Victor looked up at the swordswoman with a sheepish grin. “You heard Father dressing me down, didn’t you? That’s very gracious of you to provide me with an out. Still, I ought to apologize for extending an invitation I could not honor.”
“I’m sure there’ll be another chance to honor it,” Alias replied, offering Victor her hand.
Victor smiled with delight. “More than one, I hope,” he replied, clasping her hand in both of his own.
The swordswoman blushed. “We’ve kept you from your work too long,” she said. “Please, don’t feel obliged to see us back to our inn. We need to familiarize ourselves with the streets, and we really do have a previous engagement.”
Victor held her hand a moment longer. “In spite of what Durgar says, I have a good feeling about you. You’re just the hero this town needs. I know you’ll succeed.”
“I’ll do my best,” Alias promised.
The young merchant released her hand and bowed. Without further words, as if he might become overwhelmed with emotion if he spoke again, Lord Victor climbed into his carriage, took up the reins, and drove away.
“So do we have another engagement?” Dragonbait queried with amusement. “Or did you only say that so Lord Victor would return your hand?” he teased.
“I guess there’s no way around it,” Alias said. “I’m going to have to go back to Mintassan’s with you and wind up playing ‘Ask-me-another’ about the saurials.”
“So you can grill him for information on the Night Masks,” Dragonbait guessed.
“You know my methods,” Alias replied.
“Then?”
“Then, although they don’t know it yet, we have an engagement with the Night Masks. With any luck, more than one engagement.”
Eight
Engagements
Timmy the Ghast had not earned his appellation from any kinship to the undead or for his revulsion of the clergy, but rather for the simple fact that he smelled as bad as (some said worse than) a ghast. Timmy’s unique personal scent was the result of his chosen career and his less-than-fastidious attitude about his personal hygiene. Timmy was a midden man. He broke into townhouses and family quarters through the kitchen waste pits. While the thief occasionally gained access from a wood or coal cellar, the contents of the kitchen refuse never deterred him from making an entry if the midden was his only choice. Unlike other midden men, however, Timmy never felt compelled to bathe after a night’s work; the closest he came to washing was being caught in a drenching rainstorm. Consequently, while Timmy the Ghast had many coworkers, he had very few drinking companions.
Tonight Timmy had begun his evening’s work on a burglary assigned to him by the Night Masters. He was to steal a certain necklace from a certain courtier’s daughter. Although Timmy wasn’t given the necklace’s history, he assumed it had been a gift from a wealthy merchant who had imagined himself enamored of the gift’s recipient. Now, no doubt, the relationship had cooled, and the gift giver wanted to dispose of the gift so that it could not haunt him—or his wife—in the future. Timmy would be paid five hundred gold for the necklace and was free to keep any incidental plunder that came his way.
According to Timmy’s sources, the family was at a dinner engagement, the servants had been given the night off, and the household had no dogs. Timmy slithered through the tunnel he’d dug into the refuse pit and waded his way to the access door, unperturbed by the stench, the bugs, or the rats. Timmy had had two friends who had suffocated trying to sneak into a house through a chimney and one who’d broken his neck climbing into a second-story window. Timmy preferred the safety of the refuse.
Timmy climbed up into the kitchen. There was a low glow from the fireplace, and the thief let his eyes adjust to the dark. Two young children, scullery help, were curled in front of the fire, in an exhausted sleep. As he made his way out of the servant quarters, Timmy’s boots squelched along the passageway, leaving filthy tracks on the carpets. The midden man wasted no time finding the young debutante’s room and her jewelry box. The necklace, a diamond-and-ruby chain, was concealed rather amateurishly in the box’s lining. There was an inscription on the clasp, but Timmy could not read, which he realized was probably his best qualification for being hired to steal the necklace.
Timmy tossed the chain into a sack, then dumped the remaining contents of the jewelry box in with it. He slipped into the master’s bedroom and added the contents of the debutante’s mother’s jewelry box to his sack. Timmy did not bother searching for any other treasure. “Portable property only” was his motto. The bounty on the necklace and his earnings for this job, even with the fence’s cut and the tax to the Night Masters, were sufficient to keep him in comfort for weeks.
Timmy headed back for the kitchen. His teacher had gotten nicked once when he bumped into the house’s owners coming in the front door. “You won’t meet the owner in the midden,” was another of Timmy’s mottoes.
Timmy snitched a peach from the kitchen larder, wolfed it down, and left the pit on the kitchen table before he slid back into the refuse pit. He peered out of the tunnel. Slick Jack, his lookout, was not standing by the hole, which was odd. Night Masks did not abandon their posts. Timmy popped his head out of the tunnel, like a turtle from his shell, and looked around. He spotted Slick Jack across the alley, resting comfortably, unconscious, his wrists and ankles tethered with leather thongs.
Timmy the Ghast tried to back into the warm, moist darkness of the midden, but his retreat was too late. Clawed fingers grabbed him by the shoulders and pulled him from the tunnel. The thief found himself nose to muzzle with a snarling monster with a lizard’s hide and the glowing red eyes of a fiend, or so he told his mates later.
The monster, unprepared for Timmy’s overripe odor (freshened by his latest foray), began gasping and gagging and dropped the culprit.
The break-in artist didn’t hesitate, but hit the ground running. Unfortunately, he got all of three steps before someone else tripped him with a scabbard between his legs. As he tried to get his feet beneath him again, a hand grabbed him by the collar and slammed him into the wall of the house.
“Phew! This one reeks!” his captor cried. She was a muscular woman with red hair and a blue tattoo along her right arm. Her companion, the lizard monster, snarled something, and she replied, “Hang on, let’s do a little cleaning up before we wake the house.”
When the watch arrived, summoned by one of the scullery maids, they found Slick Jack tied up in the alley and Timmy the Ghast naked in a rain barrel, muttering about the unfairness of being not only nicked, but forced to wash as well.
Bandilegs collected the loot while Sal and Jojo held their dagger tips steady at their prey’s throats. It was a moxie pinch, smooth and easy. The swells, foreign traders from Turmish, had obviously assumed from Westgate’s size and prosperity that it was an outpost of civilization where they would be immune from attack. They’d been strolling the streets with their airs and their purses and their rings and had been shocked by the three youths who’d popped out of an alleyway and demanded at dagger-point that they hand over their valuables.
Bandilegs ran back down the alley with the purses and what rings could easily be pried from nervous fingers. Even with the cut for the Night Masters, there would be plenty for everyone.
Jojo and Sal backed away a few steps from the terrified merchants. Sal gave the high sign to their lookout, who faded into the darkness at the end of the street. Then she and Jojo spun on their heels and dashed after their companion. They’d traveled half a block before the merchants regained enough of their voices and their spines to begin shouting. No doubt they shouted, “Thieves!” or “Help, watch!” but since they shouted in Turmish it was hard for the thieves or anyone else within earshot to tell.