Olive cut a dashing figure in the green-and-white Thalavar livery, which included a huge, floppy hat bedecked with a great green plume. She wore a mask of silver glittering with fake emeralds. Al ias could see other halflings in the crowd similarly costumed.

Thistle wore a veil of fine white lace over her face and was bedecked in a pink gown with a very high collar and short, ballooning sleeves. Long pink gloves covered her lower arms. As she approached Alias, her eyes were glittering with excitement.

"See what I have?" the young woman exclaimed, holding out her right arm for Alias to see.

Thistle's right glove was embroidered with a blue stitchwork very similar to Alias's own tattoo. Waves and thorns crested from wrist to elbow, but where Alias's pattern displayed a rose, the young noblewoman's featured a thistle.

Alias nodded politely, grateful that her face was masked and her amusement hidden.

"It is a compromise," Lady Nettel explained with a smile, "one that myjht keep her from attempting any major transformations in her appearance for a few months. Victor, I do not see your father here."

"My father was… detained," Victor replied, avoiding Alias's look. "He's asked me to stand in his stead until his arrival."

Alias was about to pull Victor aside and demand that he elaborate on his last statement, but Olive was tugging on the swordswoman's bodice to get her attention. "Did you and Dragonbait talk?" she whispered anxiously.

Alias frowned down at the halfling, wishing now that the mask she wore did not hide her displeasure. "This is not a good time, Olive," she growled.

Olive lowered her eyelids suspiciously, but with Lord Victor so near she did not dare elaborate. "Fine. I guess П1 go check out the buffet table."

Alias turned back to Victor, who was making excuses to Lady Nettel that he needed to circulate. Thistle asked Dragonbait to escort her and her grandmother about the room. The paladin nodded his assent. As he let each Thalavar woman take an arm and draw him off, he tilted his head in Victor's direction. His meaning was perfectly clear to the swordswoman. "You said your father was going to be here," Alias declared heatedly.

"He is," Victor replied, nodding at a passing Thorsar dignitary. "We… talked this afternoon. When I showed him the key, he looked surprised, but he wouldn't speak about it. He promised that he would come later to talk to you and Durgar before the end of the ball."

"Victor," Alias stressed, "you have to go to Durgar with this right now. Your father could be using this time to flee the city."

Victor shook his head. "My father isn't going to flee. This is his city. I think maybe the key belonged to another noble, and Father is covering for him. He just needs time to decide how to handle this gracefully."

Alias shook her head at Victor's stubborn loyalty to the croamarkh. Part of her wanted to bolt the party immediately and track down Luer Dhostar, while the other part was willing to wait for Victor's sake, even though it probably meant losing the Faceless. She sighed and nodded. Til wait," she said.

"Good. Then, since you're waiting, we may as well dance. Would you do me the honor?" Victor asked, extending his arm. He froze for a moment as an uncomfortable thought occurred to him. "You can dance, can't you?" he asked. "I can manage," Alias replied with a laugh.

Victor called the dance a Westgate procession, but Alias knew it as a Shadowdale reel. It was simple and repetitive, but Alias found herself enjoying it nonetheless. The orchestra was skilled and lively, and the nobles on the dance floor at least showed her no animosity. She looked into Victor's blue eyes, and her heart soared.

Along the sidelines, Dragonbait stood Bwtwring politely to Thistle as the young woman explained the origins of all the different food on the buffet table. All the while, he stared at Victor Dhostar, wondering whether Olive could be right.

The halfling popped up beside him, munching on a sticky roll. "Shen sight still out of focus, eh?" she taunted, noting the look with which he fixed the croamarkh's son. "You could stand on your head. Maybe that would turn everything right side up." She wandered off to another table for some liquid refreshment.

The saurial glared after her for a moment, then smiled. Only Olive could suggest something so ridiculous that might actually have merit. Not upside down, but backward, the paladin thought. He turned about to face the buffet. As Thistle chattered on about the longer growing season required for melons, the paladin closed his eyes and reached out with his shen sight.

He let the myriad colors slide, along his consciousness. He stopped, focusing on a very dark purple to his right. He peeked out one eye. Kimbel, the former assassin, stood on a staircase, watching the guests from behind the guards.

Dragonbait closedfliis eye again. In a moment, he could sense a deep red hatred speckled with green jealousy. The paladin confirmed his guess. Haztor Urdo, hating Alias, jealous of Victor's pleasure in her company.

With his eyes squeezed tightly shut, the paladin let the colors wash over him longer, until he could sense their pattern as they moved about the blue that he knew must be Alias, as they stepped back from her, circled around her, pulled her close.

Blackness like a shroud covered the blue flame of Alias's spirit, blackness so dark, it devoured the light from her, giving up none of it. Blackness was the lust for power, the voracious appetite for control over all others, the desire that swallowed its tail and devoured the being's own universe.

Dragonbait whirled and glared at the man holding Alias in his arms. Once again, where Victor stood, the paladin saw the blue flame so like Alias's. Now he concentrated on what lay beneath the blue. As if Victor's soul were a canvas, he stared at it for the pentimento that lay beneath the illusion of virtue painted on the surface.

Then he could see it-the image that lay beneath what Victor had seemed. There were pits of blackness filled with black serpents, all poised to devour whatever came their way. As Victor reached a hand out to the swordswoman, Dragonbait saw a serpent wind about the flame of Alias's spirit, prepared to crush the life from it before making it a meal. Despite himself, Dragonbait let out a mewling cry and nearly toppled forward.

It was a moment before he could gather his shen sight back into whatever spot it rested when not in use. He saw a flame of blue, tinged with a little green jealousy just before his vision cleared. Thistle stood before him, her hands resting gently on his shoulders. "Are you all right?" she asked slowly, in a manner that presumed that because he did not speak her tongue, he could not hear or easily understand it.

The paladin nodded, tapping his chest to indicate he'd only swallowed something the wrong way.

As Thistle turned to get a glass of water for the saurial, Dragonbait watched Victor with new insight. He remembered how Mist had claimed the noble was a pawn to his ambition and desires. The wyrm always did have a talent for understatement, the paladin thought with a wry sense of amusement.

The dance ended, and Alias strode from the dance floor, hand in hand with Victor. Dragonbait excused himself from Thistle and moved toward the couple.

"I must speak with you," the paladin said to Alias in saurial, "alone."

"Can't it wait?" Alias asked, eager to reach the refreshment table and ease her parched throat.

The paladin shook his head to indicate it could not. With a sigh, the swordswoman excused herself from Lord Victor's company. She followed the saurial to a less-crowded section of the room.

"What is it?" Alias asked. She removed her mask and spoke in Saurial so that she would not be overheard. "Night Masks?"

"No, it is Victor," Dragonbait replied. "Olive is right. We cannot trust him."