Masquerades - Kate Novak [78]
Alias nodded slowly. Dragonbait had stolen her the day she'd been created. "I hated Cassana," she assured the actress.
"That's what your friend said."
"What else did you talk about?"
Jamal shrugged. "Nothing much."
"The Dragonbait effect," Alias noted. "Everyone talks to the silent saurial. Tells him things they won't tell other people."
"Just boring stories of an old woman's life. Nothing that could interest you." Jamal pulled two glittering silver belts off a hook on the wall and handed them to the swordswoman.
"But they do," Alias insisted. She struggled for some way to explain why Jamal interested her, without giving away the feelings she had for the woman, feelings that Finder had implanted in her for some reason. "My father," she said, "was in Westgate in the Year of the
"Victor Dhostar's sending his carriage for me. He's invited me to a party on his family's new ship."
"Ah, mixing with the Westgate snobs. How-" Jamal stifled a mock yawn "-exciting."
"Victor is very nice," Alias said. "He stood up for your theater the other day."
"He was just trying to impress you with his power. He's a merchant, my dear, to the core. Granted, he's a very good-looking merchant, and possibly a good-humored one, but he's still a merchant."
"What do you have against merchants?" Alias demanded.
"Ah, well, that's a long story. It boils down to the fact that merchants know the price of everything and the value of nothing. Rather like this ship you'll be on-The Gleason, named for the family of Luer Dhostar's late wife. The Dhostars spent a fortune on a ship to protect their goods from pirates, but they can't protect the people of Westgate from the Night Masks."
"They've paid me a good deal to try," Alias pointed out.
"The price of a set of The Gleason's oars would cover your retainer," Jamal retorted. "Not that I want to encourage you in this ill-fated fraternization, but what are you wearing?"
"Victor said it was semiformal, so I bought a full-length silk tunic. It's blue with silver embroidery. I thought I'd wear it over my leather britches."
"Ah," Jamal sighed blissfully, "they are so egalitarian about dress up north, aren't they? Let me give you some motherly advice. You can't do that. First of all, the slightest whiff of leather will get you shown to the back door with the bodyguards. Secondly, the ladies of Westgate wear inconvenient, uncomfortable clothing to semiformal affairs to remind them how perilous social arrangements are in this city. You'll want to wear an undergown. I have a white bliaut that should fit you and goes with blue. You'll want to double gird the tunic with two silver belts. I've got a set I've just polished. One can hold your scabbard, peace-bonded of course."
"I don't want to impose," Alias insisted.
Prince. He died two years later. He told me about a woman he'd met here-an actress named Jamal with red hah-." Finder had never actually told her any such thing, but he had to have known Jamal. "I thought you might have known him."
"Who was your father?" the actress asked.
"Finder Wyvernspur. He wouldn't have used that name, though. At the time, he called himself the Nameless Bard."
Jamal sat lightly on a trunk, looking a little stunned. "The Nameless Bard was your father?"
"You did know him?" Alias asked.
Jamal nodded. "It was the Year of the Prince, like you said, in the spring. I was running from a squad of Night Mask muggers, and he stepped out of an alley with his sword and saved my neck. Then he saved my spirit."
"Your spirit?" Alias asked. "How?"
Jamal took a deep breath and sighed. Then she explained, "I'd lost iny daughter the year before. I nearly grieved myself into the grave beside her. Nameless… he convinced me I still had things to live for."
Alias felt her throat drying. "You had a daughter?"
Jamal nodded. "She died in Deepwinter, in the Year of the Worm."
The year before I was created, Alias thought.
"She was murdered by a vampire when she was twelve."
"I'm so sorry," Alias said.
"The vampire was a merchant noble's daughter, and they shielded