Masquerades - Kate Novak [69]
"You mean the common people might be free to block traffic if they want to watch a puppet show?" Alias teased.
"And powerful merchant families with money to hire mercenaries would be free to run those common people down with impunity," Durgar retorted. "The croamarkh's laws protect the weak as well as the strong. Now you must excuse me, I have other duties. I will arrange for two guards to meet you at this door with a porter. Good day." The priest continued down a corridor, leaving Victor and Alias standing at a guarded doorway.
Victor pulled out a key hanging around his neck and unbolted one lock of the doorway. The guard, with his own key, unbolted a second lock and pushed the door open. The room within held two accountants, four more guards, and enough coin to satisfy a young dragon. Victor wrote out an order for Alias's payment, and the guards
gathered up twenty small sacks filled with fifty gold each and piled them into a box.
Alias signed a receipt and hefted the box under her arm. As she and Victor left the room, Alias could hear the guards on the other side relocking the bolts. She and Victor sat on a bench beneath a window beside the counting room door.
"So what do you think of all this?" the swordswoman asked the young merchant.
"Well, no one loathes Haztor Urdo more than I," Victor said with a laugh, "but my father and Durgar have a point. The croamarkh must stand united with those who've elected him. We've had a croamarkh ever since Verovan's death. For a hundred and twenty years, that's protected us from another tyrant. Any of the merchants would be better than someone like that, and Father is the best of all of them."
"How about a croamarkh who isn't a merchant, elected and supported by all the people?"
Victor looked at Alias with astonishment. "You can't be serious. Where did you get such an idea?"
"It's the way Dragonbait's people elect their leaders," Alias said.
"Alias, I don't know much about the saurials, but they must be different from humans. Not all humans are able to make important decisions like voting."
"Human adventuring groups elect their leaders that way, too," Alias argued.
Victor shook his head. "It could never work, not for a city like Westgate," he said. "I'm glad you're with us, though. The other merchants will look after themselves, but with you we can look after the weak, like Durgar said."
"How do we do that?" Alias asked.
"By fighting the Night Masks. It's true, they prey on the merchants, but it's the common people they hurt the most." Victor's voice grew more impassioned, though unlike his father he did not need to raise his voice to reveal the intensity of his feelings. "When the Night Masks rob or burn the warehouse of a bigger merchant,
the merchant loses some goods, perhaps some guards, a little business. It's a nuisance. But when the Night Masks go after the common folk, it devastates their lives. To the common people, a bolt of fabric or a crate of wine could be their whole inventory, a wounded guard is a breadwinner without work, a little business is the whole profit margin. If we can take care of the Night Masks, the people will be better off."
The young merchant spoke with the same earnest and hopeful tone he had when he'd revealed his dreams to find Verovan's treasure and use it to improve Westgate. Alias put her hand on his. "We will take care of the Night Masks," she assured him.
"I know. Do you think, as a favor to me, you might try at least to keep from offending the merchant houses 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