Masquerades - Kate Novak [14]
Mintassan shook his look of surprise at Alias's self-announced entrance and smiled broadly. "There, Jamal, see. There was a perfectly rational explanation. Pleased to meet you, Alias. I'm Mintassan the Magnificent, though my friends call me Mintassan the Mad." Mintassan offered his hand, and Alias accepted it in her own.
Mintassan was tall with broad shoulders, but somewhat overweight-his gut parted the center of his vest. Nothing, Alias thought, that a few laps around the Sea of Fallen Stars couldn't take care of. Perched on the sage's nose was a pair of gold-rimmed spectacles made with glass as thin as soap bubbles. Alias wondered if the spectacles were magical or if Mintassan wore them to give himself a look of erudition. In his baggy white pants, billowing shirt, and bright-colored vest, he really looked more like a merchant than a sage. Aside from the glasses, the only other clues to his scholarly interests came from the sigils embroidered in his vest and a tiny ornament fastened to the vest's lapel-what appeared to be the skull of a tiny mammal.
As Alias shook hands with the sage she realized his eyes lingered over the azure tattoo emblazoned on her right arm. Alias pulled her hand away self-consciously and turned her attention back to Jamal.
Jamal remained frozen, staring at the swordswoman, trying, as she fought off her obvious terror of a long-dead sorceress, to take in all of Alias's and Mintassan's words.
Alias set the slipper down on the floor in front of the sofa and stared back at the other woman. Jamal was older than the "memory" that Finder had given the swordswoman, with wrinkles etched about her eyes and her neck, but she looked almost regal with her posture straighter than a schoolgirl's and her flowery housecoat draped dramatically over the sofa. She remained unbowed by the pressures of Westgate life or the sordid attacks of its underworld. Yet there remained something comic about her appearance, the frayed sleeve of the housecoat, the singed hem, the scarf half falling off, the missing slipper. Alias was reminded of meeting an artist's model once. The painting looked just like the woman, but the woman was nothing like the painting; without the brush strokes, she was less romanticized, but much more real.
"I'm nobody, also at your service," Dragonbait whispered in Saurial.
Alias shook herself from her reverie. "Oh, and this is my companion, Dragonbait," she said, indicating the saurial with a wave of her hand.
"Yes, of course," Mintassan said, nodding and offering the paladin his hand as well. "Dragonbait the Saurial Paladin. Companion to Alias of the Magic Arm. We've heard a halfling bard tell of your exploits down at the Empty Fish. Haven't we, Jamal?" the sage asked, nudging the older woman.
Alias fidgeted slightly, but kept her agitation in check. The only thing she disliked more than strangers knowing details of her life was when the strangers were spellcasting sages like Mintassan.
Jamal finally overcame the shock of Alias's resemblance to the sorceress Cassana and was able to concentrate on Mintassan's words. "Ruskettle," Jamal said. "Mini's Mouth, can that woman ramble."
"Exactly," Mintassan agreed. He turned back to Alias. The tales, however, do not do justice to your loveliness."
Alias fidgeted again under Mintassan's appraising eyes. He had a bold gaze that she found rather forward.
Jamal sighed and slapped the mage's leg. "Mind your manners," she reprimanded.
Mintassan grinned and asked, "Please, allow me to present to you my current charge, a patient singularly lacking in patience, that talented and fearless lighter of wrongs, Jamal the Thespian, Jamal the Lady of Cheap Heroes and Cheaper Theatrics-"
"Jamal the Slightly Parboiled," Jamal finished, as she picked up her recovered slipper and slid it gingerly over her wounded foot. "So what were you doing in my burning house?" the woman asked, her distrust obviously not completely allayed by the fact that the swordswoman was a character in the halfling Ruskettle's tales.