Masquerades - Kate Novak [51]
The door crashed open, and Littleboy waddled in, flanked by his two toughs. A careless observer might mistake Littleboy for a bald halfling or a shaved dwarf, for the hairless Night Mask was short and barrel-shaped. His round face and apple cheeks gave him a cherubic look, but one that was quickly belied by his unpleasantly cruel attitude. Littleboy dressed in a heavy, open-fronted cloak and a great slouch hat. His supporters were two lantern-jawed lunks who looked as if they had hobgoblin blood sloshing through their veins.
Littleboy climbed onto one of the barrel stools and rested his elbows on the bar. His boys remained standing and silent. "So, Edna," he said.
Edna threw a small pouch of coins on the bar without a reply. Littleboy picked it up, hefted it, and frowned. "You're light," he noted.
"Not a lot of customers," Edna replied, trying a casual shrug.
"Then you don't need a lot of furniture," Littleboy said. He tucked the pouch into his cloak pocket and snapped his fingers. One of his boys moved off. Littleboy heard the satisfying sound of one of the barrels smashing over one of the other barrels. His eyes never left Edna's face. Her eyes widened for a moment, then became slits.
"Let this be a warn-" Littleboy began. He was interrupted by twothumpsbehind him and startled by the ghost of a smile on Edna's face. Littleboy looked up in the mirror behind the bar.
The Night Mask collection agent was once again flanked by two figures, but they weren't his boys. One was an armored woman in a scarlet cape, the other a big lizard. "Kezef's blood and bladder!" Littleboy muttered,
recognizing the pair from the stories that had been coursing through the grapevine.
Littleboy did not need to look around to know his own boys were sprawled on the floor. He laid both his hands on the bar, one resting over the ornate ring of the other.
"Is there something I can do to help you?" he asked coolly.
"You can close down your little extortion racket," the swordswoman said. The lizard made a chuffing noise.
"I have no idea what you're talking about," said Littleboy. "I have a business deal with Edna here. My boys do some of her heavy lifting and serve as bodyguards to protect her and her establishment from the city's more unsavory elements. Isn't that right, Edna?"
The swordswoman looked at Edna. The bar owner's face was a study in uncertainty and fear. While everyone's attention was focused on Edna, Littleboy removed the face of his ring, uncovering a small needle, which wept a single greenish drop of venom.
"No," Edna announced, possessed by some wisp of courage. "He's been shaking me down, like you said."
The swordswoman pulled Edna's pouch of money out of Littleboy's cloak pocket and tossed it back to the bar owner. To Littleboy she said, "I suggest you leave this place and not come back."
"You shouldn't interfere in my business," Littleboy said. "I have powerful friends."
"Then you should stay with them for a while," the swordswoman replied.
Littleboy sighed and twisted as if he were about to hop down from the barrel stool. A second later, he thrashed out with his right fist to slash his poison needle across the swordswoman's face. The lizard snarled, and the adventuress reacted with lightning quickness, grasping the extortionist firmly by the wrist and bending his arm backward.
"That hurts," Littleboy gasped. The lizard brought a pewter tankard down on the Night Mask's head, and blackness claimed him.
"Now what?" Edna asked.
"Call the watch," the swordswoman said, as if it were simple.
"It'll only be Littleboy's word against mine," Edna complained. "And, like he said, he has powerful friends."
The adventuress held out the extortionist's ringed hand. "Carrying poison will get him hard labor and banishment from the city, no matter who his friends are," she pointed out.
"So it will," Edna said. She took the tankard back from the lizard and started wiping it clean again, only now she wore a grin. "Fritz," she called to the pensioned dock-worker, "fetch Durgar's