Friendly Fire

by Dale Lucas

  Rem felt a chill worm through him. Injuries, but no deaths … yet. That wasn’t terribly comforting.

  “Who’s hurt?” someone asked from the far side of the room.

  Ondego lowered his eyes. He then named five of their comrades now nursing wounds of various sorts, from incidental to life-threatening, and promised to offer updates on their progress when he had them. Ondego was a hard man who’d lived a hard life, but Rem knew him well enough now to know that losing any of his charges—or seeing them in mortal danger—shook the prefect deeply. The fact that he reported their compromised states with eyes down, in a droning monotone, told Rem that he was doing his damnedest not to betray the real depth of his emotions to those who’d made it back to the watchkeep unhurt.

  “There are rumors,” someone else began, “that this wasn’t just mischievous vandalism, but a deliberate attack. What’s the word on that?” It was Woldor, a russet-haired dwarf who shared the night shift with Rem and Torval. His high, piping voice was unmistakable.

  “That is correct,” Ondego said, now raising his eyes to the gathered company. “Some evidence at the scene suggested, shall we say, directed enmity. When we’ve got all the facts, we’ll present them. ’Til then, just know that we should be on the lookout for anyone with a proclivity for setting things on fire.”

  “Or who hates dwarves,” Woldor added.

  Ondego leveled a sober glare across the room at the diminutive watchwarden. “Let’s hold off on that, eh? Until we know more.”

  Murmurs of assent circled the room. Ondego gave them a moment to do so, then raised his hands once more for silence.

  “I know my people have had a long night, and they need to be away from here, quickly, so they can clean up and rest. I’ve no inkling what you dayshifters are in for. Suffice it to say this is a bitter business indeed, and we best all keep our eyes open wide. We hope it’s just a onetime thing …”

  He paused, sighed. Rem had never seen his prefect so tired, so bereft of words.

  “Just be careful out there,” he said finally. “My people are dismissed.”

  “And mine can hit the streets,” Torala added. “Eyes open, fists clenched, backs to the wall.”

  The meeting broke. The soot-stained nightshifters all said their goodbyes and made for the doors. Rem looked to Torval, eager for the two of them to do the same. His partner stared back at him as though awaiting some wise words or eager questions.

  “Ever seen such a thing?” Rem asked him quietly. “Arson? That anti-dwarven stuff?”

  Torval shook his head slowly. “Never.”

  “Well, then,” Rem said, “I guess we should do as we’ve been told and be on our way. I know I need some sleep, desperately.”

  Torval studied his black-streaked arms and filthy hands. “I’m thinking I might stop by the bathhouse on the way. I can’t go home like this. It’d take ten baths in the tin tub to get me clean.”

  Rem nodded. “Fine idea, old stump. Count me in.”

  He clapped Torval on the shoulder and the two of them moved to make a straight path for the door and freedom. They’d gone only two steps when they heard their prefect’s gravelly voice behind them.

  “Torval! Rem! Rein those horses.”

  Rem froze, as did Torval beside him. They both turned. Ondego waited at the door of his office, looking right at them. He waved them in. “A word before you’re on your way, boys.”

  “So close,” Rem whispered as they approached the office.

  “This had better be good,” Torval grumbled, leading the way.

  The office was crowded. Ondego and Prefect Torala both hovered behind the desk, but neither took the single chair there, as though they could not decide who deserved it more. Hirk’s and Torala’s tall, looming seconds haunted opposite corners on the far wall. Everyone was grim and silent. Rem was set on edge immediately. It felt like a tribunal, not an impromptu meeting in their commander’s chamber.

  “That fire was on our shift,” Ondego said, “so that means we’re responsible for investigating it.”

  Rem and Torval exchanged puzzled glances. Were they supposed to say something?

  The lady prefect, Torala, chimed in. “Those scrawlings were religious in nature,” she said, lined mouth frowning. She was a hard-faced, tautly muscled woman, probably just past fifty. Though she dressed like a man and wore her hair in a series of tight, utilitarian braids, her stone-hard gaze and regal bearing brought to Rem’s mind images of ancient empresses and unconquerable barbarian queens. “Given the anti-dwarven graffito, and the riot in the Warrens yesterday morning that you reported on, Remeck, we’re assuming the blaze was set deliberately.”

  Rem thought back to when he’d started his shift at sundown the night before, how he’d come into this very room and given Ondego a summary of what he’d witnessed in the dwarven quarter with Indilen. Now, just twelve hours later, it wasn’t an isolated incident; it was indicative of a coming storm, a possible prelude to acts of terror directed at Torval’s kinfolk in the Warrens.

  “That doesn’t make any sense,” Torval broke in. “Your kind and my kind have lived side by side, with barely a hiccup, for almost two hundred years.”

  “True enough,” Ondego said, “but that was a dwarven work site, and whoever marked up those stones and set that blaze clearly didn’t care for them. And I don’t think we can underestimate the importance of that dust-up yesterday morning.”

  Torval lowered his eyes. He seemed to take that news personally somehow—though Rem could not guess why. Rem, for own his part, suspected what they were about to hear. He decided he’d try to earn some points with a blurted guess.

  “They replaced them, didn’t they?” Rem asked. “The dwarves? The human stonemasons were fired and the dwarves hired in their place.”

  “Just so,” Ondego said. “Their contract wasn’t renewed and the temple clergy went with Torval’s folk instead.”

  “There you are, then,” Torval said. “The dwarves stole a contract from those stonemasons, and the masons are in a bind over it. Cancel the contract and give the tall folk their jobs back. That should solve the issue.”

  “You know it’s not that simple,” Ondego said, and Rem thought he saw real worry and sadness in the prefect’s haggard face. As though he, knowing Torval so well, and for so long, could not believe how obtuse and resistant the old stump was now being. Since when did Torval try to avoid a fight, or suggest a compromise in place of hard justice? Truth be told, Rem was a little shocked himself … but knowing that something had been eating at Torval for the past few weeks—something that Rem had only just gotten Torval to relent on the night before—well, that explained a great deal of his untoward behavior, didn’t it?

  “And why not?” Torval asked, clearly growing impatient. “Ten to one my countrymen undercut those poor sods. Offered twice the work for half the price. That’s our advantage, you know. We don’t tire the way humans do. We don’t need all the little comforts and supports that humans need.”

  “If their contracts were negotiated fair and square,” Torala broke in, “then we can’t make anyone do anything. But we don’t know what actually happened. The information before us now is just what we’ve been able to scare up in the last hour. One party out, the other in, the temple burns. There are all sorts of assumptions we could make, but we’d like to get some hard facts.”

  Torval barreled on, grumbling almost to himself, as if the rest of them weren’t present. “They should’ve known that if they took coin out of human pockets and food out of human mouths, they’d cause trouble.” His argument was a little too forceful, Rem thought. Torval then raised his eyes and spoke to Ondego. “I’d advise laying the law down on them.”

  “The law is exactly what we’re talking about here!” Ondego suddenly shouted. Rem felt his body stiffen in answer to Ondego’s raised voice, like a hare in a wood hearing the snarl of a predator. “Assuming there’s been no legal malfeasance, those dwarves have a right by law to contract with anyone the
y choose and to work, without threat or coercion. By law, setting fires in my ward is a crime, last time I checked. And by law, since that fire was on our watch, it’s our gods-damned job to get to the bottom of it. That’s what I’m angling at here, to put not too fine a point on it.”

  “So where do we fit in?” Rem asked, trying to manage the mounting tensions in the room. The last thing he needed was a steely-eyed squaring off between Torval and the prefects.

  “I’m tapping the two of you,” Ondego said, all the fury suddenly fleeing from him. No matter how many times Rem saw that sudden change in Ondego’s mood—furious to calm, or vice versa, in an instant—it never ceased to unnerve him. “Torala’s only dwarven watchwardens are city born or from the far provinces, so we can’t send them. No natural rapport with the ethnarch and his people. While Woldor out there is good in a fight, he’s not a keen questioner. Too affable. Since both of you were present, saw the blaze and the evidence left in its aftermath, I want you to dig and get to the bottom of it.”

  “You’re telling me that, just because I’m a dwarf, I’ve got to make nice with Eldgrim’s court?” Torval asked.

  “Is that a problem?” Ondego asked. His tone made it clear that it shouldn’t be, even if it was.

  “It well might be,” Torval said. “I have history with the ethnarch and his court, sir, and none of it good.”

  Ondego studied Torval carefully for a moment. He seemed to honestly, fairly weigh those words before offering his own answer to them.

  “Be that as it may,” Ondego said, “I need you to do this, Torval. A hotheaded little runt you are, to be sure, but you’re the only one I trust to speak with this lot—to really study them and tell me what you think of their responses. If that ruffles your feathers—fuck all. Care to argue further?”

  Torval scowled but said nothing. After a long silence he finally shook his head.

  Ondego continued, now addressing the two of them. “Work both angles. Find out how the dwarves got that contract, then talk to the stonemasons and see if they strike you as belligerent or vengeful sorts—at least, vengeful enough to burn a gods-damned temple down. Get copies of the contracts—the one the masons were released from and the present agreement between the dwarves and the Panoply. It could be those human stonemasons have got nothing to do with this, but as of this moment, given their motive and their violent demonstration, they’re our prime suspects. I hate to ask it of you, but I’d like you to make your first sortie to the dwarven ethnarch right now, before either of you go home for the day. You can go straight home from there and question the stonemasons this evening—even start your shifts late, to get some extra rest. Nineteen bells, let’s say—but I’ll expect a full report when you arrive this evening.”

  Rem looked to Prefect Torala. Her level gaze said it all.

  “Understood,” Rem said, hoping that Torval would let him talk now and would keep his own mouth shut.

  Ondego nodded. “I know it’s a shit job and not fair to either of you, considering the night you’ve had. Here and now, though, that’s the way it’s got to be. We need facts—stone-hard facts—to get us started, and you’re the only ones I trust to get them.”

  Rem nodded. Torval as well—though barely. For a long time no one said anything.

  Ondego broke the persistent silence. “Fuck off, then. I’m tired and you’ve got work to do.”

  “Aye, sir,” Rem said, eager to end the meeting and be on his way. He turned to go and clapped Torval on the shoulder. “Come on, partner,” he said quietly.

  Torval sighed, grumbled something under his breath, then turned and left the office. Rem followed dutifully behind him.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  Rem let Torval lead the way—across the administrative chamber, through the main vestibule of the watchkeep, down the front steps, out into the cold, sunny morning. He waited until they were nearly all the way across Sygar’s Square, the watchkeep far behind and the knotted streets of the ward ready to engulf them, before he finally spoke.

  “Tell me, now,” Rem said, trying to sound both forceful and casual at the same time. “What’s been eating at you? Is it something to do with Tav?”

  Torval shrugged diffidently but offered no elaboration. For what felt like a long time, he strode on in silence. They left the square for a shadowy side street that was even colder than the sunlit square. Rem pulled his greatcoat closer around him, shoving his hands in its deep outer pockets.

  “Bad blood, that’s all,” Torval finally said.

  “I don’t follow,” Rem said.

  Torval shook his head. “Don’t trouble yourself over it, lad. It’s my burden to bear.”

  “It may be,” Rem said. “But you’re my burden to bear, and whatever this is, it’s making you a damned heavy load. You’ve told me there’s trouble, now tell me what it is.”

  Torval kept marching. “Tavarix is of an age to be apprenticed. I thought I could place him with a tradesman in the city, but … he wanted to learn his trade among his own kind.”

  Now they were getting somewhere. Rem knew that Torval had a rather combative history with his own folk—he’d challenged their ironclad caste system and been cast out and exiled for his pains, and probably still bore the psychological wounds of that ostracism.

  “So,” Rem added, “you’ve had a rough time with your people. Reason to hate them, even. You can’t make amends somehow, for Tav’s sake?”

  “Oh, I did,” Torval said bitterly. “I went to them. I beseeched them not to hold my sins against my boy. They heaped requirements upon me, demanded all sorts of assurances and vows … but they agreed to take him in the end.”

  Rem waited for some elaboration. None came. Still, he could see on Torval’s face a terrible look of bitterness and gall. The muscles of his jaw seemed so taut he might grind his own teeth to dust.

  “Well,” Rem said. “Mission accomplished, then. Isn’t that good?”

  Torval suddenly stopped, right there in the middle of the street. “They made me kneel!” he spat. “Stripped my pride and my dignity from me! Right there in that damned court chamber of theirs! All because they knew I loved my boy and I’d refuse him nothing!”

  Rem didn’t really know if being made to kneel before one’s nominal enemies had some special disgraceful connotation in dwarven culture, but he could clearly see the memory of it made Torval quake top to toe, his expression a strange mixture of rage and despair. Rem thought he saw the glint of tears in Torval’s eyes, a nakedness to his gaze and aspect. It had to be the long night, their exhaustion. Otherwise, Rem imagined, there was no way in all the sundry hells Torval would consciously be so forthcoming with his deepest feelings—even to Rem.

  “So they took him, then?” Rem asked. “They accepted Tav, and he’s apprenticed to a dwarven tradesman now?”

  “Aye,” Torval said. “A stonemason.”

  Cack. That added a new wrinkle to things.

  “That’s why you were calling to him in the fire last night?” Rem asked. “That’s why you were so panicked?”

  Torval nodded. “I found a gang of workers on-site when I arrived, but Tav wasn’t among them. When I saw that—that he wasn’t with the others—I just lost my mind. I went in among the wreckage, sure I’d find him pinned somewhere.”

  “But you know he’s safe now, Torval,” Rem said, remembering the assurance his partner had received from that dwarven mason the night before.

  “Aye,” Torval said, nodding. He still sounded miserable.

  “Look,” Rem said, desperate to see his friend comforted, “what say we stop and see him? We’re headed to the dwarven quarter now, aren’t we? We’ll just pop in at his dormitory and—”

  “I can’t do that,” Torval said.

  “Why not?” Rem asked.

  “Because I’m an outcast!” Torval spat miserably. “That’s why they made me work so hard for Tav’s acceptance. And I promise you, every boy that Tav is housed with knows where he came from. Who his father is. If I go in there,
casting about, I’ll look like a fool, and I’ll make him hate me even more than he already does.”

  “Than he already does?” Rem asked. “Torval, that’s ridiculous.”

  “He chose them, didn’t he?” the dwarf asked. “He chose them, knowing all too well what it would cost me! If it had just been a matter of coin … gods, I would’ve worked day and night to buy him any mentor he chose. But to go to them … to insist that he live and work under the watching eye of Eldgrim and his court, who made me get on my knees and brand myself all but a criminal and heretic …”

  Torval hung his head miserably. His shoulders shook as he choked on a sob. Rem wasn’t sure how to handle this. Hugging Torval might embarrass the dwarf further. Acting as though it didn’t matter would be patronizing. Just standing here left his partner exposed to the glances and gazes of every curious passerby.

  At a loss for anything else to do, Rem took Torval gently by the shoulder and led him away from the center of the street. They found a stone horse trough, still filmed over with a thin sheet of ice from the night before, and sat on its wide rim. As Torval sat there, head hung, miserable, Rem cursed himself for not having had this conversation with the dwarf earlier. He’d noted signs of something strange in Torval for weeks—increasingly frequent reveries and asides on the subject of his self-imposed exile, a mood alternating between frustrated rage and weary resignation, a general sense of inwardness that was, for Torval, wholly out of character.

  For his own part, Rem had always thought Torval’s decision to leave his people and make his own way in the world had been a rather courageous one. After all, Rem had done the same. But he could just as easily understand Tav’s impulses. The boy was getting older. Though most youngsters were, in essence, headstrong foals waiting to be saddle broken by the world, it was usually a sense of culture, kinship, and duty that helped them to refine their restless energies and make something of themselves. Even if they were rebellious sorts—and Tav had never struck Rem as such—they needed traditions to push against, expectations to undermine. Without a culture to embrace or to shrug off, a young person was nothing: lost in a void, not sure what they were or how to relate to anything. Torval’s sacrifice of both pride and stature in his son’s eyes to fulfill the boy’s desires—to give Tav something that Torval had relinquished—was a precious, loving gift. Rem saw that clearly. But all Torval could see was the cost—his crushed honor, separation from his son—and not the possible benefit.