while you're doing it. I'm not saying letting scum like Haztor Urdo go, but, um, maybe you could let me in on your plans, then if there's anything politically treacherous involved, I could at least warn you.'
Alias withdrew her hand from Victor's. Although she truly wanted to please the young lord, she was unable to resist the sarcastic comment that came to her lips. 'Maybe I should just work the Shore,' she suggested, referring to the slums just outside the city's western wall, 'since there's nothing there any merchant could want.'
'Yes. That would be good,' Victor agreed, oblivious to her sarcasm. 'The Shore is full of transients who don't like to get involved with the watch. The watch doesn't even patrol there regularly, so the Night Masks strike at the inhabitants with the most impunity.'
Alias smiled at the innocent way Victor had taken her suggestion.
'That's settled then,' the merchant lord said. 'Now, about the party on the ship tonight. You will still come, won't you?'
Alias grimaced. 'Perhaps I'd better not. The other merchant houses might object to the presence of a common little sell-sword who's arrested one of their own.' 'You know I don't feel that way. You've performed your duties with honor, and I think you deserve respect. I want to set an example by hosting the hero of Westgate on our cruise.' 'Thank you, Lord Victor. I’d be honored to accept.'
'It will be my honor to show off the most intriguing, lovely woman in all of Westgate.'
Alias laughed at the flattery. 'I've been looking forward to showing off my new earrings, so I may as well come.'
Victor leaned closer, examining the earrings. 'Three stars. They're very becoming oh you,' he whispered with his mouth so near her ear that she could feel his breath move the tiny stars. 'Might I hope you choose them in honor of the Dhostar trading badge?' 'I choose them uvhonor of you,' Alias whispered. Someone nearby coughed politely.
Alias and Victor, moved away from one another and looked up. Sergeant Rodney and the watch guard Rizzi stood at the top of the stairs; the porter stood behind them.
'His Reverence sent us to serve as escorts, Your Lordship,' Sergeant Rodney said to Victor.
'Just a moment, please,' Victor told the guards. Turning back to Alias, he said, 'I must be on the pier to greet all our guests, but I'll send my carriage to your hotel a little before sunset.'
'I'll meet you at the pier,' Alias agreed. The porter came up and hefted her box of gold on his shoulder. Alias gave Victor's hand one last squeeze before she followed her gold and her escorts down the stairs.
Eleven
Back in her room at Blais House, with the money she'd just been paid, | Alias planned what to do next. She wanted to work in the afternoon to make up for the time she'd lose tonight at the party. In the daylight she'd have to rely on a disguise, which would be easier if she went without Dragonbait. She returned to the market, where, once she'd purchased a new tunic to wear to the party, she started picking through second- and thirdhand rags. She found a stained, long-sleeved tunic to cover her tattoo, a pair of badly patched, baggy trousers to hide her scabbard, and a scarf to cover her red hair. With the addition of some mud and a layer of dust, she would pass for a drover. Back at Blais House, she lay the outfit for the party-a blue silk tunic trimmed with silver embroidery-on the bed with her new earrings and changed into her newly purchased rags. Then she headed for the Shore via the Water Gate. The city wall made more or less a half-circle around Westgate, but owing to a steep cliff in the northwest, it turned inward sharply, running along the top of the cliff until the cliff reached the shoreline. The Water Gate opened over this cliff onto a steep staircase and a path leading down to the Shore. While the Outside, the district of Westgate surrounding the city wall, was predominantly open grassland for grazing herd animals, with the stockyards of the leading merchants pressed against the city wall, the neighborhood of the Shore, wedged between the cliff wall and the sea, was a slum. It was, as Victor had said, populated mostly by transients,unable to afford the silver for board and lodging within the city walls: drovers, day workers, and down-on-their-luck adventurers. The Shore offered flophouses for a few coppers a night, and food stalls in the neighborhood sold stale bread and bruised fruits and vegetables for less. Many of the inhabitants relied on the sea for added nourishment. As Alias made her way down the steep cliff staircase, she could see hundreds of them on the beach, digging for clams and crabs.
The buildings were cobbled together from lumber scavenged from broken-down carts and driftwood from shipwrecks. None of them looked as if they could withstand a serious storm. Lean-tos, tents, and tarps filled in the spaces between the buildings. Sewage meandered through fly-lined trenches to a creek, which spilled into the sea.
What with the steep staircase and the stench, Alias could understand why the watch did not make a regular patrol of the area. Although Finder had given her detailed memories of Westgate, she had no recollection of the Shore, beyond the fact of its existence. Not even the curious, adventurous Harper bard had come down here.
Despite her costume, Alias couldn't have felt more out of place if she'd come down in a white coach pulled by six horses. People scurried ahead of her in fear, and she could feel jealous eyes following her down the street. It couldn't be her hidden weapon people feared or her rags they envied, but something she couldn't pinpoint.
From a low pen beside a ramshackle hovel came a vicious-sounding skronk. Alias peered into the pen. Inside was a mother pig and six piglets. Two of the piglets were fighting over a moldy cabbage stem. None of the piglets was plump (apparently there wasn't even enough garbage to feed them), but the two piglets fighting were just a touch less scrawny than the other four who lay, like their mother, in an exhausted slumber brought on by too little to eat and no hope of more.
I don't fit in because I look well fed, Alias realized, and willing to fight for my food if I get hungry again. The swordswoman slouched, shuffled her feet, and kept her eyes down in an effort to dispel her warriorlike appearance. She joined some people at a well and waited her turn for a scoop of water. After she drank, she sat down near a lean-to where three drovers were playing dice, with penny stakes.
As she stared up the cliff at the city wall, Alias could pick out the newer stone in the section that had been rebuilt after the corpse of the dragon Mist had collapsed on top of it eleven years ago. The wyrm had been enlarged by a magical spell at the time, and Alias shuddered, imagining how much damage the dragon must have caused when it toppled over the cliff and landed on the slum below.
She was wondering who had scavenged the ancient dragon's skull when she noticed a lean but aggressive- looking young man approaching her. He wore a new tunic of brilliant green, and Alias thought he was handsome enough to serve one of the merchant houses, until he smiled and spoke. Only half of his teeth were still in residence, and his manner and his speech were too uncouth to recommend him to such a post. Та jus' get ta the city?' he asked her. Alias nodded, keeping her eyes down. 'Gotta pay the visit tax,' he said.
'Not staying in the city,' she answered. 'Sleeping under the stars.'
'Don't matter. Gotta pay the visit tax. It's a copper a night.' 'Suppose I don't have a copper?' she asked.
'Then ya gotta stay out past the 'ill of Fangs, wit' the beasts and goblins. Wanna be safe near the city, gotta pay the visit tax.'
Alias made an elaborate display of pulling the copper coin from her boots, secretly pleased that she'd managed to convince him she was just another victim. The man dropped her coin in a sack he wore about his neck. 'Anyone else bother ya, tell' em ya paid Twig,' he said, then moved off.
It wouldn't be worth it, Alias thought, to bring him in for extorting a copper. She watched Twig 'tax' the camping drovers, then move toward the hovels around the well. At each hovel he demanded coin for every inhabitant he saw. The tax was two coppers for those in a 'real' house. Even the day workers who weren't new to the region paid Twig, though their money was probably labeled a 'residence tax' or 'insurance.'
Rather than stop Twig, Alias wanted to get a feel for how far his dealings reached. The Night Masks, she realized as she followed Twig from a discreet distance, had found a way to draw blood from stone. Even if Twig collected for a tenth of the district and paid as much as a fifty percent cut to the Night Masters, he'd earn at least
