by Dale Lucas
“Wheedling shoat,” Torval snarled, pressing his fists against his face. “Mewling, vile little pig.”
For just a moment Rem thought Torval might be cursing his own son. But when the dwarf began to knock his own fists against his forehead, he realized that the grunted insults were directed at himself.
“Stop it,” Rem said.
“Wengrol, give me strength,” Torval muttered through clenched teeth. “Yangrol, take this soft iron and make it steel.”
Rem had never heard Torval pray before. Hearing it now—the pain in his partner’s voice, the loss and confusion—made him feel like a lost little boy, somehow. The way he felt the first time he’d realized that his father could be wicked and cruel—and was, thus, fallible, not the god-man his child’s heart had always made him out to be.
“Torval,” Rem said quietly, “there’s no shame in what you did.”
“Isn’t there?” Torval asked.
“You put your son’s desires before your own pride,” Rem said. “For his sake—and for the sake of your family—you made peace with your enemies. That’s not weakness, old stump, that’s the very definition of strength. They may think they’ve broken you, but that’s not true. You’ve bent, and you’ve endured. The dwarf before me now is the same brave soul I’ve come to know and rely on since my time on the watch began. Don’t try to tell me the head-breaker who’s got my back is any less than the bravest, ballsiest lump of blood and bone I’ve ever known.”
Torval drew a deep breath, clearly trying to calm himself. “Why do I feel, then, like what I gave away can never be regained? Like Tav might thank me for giving him what he wanted, but still be ashamed for being the son of an outcast? An outcast who came crawling back, begging forgiveness?”
“Only fools and despots never ask for forgiveness,” Rem said. “Besides, in your heart, do you really think you were wrong? Ever?”
Torval looked to him. Puzzled.
“You did what you had to do to keep your family together, to give them a new life after the old one was taken from them. And now, to give Tavarix something precious—something he needs—you also did what you had to do. There is no dishonor in that. Hold your head high, old stump.”
Torval wiped his face. Sniffed. He was calming now … but he wasn’t done probing at the wound.
“I imagine all the ways it could go wrong,” Torval said. “What if Tav decides that the way of our people is the only way—the right way—and that all the decisions I’ve made for our family are wrong? Or what if all our time living apart from our people, among the men and women of the west and strange elves and the blasted orcs that infest this city, have actually ruined him? What if Tav isn’t dwarven enough any longer, and he ends up just like me? Cast out? Humiliated?”
“You’re overthinking it,” Rem said gently. “One of the priests who schooled me—a good man, one of the best I’ve ever known—told me once that our greatest hopes and deepest fears are seldom realized. Trust Tav to understand and discern on his own. Trust him to be strong when things are hard. And trust that your love for him, all these years, will have planted deeper roots than any fostering or instruction ever could.”
“Even so,” Torval said, “there’s the ethnarch and his court. If they feel they’ve been wronged, and I cannot promise them vengeance—”
“You’d owe them that?” Rem asked.
“Not as a dwarf, as a watchwarden,” Torval said. “Anyway, they’re not going to want an investigation. They’re going to want names. They’ll cry for heads on pikes, and if we don’t deliver, our heads may be added to the list.”
“That’s ridiculous,” Rem said. “Surely they can’t be so vindictive?”
“Dwarves never forgive,” Torval said, “and they never forget.”
Rem laid a hand on Torval’s shoulder. “As you’ve demonstrated, some do. Maybe Eldgrim and company will surprise us.”
Torval finally seemed fully in control of himself again. He shot to his feet, cocked his head to indicate that Rem should follow, then set off at a hard march. “Come on,” he called over his shoulder. “That’s enough pissing and moaning for one day.”
Rem smiled as he hurried to catch up. It was nice to have the old Torval back, if only for a little while.
CHAPTER NINE
Rem felt strange when they passed into the dwarven quarter. Though he’d just been there yesterday, and had loved the brief hour or so that he and Indilen had spent exploring before the eruption of violence, the crowded streets, colorful awnings, looming pyramids, and diminutive people who lived and worked there had now all taken on a daunting, alien quality. The sense of joy and easy purpose that he’d noted the day before was gone. Every face wore a frown or a resigned grimace; all eyes were downcast, all movement aimless or automatic. Openness had yielded to wariness. Purposeful labor had become oppressive toil. The change in the air was unmistakable.
Torval led Rem deeper through the twisting streets, past open bakeshops, silent saloons, and artisans undertaking their daily business beneath a cloud of melancholy and apprehension. Rem tried to keep his eyes down, to avoid directly engaging with anyone. Suddenly he was unpleasantly aware of his own alienness in the current surroundings. Soon they moved past the area that the riot had swept through the day before, the streets still littered with the gathered-up detritus of the chaos: broken handcarts, shattered pottery and crockery, torn clothing and muddied tapestries, discarded bread and sweetmeats trampled into the mud. Just yesterday all those things had embodied the hopes and labors of the people who called this quarter home—investments, wages, handicrafts wrought with love for sale and barter. Now it was all junk, good for little more than a firepit.
The ruined wares and broken furniture weren’t all that had suffered, either. Several of the colorful silks once stretched between the buildings had been torn from their moorings and now trailed into the churned mud, the flayed skins of once-colorful beasts. Windows were broken. Wooden support struts bent, dogleg, while the eaves and roofs they supported sagged. More than a few doors had been torn off their hinges or hung askew in mute testimony to just what sort of damage a furious mob could do. Among the wreckage the locals labored, clearing the entryways to their shops, gathering up their ruined offerings—wasted money and effort now—and making haphazard attempts to restore their homes and places of business to some modicum of structural fidelity. The wreckage, though isolated to just a few intersecting streets, was ugly and unnerving. Rem felt ashamed just passing through, as though he were somehow to blame.
Torval marched on, purposeful, as if he knew where he was going. Little by little, through the occasional gaps between silk awnings and looming pyramids, Rem noted rooftops and houses rising gently in the distance. That meant they were approaching the slopes of Suicide Hill and, presumably, the dwarven ethnarch’s citadel. Finally the street opened onto a broad square—the divergence of several streets into an open space complete with one of the city’s ubiquitous burbling public fountains. On the far side of that square, their destination waited.
The citadel hunkered in the shadow of the hill behind stout stone walls covered in ivy. Rem saw only a single entryway, a wide wrought iron gate flanked by high hewn-block towers on either side. A pair of dwarven guards in house livery—deep blue-gray and silver chased with copper accents—stood guard at the gate itself, each with a thick-handled halberd in his hand and a sword sheathed at his side.
“Let me do the talking,” Torval said over his shoulder, then seemed to lean into his stride toward the gate and the sentries. Rem only gave a curt grunt in reply and kept pace. He was still trying to get a good look at the citadel.
As they drew nearer, Rem was afforded a better view into the compound through the thick iron bars of the closed gate. The grounds were dominated by two structures, each clearly born of the same dwarven architectural imagination but with peculiarities of design and form that denoted their separate, distinct purposes. The structure to the right looked, to Rem, like a castellated ma
nor house, adorned with leaded windows and sporting fine landscaping in its dooryard, but fortified nonetheless—its walls stout, its roof hidden behind battlements and a low crenellated parapet. Its angles were sharp, its lines clean, its thick walls, buttresses, and geometric design suggesting strength, resilience, a robust harmony. Though laden with decorative accents—thorny dwarven runes, intricate multilayered knots, the graven images of squat warriors and thick-legged maidens opposing hoary giants and abominations from the ageless depths of dwarven cavern countries—the structure nonetheless struck Rem as gloomy and severe.
To the left, separated from the great house by a small wooded park crammed with shade trees and stone arches, stood the dwarven temple. The hulking edifice, slate gray and built of hewn blocks as large as a peasant’s hovel, sported the same severe angularity, geometric imperiousness, and glowering strength of the great house, but on a far larger scale. Its squat, strong buttresses put Rem in mind of the seeking roots of some long-petrified tree, and the four rising towers of the structure completed that image. Something about the two buildings suggested kinship, as though the temple were the great house’s grim and overbearing father.
As Torval approached the great iron gate, the dwarven guards stepped forward. Perfectly in unison, they dipped their halberds to create a barrier against his advance. Up close Rem could better see the details of their uniforms—the intricate, endless knots woven into their surcoats, the square scales of the mail shirts beneath, the beautifully embossed leather bracers and greaves they wore. Clearly the ethnarch spared no expense in the arming and outfitting of his house guard. The one on the left was clearly older, his intricately woven, well-oiled beard a streaky iron gray. Rem assumed the guard on the right, whose beard was shorter and of a rich brown, to be much younger.
“Stand fast there!” barked the older soldier, whom Rem named Gray Beard. “Name yourselves.”
Torval studied the sentries. Rem stood silently beside him, trying to look hard faced and undaunted, but only feeling tired and out of his depth.
“Watchwardens of the Fifth,” Torval barked back, “under official orders to treat with the ethnarch.”
“Regarding what?” the younger guard—whom Rem dubbed Brownie—demanded.
“Regarding wardwatch business fit only for your master,” Torval said. “Stand aside.”
There was a pause. Gray Beard spoke again. “We’ll need more than that.”
Torval paused a long while, as if considering his answer carefully, and that pause made a deep impression on Rem. In six months of working at Torval’s side, he could not remember the dwarf ever choosing his words carefully.
“Adet isyeine tsaffliende,” Torval said curtly. “Stammiende dimwa. Naga.”
Gray Beard and his young partner seemed to chew on those words, whatever they were. For a long time they said nothing.
Rem let his hand hover close to the pommel of his sword, taking special care not to reach for it. He had no idea what Torval was saying to his countrymen, but the hard consonants, broad vowels, and forceful delivery gave no impression of friendliness. The sentries, implacable, stood fast and studied the two of them. Rem saw that there was something like disgust and disapproval on their faces—what little of those faces he could see beneath the crown and cheek guards of their molded helms. Whether it was Rem’s presence or Torval’s words that troubled them—or both—he could not say.
Then, finally, both slid sideways and drew their halberds up vertically to allow passage.
“Dza digyornen,” Gray Beard said to his young partner, who withdrew to the gate and opened it. The intricate lattice of iron filigreed with creeper vine swung on its half-rusted hinges, squealing ominously as the interior of the compound beckoned them. Torval led the way.
As they passed through the gate, Rem heard whispered words between Torval and the guards. Most of those words passed in a flurry of wide vowels and hard consonants, but the last word—spoken with bitter emphasis by Gray Beard—lodged in Rem’s awareness like a stone in his boot.
“Sweppsa.”
Torval froze for a moment when that word was spoken, raised his head the slightest bit, but did not look back at the guard. From where Rem stood he could not see Torval’s face. But he could see Gray Beard’s, and he studied it now. The old dwarven guard’s frown was bitter and malicious, his gaze wary. Clearly, whatever sweppsa meant, it wasn’t friendly.
Gods of sea and sky … were they about to get into a fight, right here on the ethnarch’s doorstep?
To Rem’s great relief, the answer was no. After his moment’s hesitation, Torval carried on, clearing the gate and making a path across the gravel-strewn courtyard beyond toward Eldgrim’s manse. Rem followed, silent and relieved. Clearly the sentry had thrown an insult at his friend … and Torval, miracle of miracles, had successfully fought the urge to answer that insult with violence.
Who said dwarves couldn’t change?
The span between the gate and the manse’s main entrance was roughly two hundred yards, traversed by a meandering flagstone path through a cramped garden filled with an array of glowering stone dwarven figures, all carved with the square strength and strident stylization that Rem recognized as unique to dwarven crafts. He had been in sculpture gardens before, but he was intrigued to note that, in this dwarven version, there was really very little garden—just a few stunted well-trimmed evergreen shrubs and some leafless trees spaced as punctuation of a sort between the sculptures, with beds of hibernating wildflowers lying dead nearby. Rem found it rather disconcerting that the sculptures, while possessing the typical features of the dwarven race—the squat build, large feet, thick hands, and elaborate beards—were also larger-than-life, standing nearly eight feet tall, blank stone eyes glaring out of implacable, frowning stone faces. The figures towered over him, filling him with a distinct sense of unease. How much more intimidating must these looming, frowning figures be to Torval’s kinsmen, who were so much shorter than they?
Everywhere watched, Rem thought idly. Everywhere judged. What a dreadful place …
A dwarf in house livery waited at the door. He looked young, his beard barely an inch from his chin, too short to braid. He opened the door for Rem and Torval silently. Sharing the briefest glance, the partners entered the house of the ethnarch.
Another house servant waited within, right in the center of the grand hall just beyond the entry. This dwarf took their names, asked the nature of their business, then disappeared through a door off to their left. Torval stood rooted, eyes darting about the great room, shoulders square, as if ready for a fight. Rem didn’t want to wander far, so he drifted a few idle steps from his partner, just enough to get a better look at the size and scale of the grand foyer they now stood in.
It was strange for Rem to stand in such a space—high ceilinged and clearly expansive, but, based on the proportions of his own body, still wrong somehow. Too small to his senses, if not immediately to his eye. The floor was made up of slabs of black and gray marble. A great gaping fireplace stood off to their left. The pillars and mantel of the fireplace were carved in a dynamic, breathtaking frieze of what Rem assumed to be dwarven history: stout heroes, shapely maidens, humpbacked goblins, and many-headed trolls, all interwoven with those ubiquitous endless dwarven knots. A few stately chairs were spaced close around the fire, while a few more—along with a lounge or two—adorned the room’s outer walls.
“Now listen,” Torval said, voice low. “We’re about to step into the ethnarch’s court. We’ll stand before Eldgrim himself, his wife, Leffi, and all the officials appointed by the home council to oversee operations here: the trade minister, the captain of the house guard, and the four high priests.”
“Four?” Rem asked, moving back toward his partner.
“Our clerics have specific roles and responsibilities, and—”
“—And they don’t step outside of them,” Rem finished. “Got it.”
“Only speak if spoken to,” Torval said slowly. “Dwarven admi
nistrators live for ceremony. They want everything to run smoothly, and for the conversation to follow a prescribed sort of script. If they do happen to address you directly, answer in the simplest possible terms, then keep quiet again. Am I understood?”
“I should think,” Rem said, “that I’d know a thing or two about courtly proceedings.” Rem suddenly realized what his statement was implying—the truth of his noble blood and upbringing—and quickly decided to amend it. “Being a groom’s son. Raised in a noble house and all.”
Torval barely seemed to notice. “Not this court, you don’t. Just do as I say.”
Rem nodded. Torval returned to his silent brooding. Rem finished his perusal of the room.
Directly ahead of them, a line of columns and arches marked a sort of arcade beneath the second-floor balcony, which sheltered an open doorway that probably led deeper into the manse. To their right a long, grand staircase hugged the wall, climbing up to that balcony above the arcade. Save its dwarven accents and its peculiarities of proportion, Rem could have assumed this to be the home of any well-to-do baron from the north.
The hinges on the door to their left squealed. The herald marched through, waved them on, then led them into the chamber beyond. Rem had to duck to get through the door, but the room itself—a fairly typical throne room and audience chamber—was large and spacious. Despite the high ceilings and great length of the room, he still felt like a clumsy giant. How must the everyday, oversized world feel for Torval, then—for any dwarf who lived and moved in a world built for humans? A world full of strange giants and oversize construction that constantly reminded them of their own smallness? Their own otherness?