Heden cleared his throat again. Stood there with the thing wrapped up, held out. It was heavy.
“I remembered when we found this and I, ah…,” he looked at the sawdust on the floor. “I took it as my share because I…you know, I thought…I knew how much you wanted it and I thought I could get more than my share by….”
The dwarf turned and stared at Heden, his ember-red eyes glowering from under an earthen brow.
Heden took a deep breath.
“I was a complete shit in other words,” he confessed.
The dwarf glanced at the cloth-wrapped orb. Heden unwrapped it. It looked like a massive fire opal. It glowed from within mimicking the red hot eyes of the Elemental in front of him.
Heden held it out. The dwarf looked from the Flame Speaker gem, to Heden, and back.
“I lost the…ah. The sword. I lost it. Starkiller.”
The dwarf’s red stone features grimaced. He started breathing heavily. His eyes flared red. Heat boiled off him. Heden had been sweating from it before, now it was almost unbearable. But he didn’t move away. He was going to stand there and take it. All of it.
“I had to give it up. There was a naiad and someone had been murdered and I….”
The dwarf maintained his silence.
“Doesn’t matter,” Heden finished. “I know it technically belongs to all of us.” Everyone left. “But I thought I should…”
Heden looked away from Zaar, looked at the shop full of people watching him. Turned back to the dwarf and shrunk a little.
“I don’t know what I thought,” he finished lamely. He found himself unable to ask for another weapon. Even though several were his by right.
The dwarf ground his teeth, which Heden could hear. It was like a human pursing his lips in thought.
He turned his back on Heden, and returned to his work. Heden stood there, feeling useless, holding the Flame Speaker gem. Everyone in the smithy tried to go back to work, tried to ignore him.
“I wouldn’t do it again, you know,” Heden said. Louder, and more clearly than he had said anything else up until this point.
The dwarf stopped working and half turned his head, not looking at Heden. Waiting.
“Make a decision like that.” He stared at the dwarf’s back. Everyone had gone back to watching him and listening. “I was young and…humans do foolish things when they’re….” He looked around; almost everyone working for Zaar was a human.
“Don’t judge all of us based on one mistake I made, is all,” Heden concluded. He looked down at the Flame Speaker gem. It was beautiful. “Well,” he muttered, “maybe not just one mistake.”
Staring into the gem, Heden didn’t realize the dwarf had turned back around until he saw Zaar’s four-fingered stone hands reach out and grasp the thing. For a moment, they were both holding the gem. Heden looked at Zaar. The dwarf would not return his gaze. Heden knew something of the provenance of the crystal. Zaar considered it a holy relic, left over from a race of dwarves now long-gone. A race Zaar’s people had considered their elder brothers. Better versions of themselves.
Zaar made a noise, like “angh,” and took the gem from Heden. Turned and looked away. Heden stood there for a moment, his breathing coming easy. A burden lifted. He wondered if this was as good as it would get between the two former comrades. Decided, if it was, it was good enough. More that he deserved.
He walked out of Zaar's shop, empty handed.
Chapter Thirty-three
Business in the inn was picking up by the time he got back. The sun was getting low in the sky. There were about a half-dozen girls here, serving. He recognized Martlyn, the red-head. He wondered how many girls Miss Elowen employed. How many of them came here now, when they weren’t working?
Ignoring Morten in his chair by the door, Heden took a table near the library. He liked the library. Always wanted to show it off once he opened the place. It was a catalog of every place he’d been, all the places the Sunbringers had plundered. Books were incredibly valuable to his family, any farmers really. Even here in the city a family might own three books? Four? Heden had hundreds.
It was just something he’d started doing. Making sure to take the books they found. Only a fraction of the books on the wall behind him were written in Tevas-gol. Even the ones he couldn’t read were fascinating. There was a book in there on dwarven stonemasonry techniques. When Heden saw it, and realized what it was, he thought it was probably worth a thousand crowns. It might be. Might be worthless, he didn’t know. He just liked having it.
Martlyn walked over to him. Enjoyed walking over to him, showed herself off to him in what she thought was a subtle manner. Heden tried not to roll his eyes.
“What’ll it be, boss?” Martlyn asked, her green eyes dancing, one hand on her hip.
“I’m not the boss,” Heden said. “That’s Violet,” he said.
Martlyn smiled. “Uh-huh,” she said. “How about a drink?” she asked. “On me,” she added, her smile growing.
“On you, huh?” Heden asked, amused. “You’re going to serve me my own drink for free?”
“I could charge you for it,” she said, her eyes wide, “if it would make you feel better.”
“It would not,” Heden said. Another girl saw the two of them interacting and frowned. She cat-footed over and smoothly assumed a stance next to Martlyn. “Something to eat, sir?”
Heden pointed at her and thought. “Caerys, right?”
She smiled like the sun coming up. “That’s right, your lordship,” she said. She had short dark hair and while shorter and apparently younger than Martlyn, she seemed more developed. It was probably just the way she was dressed, Heden thought.
“And you’d be Heden,” Caerys said, dropping a curtsey. She bit her bottom lip and looked at Heden with wide brown eyes. Martlyn made no effort to hide her displeasure.
“Don’t you have people to serve?” Martlyn reprimanded. Heden believed she was second-in-command after Vanora.
“Don’t you,” Caerys said, nodding at a table with two men at it, impatient and leering at the two girls.
“I was here first, now get back to work,” Martlyn hissed under her breath.
“I just finished with a man and he’s quite satisfied, you’ll be happy to know.”
Was it…was it possible she was just talking about bringing someone food and drink? Heden wondered.
“Girls,” Heden said. They both stopped arguing and looked at him, Caerys tried to be attractively demure, Martlyn tried to be attractively assertive. “Ale,” he said, pointing to Martlyn, “mutton,” he said pointing to Caerys. Whatever else, they couldn’t be plying their trade while getting him a meal at the very least.
Martlyn rolled her eyes. “A diplomat,” she said exasperated, and turned to leave. Caerys smiled, considering Martlyn’s frustration a triumph, and curtseyed again, before following the older girl.
“This is not going to work,” Heden said to himself.
Something was going on by the door. Something he hadn’t noticed when Martlyn and Caerys were standing in front of him.
Morten was arguing with a man, a customer. There was a girl, one Heden didn’t recognize, watching from behind the bar, using the bar as a shield.
The man had the look of a sailor, which Heden found strange. What word had gotten out about his inn, that someone would come all the way here from the docks? He looked at the girl, behind the bar, beautiful and innocent-seeming, and formulated a suspicion about why the Hammer & Tongs might be popular. ‘Practice,’ Vanora had called it. Were they not charging for their services? Heden had a hard time imagining that.
Well, Heden thought, they’re making money off the food and wine and Vanora has my…, he stopped himself. Looked at the door to the cellar. Narrowed his eyes.
Morten and the sailor were now having words. Things were escalating. Morten sneered at the man, and stabbed him in the chest with his finger. The sailor grabbed the finger and twisted and Morten fell to his knees.
; Heden sighed and prepared to get up when the door opened and Bann walked in.
The massive, war-bred demiurq surveyed the room. Saw Heden, nodded to him, then pulled the two-hander he carried off his back, scabbard and all, and bashed the sailor over the head with it, dropping him to the ground.
Morten got up, favoring his finger, and genuflected before Bann. The two of them talked for a moment, with Morten nodding and trying to impress. Bann made a gesture and Morten nodded. Grabbed the sailor by the collar and dragged his unconscious form out the door.
Bann, holding his scabbard, shook his head and walked over to Heden’s table.
He leaned the two-hander against the table. It was huge.
“It’s like that with terrans,” Bann said, sitting down.
Martlyn came out of the kitchen with his ale, and stopped when she saw Bann. Heden held up two fingers and then pointed to himself and Bann, and she went back through the kitchen door.
“Terrans,” Heden prompted, returning his attention to Bann.
“Humans. Morten,” he explained. His voice sounded like distant thunder. It was impossible for him to sound otherwise. “He sees me, he thinks he does what I do, he’ll get the same reaction. Don’t work.”
“Because he’s not an eight-foot tall urqwight,” Heden said.
“Basically,” Bann said. “Not bad for him to learn here. Good place for it.”
“That why you’re here?” Heden asked. “Check in on Morten and the girls?”
Bann cleaned his teeth with his spearhead fingernails. “What do you think?”
“I think Elowen’s about fed up with all this,” Heden said.
Bann nodded once, slowly.
“It’s not the time off that matters,” he said. “Got plenty of girls to cover for them, and more to spare. But these girls, working here, for you…you don’t give a shit. Makes them feel…,” Bann didn’t know how to say it.
“Independent,” Heden offered.
Bann nodded again. His huge, ink-black face impressive, his needle-thin tusks jutting up out of his jaw a discreet few inches.
“Can’t be having that,” he said. “That is bad for business. Girls need to know who runs ‘em. And Miss Elowen runs ‘em.”
“And the count runs her.”
Bann shrugged. “Runs all the trulls. Miss Elowen gets by better than most.”
“So how does this end?” Heden asked.
“You tell me,” Bann said. “Your inn, your girls.”
Heden shook his head. “They’re not my girls,” he said.
Bann looked at him. “That’s right. They’re not yours. They’re the count’s. How long you think you can keep this up, before it gets back to him?”
Heden shrugged. “How about I kill him?”
Bann howled a short laugh. Everyone in the inn looked at him. He stopped abruptly and looked at Heden.
“Oh, you’re serious. Shit.”
“He’s gotta go down sometime,” Heden said.
“Well, his like don’t die of old age, I grant you. But they don’t die from lovestruck priests trying to save a trull.”
Heden didn’t say anything. Waited for Bann.
Bann held up his hands. Recanted. “That was mostly pigshit,” he admitted. “But the point stands. Takes more than one pissed off old ratcatcher to bring down the count.”
Heden had to admit this was a reasonable assumption.
“Vanora’s staying here,” he said.
Bann shook his head. “That ain’t no kinda solution,” he said. “None of this matters, you keep Violet.”
Heden nodded. “Well, I’ll admit, I haven’t really thought about what happens next….”
“Ratcatchers,” Bann shook his head.
“But I guess I figured,” Heden said, leaning back in his chair, “that either the count, or his men, would make a play for Vanora, or me, and then all this would come to a head.”
“Piss off enough people,” Bann said, “eventually someone goes for you.”
“Worked before,” Heden said.
“When you were a younger man.”
“We’re none of us the men we once were,” Heden said with some humor.
Heden looked at the man, not a friend, but a friend to his friends. Lots of campaigners went to the Rose Petal. Heden didn’t judge. Never seemed to be any of his business.
“I need someone to look after the girls.”
“You got someone to look after the girls,” Bann said, nodding to Morten.
“You know what I mean.”
Bann’s smile waned. His eyes slowly took in everyone in the common room.
“Miss Elowen trusts you, for some reason,” Bann said, “so she ain’t done nothin’ except ask me to explain that all this,” he said, indicating the inn and its customers, “can’t last forever.”
“Might not last the week,” Heden said.
Bann nodded. “Specially once the count figures out who you are and where Vanora is.”
Martlyn and Caerys brought drink and food. Neither of them seemed happy to see Bann. They curtseyed, and left.
Bann bent his head down, began spearing the mutton with his fingernails and bringing it up into the maw he called his mouth. “You want me to look after the girls, but he ain’t coming after the girls. You want me to watch Violet…,” he shook his head. “He wants her bad enough, he’ll send some black scarves and….” He looked at Heden. “I like Violet,” he said. “I like you. But this ain’t the Rose.”
Heden nodded. “I understand,” he said.
“I work for Miss Elowen,” Bann explained.
Heden nodded.
“If it was her asking me,” he said.
Heden understood. He liked Bann because Bann kept his word. If he said he was going to do something, he would do it. No matter what. Part of that meant saying no when you knew you couldn’t keep your word.
Heden took a bite of the mutton.
Bann watched Heden eat. “Couple of days,” he said. “All be over one way or the other.”
Heden nodded. “Yeah.”
Bann stood up, put his ale down, picked up his sword. Heden noticed Morten stand up, like a soldier at attention for a commanding officer.
“Count probably don’t know who you are,” he said, “you were out of town for a while. He figures it out, this place won’t be safe.”
“Yeah,” Heden said.
“We all like Violet,” Bann said. “We’d all rather she be here than with him.”
Heden nodded.
Bann looked around the inn. “Nice place,” he said, as though seeing it for the first time. Then he shook his head at everything, and left. Morten waited for him to pass, then sat down.
Vanora took the opportunity to come out from the kitchen where she’d been trying to listen to the conversation over the sound in the common room.
She sat down where Bann had been.
“What did Bann want?” she asked.
“Just checking in on you,” he said.
Vanora seemed to believe this.
"What happened to Martlyn?" Heden asked. The girls seemed to disappear at random times.
"She had to go back to the Rose," Vanora explained. "They all do sooner or later. They can only help me here on their time off."
Working on their time off, Heden thought. That said a lot.
“You’re paying the girls with my money,” he said, switching subjects. Vanora looked at the table, fingered Bann’s half-full ale. “That’s why they can afford to ah…ply their trade without charging, and that’s why this place is getting popular.”
Vanora rubbed her temples. Heden wondered how much sleep she got. She seemed up all hours.
She looked at him, desperate. “You do have an awful lot of money.”
Heden sighed. “That’s not the point,” he said. “You have to pay the girls, I don’t mind. The problem is now we’re going to get all sorts in here, men who think they can get it for free. Morten’s not up to that,” he said, nodding at the gua
rd Bann had leant them.
“So they should charge for it,” Vanora said, nodding. Acting like she wasn’t getting away with anything.
“They shouldn’t do it at all!” Heden said. Vanora flinched. “It’s a dangerous business. Why do think Miss Elowen has Bann?”
“Before,” Vanora started. “Before I paid them, the girls all…they volunteered,” she said, looking at Heden desperately. “They did it all for free, cleaned the place up with me, helped me with the food, the ordering, everything. They did it for nothing, just to have something outside the Rose. Something of their own. Most of them didn’t even like me before.”
He sighed. “If you’re paying them anyway,” he said, “why do they stay on the game?” Vanora didn’t answer. “How much would you have to pay them to get them to stop?” he asked.
Vanora shrugged. “I don’t know. They do it because they like to,” she said. “Why should they stop?”
Heden watched her. She was conflicted. She loved her friends, and with good reason. But she wanted Heden to approve of her.
“But you don’t sell yourself anymore,” Heden said.
Her face crinkled, like she’d tasted something sour, when he said that.
“No,” she said.
“Why not?” Heden asked, playing the abbot for a moment.
Vanora shrugged. Heden tried not to smile at the gesture. “I don’t know,” she said. “Miss Elowen never does it.”
That made sense, even though Heden didn’t like it. She was casting herself in Elowen’s role. But was that the only reason? Heden didn’t think so. But he’d grilled her enough.
“Well,” he said, “Elowen won’t put up with this for long. She knows you’re in trouble, so she’s indulging me.”
“And when I’m not in trouble,” Vanora asked, her face unreadable. “All this stops? The girls all go back to the Rose?”
Heden poured himself a drink. Just ale.
“One problem at a time,” he said.
Vanora watched him, and said nothing.
Chapter Thirty-four
“I’ll go,” Vanora said. Heden had gone upstairs to sleep and the girls were cleaning up the common room after closing.
Thief: A Fantasy Hardboiled (Ratcatchers Book 2) Page 16