"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." g

"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 nothing there any merchant could want."

"Yes. That would be good," Victor agreed, oblivious to her sarcasm. "The Shore is full of transients who don't like to get involved with the watch. The watch doesn't even patrol there regularly, so the Night Masks strike at the inhabitants with the most impunity."

Alias smiled at the innocent way Victor had taken her suggestion.

"That's settled then," the merchant lord said. "Now, about the party on the ship tonight. You will still come, won't you?"

Alias grimaced. "Perhaps I'd better not. The other merchant houses might object to the presence of a common little sell-sword who's arrested one of their own." "You know I don't feel that way. You've performed your duties with honor, and I think you deserve respect. I want to set an example by hosting the hero of Westgate on our cruise." "Thank you, Lord Victor. I’d be honored to accept."

"It will be my honor to show off the most intriguing, lovely woman in all of Westgate."

Alias laughed at the flattery. "I've been looking forward to showing off my new earrings, so I may as well come."

Victor leaned closer, examining the earrings. "Three stars. They're very becoming oh you," he whispered with his mouth so near her ear that she could feel his breath move the tiny stars. "Might I hope you choose them in honor of the Dhostar trading badge?" "I choose them uvhonor of you," Alias whispered. Someone nearby coughed politely.

Alias and Victor, moved away from one another and looked up. Sergeant Rodney and the watch guard Rizzi stood at the top of the stairs; the porter stood behind them.

"His Reverence sent us to serve as escorts, Your Lordship," Sergeant Rodney said to Victor.

"Just a moment, please," Victor told the guards. Turning back to Alias, he said, "I must be on the pier to greet all our guests, but I'll send my carriage to your hotel a little before sunset."

"I'll meet you at the pier," Alias agreed. The porter came up and hefted her box of gold on his shoulder. Alias gave Victor's hand one last squeeze before she followed her gold and her escorts down the stairs.

Back in her room at Blais House, with the money she'd just been paid, | Alias planned what to do next. She wanted to work in the afternoon to make up for the time she'd lose tonight at the party. In the daylight she'd have to rely on a disguise, which would be easier if she went without Dragonbait. She returned to the market, where, once she'd purchased a new tunic to wear to the party, she started picking through second- and thirdhand rags. She found a stained, long-sleeved tunic to cover her tattoo, a pair of badly patched, baggy trousers to hide her scabbard, and a scarf to cover her red hair. With the addition of some mud and a layer of dust, she would pass for a drover. Back at Blais House, she lay the outfit for the party-a blue silk tunic trimmed with silver embroidery-on the bed with her new earrings and changed into her newly purchased rags. Then she headed for the Shore via the Water Gate. The city wall made more or less a half-circle around Westgate, but owing to a steep cliff in the northwest, it turned inward sharply, running along the top of the cliff until the cliff reached the shoreline. The Water Gate opened over this cliff onto a steep staircase and a path leading down to the Shore. While the Outside, the district of Westgate surrounding the city wall, was predominantly open grassland for grazing herd animals, with the stockyards of the leading merchants pressed against the city wall, the neighborhood of the Shore, wedged between the cliff wall and the sea, was a slum. It was, as Victor had said, populated mostly by transients,unable to afford the silver for board and lodging within the city walls: drovers, day workers, and down-on-their-luck adventurers. The Shore offered flophouses for a few coppers a night, and food stalls in the neighborhood sold stale bread and bruised fruits and vegetables for less. Many of the inhabitants relied on the sea for added nourishment. As Alias made her way down the steep cliff staircase, she could see hundreds of them on the beach, digging for clams and crabs.