Steel and Stone

by Ellen Porath

  Kitiara looked annoyed by the dwarf’s brusqueness, but Tanis, accustomed to Flint’s blunt ways, only smiled. Crustiness wasn’t exactly uncommon among hill dwarves. “We’re looking for clothes for me, and a dagger for the lady,” the half-elf said.

  The dwarf looked pointedly at Tanis’s ill-fitting garb. “Thinking of leaving the traveling minstrel revue, then, are you?”

  Kitiara bristled; Tanis put a restraining hand on her arm and signaled her to overlook the jibe. The surest way to annoy hill dwarves—or Flint Fireforge, at least—was to pretend to ignore their griping.

  “Do you trade with Plainsmen?” the half-elf asked.

  “I trade with everybody,” the dwarf said grumpily, “and they all try to take advantage of me. Plainsmen, gnomes, even other dwarves. You’d think I was an infernal nabob, the way they try to cheat me.”

  “I’m looking for a pair of leather breeches and a leather shirt,” Tanis interjected.

  “With fringe, I suppose,” the dwarf complained. “Everybody wants fringe. Damned frippery. What use on Ansalon is fringe, I ask you?”

  Tanis smiled gently while Kitiara steamed, her brows knit over smoldering eyes. “Fringe would be fine,” Tanis said, “but it’s not necessary”—the half-elf paused significantly—“if you don’t have it.”

  The dwarf rose to the bait. “ ’Course I have it! What kind o’ cheap outfit you think I’m runnin’ here, half-elf?”

  Kitiara pulled her arm away from the half-elf and pointed at the dwarf. Her voice crackled. “Listen, old dwarf, do you want us to spend our steel elsewhere?”

  The dwarf slowly swiveled to glare down at Kitiara from the back of the wagon. His eyes were the same green as his breeches and shirt. “The name’s Sonnus Ironmill, not ‘old dwarf,’ young lady. You the hoyden lookin’ for a dagger?”

  Looking over Kitiara’s head, the dwarf addressed the crowd in general. “A sword ain’t enough for this minx; noooo, she needs a dagger, too. How about a mace and pike as well?” He looked down at his fuming customer. “What kind o’ folks you hang around with, anyway? Or”—he leaned over and whispered—“do things get a mite touchy at the ladies’ quilting parties now and then?”

  Tanis bent toward Kitiara. “He’s enjoying this,” he whispered.

  Kitiara looked from Tanis to Sonnus Ironmill and frowned. “I’m looking for a dagger,” she finally said. “I lost my old one in some quicksand.”

  The dwarf did a double take. “Eh? Quicksand?” Then he caught himself and recovered his grousing tone. “You’ll want lots of jewels and pearl inlay and the like, no doubt. Damned unnecessary. Decoration can throw off the entire balance of a weapon.”

  “Listen,” she snapped, “do you have a dagger to sell me or not?”

  “ ’Course I have a dagger!” the dwarf said, stomping over to a trunk, opening it, and tossing a folded bundle of leather at the half-elf. “Got scabbards, too, but I can see by the sheath showing from under that short skirt of yours that you don’t need one of those.”

  Tanis caught the bundle of leather; it was a full suit in the style of the Plainsmen—fawn-soft deerhide the color of polished oak, fringed along the back yoke. Someone had embroidered the hem with beads. “May I try it on in your shack?” the half-elf asked, pointing at the turtlelike contraption at the front of the wagon.

  “ ’Course. Were you planning to take your clothes off right here in publ … Hey! Did you say ‘shack’?” The dwarf pulled up short. As Tanis leaped onto the wagon, the half-elf took the full force of a vile stare from Sonnus Ironmill. Tanis merely shrugged and headed for the dwarf’s quarters. The dwarf snatched a tray of daggers, plucked off a nest of silk scarves that had fallen over on the tray, and turned back toward Kitiara. “ ‘Shack,’ he calls it,” Ironmill groused under his breath. “Price o’ leathers just doubled for that.”

  As Tanis changed into the garb in the dimness of the cramped interior, he heard a new, piping voice mingle with Sonnus Ironmill’s complaining tones.

  “Nice daggers, Sonnus! I found a jeweled sword once, which was a lucky thing because the owner showed up when I was trying to figure out who to return it to, and he was really upset that he’d lost it. I knew he was glad I’d found it, even though he was too upset to be glad, really. I guess he’d been plenty worried. I—”

  “Get out of here, you wretched kender!” the dwarf shouted. “And if you steal just one more thing from this wagon, I’ll … I’ll sell you to the minotaurs for goat food!”

  “Steal?” The little voice dripped with hurt feelings. “I wouldn’t steal, Sonnus. I can’t help it that everyone loses things and that I’m lucky enough to f—”

  “Enough!” the dwarf boomed. “Out!”

  Tanis heard a thump that might have been a kender hitting the side of a wagon. As the half-elf pulled Sonnus Ironmill’s shirt over his head, Kitiara’s cool voice was the next sound he heard. “How much for this dagger, dwarf?”

  The dwarf named a price. Kitiara haggled him down, and they had just struck a deal as Tanis emerged from Ironmill’s hut. “I’ll take it,” he told the dwarf, admiring the fit, “if the price is right.”

  “Well …” The dwarf stroked his luxuriant beard. “It seems to me that suit may well be the only one of its kind west of Que-Shu, which is where I got it, and didn’t it cost me a pretty pile of coins.… Its rarity increases its value, I’d think.”

  “Except no one west of Que-Shu but the half-elf would want it,” Kitiara said as she fingered the gathered pouch into which they’d put the coins they’d found at the will-o’-the-wisp’s lair. “You’re lucky to be getting rid of it, dwarf. Maybe we should look somewhere else, Tanis.” Tanis nodded.

  Sonnus Ironmill frowned at them both. “Five steel,” he pronounced.

  “Three,” Kitiara and Tanis said at the same time.

  “Four.”

  “Done!”

  Kitiara paid Sonnus Ironmill and slipped her new dagger, with its hilt inlaid with tiger’s-eyes, into her sheath. As she and Tanis plunged back into the milling crowd, they heard the dwarven vendor greet a customer with, “Well, what do you want?”

  Kitiara brushed past a female kender, a waist-high creature with the race’s characteristic long brown hair gathered in a topknot. “That’s the creature who tried to rob the dwarf,” the swordswoman commented to Tanis.

  “Rob!” the kender exclaimed. “I never steal. I do have incredible luck finding things. Do you think some people are just born with luck? I do. My sisters and I all have it. But I …” Brown eyes doelike with innocence, she was still chattering when a trio of teen-aged boys shoved between Kitiara and the kender. The childlike creature was lost to view, her lilting voice swallowed by the cacophony of the late-morning marketplace.

  Tanis and Kitiara slipped among the marketgoers. The din was practically deafening. A seller of tapestries argued with a vendor of leather footware; each accused the other of letting his wares spill into the other’s territory. Dozens of vendors tried to outdo each other in shouting their products’ superiority to the crowd.

  An illusionist charmed the crowd. A juggler balanced a bottle on his head while twirling flaming batons. A veil-draped seeress offered to look into the future of those with money enough—and gullibility enough—to pay for the service. A gnome sold cymbals and Aeolian harps, flat boxes with strings, played, not by fingers, but by the wind. Two humans, a man and a woman, sat on a grassy hummock overlooking the market, tuning a pair of three-stringed, triangular guitars.

  Sellers hawked scarves, perfumes, and fine clothing, all of which Kitiara ignored, and swords, armor, and saddlery, which she stopped to admire.

  “I’d like to find something for my brothers,” Kitiara said. “A weapon for Caramon—he’s athletic, like me. And a set of silk scarves for Raistlin, I think. They’d come in handy for certain magic spells.”

  “I may pick up a gift for Flint,” Tanis rejoined. “His first choice would be ale, I’m sure, but I’m not sure I want to haul a keg of H
aven ale from here to Solace.”

  “Isn’t it lunchtime?” Kitiara asked, her attention arrested by the calls of a man stirring a caldron of soup, which scented the air with sage, basil, and bay leaves.

  Tanis followed her obligingly to an open bench near the soup vendor. “You guard the seat,” he told her. “I’ll pay; I’ve got a few coins.”

  “We ought to divide up the booty from the will-o’-the-wisp,” Kitiara murmured.

  Tanis nodded. “After lunch.”

  He returned a few moments later, bearing a wooden tray upon which sat two steaming bowls of soup and thick slices of white bread sprinkled with toasted sesame seeds. They ate in silence for a while, savoring the chewy bread and peppery soup. Tanis carefully brushed sesame seeds from the beading on his new shirt, which prompted Kitiara to drop her hand to her thigh, where the sheath held—nothing.

  “Tanis! My dagger’s gone! The kender!”

  The half-elf leaped up. So did Kitiara. Then they were off in different directions.

  Tanis pushed through the packed lanes as quickly as he could, gazing right and left, but he saw no sign of the brown-eyed kender. He made his way back to Sonnus Ironmill’s wagon. The dwarf was perched at the back of the vehicle, his short legs dangling off the back. Studiously ignoring several prospective customers, Ironmill clutched a tankard and munched a sandwich. Tanis smelled fish, garlic, and ale as he drew near and asked about the kender. He had to shout his question three times, each time louder, before the dwarf deigned to look down and reply.

  “The last time I saw the thieving sneak, she was headin’ that way.” Ironmill pointed. “Guard your money pouch, half-elf. Drizzleneff Gatehop’s a quick one.” He paused, then resumed grumbling. “But Drizzleneff’s no worse than most of the scalawags I have to deal with. At least a kender doesn’t intend to be a scalawag.”

  Ironmill looked away; clearly he considered the conversation over. He was obviously startled a moment later when Tanis swung himself up onto the wagon next to Ironmill and stood on tiptoe, scanning the crowd for signs of the kender.

  The view wasn’t much better from the wagon than it was from the ground. Tents and banners gave the half-elf mere glimpses of what lay beyond the immediate row. Tanis’s quick eyes did catch sight of Kitiara, who strode through the marketgoers, shoving and glowering at anyone who got in her way. He found himself hoping, for the kender’s sake, that the half-elf caught up with Drizzleneff Gatehop before the swordswoman did.

  He didn’t get his wish. An outcry at the end of Ironmill’s lane and ripples in the crowd as marketgoers turned to watch the fracas alerted Tanis. He leaped down and shoved through to the middle of the commotion.

  Kitiara had her dagger back. In fact, its glittering blade danced near Drizzleneff’s neck. Kitiara’s left arm was around the creature’s chest; her right hand held the blade. “I should end your miserable existence right here, and no one could stop me, kender!” Kitiara shouted. A few of the vendors cheered.

  “I was looking for you!” Drizzleneff squawked. “I found your dagger …”

  “… in its sheath on my leg, you sneak!”

  Drizzleneff Gatehop, breath rasping, stopped to consider Kitiara’s words. Then she shrugged and went on. “Well, it did seem to be a dangerous place for you to carry it, if you ask me. What if there were pickpock—” Her sentence ended in a choking sound as Kitiara clamped down tighter with her left arm.

  “Listen to me, kender.”

  Drizzleneff barely nodded. Her face grew pink.

  “Never come near me again.” Kitiara’s voice was almost a whisper. The fascinated passersby had to lean close to catch her words. “Never. Understand?” The kender’s eyes grew glassy as she struggled to break free.

  Tanis moved to intervene. “Kit?”

  Kitiara looked up and winked at the half-elf. Then she spoke again to Drizzleneff. “In fact, I think you should leave Haven—right now. Understand?”

  “Kit!” Tanis interrupted. “She can barely breathe!”

  Kitiara loosened her hold slightly and moved the dagger away a bit. “Understand?” she repeated.

  Drizzleneff Gatehop nodded. “Tomorrow morning,” she croaked. “Right after breakf—”

  “Today! This very afternoon.”

  “But …”

  Kitiara waved the dagger. The kender nodded. “Well, okay. I was planning on heading out anyway because …”

  The swordswoman released the kender, and Drizzleneff Gatehop, topknot bouncing, vanished into the crowd. The throng dissipated as soon as people realized the entertainment was over.

  “Don’t you think you were a little rough?” Tanis asked.

  “She’ll think twice before she steals again.”

  “No, she won’t,” the half-elf commented. “Kender don’t steal, not from their point of view. They have no fear and no real sense of private property—just the curiosity of a five-year-old.”

  The swordswoman didn’t reply. She was polishing her new dagger with the edge of her shirt.

  * * * * *

  “How did you meet this Flint Fireforge fellow?” Kitiara asked that evening.

  They’d dined at the Seven Centaurs and were sitting in rows of near-empty benches that marked the circumference of the courtyard of the Masked Dragon, one of Haven’s largest inns. Before them, minstrels were setting up a low stage. Ignoring the clouds gathering overhead, servants of the innkeeper lighted torches set into brackets at intervals on the walls. People were just beginning to wander in.

  “Flint came to Qualinost when I was a child,” Tanis said. “We became friends, and when he left, I did, too. We’ve been in Solace for years.”

  It wasn’t the whole story, of course. The dwarf, an outsider in the elven kingdom, had befriended the lonely half-elf, had eased him through one scrape after another, and in fact had often seemed to be Tanis’s only friend in Qualinost. Later, when Flint decided to leave the Qualinesti city for good, Tanis, nearly full-grown, went with him with few regrets. Unlike the dwarf, however, the half-elf had continued to visit the elven city now and then.

  Kitiara seemed disinclined to inquire into details, however. Her attention had turned to a pair of minstrels. The woman, a wispy creature with shoulder-length blonde hair and large blue eyes, positioned herself in the center front of the stage while her companion; an equally slender man with dark hair and a ready smile, set torches in freestanding holders at the right and left front corners of the platform.

  The man stepped back and looked critically at the woman. “Light’s too dim,” he said to her. He moved the torches closer, stepped back again, and approached the stage.

  “Better?” she asked.

  He nodded and replied, “Perfect. The lighting, and the singer, too.” Then he hopped up on the platform and kissed her. The couple’s three children, an older girl and her young sister and brother, sat cross-legged on the back of the stage. They groaned as their parents embraced. The couple broke apart and grinned unabashedly at the youngsters.

  Kitiara rolled her eyes. “How sweet,” she commented acidly.

  Tanis realized that this was the same couple that had been rehearsing in the Haven market earlier in the day. Trailed by the children, they disappeared under a wooden arch that must have led to a back room. The next moments saw the five come and go, bearing instruments of every type and laying them gently on the stage. Tanis recognized one as a dulcimer, a stringed instrument played on the lap, popular among ladies of the Qualinesti court. The man came out holding two triangular guitars. There was a clavichord, an oblong box with a keyboard, which the man set up on a stand in front of a bench. The woman placed a cylinder drum at the back of the stage; her husband helped her maneuver a slit drum, made from cutting a narrow opening in a polished, hollow log, next to it. The couple’s older daughter set a gong in a stand next to the drums. The couple’s younger daughter plopped down and practiced trills on a flute while her brother warbled on a recorder. Tanis watched raptly.

  “You’re lookin
g at the stage as though you’d like to be up there with them,” Kitiara teased, breaking into the half-elf’s reverie.

  Tanis indicated the family with a jerk of his head. “Music. That’s one difference between elves and humans.”

  When Kitiara raised her eyebrows, the half-elf went on. “In Qualinost, it’s assumed that every child will study an instrument. Often, at sunset, elves gather at the Hall of the Sky and hold impromptu concerts.”

  “So?” Kitiara demanded. “Humans like music, too.”

  Tanis frowned. “But humans see it as something only musicians do. I don’t know many humans who play their own music. They come to places like this.” He gestured. The courtyard was filling up. They’d taken spots on the ends of the benches—Kitiara disliked being trapped in the middle of a crowd—and onlookers kept shoving past them for the few seats remaining.

  “What do you play, half-elf?” Kitiara asked.

  “Psaltery, gittern …”

  “Which are what?”

  “The psaltery’s a type of dulcimer,” Tanis explained. “The gittern is like a guitar. I’ve tried other instruments, but I’m more enthusiastic than I am accomplished. Flint makes me practice outdoors.” He looked at Kitiara. “Do you play an instrument, Kit?”

  Kitiara’s upper lip curved. “The sword’s my instrument. But I can make it sing like nothing that pathetic crew can play.” She gestured at the stage, where the family was lightly chanting a lilting but apparently endless melody designed to warm up their voices. “And my sword’s a lot more effective against hobgoblins.”

  Kitiara’s discourse was interrupted by the woman, who stepped to the front of the platform and welcomed the crowd. Her voice was dusky and low. She looked back at her husband, positioned by the drums and gong, and at her children, ready with flute, recorder, and clavichord. Then she faced the audience again, opened her mouth, and sang,