Masquerades - Kate Novak [97]
As the shouting grew closer, Alias motioned Dragonbait into the hallway behind the stairs. Olive had already faded into some other shadowy recess of the house.
"And you call yourself a healer!" the man above bellowed.
"There are limitations to every craft," the woman snarled back. "You are lucky I could ease your pain. Perhaps after it scars I can help further, but not now. The wound's magic is still too strong!"
"So you say," the man shot back. "What good is a healer who will not heal? I think you're in league with him!"
Someone now stood on the first landing, casting a shadow down the stairs and into the hallway. "If I were," the woman argued, "why would I come here in the middle of the night? Let it scar, then I'll call again. Until that time, I recommend you keep a very low profile. Good night."
Someone stomped very deliberately down the stairs and paused at the bottom. Alias peeked around the railing. It was a woman dressed in a tunic and leggings made from satin fabric printed with a harlequin diamond pattern. She wore a mask of black fabric that covered her face from her forehead to her nose. Around her neck was an iron necklace of a stylized mask-the unholy symbol of Mask, the god of thieves. The woman wrapped herself in a voluminous cape of wolf fur, nodded, and waved to someone down the hall, then let herself out the front door.
Alias waited anxiously for several moments, expecting a servant to come down the hall, but only Olive appeared.
"Did you see who she waved to?" the swordswoman asked the halfling.
"The sculpture we were pushing around. Its supposed to be of the god Mask stabbing Kezef, the Chaos Hound,"
Olive explained. Her voice was still a hoarse whisper. "Wishful thinking on the part of Mask worshipers. She's a priestess of Mask. She was just making an obeisance to the image of her master."
Alias nodded as she wondered what was wrong with Melman that he required a healer in the middle of the night, and why couldn't the priestess heal him?
Alias checked the door to what had once been Cassana's laboratory. The door was securely locked. Olive pulled out a tiny wire and began working at the lock as Alias and Dragonbait proceeded to investigate all the other first floor rooms.
It didn't take them long to ascertain that there was no one else in the other rooms. If there were servants in the house, Alias suspected they were quartered upstairs. Throughout their search she could hear pacing upstairs, punctuated by a man cursing occasionally.
Alias took the precaution of securing and locking the front door against any other evening visitors. Then she and Dragonbait returned to the entrance of the previously locked laboratory. The halfling stood within, her lantern propped up on an accounting table. A huge smile graced her face. With its window bricked up, the room had been converted to a treasure vault. All about the halfling were sacks, crates, and chests, each labeled with a tag. Alias read the nearest one. In a crabbed, tight handwriting was the notation, "500 gold, 100 platinum, Duck Statue stolen from Family Urdo for later ransom."
"Quite a hoard for a simple vintner," Alias noted. "Grapes must have been exceedingly good these last few years."
Olive pointed to the last pages of a thin red leather-bound ledger lying on the accounting table. "According to these figures, Melman's profits are minimal. Not even enough to require payment of business taxes.
"So all this is just spare change he's found lying in the street," Alias commented.
Olive held up a finger for Alias to wait, then thumped deftly on the side of the accounting table and a small, secret drawer sprang out. From it the halfling pulled out
a second ledger.
"This," Olive said, cracking open the ledger and taking several moments to peer down the page, "shows that our man Melman is a major player in Westgate. He's got his thumb in extortion, fencing, smuggling. It's all written down here."
"So we've caught ourselves