Sianim 01 - Masques

south on the west side of the Anthran Alliance. He was wearing nothing but a nightshirt.
    The second man had his back to her. He was tall and slender, but something about the way he moved told her that this man knew how to fight. He wore a hooded cloak that flickered red and gold in the light. Underneath the hood of the cloak he wore a smoothly wrought silver mask in the shape of a stylized face.
    Traveling players used such masks when they acted out skits, allowing one player to take on many roles in a single play without confusion to the audience. Usually, these masks were made out of inexpensive materials like clay or wood. She’d never seen one made of silver, not even in high-court productions.
    Each mask’s face was formed with a different expression denoting an explicit emotion that mostly bore only a slight resemblance to any expression found on a real face. As a girl from a noble house, Aralorn had spent many a dreary hour memorizing the slight differences between concern and sympathy, weariness and suffering, sorrow and defeat. She found it interesting that the mask this man wore displayed the curled lips and furrowed brow of rage.
    In one hand the slender man held a staff made of some kind of very dark wood. On the lower end was the clawed foot of a bird of prey molded in brass, and its outspread talons glowed softly orange in the darkness of the cave as if it had been held in hot coals. The upper end of the staff was encrusted with crystals that lit the cave with their blue-white light.
    The staff made it obvious that this man was the mage responsible for the magic that had so startled Sheen. If he had spirited the merchant and his goods from wherever he’d been to here—she assumed the man hadn’t been traveling in his nightshirt—then he was a sorcerer of no little power.
    Hmm, she thought, maybe this mouse idea wasn’t such a good one. A powerful mage on alert might find a nearby mouse that wasn’t really a mouse, and he wasn’t likely to be very pleasant about it. Even as she started to back away, the mage looked over his shoulder and gestured impatiently. She didn’t even have time to fight the spell before she was stuffed into a leather bag that smelled strongly of magic.
    She tried once to shift back into her human shape, but nothing happened. He’d trapped her, and until she figured a way out, she was stuck.
    “How much, merchant?” the mage asked in Rethian. His voice was distorted with a strange accent—or maybe it was just the leather bag.
    “Fourteen kiben.” The merchant, too, spoke good Rethian, but his voice was hoarse and trembling. Still, Aralorn noticed, the price he’d quoted was at least twice what the items were worth, unless there was something extremely valuable among them.
    “Six.” The magician’s voice may have had an odd slur to it, but it was still effective in striking terror into the heart of the merchant—who squeaked in a most unmanly fashion. Aralorn had the feeling that it wouldn’t take much to achieve that result.
    “Six, I accept,” he gasped. There was the sound of money changing hands, then a distinctive pop and an immense surge of magic, which Aralorn decided signaled that the merchant had been sent back to wherever he’d come from in the first place.
    There was a moment’s pause, then a third person’s voice spoke.
    “It worked.” He sounded as if he hadn’t expected it to. He also sounded young and aristocratic, probably because Myr was both.
    She hadn’t planned on finding him quite so soon, not a half day’s ride from the inn. It was too convenient. Had Ren known that something was going on here? Was that why he’d sent her out to the backside of nowhere? She might have to take back months of heartfelt curses if that was so.
    “Hopefully our mutual enemy will not think to question all of the merchants traveling in Reth.” There was something about the tone of the magician’s voice that was familiar, but the odd accent kept throwing her. She should be able to figure out what kind of an accent it was, she knew languages—which was why Ren had pulled her out of the rank and file in the first place.
    “He wouldn’t learn much even if he did. The merchant doesn’t know where you brought him to.”
    The magician grunted. “He knows that it was in the north because of the cold. He knows that it was in the mountains because of the cave. That is more than we can afford to have the ae’Magi know.”
    Myr gave no vocal reply; but