barrels, only to suddenly stop at a second stand of barrels, heave one out of a cross-cradle, and set it to rolling with a dull thud and sloshing sounds.

Tantaerra leaped for the stars, only just in time, coming down beyond the barrel. It rumbled on across uneven cobbles, back the way they'd come, and she hastened to get past The Masked as he wrestled more barrels over with various crashes and sent them after the first one.

"First lot were sand," he panted, "but these're water and only half-full …we'll see how good at jumping these Watchswords are!"

Behind them rose the first startled shouts, thuds, and pained groans and curses.

Not all that good, evidently.

There was still enough lamplight for Tantaerra to see The Masked turn away, snatch up something from the ground, and hurry for a dark gap in the night-shadowed walls ahead. Another alley mouth.

"Halt!" a man's voice snapped out of it, as they came running up. "I thought you'd flee this way! In the name of Lord Ravnagask, stand and yield!"

A drawn sword flashed out to underscore the commands. The Masked parried that blade with something in his hands-then leaned forward and dropped it, with some care.

There came a thud, a wild howl of pain, and the clang of a dropped sword as the Watchsword bent to clutch at his crushed toes, boot still caught under the roof-slate The Masked had so thoughtfully gifted him with.

Then they were past and sprinting hard into deeper darkness, skimming unseen stone walls with their right elbows as they went.

The clangs and crashings were all coming from behind them now, and growing fainter.

"Slow, now," The Masked murmured, an instant before Tantaerra had been about to say the same words. They went from running to walking, trying to pant as quietly as they could, as they crossed another street and then another, their alley wider and straighter now. All around soared dark and empty stone mansions, tall and new and splendid. Twice The Masked halted suddenly and crouched low, peering into the night ahead.

"Watchswords?" Tantaerra hissed, the second time.

"No. Rats. The human sort. Lairing in these empty houses, and coming out at night to forage."

"Steal, you mean."

"Such candor, little one!"

"Cut the cleverness, masked man, and devote your wits to finding us a safe place to sleep! Preferably before the sun is up!"

"Ever the loving ally," The Masked sighed.

"Ever the overconfident scoundrel," Tantaerra shot back.

"Thank you," he said grandly, bowing as if she'd paid him the greatest of courtly compliments.

Tantaerra gave him a snarl. "Well? Safe sleeping place?"

"Being as we don't know the local sewers and cellars, and the rooms aboveground house honest citizens or their less law-abiding kin, that leaves us roofs as our best shelter-being as it doesn't look or smell like rain soon."

"Agreed. So find us the best roof."

The Masked leaned close to murmur in her ear, "I work best in silence."

Tantaerra nodded and gave it to him, and he strode on.

There will come a time, she thought, when I don't have to be always running, always fighting. When I can lounge around, and doze, and not have to be always on my guard. I just hope that time comes before I'm on my deathbed.

Tantaerra left off that line of thinking as she saw a faint reflection off something metallic in front of her. She whirled around. The lanterns of a Watchguard patrol had turned a distant corner, and were coming closer.

"Whither now, masked man?" she hissed.

"Wait and watch. Our safest sleeping place will be one they've searched, and so won't search again. Unless, of course, you snore loudly."

"I do not-" Tantaerra caught hold of her temper with both hands, then whispered icily, "Know, sirrah, that ladies do not snore."

"So I've heard, though I can say from tiresome experience that some do. Yet I wasn't speaking of ladies. I was speaking of you."

Tantaerra gave him her best glare.

The lanterns arrived at a swift trot, voices rising in gruff excitement, and a Watchsword barked an order that brought many swords from sheaths.

"So?" Tantaerra hissed. "Just where do we hide, hey?"

The Masked shrugged. "We don't. Come on."

"There!" a Watchsword bellowed promptly. "Fleeing from us!"

"A man and a boy!" another Watchsword barked. "Take them for questioning!"

The heavy-booted charge sounded like a stampede of frightened oxen. It was quite loud enough to cover Tantaerra snarling into The Masked's ear, "What happened to waiting until they checked the building, then hiding?"

"New plan."

Tantaerra ran after him, seething. "Do you always act the reckless fool?"

"No," The Masked replied calmly. "Only when I must." He flung himself around a half-seen corner and added, "Since I entered your service, it's seemed a 'must' fairly often. That might just have something to do with your act, little one."

"You," Tantaerra seethed, "are the most gods-damned annoying-"

Some of these Watchswords were fast. They were right behind Tantaerra now, and she swallowed the curses she felt like spitting and saved her breath for scampering. Really scampering.

They charged into a pitch darkness, and The Masked gave a grunt that sounded like he'd been hurt, followed by a crash as someone slammed heavily into a wall-and then the thunder of the onrushing Watchswords.

Tantaerra shrank back into a corner, trying to look small-and then blurted out an involuntary "Eep!" as someone grabbed her by the back of the neck, half hair and half her gorget-collar, and pulled her down and back, through a hole or panel she hadn't known was there, and down, down-

They were falling down a dark shaft-no, riding something that squealed, as something else hissed past her ear …

"It's me, stop struggling," The Masked said in her ear. "And watch where you wave that knife. People get hurt that way."

He was standing atop a dumbwaiter, riding it down its shaft, its rope hissing past. Very quickly, which meant-

The crash as it hit the bottom of the shaft was deafening, teeth-jarring, and ended in loud splinterings as The Masked's boots went through the top of the wooden dumbwaiter box.

He kicked his way free, the last kick smashing open the doors at the bottom of the shaft and striking senseless a Watchsword on the other side of them, who'd been rushing to snatch them open.

That left an escape route that The Masked took without hesitation. And being as he hadn't let go of Tantaerra, she took it too, up an earthen ramp cluttered with wheelbarrows into the slightly less dark night, where three Watchswords had time only to turn and shout and start after them before they were out, along the street, and starting up a promising-looking drainpipe attached to the wall of the nearest dark mansion.

The masked man climbed one-handed with a speed that astonished Tantaerra. Halflings owned drainpipes, not hulking humans who wore masks and manhandled those who hired them and-

This empty mansion had a gently sloping roof split by five towers, a square of four around a higher central spire. The Masked headed across it in surefooted haste.

Only to almost run into someone coming around the nearest tower. Someone whose brown eyes looked all too familiar.

The man who'd been on that temple roof in Halidon. His mouth fell open in surprise, then closed again in a cold smile.

He stepped forward, a long, wicked dagger in his hand.