Tantaerra swung around again-in time to see an all-too-familiar shoulder and arm duck into an alley mouth. "Yes," she said bitterly. "By him."
"Then we head for those lanterns," The Masked growled.
He strode right toward the bright lanterns, and all the armed and armored men holding them.
Tantaerra dashed after him. "He's right behind us, running down the street, sword out!"
The Masked cast a quick look over his shoulder, saw their mysterious foe two streets back and closing fast, and chuckled.
"A rescue!" he shouted, sounding desperate. "Fellow men of Mereir, a rescue! We are beset by vile Telcanors!"
His cry was answered by snarls and curses, and Tantaerra saw that amid the eager, angry armed men was an improvised litter made of cloaks slung over poles. On it sagged a bandaged and bloody man whose face-through several dark and swollen bruises-she recognized. The warrior of Mereir who'd come to their room at the Hearth to try to recruit them.
The Masked pointed down the street at the brown-eyed man, sprinting with sword in hand.
With a roar, the Mereirs charged, leaving four litter-bearers hesitating with the wounded man between them.
The brown-eyed man took one look at them, skidded to a halt, spun around, and raced back the way he'd come.
Like a pack of hungry dogs they swarmed after him, shouting and waving their swords.
The Masked watched that pursuit dwindle into the night. He'd only just turned back to bid the litter-bearers farewell when shouts and the clangs of clashing swords arose from far down the street.
"They've found the Telcanors," he announced with satisfaction, and led Tantaerra away down a handy alley.
"Where're we headed?"
"A rooftop that lacks Mereirs clashing with Telcanors-and sleep," The Masked told her flatly. "Before I start snoring as I walk."
Tantaerra pointed into the gloom ahead. "That one, perhaps?"
Ahead, the alleyway was scorched with soot and awash in ashes, many wagon-tracks crisscrossing through those heaps of tattered blackness. They spilled out of the gutted back of a tall mansion that had hosted a recent fire. Fresh planking and stonework shone amid the blackened ruin, where rebuilding had begun. Night-lamps glimmered high in occupied houses beyond, shining down on what looked to be an intact roof.
"How sturdy?" The Masked wondered aloud. "Dirty work getting up there, too."
"Ladders," Tantaerra replied. "I don't think even Braganzan builders can fly."
The Masked shook his head. "Prudent builders stash their ladders high, out of reach, then take the last ladder away with them. Otherwise they'd lose every one the first night, and-"
He came to a halt, staring at the neat stowage of a dozen ladders leaned together against one wall.
"Obviously Braganzans aren't prudent," Tantaerra purred.
Her masked companion sighed. "Or they trust in the Watchguard patrols."
"That's what I said," Tantaerra said sweetly.
It took more than a little grunting effort to haul the ladder they used up onto the roof after them, but that roof felt solid enough to sleep twenty masked men and a score of halflings.
Sleep, that most elusive of Braganzan delicacies.
This time, however, they found it.
∗ ∗ ∗
Luraumadar.
"Go away," The Masked snarled, or thought he did. Was he still asleep?
Luraumadar. The mask's whisper was louder and more insistent than usual.
The Masked blinked. It wasn't dark anymore. He turned his head to stare into the strengthening light, and found himself gazing across rooftops in a chill dawn. Smoke was curling gently up into still air from more chimneys than he could count. He felt stiff and cold.
Except for just above his right hip, where he was very warm. He looked down along his body. His employer was curled up against him, her snores butter-soft, one hand over her nose. For warmth, of course. That hand had left fire-soot across her cheek.
The Masked gazed at that smudged face. Tantaerra Loroeva Klazra. A little spitfire, to be sure, yet one that he just might start to become ever so slightly fond of, razor tongue and all.
She murmured something inaudible in her dreams, stirred-and farted loudly enough to awaken herself.
She came bolt upright to glare at him, hands darting to dagger hilts. "Well, masked man? What are you staring at?"
"One of the more diplomatic patrons I've worked with," he replied, chuckling.
"Keep me less hungry and closer to a handy chamber pot and a warm and private place to make use of it, and you'll find me even more diplomatic," she snapped, elbowing him in the ribs and kicking off against his hip to put distance between them. "Great stinking human."
When he made no reply, and didn't move, she erupted. "Well? Am I going to have to find us something to eat? Who paid good silver to whom, hey?"
Ten silver weights. Not enough, of course. A hundred times that wouldn't be enough for what he'd been through, and they both knew it.
The Masked merely looked at her. She cocked her head to one side and gave him an exasperated glare.
Ever so slightly fond, yes.
∗ ∗ ∗
The builders, as it happened, had brought their own little row of covered chamber pots, and even a few filthy cloaks that could serve as a temporary privacy tent.
They hadn't, however, been quite so kind as to leave anything to eat at their worksite, so The Masked followed his nose, leading his sharp-tongued client to where the nearest smells of frying and fresh-baked bread were coming from: a ramshackle joining of three former houses that were now Thaener's Fine Lodgings. With rumbling stomachs, man and halfling sought the front door, and a meal.
Thaener was long dead, it seemed, surviving only as a benignly beaming portrait presiding over the feasting-room. He smiled down on the ravenous eating of the two guests who arrived much earlier than most, and his merry countenance changed not a whit as they sighed, patted now-full bellies and stretched contentedly, then rented a room and paid extra for a warm bath to be brought up to it.
"Your masks, and my being a halfling, make us rather too easily remembered," Tantaerra said slowly, watching steam rise after the last small-keg of water had been poured into the bath and the keg-bearers had lurched out of the room. "We should do something about that before we set about exploring Braganza."
"Such as split up and go separately?" The Masked suggested, as he securely bolted the door. "I have masks that look less like masks and more like battered old faces, if I keep a hood up to shade them."
"I …" Tantaerra's voice trailed off, and she turned away.
His patron wasn't happy about something. Something she'd rather not admit.
The Masked sighed, took off his cloak, and looked for some way to hang it to guard her precious modesty.
"What're you-oh. Don't bother." Tantaerra straightened from sniffing at the little ewer of soap-flakes. She was already half unlaced, her hair-combs out and tresses tumbling about her shoulders.
The Masked tossed the cloak aside. "So what's bothering you?"
"What d'you mean?"
"The princess," he announced to the nearest wall, "is reluctant. And even more reluctant to impart to me what she's reluctant about. In this, demonstrating that halfling women can be just as obstinate and foolish as human women."
"Masked man," Tantaerra said sharply, bared now down to the belt she was undoing, "what by the First Vault are you talking about?"
"Your obvious reluctance …right after I suggested…"
Tantaerra stepped out of her breeches, then looked up into his silence. It was obvious what he was staring at. Both of them.
She put her hands on her hips and faced him challengingly. "Yes, they're breasts. Men have them too-the gods alone know why-yet I manage to keep from staring. Somehow. If you want to feel equal in awkwardness or, I don't know, plain rudeness, take out your manserpent and I'll have a good stare at that."