The Second Gate

Vol. III of the Dwarves of Ice-Cloak

A. Trae McMaken

Copyright © 2023 by A. Trae McMaken

All rights reserved.

www.traemcmaken.com

Lost Pathway Books

Michigan, U.S.A.

www.lostpathway.com

Cover Design by Rebecacovers.

No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except as permitted by U.S. copyright law.

The story, all names, characters, and incidents portrayed in this production are fictitious. No identification with actual persons (living or deceased), places, buildings, and products is intended or should be inferred.

1st edition 2023.

For Cathy, my beloved bride beyond price

Contents

1. Two Ways

2. The Narrow Gate

3. The Purveyor

4. A Triumphal Entry

5. Discovery

6. The Bride Price

7. A Meeting

8. Decision

9. The Feast

10. The Kara-Indal Snows

11. A Search

12. The Thaw

13. The Liar

14. Betrayer

15. The Bells of Ice-Cloak

16. Three Days

17. Fire and Death

18. The Second Gate

19. The Caravan

Thanks

About the Author

Also By Trae

1

Two Ways

The Lower Way used to be prettier, trailing along the natural course of the stream through the ancient caverns of Ice-Cloak, but fifteen years ago the king had ordered it to be widened, and much of its natural beauty was buried beneath squared flagstones. King Ringhand son of Silvertongue cared less for the beauty of the caverns and more for the movement of trade. He rarely left his low halls to walk in the caverns, anyway. In narrower places, the stream had been diverted into a hidden channel. Not even the stalagmites were spared from destruction anywhere they might have inhibited the flow of goods. The workers had done what they could to preserve the caverns, but Topaz remembered the way the trail had been when she’d first followed it to the West Branch to visit her aunt. She liked to imagine what it must have looked like the first time the Crippled King set foot within the mountain, but now it was much harder to envision. She shook her head. Only a few months past rhundal, and already she bemoaned the past.

Topaz followed the turn to the West Branch, the split where the Upper Caverns were considered to begin. The walls of the West Branch were cut with many adits to passages running north and south and even west at its end. Countless stoneholds lay tucked away down those tunnels. In among the stalagmites in the natural cave was the West Branch Market where merchants showed their wares, crafter apprentices displayed their master’s work, singers and harpers and flutists made their deep music. The gleaming hues of rarer yellow and orange miner’s eye fungus mixed with the common blues and greens. The clothes in the Upper Caverns were finer. More rings graced fingers. Necklaces hung on display. Even the beards were braided and twisted with finery of silver, bronze, and here and there gold. It was an even busier place than the South Caverns, Topaz’s home. The dwarves of the South Caverns—or the Southcavers, as they were called—were more numerous, but they lived deep, and fewer folk tried to sell them anything. The South Caverns were home to rough miners and scrappy crafters, far from the richest and oldest families in the mountain. Much of the ore came from the deep mines below the South Caverns, but ore was not worth half as much as the fine craft-work made from it.

It was not far to her aunt’s stonehold. Her aunt had moved there over fifty years ago and she might as well be called an Upcaver. All from the West Branch and the Gallery were Upcavers, but the Gallery Dwarves were especially wealthy, and the stoneholds spreading from the eleven galleries were priceless. Above the door to her aunt’s stonehold was the familiar etching of a loom. The door was open, and light poured out into the tunnel. Topaz squinted as she entered unannounced.

Tallow lamps burned brightly, and yellow miner’s eye covered the ceiling. The walls were hung with intricate tapestries, the floor with the finest of rugs, and rows of racks displayed yet more of her aunt’s skillful wares. It was exactly what one would expect from the stonehold of a fiber artisan and lanolin merchant. Private living chambers lay through one door at the back, and storage closets through another. Topaz’s aunt worked there in the front, with her two silent apprentices at one side. The smell of wool and lanolin was strong and rich.

Topaz didn’t speak or interrupt the labor. There were no customers, and the looms clacked. One of the apprentices was spinning fine-crimped wool, the treadle-driven wheel whirring along. Topaz’s aunt worked the shuttle and weft and treadles of her great loom with deft precision. She was Ice-Cloak’s premier weaver of decorative tapestries and rugs, and many a Gallery Dwarf hung her craft in their holds.

Topaz stepped slowly over to her aunt, waiting to the side, enjoying the smells and the rhythmic sounds. She knew her aunt was aware of her presence, but also that she would not stop until ready. That was alright. Topaz had learned much of the trade from her aunt, and she enjoyed it. She didn’t mind watching. The rug taking shape had a marvelous pattern that imitated the creeping growth of miner’s eye with all its colors and variations.

At last, Thinweave set the shuttle aside and stepped back, looking at her work from a few feet away. She pursed her lips, then turned her gaze to Topaz.

“Niece,” she said.

“Aunt.”

Thinweave turned to her apprentice who worked at a smaller loom. The apprentice must have felt her gaze because she stopped and looked over.

“Make us tea,” Thinweave commanded, then motioned for Topaz to follow her into her private chambers.

Thinweave did not spare her own chamber luxury. There was barely any visible stone beneath the miner’s eye and the fine weavings. A lacquered round table stood in the center of the room, and Thinweave sat down in a fine chair, motioning for Topaz to join her. They waited in comfortable silence until their tea arrived, carried by an equally silent apprentice. It was a peppermint tea. Thinweave was not so extravagant in her own tastes as to indulge in the foreign spices now so popular among the wealthy, at least not on a regular basis. Peppermint grew well in the Kara-Indal, and there was no shortage. Every Southcaver grew up on peppermint tea.

They sipped the hot beverage for a time, relishing the steam.

“If you apprentice with me,” Thinweave said, “these luxuries of family would end. I would treat you no different than the others, even if I made you heir.”

“I know.”

She also knew that her aunt would suspect that she had come to make a formal petition to be her apprentice. Now past rhundal, she could. Such a petition would mean the eventual inheritance of Thinweave’s livelihood, if all went as normal. This very hold, an Upcaver stonehold, could be Topaz’s one day. Thinweave was a kelgrana, a dwarf-maid who married a trade and never a dwarf. They were treated with respect, but never called wif. They bore the same sort of names as any crafter. And it was not unusual for a kelgrana to take a niece or nephew as an heir, if they could master the craft. Some dwarf-wif’s practiced trades and raised children, but rarely did they become true masters. No. Kelgrana dedicated themselves to their art, remaining unmarried and childless, and such was expected of their apprentices—at least the maids.

Wool was plentiful, the valleys around Ice-Cloak covered with flocks. The only way to grow wealthy from a trade in fiber was to craft it better than anyone else. Thinweave did so, and she also traded in lanolin, a natural grease from wool. The dwarves—not just maids and wifs, but even smiths exposed to the drying heat of the forges—used it as a balm, often infused with herbs and spices. It made their skin soft, with a sheen that reflected the miner’s eye. There was none purer nor recipes more prized than Thinweave’s.

Topaz took another sip of her tea.

Her aunt raised a thick gray eyebrow. She looked especially like her younger brother, Topaz’s father, when she did that.

“You’re troubled,” her aunt said. Topaz tried to smile, but she didn’t answer.

“Look,” Thinweave said, setting down her mug and folding her hands in front of her. “For a moment, I’m just your aunt, and not a prospective master. What is it?”

Topaz had always found it easier to speak with her aunt than even her own mother. But that made it harder, now, considering.

“I’m not sure. . .” she started, then stalled. She took another sip. Thinweave’s eyebrow drifted upward again.

“Whether you wish to labor?”

“No, no,” Topaz said quickly. “Not that. I will always practice. And I’ll always wish to learn from you, as much as you’ll teach me.”

Her aunt sighed.

“But.”

“But I want babes. . . I want babes.” It felt good to say it. She avoided her aunt’s eyes. She knew Thinweave had wished to take her as an apprentice. Topaz’s brothers labored with her father at smelting. There were no others in the family.

“You’re a pretty maid,” Thinweave said. “You’ll have no problem.”

As if it mattered. There were two or three dwarves to every dwarf-maid, and so every maid received marriage offers. The only variation was how wealthy the offers.

“It’s just. . .”

“Ay?” Thinweave picked her mug back up and took a sip.

“I want the babes. It’s just. I’m not sure I want the dwarf.”

Thinweave spit her tea back into her mug, leaned back, and laughed, clapping her hand on her thigh.

“Ah, maid,” she said, shaking her head, her shoulders shaking.

“I’m serious,” Topaz said.

“I know. That’s what makes it funnier.”

Topaz couldn’t help but smirk, but she tried to hide it by taking another sip.

“You do know,” her aunt went on, leaning in and whispering, “that you can’t get the babes without the dwarf, ay?”

“Ay, yes.”

“Mhmm.”

“I really am serious,” Topaz said, and this time enough of her emotion made it into her voice that the mirth drained from her aunt’s frame.

“Alright, alright, maid.” Thinweave leaned back, squinting at Topaz. “Do you not like a dwarf? Do you not find them. . . pleasing?”

“No, I do. In principal, though less in particular, from the ones I know.”

Thinweave grinned again, but contained herself.

“Gilna and gilke are the greatest treasures of our folk. Don’t think I’ve not wondered if I made a mistake.”

“You?”

“Me.”

Topaz found that hard to believe. Thinweave appeared to see that.

“Think of it this way maid. Did your grandmother bear babes?”

“Ay, yes.”

“And her mother? And her mother’s mother?”

“Ay, of course.”

“Every single maid in your line has born babes back to the beginning, when the creator carved us from rock. It is a hard thing to go against the weight of your lineage, the heritage of every single mother of your blood. There are those of us who transgress that line. We pay our own price for that. ”

“You’re. . . You’re alright with it? I mean, if I?”

“You’re my niece. You’ll always have that. Besides. You’ll tangle the loom if you’re wishing for a babe to scream you up all night.”

Thinweave smiled and finished off her tea in a single swallow.

There was a carving above the arch that depicted a dwarf miner balancing on a tilted barrel with a tankard in each hand. Yale paid it no heed as he passed underneath; he’d seen it ten thousand times and could have carved it again, himself.

Sudbeard nodded to him as he entered. It was a narrow hall with a long deep firepit in the center, always alight. What with the fire and the dwarves with lit pipes packed with hill-smoke, it was a hazy place and smelled of dwarf and alcohol. It was not nearly ventilated well enough, and an unbroken trail of smoke drifted out of the archway and into the caverns beyond. All in all, it felt homey to Yale. Two long benches lined each side of the hall, and dwarves sat in scattered groups on each side of the fire, their chatter low. To foreign ears it would have sounded guttural. The humans had a horrible time trying to learn dwarvish, so purveyors often picked up a pidgin Laithan to accommodate them. Yale hated it.

“Gont, Yellowhood,” Sudbeard said. Gont was a dwarvish word used as a greeting among the Southcavers. It meant tap, derived from when a dwarven miner or laborer would tap on the shoulder of his work partner to alert him to his presence or get his attention in a loud mine. Miners had begun to say the word as they tapped, and it had developed into a general slang.

“A hot one,” Yale said to Sudbeard, who nodded and pulled a huge copper kettle from the coals of a brazier with a leather glove. Moments later, Yale cradled a ceramic mug of steaming mead in both hands, letting the heat waft through his beard into his face. He took a deep breath through his noise. He was not alone among dwarves in loving a hot brew, and he could use one that night.

He sat near a loose group of dwarves near the middle of the hall, staring into the glowing coals. It was hot in the hall. Yale didn’t intend to socialize much, he just wanted a drink. He was tired from hauling three tons of smelted iron to the lift at the Great Stair, where it would be hoisted to the workshops of the Face. He’d lost—from what he judged—about a twentieth of its value, meaning he’d lost wealth on the deal. But that was alright. The smiths of the Face believed they had received yet another bargain from Yale, and the Southcaver smelters were pleased by Yale’s purchase. For all either group knew, he was a hard working purveyor of modest means but eager connections, willing to cut a favorable deal.

“Fished the lorknaben out of the lake, they did,” a dwarf said nearby. Yale heard it in way of those who hadn’t been paying attention when a whole sentence stands out from nowhere. Lorknaben was dwarvish slang, meaning something along the lines of “stilt-walker,” one of many slang terms used for humans. In fact, there was no specific word that the dwarves used to mean human, but many insulting slurs. Lorknaben was perhaps the most well-used.

“What’s that?” Yale asked, interjecting into the conversation. He recognized the miners who were huddled together. They were all Southcavers, though he could have known that by the tattoos. They recognized him, too.

“Gont, Yellowhood,” said the dwarf, then answered his question. “They pulled a dead lorknaben out of the lake.”

“When?”

“Yesterday.”

Yale frowned, furrowed his brow, and muttered loud enough for a few of the others to hear:

“So it’s true.”

“What’s that?” the miner asked, leaning in.

“Nothing, it’s just that I’d heard something but didn’t believe it.”

“What’d you hear?” one of the other miners asked. He had the attention of at least five of them, now.

“Oh, it’s probably not something I should. . .” Yale paused and glanced at the door. The others leaned in.

“Come now,” the first miner said. “You’re one of us, Yellowhood. Take a pull and tell us if you’ve got news.”

Yale nodded, as if thinking, and then took a drink. He leaned forward, his elbow on his knee.

“It’s just that, you know in my work, I meet a lot of folk, hear a lot of things,” he kept his voice low. He could see others edging closer to listen.

“Ay, yes.”

“Well. . . I heard that the prince—you know the one I’m speaking of—”

The others nodded, eyes gleaming.

“—well, some humans tried to cross him. And word was, he meant to send a message.”

A few of the other dwarves leaned back, clearly letting this bit of news sink in.

“But to leave him in the lake? The king has sworn protection to the human traders,” said the first miner.

“Ay, he has,” Yale said, “But the prince, he doesn’t shy from the blood of those who cross him.”

He saw a few nods and a few smiles. Many of the Southcavers had little enough love for King Ringhand, and many thought the Smuggler Prince must be a Southcaver, himself.

“If that’s so,” said another dwarf, “then this prince has grown bolder.”

“I dare say he knows his business better than we do,” said the first dwarf.

Conversation dwelled on the prince a while longer, and Yale knew the tale would spread. He drank his mead, relishing the soothing heat on his throat. The radiating warmth of the fire relaxed his muscles. He didn’t partake of much more conversation. At length, he rose, planning to head back to his stonehold to sleep. A few nodded to him, and he nodded back before heading to the door.

2

The Narrow Gate

Topaz’s father and brothers worked in a smelting workshop separate from their stonehold. The smeltery was a place of fumes and heat and business, but their private family stonehold lay in granite along a passage fifty feet down a stairway below the South Caverns. The door to their family hold was stone, without ornament, except for a simple bronze-plated carving of a bucket above the lintel, kept polished and gleaming in the light of the blue miner’s eye.

The door swung open on greased hinges, and Topaz entered to find her father sitting at table, a mug and an empty plate before him. She could still smell the fried cave-bread her mother had made. Her brothers, both unmarried as yet, often stayed away late after work, but her father came home to eat and sleep. He was a portly dwarf who liked his food, and his beard rested atop his belly when he sat.

“Gont, there you are maid,” he said. She approached the table and sat across from him, setting down the wrapped parcel she had carried back with her. He watched, expectant. He'd been looking at her like that for the past few months since her rhundal.

“I was with your sister,” she said.

“Ay. How is old Thinweave?” he asked. He always called her “old.” She was his older sister by thirty years. How Thinweave was doing wasn’t really what he wanted to know, but he wouldn’t ask about it outright.

“She is well. She sends greetings.”

Topaz’s mother walked out of a side chamber, rubbing her hands on her apron front. She saw her daughter and smiled.

“Are you hungry?” She asked. “I could fry up some more cave-bread.” Cave-bread was made from a powdered fungus that grew below ground, often fried in mutton fat by those in the South Caverns who couldn’t afford regular meat. Most Southcavers grew up on the stuff, and even a fairly well-to-do smelter like her father still liked to eat it.

“I ate with Aunt.”

“Oh. . . Oh.” Her mother veered away from her pan and brazier and sat down at the table beside her father. “And how was that?”

Her mother wanted to know, too, and like Topaz’s father, she wouldn’t ask directly.

“It was pleasant,” Topaz answered, enjoying their eager expressions. She would stretch it for a moment longer, just for fun. And a little bit because she was nervous to speak her decision. She glanced at the chamber, full of fine rugs and tapestries and cushions, gifts from her aunt and her own less skillful but more than adequate workings. She had not wasted all her years before rhundal, not like some did. She’d wanted a head start if she did choose to apprentice, but her heart had been changing over the past years.

Her parents glanced at each other and then pretended to make conversation between themselves.

“I’m just about two tons up,” he said. “And no nearer a buyer.”

“I thought Halflead?”

“Halflead left for Round-Hold last week.”

“Oh.”

The conversation stalled.

“I wish to marry,” Topaz said. She found her heart was beating fast.

Her father slammed his palms onto the tabletop and rose to his feet with a wide smile and crinkled eyes. Topaz blushed, but she couldn’t help but smile. Her mother clasped her hands.

“We’ll need to start preparations,” she said, rising to her feet as well. “We’ll need spices. More rugs. Your cousin plays the flute. And we will need to arrange for lambs. Three or four.”

“Mother, we have no dwarf yet.”

“Bah!” her father said, waving his hand. “When I let it be known that my daughter wishes to marry, you will have proposals from every young gurk—” dwarvish slang for a bachelor dwarf ”—in the South Caves, but I suspect we’ll have Upcavers as well, maybe even a Gallery dwarf if your Aunt helps.” He laughed, clapping his hands together.

“Please find me a dwarf who is. . .” she paused. This was embarrassing even to think about, let alone speak. But think she had. “A dwarf who is steady. Someone kind.”

“Steady. Kind. Ay, yes,” her father mumbled, striding away from the table. He turned back. “I wonder if any sculptors or smiths in the Face have a gurk,” he said. “Nothing like kinship to move metal. No more worrying with purveyors, then.”

Topaz sighed. She rose from the table, picking up the parcel she had set there. It was a gift from her aunt, two spools of the finest of her spun wool.

“I must get to work,” she said.

“On what?” her father asked.

“My veil.”

Her mother sighed, raising her hand to her mouth in sudden emotion, and she waved Topaz away to her private alcove.

Yale walked double over, grasping a pole in each hand as he dragged the litter through the tunnel. They made their litters long and narrow, for the tunnel was long and narrow. He was a dwarf of only moderate height but even he could not stand upright in the low passage. Anywhere else in Ice-Cloak a dwarf would have carved a tunnel wide and tall with plenty of space to serve its purpose, at least if it was intended for regular use. Yale certainly used this tunnel often, but he had kept it as small and rough as he could manage. Anyone who might accidentally dig their way into it would likely think it a hasty, exploratory delving.

Behind Yale, Halfscuttle and Limp hauled litters of their own, each ten feet long and loaded with the same padded ceramic jars.

Halfscuttle mumbled. He always mumbled and Yale always told him to stop and Halfscuttle mumbled in reply. Quiet was something of an essential skill in their work, but Halfscuttle kept up a commentary under his breath from one end of their run to the other. Limp, as his name suggested, limped along behind, silent and efficient and far stronger than his gimp leg led folk to believe. As far as partners went, or help, he could have had worse. They were both Southcavers like him, and they’d kept their shared secret for decades as it was. But Yale didn’t think of them as partners or help. They were there, as they had been and would be.

The trio reached the ascent. It was bumpy, and it smelled of goat-dung even this far down the tunnel. He heard the rattle of ceramic on ceramic and glanced back to make sure the sacking he’d padded between the jars hadn’t wiggled loose. Lapis-dust was expensive stuff. At least to humans it was. Even after decades trying to figure out what it was that those gangly southern giants valued, and what he could get for it, he still felt the oddity of the humans. They used the lapis for dye, of course. Ultramarine was not a hard color to come by for the dwarves, but the humans paid well for it.

“Alright,” he whispered.

They’d come to a door in the stone. It could hardly be seen, but it was there. He’d carved it himself. It had taken a year to get it right. He set down the poles of his litter and reached up to his forehead, sliding a blued steel mask down over his face and then pulling forward his dark hood. He pressed his hands against the stone, then drew a simple iron bolt. With a push, the door swung outward on well-greased hinges. The smell of goat-dung flooded into the tunnel, the ammonia of it burning his nose with the first breath. He stepped out into the compost heap piled against the side of a hill in the narrow valley between Ice-Cloak and Queen’s West. Under the heap was the remains of the spring to an old diverted stream. The dry streambed ran down the valley, now overgrown with bramble except for a path beaten down by sheep and goats. It offered some protection for movement up the West Vale, at least.

The compost pile belonged to a family of goatherds that had grazed the hillside for generations. They had a shallow, surface stone-hold about a hundred yards away, and a goat-fold even closer. They were far from wealthy folk, but far wealthier than they used to be thanks to Yale’s regular contributions to their silence. The elder goatherd Hidehorn was a fellow conscript during the King’s Quarry war, a victory won by the late King Silvertongue that resulted in the capitulation of all the northern Grashal-Indal. To Yale, it was nothing but a year of marching and a few days of utter terror. But as a result he trusted Hidehorn with his life, and that was good because the penalty for their activities was certain death.

Yale stepped out from the compost heap and watched the dark of night for a time. He listened, he smelled what he could beyond the dung, and he watched the fold of the valley that spread out in front of him. All was as it should be.

“Alright,” he whispered back into the door. Halfscuttle emerged in mask and hood, a jar under each arm. They had the rest of the jars out onto the grassy hillside in a matter of minutes.

He’d thought about moving the meeting point even further away. He’d thought about leaving the goods a day or two prior to the meeting. On the surface, each option seemed to reduce risk. But then, to move goods further meant greater risk of discovery on the surface. To leave goods on the surface longer also meant greater risk. In the end, there was always going to be risk.

He’d decided long ago to be alright with that.

“Alright, off with you,” Yale told Limp. Limp slunk back to the tunnel behind. From there, he would wait, ready to rush out with weapons if necessary. If it came to a fight, Yale wanted Limp beside him, but having Limp beside him would also increase the likelihood for a fight, so he made sure Limp stayed below until needed. Meeting so near the tunnel entrance risked the tunnel’s discovery, but he’d rather be able to quickly flee back under stone and brace the door if there was trouble. The tunnel’s discovery was less of a problem than his own death.

They waited about twenty minutes, watching the horizons. They could see the distant shape of the Queen’s West squatting atop the western ridge. There were no lights there. The Ridgewards never used lamps or candles at night to prevent their eyes being blinded to the darkness as they watched for foes. That was the logic, at least. Mostly the Ridgewards sat and got fat and hoped not to get rotated to the northern or western mines where they might actually have to watch for danger. There hadn’t been an ürsi sighting in the valleys around Queen’s West for two hundred years.

Yale heard the humans long before they arrived. If they’d been upwind, he’d have smelled them before they arrived, too, even above the reek of compost.

There were three of them with a string of jenny mules. They’d wrapped the mules hooves in pale linen, as if that was going to help. All they accomplished was to make the hooves brighter in the dark. The humans stopped, and the one in the lead gazed ahead, unfocused. Yale could see them plainly, now, but they couldn’t see him. They were always bumbling idiots in the dark. They started whispering, their sibilant language hissing. It was stupid to whisper; it carried far at night. Better to speak in a low tone. He sighed and walked forward. When he was about ten feet away, he spoke:

“The owl is fighting the crow for food.”

The humans startled at the voice.

“And the wolf wants his share,” one of them responded, altogether too loudly.

Well, they knew the arranged password. That was good. Not that he had a doubt they were the right humans. A trap would have had more an air of. . . competence.

“Follow,” Yale said, and turned. The humans hurried after him. He didn’t like them to get too close—didn’t like how they towered over him—but they couldn’t see him if he stepped beyond a few yards. Dealing with humans was an unfortunate part of his work. He’d even dealt with elves once. . . Never again. That was not worth it. The elves could deal with the king or pound rock.

“Here,” Yale said, turning to the human in the lead. “Unload here.”

“And the goods?” the human whispered back.

Yale pointed with his thumb over his shoulder to where Halfscuttle stood next to the jars. The human craned his neck, blinking. Yale sighed.

“There. . .right over there.” He pointed. “Come on. Follow a little closer. Do you see him now?”

“Oh, yes.”

“The jars are at his feet.”

“We must inspect. We need light to see by.”

“No lights. I brought what your man asked for.”

“How can we be sure?”

“Because I said so. And if you don’t trust me, I’ll take it back under stone and you can figure out another supplier.”

The human hesitated.

“We were told you are reliable,” he said, as if uncertain. Yale didn’t respond. Finally, the human turned and motioned to the others. They untied the panniers on the sides of the first mule and let three bundles fall loudly to the ground. Yale inhaled, smelling the spices instantly.

Cinnamon. Nutmeg. Cloves. Spices from the far south worth five times their weight in silver to the dwarves. Yale’s mouth watered.

“The jars are all there,” he said, then he motioned for Halfscuttle. The two dwarves walked to the mules. The beasts shied at his scent. Yale hefted a sack in each hand. Halfscuttle took the third. Two of the humans were already bringing the first jars to the mules.

“You’re on your own from now,” Yale told the other. “If you need anything else, contact the same way.”

The human nodded, looking around at the darkness. Yale headed away but paused.

“You’ll want to be out of the valley before the moon rises. You’ve got about an hour.”

With that, he and Halfscuttle retreated to the tunnel. Yale swung the door closed behind them, then breathed easy. Safe again. Another trade done.

3

The Purveyor

The next day, Yale wore his finer woven clothes, dyed a bright yellow. A sheepskin stole draped around his shoulders, the black wool facing outward. On his head he wore a matching yellow cave hood with blue edging. He often had to meet Upcavers and rarely even Gallery Dwarves, and he found that negotiations went smoother if they couldn’t see the Southcaver tattoos on his head. Halfscuttle was asleep on a chair in the corner, his arms folded over his chest. He was still muttering.

Footsteps sounded outside the chamber, and Yale made a concerted effort not to look up from his worktable. He had parchment and pen in front of him, and two weeks ago he’d written something resembling a list of materials on the parchment. He never intended to reference it, but it looked better to have speaking runes scrawled on something on his desk when he had guests. It looked industrious and meticulous and all the things a purveyor should be. And Yale was those things, he was mostly sure, it’s just that he kept his business in his head.

When whoever it was entered the room, he didn’t look up but stared a bit more at the list before sliding it aside. As a young conscript, he’d learned from a particularly grim captain that making folk wait was one of the first indications of power and authority, and appearing to be a successful and busy purveyor was more Yale’s business than actual purveying. . . on the official and legal side of things.

He glanced up, then smiled, though he had no particular pleasure in seeing Bronzebucket standing there. Bucket, in this case, was slang for the dwarf’s belly, and bronze for the fact that he was a smelter specializing in that particular alloy. Bronzebucket was looking somewhat more unpleasant than normal, his hands tucked into the sides of his leather apron, a frown on his face.

“Gont, Bronzebucket,” Yale said, trying to sound cheerful. “I’m glad you came just now, as it is perhaps the only moment I can spare today. I wouldn’t want to have missed you.” Yale glanced at Halfscuttle and wished the dwarf was looking a little more. . . occupied.

“You’d better spare it, Roughcoat,” Bronzebucket said. Yale tried not to wince. He’d long ago attempted to eliminate the moniker Roughcoat, which went back further than he’d like to have remembered. He preferred Yellowhood, but Bronzebucket would never change, and he remembered Yale’s even humbler beginnings. A dwarf got to know a lot of folk after living in the South Caverns for a hundred and fifty years or more like Bronzebucket had.

“What may I help you with?” Yale asked.

“The last time I went through you, I got a half ounce less a pound than I should have—”

“It was a fair price,” Yale interrupted.

“—and I didn’t want to try that again, but I have no choice. Charhand is—”

“Sick,” Yale said.

“—and Halflead is—”

“Halfway to Round-Hold by now.”

Bronzebucket stared at him. He didn’t even mention Silvertooth, which was good, because a few years ago he would have. That meant something, at least. Yale continued:

“And you know that the Upcavers and Gallery Dwarves will deal with me.”

“Ay, yes.” Bronzebucket didn’t look happy about it.

“How much?”

“Two tons.”

Yale whistled.

“Can you?” Bronzebucket asked.

“Two days. A price?”

“No less than forty grams.”

Yale sighed, then nodded.

“I’ll have it brought,” Bronzebucket said. He left the chamber without another word and his footsteps faded down the passage.

Yale noticed that Halfscuttle had stood and was looking at him, his eyebrows raised expectantly.

“What?” Yale asked.

“What do we have to do?”

“What do you mean?”

“You told him we was busy.”

“Ay, yes but. . . No. No we aren’t. Go ahead and sleep.”

***

There were countless tasks and supplies needed for a colony the size of Ice-Cloak. For every single finished knife that came from a Face forge, there were woodcutters, iron miners, smelters, coalminers. . . All of them needed clothes, food, little luxuries like hill-smoke. And so arose the purveyors who arranged the movement of coal, ore, wood, food, cloth and countless other raw materials and finished products. They bargained, negotiated, bought and sold.

Two days after their agreement, Bronzebucket’s sons brought the bronze ingots to Yale’s storeroom. Two more weeks passed in the usual course of business. Some of the bronze he truly did purvey within the mountain. Half he sold to an artisan of the Face—at a slight loss based on Bronzebucket’s minimum—but the rest he traded to a merchant from Iron-Deep out of the second gate. To dodge the tariffs, the merchant had paid him an ounce and a quarter. All in all, Yale had moved the ingots for just shy of fifty-five grams of gold. He’d double checked the weight on his scales, and it came to fifty-four and a half. The artisan of the Face had haggled over half a gram, and Yale had conceded with a show of frustration.

It had been four hundred years since the ways of the Crippled King had been abandoned. No longer did the folk work an allotment each year. Instead, the grandfather of King Ringhand had begun to levy taxes on trade. Taxing trade within the mountain was next to impossible, so the kings taxed trade into and out of the mountain, charging tarifs and taxes and fees at the adit. Often, the collectors expected bribes on top of that.

And when the king began to charge taxes, the folk began to smuggle. In cleverly sewn clothing, false-bottomed crates, double-chambered pots, and many other tricks. The guards and collectors at the adit had grown wise to many of these devices. But up until Yale, no one had broken that ancient law forbidding the digging of any other adits to Ice-Cloak. At least, no one had done so and survived for long at all. To dig the tunnel and to use it had taken a steady resolve and patience beyond measure, but still he was never truly safe.

Yellowhood was not real, nor was the smuggler prince. Nor even Roughcoat. They were all roles played, whether the memory of a forced conscript, or the chosen roles of Southcaver purveyor or murderous outlaw. He’d crafted Yellowcoat and the Smuggler Prince with especial care, but in his heart he was Yale, the name his mother gave him. Steady, it meant. It was steadiness that got him through the war, steadiness that delved the second gate for decades, steadiness that kept his head straight in danger.

The door to Bronzebucket’s smeltery was open, and warm air flowed out into the passage. The sigil of a bucket atop a crucible gleamed over the door in bronze. Bronzebucket smelted more than bronze, but he’d made that alloy the backbone of his work, whether coincidentally or on purpose, Yale didn’t know.

He entered the door and found Bronzebucket sitting on a stool before a row of kilns, his arms crossed over his belly, watching as his sons shoveled coal into the maw of a bright fire-chest. The air was smoky and thick. It was rare for a workshop in the South Caverns to have the venting required for kiln work, and no doubt Bronzebucket simply vented into the main caverns above. There was a waterworks below the adit reservoir, wheels twenty yards around driving ingenious bellows the size of whole chambers to circulate air out of the mountain through a series of long bore-holes. In some places, you could see the vapor being pulled up into the vents. Other smaller water-driven bellows helped to circulate air for the lower mines, but still the airflow was far from perfect, not for thousands upon thousands of dwarves. Not many true fire-workshops existed in the South Caverns and the warrens below. Adequate ventilation only existed—was only permitted—in the Face, the cluster of workshops behind the face of a cliff high up on the mountain. The Great Stair of Brokenspear led there from the Upper Caverns. In the face, wide vents had been drilled where enemies could not attack. In the winter, the snow above the Face turned grey from the never-ceasing smoke.

“Roughcoat!” Bronzebucket said, seeing him enter. The dwarf rose from his stool.

“Gont, Bronzebucket,” Yale replied. “The deal is done.”

“Is it?”

Yale reached into a pocket of his shirt and removed a small ingot of gold. He dropped it in Bronzebucket’s outstretched hand.

“Stubs,” Bronzebucket said. “Weigh this.” He passed the little ingot into one of his sons hands.

“What should it be?” Bronzebucket asked. Yale smiled. He didn’t expect to be trusted, not really.

“Thirty-nine grams,” he said.

“We said no less than forty.”

“Ay, yes. And I traded for forty-two, which is damn better than you’d have done, and I have taken my commission.”

Bronzebucket made a brief, gruff show of hemming and stomping over to his son to verify the thirty-nine grams at their scales. In truth, Yale knew that Bronzebucket had expected less. Forty grams was more than he could have expected, but this was how negotiations went. No one had to know the truth.

And the truth was that Yale was far richer than he let on. Far richer than Bronzebucket had any idea. The Upcavers and Gallery Dwarves did like to deal with him in spite of themselves; he was willing to take marginal losses on his legal business because legal business kept his other business cloaked in legitimacy. As long as everyone got what they wanted, no one was checking in on the details. The artisan in the Face didn’t care and didn’t ask for what price Yale had taken on the bronze, only what he was willing to sell it for, and Bronzebucket just wanted his cut.

There was a rustle of blue at the door. A dwarf-maid walked through the door, her braids wrapped in fine blue cloth that matched the blue skirt she wore behind an embroidered apron. She carried a ceramic cooking dish in her arms, covered with a lid of the same, and atop it balanced a pitcher with ease. She had fine shoulders and a clear, light eye above her half-veil of blue. She glanced at Yale in passing, bringing the dish to the table and setting it down with the pitcher.

“Here you are father,” she said to Bronzebucket. He smiled, then looked to Yale.

“Is there anything else?” he asked.

Yale shook his head and left.

***

There was nothing left to do for some time, and Yale found himself before the familiar sigil of the Miner and Barrel. As soon as he entered, he felt an unusual energy among the dwarves gathered within. Mostly they were unwed miners and poor craftsmen—those who could pay no bride price and so spent their meager wealth to have others cook for them.

The long hall was more crowded than usual, the noise of chatter at a higher pitch. He recognized a couple ore haulers and sat down next to them, trying to remember their names and failing. Yale had met many folk, especially Southcavers, but some said there were over forty thousand dwarves in Ice-Cloak, now, and more in the mines and holds scattered through the Kara-Indal all the way up to Round-Hold. Who could know the number? Even the king couldn’t get a true counting. Some said there were now more dwarves in the Kara-Indal than the Grashal-Indal, but Yale found that hard to believe, even accounting for the wars.

“What news?” Yale asked to the ore haulers after Sudbeard handed him a mug full of steaming stew. Yale sniffed at it. One had to applaud Sudbeard for keeping his fare at a piping hot simmer, although it was not always immediately clear what went into it.

“Apart from the Tukith-i-Illenfärner?” one of the ore-haulers asked. It meant the Spirit of Ice-Cloak. It was the name of the great gem dug by Brokenspear himself that sat above his and his wif’s ossuary in the Chamber of Waters. It had sat there since before Brokenspear’s own death, a gift to his dead wif. Many songs told that tale.

“What of the stone?” he asked.

“Just that Ringhand took it.” It was common for Southcavers to leave off the “king” when speaking of Ringhand.

“He what now?”

The other ore-hauler pitched in:

“He took it from the plinth. Down into his treasury.”

“No. He can’t do that. It’s been there for a thousand years.”

“He said that since more outsiders are coming, humans and what else, he could not leave it to be stolen.”

“There’s always an honor guard on it,” Yale said, still barely believing his ears.

“He’s a greedy bastard and nothing short,” the first ore-hauler said, and spat onto the coals.

“I tell you, it’s the spirit of the dragon,” said an old white-haired miner. “And where the spirit of the dragon comes, evil follows.”

“Evil follows, uncle?” said one of the younger dwarves, using uncle in the honorary sense. “That’s like saying that if something evil comes, evil comes. ”

“You’d show some respect if you had sense in that geode head of yours,” the old dwarf snapped. There was laughter all around.

“But the stone’s not his to take,” said the first ore-hauler. “It belongs to the Crippled King. It belongs to Ice-Cloak.”

“It’s no more his than the Chamber of Waters belongs to the Gallery Dwarves.”

It was still a sticking point with the dwarves of the South Caverns that in his later years Ringhand’s father had closed the Chamber of Waters to all those who did not live in the eleven galleries above it. Not even the Upcavers of the West Branch could go enjoy the hot spring or the waterfall. Those rich Gallery Dwarves loved their kings, and the kings made sure they didn’t have to deal with Southcavers. There were two times as many Southcavers as Upcavers, and the Gallery Dwarves were fewer even than the rest of the Upcavers. But those close to the king and those with great family hordes had long ago claimed all the stone around the Chamber of Waters. The closing of its doors was inevitable.

“Well, lads,” Yale said, chewing on a chunk of something from his stew that was perhaps a little more suspect than usual. “Should have been born rich.”

“Eh,” said one of the ore-haulers, peering into his mug. “I’d have a fine wif stewing goat, then.”

“Like that Bronzebucket’s daughter,” said the other.

“What now?” Yale asked.

“We dropped ore at Bronzebucket’s two days ago,” he said. “His maid is past rhundal and wishes to marry.”

Yale thought of the maid who’d brought Bronzebucket food that day. His mouth watered for a moment, and not from the stew in his mug. That was a fine maid. Yale was getting past marriage age, himself. His beard had even gone gray early. What was he now? Ninety-two? The maid would have a thousand young gurks chasing her in a fortnight.

4

A Triumphal Entry

Topaz walked again along the Lower Way, headed to the West Branch and her aunt’s stonehold. She was tired, her eyes a bit bleary. After taking her father’s meal, she had toiled for well over twenty hours on the meticulous lace and weaving of her wedding veil, but she had never done anything quite so intricate—or at least, not with such a weight of personal pride and import on the line. She had questions for her aunt: should she use a spider stitch on the headside of the lower panels, and what bars should she put between the motifs of the main? She had only slept a few hours, knowing she must catch her aunt in those small times between her sleeping and working.

As tired as Topaz felt, she glanced up at the cavern wall as she followed the road along a curve. There, nearly thirty feet up in a spur of granite was a crystal cluster of blue-green beryl. It was her favorite of all the minerals left preserved and polished in the cavern walls. An age ago, someone had deftly removed some of the granite from around the beryl cluster, exposing the crystals to view from below. If they had polished the beryl at all, it was with an eye for preserving its natural beauty.

Such was the heart of the dwarves of old. Sometimes she wished she lived back then, back in the years of heroes like the Crippled King or even Spinner the Great. But then, she didn’t like excitement. The old ideals of freedom and beauty may have faded to little more than grand stories and songs, but her life, at least, was not so bad as many. Thousands of dirt-scratch miners lived in the deeps, rarely even climbing so high as to tread within the caverns.

The sound of many tramping rough-shod feet drew her attention back to her surroundings. Many laborers approached from the north, carrying bundled tools and hauling sleds and wheel-skiffs of steel studs. They marched like warriors, at least a hundred. One of them, young dwarf with an errant eye was watching her as he approached. She had only worn her half-veil, and now she regretted it.

“Where are you going?” she asked him as he passed. It was over bold but at least she could satisfy her curiosity. He smiled.

“The gate, maid,” he said, as if it was obvious. She stopped walking as they passed by, putting her back toward the cavern wall.

Yale was back sitting in the drinking hall of the Miner and Barrel. He’d only been gone for a matter of hours, long enough to sleep and rise again. Like many of the bachelor dwarves, he wasn’t there to drink at all but to eat and to keep his nose close to the business of the South Caverns. Halfscuttle leaned back against the stone wall next to him, arms folded over his chest, eyes closed, breathing slow and even. He wasn’t muttering, but he was snoring now and then.

Even though Yale was there to eat, there were a few who were drinking—deep miners by the look of them, come up for ale and supplies no doubt. Yale had only woken an hour or so before, but there was no telling what time of their waking or sleeping cycle any of the deep miners might be on. Most dwarves only slept five or six hours at a time, keeping to their own schedules. Some dwarves would stay awake for thirty hours at a time, and then sleep, but much depended on the rhythms of their work. The dwarven word for “day” was kelv, and it meant “cycle,” more or less. Their word for night meant sleep, not the dark of the sky. Still, especially for those who had reason to go to the surface, dark and light still delineated the kelv.

The miners were singing rather raucously. It was a good song, and Yale had enjoyed it before, though at the moment he was either too sober or just not in the mood. For him, it was early in the kelv. The song concerned how Spinner the Great offered the dirthna in bride price to marry Queen Keyhand. Still in mourning, she denied him, but he gave the dirthna anyway to be her footstool. She mocked that he had only his awful jokes left to offer after that. The song mostly recounted the series of jokes that Spinner told the queen until he won her smile and her heart. Whether it was truly how Keyhand and Spinner had come to marry, who knew, but it was a classic bawdy chorus. The miners often added their own lewd verses, always attributing their rough humor to the jests of Spinner the Jovial. These particular miners were of quite the cruder bent.

Someone hesitated at the threshold.

It was a young dwarf in travel-stained clothes. He stood staring inside as if trying to decide something. Sudbeard saw him, too, and he approached and offered the stranger a mug of ale. After a bit of metal passed hands, the stranger turned and looked at the benches, scouting for a spot. His skin was sun-speckled, but he did not have the look of a goatherd about him. Yale slid a little to the side, closer to Halfscuttle, opening up more of a spot to his left. The stranger’s eyes fell on the space and he came and sat down.

The dwarf sipped at his ale, looking around. There was a nervousness there that intrigued Yale. He was more than just a stranger to this drinking hall. The dwarf looked at a miner across the fire from him.

“Excuse me,” he said. When he spoke it was with a Grashal-Indal accent, and even the use of a deferential greeting rather than the Ice-Cloak gont showed him for a foreigner.

“Hmm?” the miner asked.

“I have just arrived, and I’m. . .”

“You what?” the miner asked, squinting.

“I’m trying to reach the one they call the Smuggler Prince.”

Those close enough to hear laughed, and the stranger frowned.

“Well, good luck to you.”

“Is he hard to find?”

The miner shook his head.

“I mind my own,” he said.

The stranger’s frown deepened and he looked around the hall again.

“Gont,” Yale said, leaning over. “You look like you’ve come far.” He waved for Sudbeard’s attention and called for another mug of stew ladled over a hunk of cave-bread. Sudbeard brought it steaming, and Yale motioned to the stranger.

“Thank you,” the dwarf said.

“What are you called?” Yale asked.

“I am called Sayfoot.”

“Well, Sayfoot, I am called Yellowhood, and I am a purveyor. If you’ve something to trade, you’ll have better luck dealing with me than with the Smuggler Prince. I’ll make fair offer for fair trade, and you won’t have to deal with that killer, besides.”

“I work as a guide and translator for a merchant,” the dwarf said. That of itself told Yale that the merchant was a human, otherwise he would need no translator. The humans had a horrible time learning the dwarvish tongue. Some traders used a kind of pidgin of mixed words and gestures, but it was better to have a translator.

“I am a purveyor, but I rarely deal outside the mountain. I take it your trade is beyond the adit?”

“It is,” Sayfoot said, taking a bite with a carved spoon he pulled from a pocket. Dwarves carried their own eating utensils and never shared. “My boss wishes to make contact with the Smuggler Prince.”

“Oh. He’s not the first to come here thinking to do that. I’ve never met the so-called Prince, and I’m thankful for that. Smuggling is a dangerous business, and he’s more dangerous still. They say he can get most anything in or out, but I’m not sure how he manages it. It’s better to do things the proper way.”

Sayfoot appeared a little crestfallen, but he watched Yale carefully, seeming aware of the others in the hall at the same time.

“We have heard of a second gate,” he said.

“Aye, yes, but I find it hard to believe.”

“So you don’t know how to get in contact with the Smuggler Prince?”

“For your own good, I’ll say nothing about it.”

Halfscuttle opened his eyes.

“Agot, Yellowhood. Your mine is too squared. Sometimes the gems lie outside the drift.”

“Who are you friend?” Sayfoot asked.

“That’s Halfscuttle,” Yale said. “Pay no heed to him.”

“Ack, ay, pay no heed. I’d just tell you what everyone knows.”

“Pretend that I haven’t heard. I’m not from this mountain.”

Yale leaned back as if resigned. Halfscuttle leaned over toward Sayfoot and lowered his voice.

“Well, the last I heard, and mind you, I don’t know if it’s true or not, but the last I heard was to follow the second passage from the Scuffler’s Grotto—an elteph rune above—until you see an intrusion of pumice on the right hand. Write a message with a meeting time and leave it in the niche in the pumice. Come back when you wrote and lean your back to the pumice and wait.”

“That’s just rumors and nonsense,” Yale muttered.

Sayfoot nodded.

“Interesting tale,” he said.

“Quite,” Yale answered. “The folk are imaginative and Halfscuttle is gullible. I wouldn’t heed a word.”

Sayfoot set his empty mug down on the bench.

“I suppose I must be going. I’m expected back. Thank you for the stew.”

Yale nodded.

“Good rock above you,” he said, and watched the dwarf leave.

Halfscuttle leaned back against the stone and folded his arms, eyelids half closed.

Topaz stepped out from Thinweave’s stonehold and headed toward the main cavern of the West Branch. She was headed home. Her aunt had forced her to take a nap in her own bed after they had consulted together.

“You’re red-eyed and likely to stumble on the way, and that is no way for a maid looking to wed,” Thinweave had said.

Topaz noticed unusual hubbub ahead, then realized that royal criers stood at the center of the West Branch Market among the stalls and vendors.

“The King returns victorious!” one shouted. The second crier blew a brass-bound horn. “The King returns victorious. See him arrive along the Lower Way!”

Already, scores of dwarves flowed eastward toward the lower way. Topaz had to take the Lower Way to reach home anyhow, so she followed along, not without curiosity. She didn’t understand the crier’s message. How could the king return victorious if he hadn’t gone anywhere? There had been no battle. No host had marched away. As far as she knew, Ringhand lurked in his royal hold and treasuries like usual.

She came to the union of the Western Caverns with the Lower Way. A natural pool in the stream once swirled there where the West Branch of the stream joined. Smoothed boulders had formed it in unplanned beauty, stalagmites rising nearby. Now, it was cased in fitted stone, walled-off in a perfect circle like a wide well along the newly paved Lower Way. Crowds of dwarves in fine clothes already lined the sides of the cavern, and even the Upper Way was full of faces looking down from many yards above. Everyone seemed to be wearing their finest clothes, gowns, and jewels. Topaz felt plain in her simple dress and apron. She had heard nothing of a parade, but it seemed these Upcavers and Gallery Dwarves had expected it.

Dwarves waited shoulder to shoulder as far up and down the Way as she could see, but King’s Guards in their shining armor etched and emblazoned with dwarvish geometries stood along the edges of the paved road with long halberds, keeping the folk back. There was no way Topaz was going to make it to the South Caverns during this, so she waited, trying to watch through the crowd of heads. Already, many crowded in behind her, until the West Branch was full fifty yards beyond the pool. She couldn’t remember ever seeing so many dwarves together at once.

A wave of movement and sound reached her from further down the caverns. She looked south but couldn’t see. Horns blew, followed by another strange trumpeting cry. Voices rose in cheers. When Topaz finally caught a glimpse, she gasped. Lurching forward along the pathway was one of the king’s mammoths, its long curving tusks plated in gold, its wool braided with silver rings. King Ringhand sat on a gilded chair atop the ornate litter on the creature’s back. He waved to the crowds, his hands heavy with gold and silver and flashing with jewels. How had the king gotten a mammoth into the caves? She knew he loved them like pets, but the adit was too small to allow them through. Then she remembered the laborers marching south. Surely they had not broken open the mountain?

The folk raised their voices to cheer as Ringhand arrived. King’s Guards in their burnished armor marched in columns to either side of the mammoth. The beast raised its trunk and gave a great tremolo trumpet. Topaz covered her ears at the commotion and looked around. There was not a single Southcaver in sight; they would have been easy to pick out, by clothes and the tell-tale tattoos that so many of the Southcaver dwarves wore. She felt an urge to raise her hand and cover the rhundal tattoo at her throat, but she resisted and kept her arms low.

The mammoth arrived where the road passed by the pool, and it stopped as if on command. The king rose from his chair. He wore a breastplate of living steel, etched with the emblem of a ring-laden hand. On his head he wore the crown bearing the Shor-i-Illenfärner, the Blood of Ice-Cloak, the great fire opal. It was magnificent, drawing all eyes. The folk cheered even more. He raised his hands, and at last the crowd quieted.

It was a well-chosen spot to make an oration, with dwarves able to line the cavern, the Upper Way, and down the West Branch. Topaz had no way to guess at how many thousands were present.

A voice cried out, loud and booming, but it wasn’t the voice of the king. Topaz couldn’t see where it came from, though she could see the king atop the mammoth.

“The king returns supreme to Ice-Cloak! The lord of Morningstone is dead. Morningstone has bowed to Ice-Cloak! Long live King Ringhand, Lord of all Dwarves!”

Once more the folk cheered as the king smiled, the living steel of his breastplate flashing in the varied hues of miner’s eye. At last again he quieted them with upraised hands.

“I have defeated our foes,” he said. A few cheered, but he stopped them with a gesture. “Morningstone’s royal line is ended, and they have bent the knee. We have no more enemies. The dwarven folk are united under Ice-Cloak.”

He allowed the cheers then, the shouts and raising of fists in triumph. It went on for some time before he finally quietened the effluence again.

“We need no longer remain—“ he looked around, raising his voice even more “—we must no longer remain a fortress. I have thrown open the adit. I shall fashion the finest gates in dwarfdom. Henceforth, we are a market, the capital of all trade. We are the wonder of the world. We are the source and hold of all riches. Let the humans and elves bring us wealth from afar along with our vassals.”

The king sat back down on his chair. Horns blew, and the cheering redoubled. Topaz didn’t quite understand. No army had marched against Morningstone. The king certainly had not gone anywhere; that would have been known even in the South Caverns, especially on a campaign of war. Many would have been conscripted. Morningstone was a prodigiously defended colony she’d always heard, the last of the free colonies far away at the southeastern tip of the Grashal-Indal. It would have taken a host of hosts a year and more to march against them.

The mammoth blared its own trumpet and lurched forward. The king waved as it bore him north toward the Chamber of Waters. Many in the crowd followed as the guards who had kept the folk off the road joined the column of guards that marched behind the mammoth. Topaz turned to the south, wanting to be home, but someone caught her eye amid the crowd on the far side of the road.

It was Spinel. She was a Southcaver maid—now a wif—who Topaz had known well as gilna. Spinel lived now with her husband, an Upcaver who served with the Ridgewards. Topaz tried to make her way across the road toward Spinel, but she had only caught a short glimpse, and the push of the dispersing crowd blocked her, and she lost sight of Spinel in the current of bodies.

5

Discovery

The worst part of smuggling was having to be available enough to get business but hidden enough to avoid the king’s wrath. There were simply too many untrustworthy folk Yale had to trust. The second gate may have taken him decades to dig, but it was nothing compared to the trouble of arranging its use.

After returning from the war, Yale had worked in the Southcaver deeps as a hireling miner for a claim. He had met an older dwarf who had spent nearly two centuries beneath the stone in those claims. He liked tell stories of all his labors as they sat and ate their meager meals.

It was through one of those stories that Yale learned that the water that powered many of the Southcaver waterwheels had been diverted from a subterranean stream. The stream once ran underground before bubbling up in the West Vale. Now the water was diverted into a great cistern for the workings that pumped air and raised burdens from the deep mines. Its overflow joined the reservoir near the mountain adit.

It took Yale three years to find the abandoned channel of the old stream. Without it he would never have managed to delve the second gate. Carefully, he had broken the back of the old water channel near its diversion, causing that section to cave in. Then began the long toil of carving a new tunnel to reach the remainder of the stream channel. He cut the hidden way between old workings, hiding all sign. Once that was complete, he had widened the old stream channel enough to give passage.

The channel passed dangerously close to a number of other established mine shafts and drifts, sometimes with little more than a couple feet of solid stone between them. Yale had spent twenty of his younger years carefully cutting the stone between the old parts of the South Cavern mines. The active workings had long ago sunk far, far below. The odds of anyone starting to pick at those upper shafts was small, but folk still walked them from time to time, or delved new stoneholds for homes and Yale was cautious by nature and trade, and he did not want anyone so much as hearing active mining within the stone.

The meeting place where Yale met prospective smugglers, though, that was easier. He crouched in the low tunnel, his knees up to his chest as he waddled through. There was a way into a ventilation shaft which brought him nearly through to the elteph passage off Scuffler’s Grotto. At the end of the vent shaft, he had drilled a small bore hole barely an inch in diameter through the pumice intrusion. It was dark within the vent. He made sure to scrape away any miner’s eye he found growing within, but he could look through the borehole into the blue light beyond. He settled in for a wait, but it wasn’t long.

Sayfoot arrived, packing hill-smoke into a pipe as he walked. He leaned up against the opposite side of the pumice intrusion, nearly blocking the bore hole with his back. Yale heard the strike of steel on flint, then saw the brief flare of light as Sayfoot lit his pipe. The aroma of hill-smoke reached him instantly. Yale let Sayfoot spread a small cloud of smoke before he spoke.

“What do you need,” Yale asked in a hoarse whisper. He always disguised his own voice, tiring as it was. Sayfoot stiffened, then took another inhalation through his pipe.

“We have spices to trade,” he said, keeping his voice low, even though the passage was empty. “One hundred pounds of cinnamon, three hundred pounds of tumeric, nutmeg the same. If the deal goes well, that will only be the beginning.”

Yale steadied himself before replying. Quantities like that were wealth beyond anything he normally dealt in, and moving that much could be tricky. Yellowhood was known in the mountain as an ore and metal purveyor, not a spice merchant. The king set high tariffs on spice. He took a portion of all that came in the mountain, and they said he devoured it in his meals like common salt. That made smuggling even more lucrative, and even riskier. Ten years ago, spices were hardly known in the mountain, but he had moved small amounts three or four times, now, but this was on another scale.

“And in trade?” he asked.

“Gold and silver only. Seven ounces of gold or three-hundreds of silver.”

Yale ran some calculations in his head. Though he could never flaunt his wealth, he had built something of a horde. Still, this was a hefty trade.

“Five ounces of gold with one-hundred fifty of silver.”

“That is low.”

“The risk is high.”

“I am a translator, but I cannot bargain.”

“I am not bargaining.”

“I will relate that to my employer.”

Yale did not respond, but waited as Sayfoot smoked his pipe. At length, the dwarf spoke again.

“When do we meet?”

“We don’t, if the price is not set.”

“I will endeavor to bring acceptance.”

“I will only bring what I have said.”

“I understand. When?”

“Two nights from now, the second hour. There is no moon. In the West Vale, go north from the waymarker until Queen’s West is to your left. You will find a dry creekbed. Follow it until you are hailed. We will speak of owls. You reply of goats. That is all. Go now.”

“I understand.” Sayfoot pushed away from the rock wall, then hesitated. “As one dwarf to another,” he said in an even lower voice. “They’re going to ask for living steel. I told them not to, and I told them I wouldn’t negotiate for it. They have never been here before, but they are wealthy as humans go.”

Yale already knew about the human merchant with his hired dwarves who waited south of the Valley of the Lake. Limp had discovered enough to corroborate Sayfoot’s story. Yale decided not to respond, and after a few moments, Sayfoot walked back toward Scuffler’s Grotto.

***

That night, Yale returned to the hall of the Miner and Barrel for some hot supper and gossip. Once again, it was humming.

“Yellowhood!” shouted a dwarf near the entrance. It was a grey-beard called Coalhollow, a widowed claim-holder who had little else to do in his elder years than drink and eat. But he had employed Yale once decades ago, and he liked to think he’d had a hand in Yellowhood’s modest success. “Can you believe that spectacle?”

“What spectacle is that?”

“The king! Had a parade for himself for the Upcavers. Rode in on a mammoth.”

“Bombast,” spat another dwarf nearby. Many faces had turned to watch the exchange, waiting to see the reaction of yet another Southcaver to the news that had already outraged them.

“How?”

“Had the adit broken open.”

“No.”

“Word is, he’s building gates.”

“Gates?”

“Ay. Sent criers and hornblowers to the Upcavers to tell them to come to his parade, saying he won some great victory.”

“What victory?”

“Says he defeated Morningstone.”

“With what host?”

There were scoffs around the hall.

“He marched in surrounded by spears and wearing armor,” Coalhollow said. “But none of them came from Morningstone. But they said Morningstone bent the knee.”

“King Risengate would not bend the knee,” Yale answered. He hadn’t even sat down yet.

“King Risengate is dead. And his son with him.”

Yale frowned. He’d always somehow liked the fact that at least one colony had kept from bending.

“How?”

“That’s the thing.”

“Poison, I’m certain,” said an ore-hauler.

“Assassins of some kind,” said a miner.

“Blood and murder,” Coalhollow said, nodding and cradling his mug of ale atop his beard. “What a day, when the King of Ice-Cloak murders and claims it like a conqueror. He’s no better than that bloodthirsty smuggler. Used to be, I’d have no dealings with that killer, but now it’s either taxed at the gates by a blood-handed king, or taxed by a smuggler, and they say at least he’s a Southcaver.”

“I’d watch what I said,” Yale replied, waving his hand to get Sudbeard’s attention. “Ringhand does not like speech of that kind.”

“Shit on him,” Coalhollow said, and drank to it. A few others joined him. Yale didn’t disagree, but he frowned. This was not a wise course of conversation, especially for Yellowhood, as much as Yale would like to toast to the death of Ringhand and his father before him.

Yale was not yet a year past his rhundal when King Silvertongue conscripted him into the host marching to fight against Kings Quarry in the Grashal-Indal. He’d been told and believed it was to protect Ice-Cloak against the aggression of King Braceplate of King’s Quarry.

He’d learned better on that campaign of death. Kings Quarry controlled all the trade flowing west out of the Grashal-Indal. The colonies in the foothills of the Kara-Indal had long ago succumbed to Ice-Cloak dominion, but King’s Quarry was the key to the trade of the oldest colonies. Yale’s young heart may have had foolish desires for glory when he marched east with the host. But it was not like the stories of King Spinner the Great who had scattered the ürsi to the four winds. No, it was the blood of dwarves they shed—brutal, methodical, wet, dirty and hateful. All for a king to grow fat on the bones of the Grashal-Indal.

The halls of Kings Quarry were resplendent, delved from solid white marble, almost translucent in it’s purity. Such artistry of stone carving Yale had never glimpsed. But when they left, the white marble was stained with crimson. Many Southcaver conscripts did not return. Yale, Halfscuttle, and Limp came back—mostly. And Yale never called another dwarf king, especially not Silvertongue’s turgid offspring, his hands laden with the jewels cut from Braceplate’s crown.

***

The next day, Topaz knocked on Spinel’s door. She had gone to the stonehold of Spinel’s parents in the South Caverns and inquired where Spinel now lived and if she kept to the same routine of sleeping and waking. One had to be careful when trying to visit dwarves who worked in different claims or workshops, to make sure not to disturb them when they were sleeping. It did not always bear a relation to the sun and moon.

The unfamiliar stone door swung open, and a white-haired wif in an old-fashioned heavy veil stared at her without a word.

“Uh, good meeting. I’m a friend of Spinel’s, and I was hoping to see her,” Topaz said.

The old dwarf-wif grunted, turned, and walked back across the entrance chamber and through a side door. Topaz waited. Only a moment later, a young dwarf-wif came out of the side chamber, her nutty brown hair tied up in a bun. Above her traditional black veil, Topaz saw the surprise enter the young wif’s eyes, and then Spinel squealed, rushed over, and drew Topaz into a long hug.

“Topaz!” she said, pulling her veil off and ushering her inside. “It does me such good to see you. I have missed all my old gilna.”

Spinel had accepted a husband only a month after her rhundal a year ago, and as yet she had no babe, which was not surprising. It took ten years or more for many dwarf-wifs to have their first babe. Spinel had not pursued any particular craft, and Topaz had no idea how she occupied her time. Certainly, the stonehold was spotless, the rock polished to a high sheen. The smell of peppermint filled the air. Spinel led Topaz to a cluster of low cushions and they sat, spreading their skirts. Topaz unhooked her half-veil and let it hang.

“Tell me, how are you?” Spinel asked. “And how is Agate? Have you seen her? And your parents are well, ay?”

They lived in the same mountain, but for a dwarf-maid to marry was like stepping into a whole new world. They had not seen each other since the wedding feast. Topaz opened her mouth and was still deciding which question to answer when Spinel sprang up. “Oh! Tea!” She hurried over to an ornate silver samovar and filled two mugs. The tea steamed as it poured. Topaz looked at the rugs and hangings. They were well-made, though not Thinweave’s work. Still, it was an Upcaver stonehold, with the expected signs of affluence.

Once settled with warm mugs of peppermint tea in their hands, Topaz answered all Spinel’s questions until the well ran dry and the young wif sighed and stared at the ground. The look on Spinel’s face told Topaz that her friend was seeing memory more than stone.

“And how is Oakspear?” Topaz asked. “Is he home or away?”

“Queen’s West,” Spinel answered. “He comes about once every two weeks and stays for three days. Then he must return.”

Queen’s West was considered an easy though boring assignment. The Ridgewards mostly kept track of incoming trade caravans. Far away on the frontiers, the occasional skirmish with packs of ürsi was reported, but that was far from Ice-Cloak.

“I am hoping to see him more often,” Spinel continued. Her eyes brightened. “I was at the king’s return yesterday. It was magnificent!”

“Was it?” Topaz asked.

“Oh it was. I wish you could have seen it. He rode in on a mammoth!”

Topaz nodded, unsure what to say, but Spinel made it easy by continuing. “The king has broken open the adit and plans to make great gates, and the caravans from the whole world will come to Ice-Cloak. Ringhand will make us wealthy beyond measure. But. . .” Spinel leaned in. “He wants to put an end to smuggling. King Ringhand has chosen Ridgewards to act as customs warders. I think he wants especially to catch the Smuggler Prince. And Oakspear is chosen! I hope we will see each other more often. Most of the trade comes from the south and east, so as I can’t imagine they’ll keep him to Queen’s West.”

Topaz was surprised how quickly Spinel had taken on the persuasions of the Upcavers—favoring the king was not common in the South Caverns. She glanced at her friend’s throat, but she wore a fine scarf across her neck.

“Do you know how Morningstone came to capitulate?” Topaz asked.

“King Ringhand defeated them somehow,” Spinel said. She sipped at her tea. “I don’t suppose it matters much. What does matter is now Ice-Cloak controls all trade from the whole of the Kara- and Grashal-Indal.”

Topaz smiled. Her father did not love Ringhand, and so she did not love Ringhand. She did not love Upcavers for much the same reason, and yet Thinweave and Spinel both lived there, less than a mile through the stone and yet so far.

“I suppose so,” Topaz answered.

“I ramble,” Spinel said. “What of you? Are you apprenticing with your aunt?”

“No,” Topaz said, and she felt a blush rise in her cheeks. “I am accepting proposals.”

Spinel clapped her hands.

“Wonderful! Oh I do hope you marry an Upcaver. Think of how often we could visit!”

Topaz had considered the possibility that an Upcaver would make her an offer, of course. Her father had mentioned it repeatedly. But she was far from certain she wanted to become an Upcaver. Surely, it came with comforts and status. She looked again at the scarf covering Spinel’s throat.

“Have you heard any proposals yet?” Spinel asked.

“No, not yet. ” Topaz shook her head. “My father is still receiving offers to present.”

“Of course. Now, what preparations are you making?”

The conversation veered to the myriad details involved in planning, and Spinel advised Topaz liberally from her own recent experience in wedding preparation. After all, she was a wif, now, and could speak of such planning with authority. Topaz found it a bit tiring, but the conversation stretched on. It was nice, at least, to have someone to talk with.

At the end of their visit, Spinel insisted that Topaz visit again soon, and they parted with a hug and clasped hands.

***

Yale slid his mask down over his face and straightened his dark hood. He wore mail under his shirt and a long dagger tucked out of sight at his back. Carrying the payment of gold and silver was no problem; Halfscuttle held the hide bag with the silver and gold. He’d wait a few yards behind Yale. Limp stayed in the adit with spears in case of trouble.

It was a moonless night, as Yale knew it would be, and overcast as well. Even for a dwarf, it was dim, and beyond twenty yards the night was impenetrable to his sight. There was no wind, and the smell of goat manure hung heavy on the dewy air. The dry gravel of the creekbed crunched under a thin layer of loam deposited over the years since the diversion of the underground spring.

Yale waited, and like always, he heard them coming a long way off. He waited until he saw their grey shapes emerging from the night.

“Did you hear that owl?” Yale spoke in his feigned rasp just loud enough for them to hear. They paused at the sound of his voice, but he heard the response.

“I think it was a goat.” He recognized Sayfoot’s voice, but he could also see a few tall figures behind him—the humans, no doubt. As they came closer, he noticed they wore swords at their sides.

It rankled Yale, though it shouldn’t have. He’d given up on telling folk not to come armed because all it seemed to do was make them hide their weapons, even as he hid his dagger. He’d rather see the blades in the open. Long ago he’d ventured out in full kit, but the sight of it made negotiations harder. It was reputation alone that Yale depended on. And maybe Limp if he made it fast enough, which wasn’t likely.

Swords were such a human weapon. Dwarves had little use for them. They were a terrible choice for fighting in confined spaces like tunnels and mines. Spears were better by far, along with any weapon that could keep an enemy at a distance and increase the dwarves’ relatively short reach. Handaxes could be choked up on and used for vicious punches in close scraps, and roundel daggers always hung at the belts of dwarven warriors. But the dwarves made swords at the request of humans willing to pay high price for dwarven steel. It was likely that the sword on the human’s side was made by a dwarf, though from its fit and finish—despite the gilt—most likely not a master.

There were three humans, two dwarves, and two mules. Why so many? He’d thought of limiting the numbers at the trades. Someone could give away the location of the creekbed, and it would not be impossible to find the tunnel then. They could also just kill Yale with such numbers. He could not control all the risks, only rely on the strangers’ desire for wealth.

One of the humans spoke, his voice too loud. Yale caught some of the human words, but not many. Besides being tall, the man wore a heavy cloak, some kind of shirt of a loose fabric Yale didn’t recognize, and a silver buckle on his swordbelt. He was clean-shaven. It was always an uncanny thing, that.

“He greets you and says he has the spices,” Sayfoot said.

“Greet him in return. Set the bags on the ground.”

They did as he asked. Yale smelled the spices as they moved the sacks. He eyeballed the size and weight. He would not check more than that. If they truly wanted to cheat him, well, his reputation should at least give them warning. And he would not have to deal with them again if he didn’t wish. Yale held out his hand. Halfscuttle handed him the bag of ounce-ingots. Yale in turn handed them to Sayfoot who handed them to the chief human. The human shamelessly hefted the weight, then took out an ingot and bit it. Yale knew the humans relied on such crude methods to identify metals, but it was still amusing. He fought a smirk.

The human spoke again.

“He says he wanted seven ounces of gold, or three hundreds of silver.”

“I made myself clear.”

“He wants to barter.”

“Did you tell him a human was fished out of the lake recently?”

“No. . . I won’t tell him that.”

Sayfoot turned and spoke to the human again, who frowned and stared at Yale, but Yale’s blackened steel mask remained unperturbed. There was nothing like wearing a mask during negotiations.

“If he wants to take his burdens, he may return the payment and go on his way. But do not expect to deal with me again.”

Sayfoot translated. The human grunted a single word. Sayfoot gave Yale a nod of assent.

“He will agree to the price.”

“Now leave,” Yale said.

Sayfoot turned and spoke to the human in the foreign tongue. The human replied rapidly in that high-pitched babble. Sayfoot sighed, his shoulders slouched.

“He says to ask you for a trade of living steel. He says he will come with mules laden with gold.”

Now Yale really did smile, not that anyone could see it through his mask.

“Tell him this, exactly,” Yale answered. “A dwarf would not trade living steel to a human in ransom for his own mother’s life, and if he did, she would disown him for it.”

Sayfoot tried to hold back a smirk, himself, then translated. The human responded.

“He says it surely cannot be so precious. Your smiths make tools of it.”

“You could have already told him that nothing works living steel like living steel,” Yale said. “And that it is only our mightiest smiths that do so.”

“These things I have tried to explain,” Sayfoot said.

“Then there is nothing more for me to say. Leave, or I will not be eager to deal again.”

Sayfoot translated once more. The human’s frown deepened, but the speech ended and with many backwards glances the little caravan departed back down the creekbed. The smell of mule manure wafted back to him. They’d left it on the ground. He would have to have Limp clear it out of the creekbed later.

Once the sound of the human party dissipated, Yale, Halfscuttle, and Limp loaded the sacks of spices onto the waiting litters within the tunnel. For the first time that Yale could remember, Halfscuttle didn’t mutter or mumble on the way back, leaving Yale to his own thoughts as they slid the litters of spices over the smooth rock of the old underground stream channel. The smell of cinnamon and nutmeg mingled with the limestone and the granite intrusions. They came to the end of the tunnel suddenly, as if Yale had sleep-walked it.

Yale peered through the peep-hole bored through the stone. The old dead-end passage was deserted. He slid the door inward on its stone hinges and they pulled the litters out. Carefully, he closed the tunnel behind them. He was still proud of how faint the seam was when it was closed. They were still a fair distance from any populated area in the mines, and they had to get the litters back to Yellowhood’s stonehold. Yale slid off his hood and mask. In the mountain, they were more suspicious than helpful.

They dragged the litters for another twenty minutes through empty mined-out tunnels. The working mines had long ago sunk deep, and many of the dwarven family stoneholds lay around fifty to a hundred feet below the natural cavern levels. The old tunnels stretching westward through the mountain had been mined out early, and those too close to breaking through the ridge to the West Vale had been shut down and collapsed by the colony mine inspectors. Few folk wandered in the miles of dim western tunnels.

They were nearing the more settled areas when Halfscuttle broke his silence, his voice angry and loud, no hint of muttering under his breath.

“I’ve never seen such pig-headed arrogance, trying to haggle like that, and we already with the goods out the hole. Don’t he know you’re the Smuggler Prince?”

At that moment, they turned a corner in the tunnels and before them stood a young dwarf. His eyes were red and wide. Yale smelled the alcohol on him. The dwarf turned and fled, lurched against the rock wall, and continued at an unsteady run towards the stoneholds beyond.

“Shit!” Yale said. He turned at Halfscuttle, wanting to break his jaw, but instead he just said “Shit!” again.

Limp began to sprint after the dwarf.

“No, Limp! Stop!” Yale called.

Thankfully, Limp stopped his sprint, but his face was contorted in an expression that Yale recognized and feared.

“Who was that?” Limp asked. “I recognize him.”

“That was one of Bronzebucket’s lads. He helped bring the ingots,” Halfscuttle answered.

“Shit!” Yale said again.

“Do you think he suspects?”

“He ran. And he saw my face. I’ve told you a hundred times to keep your mouth shut, Halfscuttle, you mouthy shit.” Yale saw Halfscuttle’s face change, moving from the usual slack-muscled expression to a collected, grim stare directed at nothing. The scar on Halfscuttle’s forehead still stood out, long ago faded from angry red to a silvery white, little spider lines spreading out across his forehead from the main fold. They had all come back from the war, more or less.

“I’m sorry,” Yale said. “I’m sorry Halfscuttle. I shouldn’t have said that. I’m sorry.” Yale placed a hand on Halfscuttle’s shoulder.

Some of the grim tension left the dwarf’s face. He shrugged once but didn’t answer. Yale sighed.

“Should have killed him,” Limp said. “Too late, now.”

“No,” Yale said. “No.”

6

The Bride Price

Topaz sat with folded legs on the sheepskins atop her bed. Her brothers slept in niche-bed alcoves behind tapestry hangings off the main chamber of the stonehold, but as the only daughter, Topaz had been given a nearly ten foot square chamber separated from the rest of the stonehold by a door. Glimmers of miner’s eye grew on the ceiling, and the walls were warm with tapestries she’d woven herself over the years. The hangings were mostly in patterns of blues and yellows, both her favorite colors and dyes that were not too dear in price. Along one wall leaned her pin, inkle, and tapestry looms. They were much smaller than her aunt’s but well-used.

She was bobbin lacing yellow onto the hem of her wedding veil. The wedding veil itself she’d made in a traditional style out of a deep blue lapis-dyed thread. It would cover her whole head and leave only her eyes exposed, as opposed to the now-common half-veils that let a maid’s hair and braids remain on full display.

The door to her chamber was open a crack. She had not bothered to shut it all the way. Her father and brothers would be working in the smeltery for many hours yet, and her mother had gone to trade for meat, wurtzels, and cave-bread and would likely not return once she’d made her trades and had her fill of speaking with the other wifs she would no doubt stop to see along the way.

That’s why it startled Topaz when the stonehold door swung open. The whispered voices of her father and brothers reached her, low and strained.

“Why were you wandering there?” her father demanded.

“We’d just been out drinking is all, and I. . . I did not want to return yet,” It was her second brother. “What do we do?”

“You’re sure he’d know you?”

“I talked to him only days ago.”

“And you ran, what’s worse,” her eldest brother said.

“You would have!”

“I wouldn’t have been a coward.”

“Put a stopper in your foolishness,” Bronzebucket snapped. “We should all be worried. They’ll figure you told us.”

“What do we do?”

“You know what he does when someone crosses him!” Her eldest brother snapped.

“Your grandfather taught me something when I told him I was going to apprentice with old Redmold’s smelter lot. He said, ‘don’t start a fight, but if there’s going to be one, hit first and hit hard.” It was an adage her father had often repeated—to her brothers.

“We aren’t killers. They are. Everyone says so.”

“No. We’re dwarves of business. Enough. I’ll handle this. Not another word of it to anyone, and you each stay here until I return. Let none but your mother or sister come within.”

Topaz had little to do with her brothers. Even before their rhundal they had gone with their father to the smeltery. Topaz had spent her time with the gilna, maids, and wifs. The dwarves lived segregated lives much of the time, by sex and hold and cavern. She had no idea what they were talking about, but it was obvious there was danger, and she knew it was not meant for her ears. Feuds were not unheard of in the South Caverns. She set her veil down and walked to the door, pushing it open wide.

Her father and brothers startled at the movement.

“Topaz,” Bronzebucket said.

“Hello father, would you like me to make something to eat?”

The three dwarves looked at each other, then back to Topaz.

“No, thank you. Maybe for your brothers. I have business to attend to.”

Topaz nodded and moved over to the brazier by the larder alcove. Her father disappeared into his own chamber as she prepared to light the coal and fry cavebread. She had the coal lit when he returned carrying a rolled up piece of whitened sheepskin.

“Block the door,” he told his sons, and then left the stonehold.

Topaz mixed the cave-bread, then drizzled the batter onto a cast iron griddle set over the brazier coals.

“It sounds,” she said, “like you have gotten into an unusual amount of trouble.”

She turned to look. Her eldest brother slotted a beam in place across the door and walked over to the cushions and sat down heavily. The second brother emerged from their father’s chamber carrying a spear and shield that had hung on Bronzebucket’s wall from her earliest memory. She’d never seen it moved. Neither brother responded to her or even acknowledged her presence. She finished frying the cave-bread, gave them each a thick piece, and took another for herself back into her chamber.

It seemed absurd to think that her brothers had gotten into enough trouble to need a spear, but she doubted entirely that it endangered her. Not that she didn’t care about their safety, but it didn’t sound like they’d killed anyone. If they had, it would bring reprisal. A murdered dwarf’s family would send a blood avenger to spill blood for blood, but they would not touch a maid. That would bring the whole community down on them. If it was an issue of wealth, then it must be dealt with by wealth. Rape—she did not countenance that idea. It was unheard of. Twenty years ago or more there had been a rape in the South Caverns. Two bride-prices had been paid to the family, and still the offender was found with his skull stove in. The maid had done it herself, they said, and no one thought to avenge that killing. Topaz heard the family migrated north.

She couldn’t help but be curious about the situation her brothers had gotten themselves into. She left the door cracked and sat back on her bed. But her brothers kept silent, not even whispering to each other.

Yale wore his yellow hood and sat at his worktable in Yellowhood’s stonehold. The door was open. Limp sat in one corner smoking. It was an unusual choice for him, waiting in the stonehold, but he’d made the choice himself. Yale had not asked. Halfscuttle did not sleep. He sat with his arms folded and muttered too low for Yale to hear.

If the lad had half the sense of a goat, he’d keep his mouth shut. Even if he told his father, Bronzebucket should have the sense to keep any mouths shut that needed it. That made a few more folk who knew that he was not Yellowhood. Or not just Yellowhood. It was for situations like these that he’d spent years ensuring his reputation as the Smuggler Prince was deadly and dangerous. He was the Smuggler Prince, a ruthless criminal and lord of the Second Gate. No matter the Second Gate was a hole in the rock barely wide enough to fit his shoulders. No matter it was hidden behind a pile of goat-manure. If Bronzebucket had sense, they’d leave him be.

He heard footsteps and felt his body tense.

Bronzebucket stepped into the doorway of the chamber, his face grim. He strode in, not stopping at the threshold. Without greeting Yale, Bronzebucket sat in the chair across the table. He cast a quick glance over his shoulder at Limp and Halfscuttle.

“Drink,” he said, pointing to the jug and motioning towards himself. Yale didn’t have the energy to feign a polite welcome, but he did pour Bronzebucket a mugful and handed it over. Bronzebucket took a long drink, sighed, and then stared at Yale with dark eyes. Funny, but in that moment Yale wondered how a tubby dwarf like that had begotten a dwarf-maid like the one he’d seen at the smeltery. It took a while before anyone spoke.

“So,” Bronzebucket said at last. “I know, and my sons know, and I have arranged a message to an influential other. If anything should happen to us, that message will be sent. And don’t think to discover my means. You are not the only dwarf with resources.”

Yale spread his hands.

“You’re safe. Tell no one, and you’ll stay safe. It might be different among Upcavers. But we are Southcavers.” Yale motioned to the tattoos on his shaved head.

“You must understand that I cannot accept your word on the matter. I am not unaware of your past actions. You’ve killed Southcavers before. I admit you played me for a fool with this act of purveyor. But then my family’s lives were not at stake. I will not be made a fool in this.”

Yale got the impression that Bronzebucket had more to say, and that he wouldn’t like it. He waited.

“This is how I see it,” Bronzebucket said after a pause. “There is strength and weakness. Right now, your wealth and life depends entirely on the king and Ridgewards not knowing who you are. You could kill me, but if you do, they will know who you are.” Bronzebucket took another long drink. “So I do not see why we cannot be in business together.”

“You want to smuggle?” Yale asked.

“When I have ore to trade, you take it at the price I say. And you pay me three grams of gold every month, just to remind me that you respect the arrangement we have. If you don’t, then you had better disappear.”

Yale leaned back and scratched at the hair on his chin. He met Limp’s eyes over Bronzebucket’s shoulder. They were narrow and steady, and Yale knew Limp would have spilled the smelter’s blood without a second thought. He’d been like that ever since they got back to Ice-Cloak. Yale was pretty sure he’d kept Limp’s impulses in check since then. He gave him the slightest shake of a head, now.

“You know, Bronzebucket, I didn’t take you for the extortionist. But I respect the impulse.”

Yale didn’t respect the impulse. Bronzebucket should have stuck with a trade agreement. Instead, he’d decided to be a greedy idiot. A secret letter? Nothing a few hours of having your feet burned in live coals wouldn’t divulge. Yale had seen it done by Silvertongue’s guard during the Siege of King’s Quarry. If that didn’t work, there was always torturing his sons in front of him. Yale’s mind returned once again to the dwarf-maid he’d seen. His mouth watered. He swallowed and sat up straighter. It was always safe to have a second adit in a mine, but it was even safer to have a third. And so in dealings there was usually a third option, or a fourth or fifth or sixth. . .

And an option with blond braids had invaded his thoughts.

“I’ll tell you what,” he continued. “I’ll make you a counter deal.”

Bronzebucket raised an eyebrow.

“I’m not likely to alter mine,” he said.

“I am wealthy. As you might imagine, trade without tariffs and taxes is lucrative.” Yale stood. “Come with me for a moment.”

Bronzebucket looked alarmed and suspicious both. He cocked his head.

“I’m not going to hurt you. Your message, remember?” Yale grinned. Bronzebucket frowned but stood and followed him to a door at the back of the chamber. Yale opened it and led into a passageway. They walked past a couple doors and then Yale opened one. The smell of spices poured out, and he heard Bronzebucket inhale. Yale led him into the storeroom. Yale had storerooms for Yellowhood’s known trade and more private chambers for his clandestine activities. At first he had dug in the rock throughout the South Caverns, but he found it more dangerous to sneak merchandise around in the tunnels; better that his trade came and went from the apparently legitimate hold of Yellowhood.

But nothing could hide the smell of hundreds of pounds of spices from dwarven noses, so he had not hidden the sacks in the secret carved holes even within his stonehold. There was no use—that was part of the danger of trading in spices. He also didn’t have the records for an import at the gates, and it would be hard to explain how he’d come by so much within the mine without anyone knowing about it. It was another part of the risk.

Bronzebucket knew by smell what the sacks contained, and his eyes widened in surprise before he managed to compose himself.

“This,” Yale said, “Is from one night. I assure you, it came to me at an advantageous price.”

“Why show me?”

“So that you believe me when I say that I could pay you a bride price beyond even a Gallery Dwarf.”

“A bride price?”

“Your daughter. Has she accepted an offer?”

“No, but. . .”

“I want you to take her my offer. All of this—” he said, motioning to the spices. Yale could practically see Bronzebucket’s thoughts spinning. “She would, of course, then come into possession with me of the rest of my wealth. And you would be my gulmaheer.” The dwarven word meant marriage-father.

“She. . . She would have to agree. She would have to meet you.”

Yale nodded.

“Everything would be done properly.”

“I’m not sure I want my daughter involved in such danger.”

“Let me speak even more plainly, then,” Yale said. “You can become my family, and experience all the protections and benefits I provide. Or you can become the dwarf who is extorting me. You are a smelter. I am not a smelter. My skills lie elsewhere.” Yale hoped Bronzebucket wasn’t too dense to take his point.

Bronzebucket’s jaw flexed.

“Everything properly, you said?”

“Everything.”

“And with this bride price. You also take my ore for me?”

“Of course. Under terms profitable to us both, as family.”

Bronzebucket looked at Yale, taking in his face and beard and shaven head.

“You are older than common. She will have to agree.”

“Of course. But I’m sure you can be persuasive. Properly, as is tradition.”

“As is tradition.”

Yale led him back out of the storeroom.

“Would you like a stiffer drink?”

“Ay, yes. I think so.”

When Bronzebucket finally left the Stonehold, Yale closed the door behind him and sat back down at his table, leaning his elbows on the surface and setting his chin on his outstretched fingers. Limp was still smoking, and Halfscuttle still sat with his arms crossed, eyes open.

“Well,” Yale said. “At least he didn’t call me Roughcoat.”

7

A Meeting

Topaz had fallen asleep, but she woke when her father hammered on the stone door of the stonehold.

“Let me in, you lads!” he shouted.

“Is it safe?” the eldest asked through the door. She could hear her second brother scrambling, probably for the spear.

“Of course it’s safe,” Bronzebucket roared. He sounded drunk. “Let me in!”

She heard the grate of the beam being dislodged, and the door swung open.

“What are you doing with that, you daft fool,” Bronzebucket said. “Put it back.”

“What happened?” the eldest asked.

“What happened is my business. You’re safe, at any rate. Go to sleep. You’ve plenty of work to do in the morning.”

Topaz could hear her father walking toward his chamber as he spoke. Then his own door slammed. She heard mumbling from her brothers, and then nothing more. She fell back asleep.

Topaz awoke and set about her usual routine. She oiled and re-plaited her hair, then layered her outer covering over her night shift and tied on her skirts and apron. Typically, her father and brothers ate cold oats and honey for breakfast, so she did not wake before them to cook. Instead, she would fix them a warm meal after they’d worked the first six or eight hours and take it to the smeltery. With the rest of the time, she wove enough cloth to sell, money which she was duty-bound to hand over to her mother and father until she either married, took up her own stonehold, or apprenticed.

She opened the door to the main chamber and looked with surprise at her father and mother sitting together on cushions and speaking in low tones.

“Father. What are you doing here?”

He looked none the worse for wear from his intoxication the night before.

“We must talk,” he said. His eyes actually seemed to sparkle. Topaz felt her stomach sink into a flutter of nerves. Only one thing could make her father that happy. Her mother looked jewel-eyed as well. “Sit down with us. Sit.” Bronzebucket patted a cushion in front of them. Topaz pressed down her skirts and knelt on the cushion, hands on her legs. It was a formal way of sitting, but it somehow felt right. Her mother reached over and clasped one of Topaz’s hands and squeezed it.

“It is no surprise that I have received offers already,” Bronzebucket said. “I have spoken with your mother, and we both feel that one in particular stands above the rest.”

Topaz looked to her mother.

“I agree with your father. This is a good match. He is not an overly young dwarf. He has had time to settle. Establish himself.”

“You know him?” Topaz asked.

“No. But your father has done trade with him.”

“Yellowhood is a fine match. He is wealthy, and a purveyor of ores with many connections in the Face and elsewhere. It is my wish that you marry him.”

“I know he would be good for your business,” she said. “Do you remember what I asked you?” Topaz said.

Her father looked lost at that. “Someone steady. Gentle,” she reminded him.

“Oh, ay, yes,” he said. “Do not worry. And you still have your brothers and me if anything needs straightened out.”

Topaz did not want anything to straighten out, so that was not comforting.

“I know he will be good for your trade. But what is he like? Will he be a good husband?”

“He is a steady dwarf, like you asked, mature, without the instability of a rank young gurk. He is careful, and he will provide a solid foundation for your stonehold. ”

Topaz noticed a sheen of sweat on her father’s forehead as he continued. “He has seen success. The bride price will honor you well, believe me. And like your mother said, he is not over-young. He has his own stonehold, a large space of rock, not far from the smeltery or from here. We would see you often. It is my wish that you accept him.”

The dowry might honor her, but half of it would stay with her mother and half with her father to provide for her in case she was widowed and needed to return. But all parents used that wealth to enrich themselves in the meantime, some wisely, some foolishly.

“How old is he?”

Her father and mother glanced at each other.

“I am not entirely sure,” he said. “I did not ask. But I remember when he was young. He has grayed early.”

“Grayed?”

“Ay, yes. Maybe he is eighty?” he said.

“That is well older than me.”

“My gem,” her mother said, squeezing her hand again. She hadn’t let go. “It is not a bad thing to marry older. Many maids do, and it often serves them well. As we said, an older dwarf is a settled dwarf. He has the rock under his feet.”

“What of the other offers?”

Bronzebucket fidgeted with his big heat-dried hands.

“I do not wish to even bring them to you unless you deny Yellowhood,” he said. “His offer is superior.”

“Yellowhood,” Topaz said, testing the name. “You said you knew him when he was young?”

“ Ay, yes. Yes. . . That goes all the way back to the war. I did not know him well, then.”

“He fought?”

“He went. I’m not sure beyond that. When he returned, he mined in a claim where your uncle was captain, and then he became a purveyor. But all this you can ask him yourself when you meet.”

“You will meet him, won’t you?” her mother asked.

“Well,” Topaz said. “I suppose. Will you go speak with him. Maybe in a few days we can. . .”

“He will be here today,” Bronzebucket said.

“Today!” Topaz and her mother exclaimed at the same time. Topaz’s mother dropped her hand and scrambled to her feet.

“You didn’t tell me that!” she said, looking at her husband in horror. Bronzebucket flinched.

“I arranged it with him yesterday.”

Topaz sprang up, too.

“Father!” she said.

“That is not enough time!” her mother snapped.

“Why such a fuss?” Bronzebucket asked, leaning away.

“Why such a fuss? Why such a fuss! Topaz, come!” The two fled to Topaz’s chamber.

When Yale arrived at the door a few hours later, he had no conception of the flurry of bathing, cleaning, anointing, spicing, braiding, veiling, and even borrowing that had proceeded him. Bronzebucket had hidden in his own chamber for much of the interim.

Yale felt like he had an unusual difficulty swallowing, and his heart beat fast as he reached the door. He had imagined what this might be like. Many times over many years, even before Topaz’s face had attached itself to the scene. He had faced death and worse than death, but now his stomach fluttered like a rank conscript’s. He took a steadying breath. Yale was who he was, where he was, and alive because he’d kept his head when it counted. He rapped on the stone with his ringed knuckles. He had actually bought new clothes and put on rings.

Bronzebucket opened the door. He looked sweaty, but he too was wearing finer cloth than usual—a long shirt of vibrant crimson.

“Greetings,” Yale said, making a slight bow. Instead of the informal gont, he used the older korinzdal.

“Greetings,” Bronzebucket said. “Welcome to my hall. Enter in friendship.”

Yale stepped over the threshold. He caught sight of vibrant blue out of the corner of his eye, but he resisted looking. He was not supposed to look yet. The stonehold smelled of spiced oils and it glowed warm with lamplight. He wanted badly to look over at the maid. Instead, he fixed his attention on Bronzebucket and his wif who stood next to a silver samovar.

“A drink for you honored guest?” she asked.

“If you drink with me, lady-of-the-hold,” he said, bowing to her also. She smiled and filled mugs for the three of them. They raised the mugs, nodded to each other, and sipped at the tea. It had cinnamon in it. They took this seriously. That was good.

“My guest and my friend,” Bronzebucket said. “I have heard that you are alone under the stone.”

“It is true.”

They drank again.

“I have heard you have a maid in your hold, of great beauty and worth,” Yale said.

“It is true.”

They drank.

“My friend and host. I would ask this maid if she would light my hall as no lamp could. If she would bring purpose to my labors and refreshment to my bones. If she would carry my line forward against the darkness.”

“This maid is of surpassing worth. How do we know you honor her aright? How do we know you value her worth?”

“Nothing compares to her worth, but I offer my treasure and my horde in exchange, and she will be lady of my hall and my years and all that the stone gives me.”

“And what does your horde contain?”

“Fifty ounces of gold.” To Yale’s surprise, Bronzebucket drove an even harder bargain when drunk, and they had bargained long. The spices, Bronzebucket insisted, were too difficult and dangerous to accept as a bride-prize, though he took a small bag with him as a gift. For the bride-price, he demanded gold. Not even silver would he countenance.

When he named the bride-price, Bronzebucket’s wif lost a bit of composure, but she recovered it quickly. She must not have known. Bronzebucket’s forehead glistened, and his eyes gleamed.

They drank.

Yale knew he was blushing and sweating. But it had nothing to do with the threats they had so recently exchanged. This was an ancient and sacred tradition, one which could set in motion an entire course of life and bind two souls together inseparably.

“My friend and my guest, your wealth could never compare with the maid’s worth. But it is her choice if she will have you. Here. There she sits. Win her if you can.” Bronzebucket extended his hand toward the sitting area.

At last, Yale turned. Kneeling on a cushion sat Bronzebucket’s daughter, her blond hair braided and wrapped and somehow stacked and balanced in a pillar upon her head, stuck through with gemstone-capped pins. She wore a half-veil, and her dark eyes looked out at him with a piercing gaze. He felt his heart thumping in his throat, and for a moment he neither moved nor spoke. She knelt with her hands flat upon her thighs, her dress arranged perfectly so that no wrinkle marred it, yet he could still see how lovely was her form, her wide shoulders strong and refined, her hips. . .

He needed to collect himself. He took a breath and stepped toward her. There was a pillow a yard in front of the maid, arranged in exact relation to her own upon an elegant woven rug. He crossed his legs and sat in the traditional pose, leaning over his knees. The traditional formula had ended. What words came next were not prescribed by custom. He was on his own, now.

For her part, Topaz saw a dwarf wearing a fine yellow shirt and a belt buckled with plated gold. He wore no cover over his shaven head, and on the sides of his pate were Southcaver marks. His beard had mostly grayed from its original black, as her father had said. But what struck her at once was that he was cave-eyed—so it was called when a dwarf had yellow eyes. His eyes were bright like enamel, with an inner ring of light gray. The folk always said a cave-eyed dwarf was a trustworthy dwarf. She’d always liked the trait. A wif or maid would have told her such a trait ahead of time, but of course her father would not have considered it.

Of form, Yellowhood was not special. It was apparent he was no stranger to hard work, but he carried himself with more precision and poise than one usually saw in a Southcaver miner. She could see the sweat on his brow, but her own heart was beating, too, and she tried to steady her breath.

He hesitated.

“I am called Yellowhood,” he said. His voice was deep, but not grating.

“I am called Topaz.” She made sure to enunciate every syllable.

“I would call you a rarer stone,” he said.

“I like it. Not all beauty is rare. And I’m used to it.”

He flinched. She didn’t know for sure why she rebuffed him like that. He inclined his head to her, then sighed.

“I meant no disrespect. In truth, as you can see, I am no young gurk. I am sure you could find a younger and finer specimen than myself, and one more accustomed to pleasing speech. I am not sure what I can bring you that you would value. But if you’ll have me, I promise this. I will not be a tyrant, and I will protect you with my life.”

These promises, at least, he felt like he could keep. He knew the eyes of her parents were on his back.

For her part, Topaz felt a little more comfortable with this direct manner. But she did not intend to give him an answer so soon.

“You fought in the war,” she said. She saw the slightest grimace cross his face, but his eyes were steady.

“I did.”

“Do you regret not staying a warrior.”

“Never.”

“Why?”

He hesitated, his eyes flickered down, then to the side as if fleeing from seeing her body. When he spoke again, it was barely above a whisper.

“I’m not sure what could be worth a friend’s life. But it was not King’s Quarry.”

Topaz didn’t know quite what to think of that answer, but it was better than if he’d said he liked the war. It seemed an uncomfortable topic for him, though, so she changed track.

“And why do you wish to marry?” she asked.

“For children.”

In truth Yale had not thought overmuch of having children. He’d never considered himself much of a candidate for progeny. He’d spent most of his life caring about his friends. But lying had become easy, so much so that he hardly noticed when he mixed it in with the truth. He couldn’t always even tell the difference.

“Only for children?”

“Not only,” he said. “I. . . It would be nice. . .” He looked around with those striking cave-eyes. “My hold is lonely and drear.”

“Do you like to keep the old customs strictly?”

“Let the wif keep custom or not as she will, so long as the dwarf is kept.”

“Do you keep busy?”

“I. . . keep odd rhythms. Purveying. I have to deal with others on the schedules they keep. But it is not so much steady labor as in mining. I keep to my front chamber. I do not crowd the private chambers.”

That made sense to her, at least.

“What do you seek in a wif?”

Yale paused. He was not prepared for this type of question. Beauty, yes, but he doubted he should say as much, even though Topaz was abundantly attractive. Love? That seemed an unreasonable expectation. . .

“Friendship,” he said. Friendship was the one thing in life he felt like he understood after all his years.

“You wish to be friends with your dwarf-wif?” Topaz asked. Her eyebrows arched slightly, her smooth forehead wrinkling. Were dwarfs and wifs ever friends? She wasn’t sure.

“Friends are always there for each other. They see to each other’s needs. They. . . they’re loyal.”

Topaz pursed her lips and squinted.

“Do you lack friends?”

Why did every answer seem to backfire?

“No.” At least, he didn’t think so. He had Halfscuttle and Limp. They were fixtures in his life. The three of them had come back together. It’s not like they spoke much, or even went out drinking together, or shared many thoughts. But there came a point when someone was simply your folk, and their lives inseparable.

“I see.”

Yale tried to think of something to say, something to move beyond that awful pause, but he couldn’t think of anything. He felt himself blushing again, and the sweat beading on his bald head.

“You’re wealthy,” she said.

Thank goodness she said something.

“Ay, yes.”

“Why stay in the South Caverns?”

“I’m a Southcaver.”

“Many times Southcavers who gain wealth buy stone in the Upper Caverns, or even the north cuts.”

“I’m a Southcaver,” he said again, a slight edge sneaking into his voice.

“You might gain more trade if you moved.”

“I’d rather lose trade than make them think I aspire to be one of them.”

“My aunt lives in the Upper Caverns. I’m quite fond of her.”

Shit, he thought. This was going terribly. He saw monthly payments or Bronzebucket’s roasting feet in his future. He didn’t need to feel humiliated by this dwarf-maid barely past her rhundal. But then why did she intimidate him like this? When was the last time he’d even spoken to a dwarf-maid? He felt a flash of anger.

“My compliments to your aunt on her fortune of a niece,” Yale said. He rose. He wasn’t sure if he was supposed to break off the conversation or if she was. Judging by the sense of surprise on her face, he might have gotten it wrong. He regretted his impulsivity. “I mean that sincerely. And I’m serious in my offer, though I cannot claim to be worthy.” He glanced back at Bronzebucket and his wif. They stood in the same places, but they looked a touch palid, now. “I have no family of my own, anymore.” It had been years since he’d felt that loss, but he did at that moment. “I would see to the welfare of yours. Your worthy aunt included. Thank you for allowing me your presence, and to speak to you.”

Topaz watched as Yellowhood gave her parents a short bow. She felt she had angered him, and that bothered her. Had he had enough of her so quickly? How could that bode well? He said the offer still stood. There was something about him that seemed deeper than the answers he gave, but she wasn’t sure how to delve there. She should have thought of better questions. Why had her father not given her time to prepare? She felt herself flushing again.

Yellowhood left, and she stood up from her pillow. Her mother and father watched her, waiting for some sign.

“I want to be alone,” she said, and went to her chamber, shutting the door behind.

8

Decision

Topaz sat with Spinel in her West Branch stonehold. They sipped hot peppermint tea with honey and sat on cushions. Spinel’s mother-in-law sat across the chamber hand-weaving an ugly scrap rug, though what she intended to do with it Topaz didn’t know. The old wif always wore her traditional full veil, even in her own stonehold. Topaz wondered if she was from the east, maybe somewhere like Quartz-Rhime, but she didn’t want to ask. For the length of time it took her to drink half of her mug of tea, Topaz had kept up a friendly chatter with Spinel about the West Branch market wares.

“And you,” Spinel said abruptly. “Have you received offers?”

In truth, this was why Topaz had come, but she could not raise her own business unasked. She could have asked her mother, or even her aunt, but she felt more comfortable speaking with someone more her age, someone whose first year of marriage was still fresh in her memory. The presence of the old dwarf-wif in her heavy black veil did not help.

“I have.”

“And?”

“I met with one. A purveyor called Yellowhood.”

“Yellowhood,” Spinel said, squinting. “I don’t recall that name.”

“I hadn’t heard of him either, but my father has known him for a long time.”

“What’s he like?”

Topaz sighed and lowered her voice.

“I only spoke with him for a few minutes.”

“You must not have liked him. I think I spoke with Oakspear for, it must have been an hour or more. My father made him leave. I knew right away.”

“It’s not that I didn’t like him.”

“What then?”

“He barely seemed to want to talk to me. He left after only a few moments.”

“That’s a dwarf for you,” said the old wif from across the chamber, startling Topaz. Spinel took no notice.

“You’re worried he doesn’t like you?” Spinel asked.

“No. Well. Maybe.”

“He is making a proposal to you. Surely you aren’t the only dwarf-maid in the Southcaverns. Nor the only from a sturdy family. I heard that Agate is taking offers, now.”

“I know that. I know. It’s just. You said you knew right away.”

“Ay, yes.” Spinel faltered, looking a little uncomfortable.

“These things take time.” It was the old dwarf-wif again, still looking down at her hand-weaving. She had a pile of scrap fabric next to her, and she seemed determined to use every last bit as she tied the pieces together. “What difference is one minute from one hour, compared to two hundred years? You learn to know each other. Before thirty or forty years, you know nothing.” She did have a Grashal-Indal accent.

Topaz suspected the wif was trying to make her feel better, but the thought of deciding to join with someone for two hundred years on the basis of a few minutes was not precisely comforting.

“Is there anything you do like about him?” Spinel asked.

Topaz hadn’t stopped thinking about Yellowhood. She wanted to talk to him more, find out what was really behind those cave eyes. She’d had time to think of more questions—better questions. But the proposal had been made. She could not just show up at Yellowhood’s stonehold to speak with him. But otherwise what opportunity did she have? To draw out the process even more could be taken as an insult.

“I like that he seemed. . .” What did he seem? “Calm. Except maybe when I asked him about the war.”

“Don’t ask about the war,” the old dwarf-wif said emphatically. The wif still didn’t look up from her work, and Spinel still didn’t acknowledge her presence or words.

“Calm is. . . good,” Spinel said. “What about how he looks? You know. Did you like him? How is he put together?” Spinel’s eyebrows rose halfway up her forehead as she asked, and Topaz felt herself blushing.

“He’s cave-eyed.”

“Oh, is he now?” Spinel grinned.

“Do you want him behind you?” the old dwarf-wif asked.

Spinel gasped, and Topaz turned bright red.

“Oh don’t act coy,” the wif said. “You want babes? You want lineage? What do you think you’re asking for?”

“It’s not talked about,” Spinel said. It was the first she’d acknowledged her mother-in-law.

“You’ve been a wif for a year. Tell me in another hundred what’s talked about.”

Spinel glared at the old wif, and Topaz groped for another topic, feeling sweat break out on her forehead.

“How, uh, how is the customs thing. For Oakspear?”

“Oh. That. It’s fine. The king has granted them a sigil—a scale. They call themselves the Scales. King Ringhand says that now that Morningstone has capitulated, our new war is trade. He wants the Scales to stamp out smuggling. They’re after the Smuggler Prince, most of all.

“Before you mentioned him at our last meeting, I didn’t know he was talked about much outside the South-Caves.”

“Not as much, not here. But the king has taken notice. There are stories of a second gate.”

“Is Oakspear happy with this duty?”

“Oh ay, yes. He will be mostly ranging outside the mountain, in the West Vale and the ridge. They’ve just begun patrolling. It was all supposed to be a secret until now.” She smirked.

“So you should see him more often.”

“Oh,” Spinel said, her face falling. “No more than before. The King’s Guards keep the duties below stone to themselves. They’re jealous of their territory. But Oakspear hopes they may prove their worth to the king.”

As they spoke, they finished their tea and pretended to forget the earlier embarrassment. Before long Topaz took her leave and headed back to the South Caverns and home. It was a walk of about a mile, mostly along the lower way with the stalagtites hanging high above her and the smell of the cold water and granite filling her nostrils. As she neared the South Cavern branch, she saw a line of dwarves ahead carrying a huge steel chain over their shoulders, heading toward the adit. She had seen plenty of evidence that the king’s construction project at the adit was progressing quickly. Hundreds of dwarves had been sent to work on it. With nowhere to be and feeling a tad listless now that her wedding veil was finished, she let curiosity overcome her and followed. It wasn’t far.

As she neared the adit, she gaped. The reservoir with its tall stone wall had been demolished. For centuries, it had stood as a defensive measure, ready to flood the adit in time of siege as Brokenspear had first done. Now, there was no trace it had existed. The whole area was freshly paved and wide open, the stream flowing on in a narrow artificial course. A shaft of daylight streamed in where it had never before reached.

The adit itself was no longer a narrow opening barely wide enough to fit two dwarves abreast. Now, a passage nearly fifty feet broad and seventy feet tall opened straight out through the cliff-face and into the Valley of the Lake. Dwarves swarmed all throughout it, masons fitting huge stones with perfect seams in geometric designs of granite and marble and black basalt. She could see the opening in the cliff where dwarves on ladders prepared hinges in the stone. The hinges were bigger than their own bodies, held in place for the moment by block and tackle. Beyond, she saw the sparkle of blinding light on water. The line of workers carrying the chain climbed a narrow side-stair from the new plaza, heading up into the stone of the cliff, no doubt delivering the chain for some mechanism for the new gates.

Topaz wasn’t the only dwarf standing there agape at the progress on the new gateway of Ice-Cloak. She had always known that Ice-Cloak was unassailable. Even in the wars with King’s Quarry, the last time a siege of a dwarven colony or mine had occurred, it was brutal attrition and numbers that won the day for Silvertongue—mining and counter-mining, starving and flooding, burning and boiling, smoking and suffocating, crushing and collapsing. These were the horrors of a dwarven siege.

But the host of Silvertongue had outnumbered King’s Quarry by far. Tens of thousands of dwarves lived in Ice-Cloak across untold miles of sprawling caverns and tunnels. No host in the world was mighty enough to assail them below the stone. Nothing had threatened Ice-Cloak in hundreds of years. Even with a wide entrance hall like this new work of Ringhand’s, it would be madness to attack the mountain.

No. Ringhand was right. In Ice-Cloak, trade was war.

And yet Topaz felt conflicted. She always wished she could have seen the mountain and valley as Brokenspear had seen it a thousand years ago. What it must have been like to sink a mining shaft into the cliff only to discover the great caverns beyond! Such a marvelous discovery few dwarves had ever made.

They said when Brokenspear founded Ice-Cloak, he and his followers lived in unity, not divided by Southcaver and Upcaver. All lived in the eleven galleries who wished it. They cared for what mattered, then, not custom. The Crippled King served and died for the folk, to break them free of the traditions of the old colonies that had kept them bound. So the stories told.

Yale sat at his table, staring at the well-groomed and finely attired son of a Face smith. The longer the conversation had gone on, the more he realized how much he disliked the dwarf, but that often happened in Yale’s dealings and he had learned not to let it show. Even so, he sometimes wished he could wear an actual mask as Yellowhood like he did as the Smuggler Prince.

“You’ve never asked for so much in the past,” the dwarf said, his brow furrowed.

“Sometimes I am able to find ingots for that price, but not right now.” In truth, he’d been able to undercut before because the ingots were smuggled. But his storerooms were unusually empty, apart from those blasted spices. He just didn’t have enough metal to trade. Many who had dealt through the second gate before had grown suddenly hesitant.

“Then I think we can say there is no trade.”

“When I find ingots—” Yale began, but cut short. Topaz stood in the threshold, looking inside over her half-veil. Halfscuttle stared at her, struck dumb for a moment. She was not arrayed in the immaculate blue wrapper gown she had worn when he’d seen her last, nor was her hair in a tall pillar upon her head. Instead, she wore an apron down her front, her braids fell down from her shoulders, and she beheld him with deep eyes.

“What’s that?” the smith’s son asked.

“—I will let you know. . . When I find ingots for a lesser price.” Yale finished. “Give my regards to your father.”

The merchant’s son looked over his shoulder, saw Topaz, and then turned back to Yale.

“Very well,” he said. “In the meantime we will look elsewhere.”

“Certainly.”

Topaz stepped aside as the young dwarf left, though he did not scruple staring at her as he did so. Topaz paid him no heed. Yale stood, expecting to say something, but he found nothing to say. What was she doing there? Without her father? Mother? Anyone?

“I am sorry for interrupting,” she said. “The door was open.”

“Ay, yes. I do not keep it closed when I am in. It makes it seem more inviting.” That was what he said. What he thought was that it made him seem less suspicious. That was another reason he so often didn’t hide his wares, often moving them in plain sight where anyone could see.

“My father keeps his smeltery open as well, when he is there.”

Yale nodded.

“May I come in?” she asked.

“Ay, yes, of course. Will you take a drink?” Then he realized he had no clean mugs.

“Please.”

“One moment.”

He had to keep himself from running as he headed back into the private larder for another mug. He wiped all the dust off, collected himself, and walked back to the front chamber. He found Topaz sitting in the chair across from his own, her hands folded on her lap. Halfscuttle still sat in the corner, mute. Yale poured honeyed water into her mug from the pitcher he kept on his table, then handed it to Topaz.

“I’m sorry, I do not have tea.”

“You need a samovar,” she said. “Those who come for business would appreciate it.”

“You’re right.” Why hadn’t he ever done that? Other than keeping it full and warm would be one more thing to keep track of, burning charcoal inside and the rest. Topaz was looking around the room, and he realized how bare it was. Especially compared to the chamber of fine hangings and rugs and cushions and aromas in which she had received his proposal.

“How do I account for the joy of your visit?” he asked.

“I want you to try again. Why do you want to marry me, rather than any other maid. And why should I marry you, rather than any other dwarf.”

Yale felt the return of the flush and sweat. Though he had not expected her to agree to marry him after what felt like a disastrous interview, he had also felt some relief that at least it was over. He could not answer this maid’s question, not with the truth he wished to speak at least. Nor did he wish to lie. What answer he could give her, he would give plainly.

“I saw you at Bronzebucket’s smeltery, and your beauty struck me. When I saw a chance to have that beauty, I made the attempt.” If it was any consolation, he noticed that her face was flushed as well. “I heard from Bronzebucket that you are skilled with textiles and clever of hand, but now I see you are more than that.”

“And what more am I?”

“You are bold.”

“I was not sure you truly liked me, apart from the fact I’m a maid.”

“I find I like you more and more. And as to why you should marry me, for that I do not know an answer. Many maids seek a horde, and that I have. Many seek a stonehold, and I have much stone here. But you didn’t ask me about these things. Maybe because you already knew, or maybe becuase you didn’t care.”

Topaz stared him full in the face, eye to eye, hers like dark mineshafts. She didn’t respond.

“I cannot say I am better than anyone else. I have thought about what I could tell you.” He shook his head. “I have labored many years and held my course when it was hard. I would hold to you as well. But I have no greater virtue than many others.” He wanted to tell her everything right then. About Yellowhood, Roughcoat, the Smuggler Prince. . . Even about Yale. But he couldn’t. Long had he hoarded those secrets and lies. Far longer than his wealth. She must spurn him if she knew. She should. And yet he was not brave enough to let her spurn him. Some of the blush on his face was from shame for that as much as Topaz’s presence.

That shame, more than any other reason, was why he had not married after gaining wealth. He did not deserve this bold dwarf-maid. But he had deserved nothing in life. He’d taken it. Slowly. Day by day.

“You said you don’t have any family?” she asked.

“No. I was a late and an only child.”

Topaz nodded. He wasn’t sure if he should ask about her family, but he already knew. She turned and looked at Halfscuttle.

“Gont, stranger.” She had used the informal.

Halfscuttle looked startled to be addressed so.

“Gont”

“How long have you known Yellowhood?”

Halfscuttle glanced to Yale.

“Eh, known him? I know him, ay, yes. Since the war. Before the war.” He squinted, as if trying to remember. “I’m sure it was before the war.”

Topaz cocked her head to the side.

“And what do you have to say about Yellowhood?” she asked.

Yale actually laughed, but from shock more than humor. Anything could come out of that dwarf’s mouth.

“What do I have to say?” Halfscuttle asked back, pausing. “I say he’ll take better care of you than you take of yourself. That’s what he does for me.”

Yale let his breath out.

Topaz smiled.

“Thank you.” She rose. “I should let you get back to your labor.” She looked around the chamber once more, and then left, but her aroma lingered, and Yale breathed it in.

A week later, Topaz knelt on a cushion in her family hold, the smell of cinnamon in the air, her knees folded, her hands on her iron-smoothed gown. She stared across at the young gurk who’d come to make his proposal. She’d worn a different veil this time and covered her hair, leaving only her eyes and brows exposed.

“You will not find a better husband than me,” he said. “My family’s hold is one of the biggest in the Upper Caverns. As the eldest, I will take over for my father, one of the finest enamelers of the Face. Already, I do the work of a master. Our children will be raised with respect, honor, and tradition, and will be raised among the finest of crafters. Our family horde is no shame.”

“Why bring your proposal to me?”

He frowned.

“I don’t understand.”

“Why do you want to marry me, rather than another maid.”

He actually turned and looked at Topaz’s parents, as if trying to find an answer there.

“My father said. . . Your father. It was a good match.”

“Are there no maids in the Upper Caverns?”

“Not. . . right now.”

Perhaps one in three dwarves born were gilna—girl children. Sometimes fewer. This meant that at any given time, there were not many past rhundal and yet unmarried. Every maid knew that she would receive proposals if she was willing to receive them, even without anything else to speak for her besides being a maid. Still, it surprised her that he admitted as much.

If she thought that Yellowhood was not much for talk, this one didn’t seem to realize that there was anything more to this process than the offer of a bride price and his short speech about his family. They sat and stared at each other in silence for a time, a look of confusion growing on his face.

“Thank you for your proposal. I will consider it with all the honor it deserves,” she said. After she said no more for a time, he seemed to get the picture and rose.

Bronzebucket saw him out, and then turned to Topaz, hands clasped and brows wrinkled in a pained expression. This was the third gurk she’d received since Yellowhood.

She stood and pulled a pin from her hair, spinning it in her fingers so the yellow citrine on the head caught the light. She would not do this again.

“Tell Yellowhood I accept,” she said.

“What?” Bronzebucket asked. Her mother clapped her hands once.

“Tell Yellowhood I accept his proposal.”

Her father let out a deep breath. He looked like he’d just heard the news that his son had not been in the tunnel that collapsed.

“We have so much to do!” her mother said. “We must find out who Yellowhood wishes to invite to the feast. We’ll send your brother for a list. And we must make our own list, and we need to borrow more samovars, but nice ones, and—”

“Not now,” Topaz said. “I’m going to bed.”

With that, she walked into her private chamber and closed the door behind her, closing out the sound of her mother’s voice, a pitch higher than usual, turning her slew of preparations on Bronzebucket.

“We simply cannot risk it,” the dwarf said.

Yale looked at him over the table.

“You risked it a month ago. The king has raised tariffs on barley again.”

“That was before Ringhand set these Ridgewards or Scales or whatever they call themselves scouring the mountainsides for smugglers.”

“They’re incompetent.”

“You’re not the one who has to bring the goods all the way up the West Vale, right under the nose of Queen’s West.”

“Queen’s West is miles away.”

“I’m not going to argue. It’s too dangerous. We either pay the tariffs or we deal with humans.” The Red-Vein merchant spread his hands palm up. “We have appreciated your help in the past. We mean no insult.”

Yale thrummed his fingers on the granite tabletop.

“I take none. You know where to find me.”

The dwarf nodded, then rose and left. When he was well gone, Yale looked at Halfscuttle.

“Third one in as many days,” he said. Halfscuttle grunted.

“Cowards and knaves and useless grifters,” the dwarf muttered.

“At this rate, we will be left with the humans. Ringhand is more lenient with them than his own kind. He doesn’t want a reputation with the human kingdoms of being a poor host. So the lorknaben will probably keep dealing.”

Yale paused.

“Of course, I’m sure Ringhand would extend no leniency to us.”

He heard footsteps in the passage outside the door. Bronzebucket appeared a few moments later, and he was smiling. Yale stood. He hadn’t heard anything in over a week. For a couple days after Topaz’s unexpected visit, he had felt a resurgence of hope, but it had faded, and he had begun thinking of extortion fees and smoking feet again.

“Bronzebucket, gont.”

“Gont, Yellowhood.” He strode into the room, his thumbs tucked into his belt. His belly seemed almost to float in front of him. He came to a stop at the table. Yale felt a surge of expectation.

“I came to tell you we must reinstate our agreement.”

Yale’s brows and his stomach sank together.

“Is that so?”

“Ay, yes. I believe the arrangement we had discussed will do.”

Yale had dreaded this. The thought of extortion was unbearable. It was no different than taxes. That’s all Ringhand’s taxes were, anyway—extortion wearing a crown. He hadn’t tolerated it from Ringhand, and he didn’t expect he’d tolerate it from Bronzebucket.

“I’m sure there are alternatives.”

“Oh, you no longer wish to marry my daughter?”

“What?”

“She has accepted your proposal, Yellowhood!”

Bronzebucket burst out laughing as he watched Yale’s face pass through an array of contortions as waves of emotion passed over him. Bronzebucket actually bent over and grasped his knees, his face red as he roared.

“I couldn’t help myself!” He managed to say, straightening back up, somehow hauling his belly up with him. “We must set a date for the feast!”

Yale sat down in his chair, hardly believing it. He had hoped. He had hoped at one point, but now that the hope was so unexpectedly realized. . . It meant a variety of situations in his future that made his heart beat to think of.

“My wif demands I return with a list of your guests,” Bronzebucket said. “And my wif asks if perhaps some small quantities of spices might be available, to serve in the dishes. It would be to your credit as well as ours.”

“Of course. Soon there will be no difference.”

Bronzebucket smiled, then chuckled again.

“It’s all different, you know. Once you have a wif. Always someone else to look after besides yourself.”

Yale glanced at Halfscuttle. He knew what that was like. Limp could be a handful, too. But he thought of Topaz’s dark eyes. She made him feel. . . intimidated. He had a feeling that “looking after” might take on new meaning for him.

“Any advice?”

“Hah! Well.” Bronzebucket’s face grew thoughtful. “To be honest, I have been a lucky dwarf. But I’d say, you must give the wif mastery of as much as you can trust. Ay, yes, you have your business and that is yours. But do not try to keep a dwarf-wif cooped in a stonehold with no craft and no purpose. With nothing else to work, she will seek to master you, instead. It gets easier when she has babes, if you are so blessed. But mark me.”

“I will.”

“Now, my wif suggested three weeks less a day for a fitting time of waiting.”

“That will do.”

“And for your guests?”

“Myself, Halfscuttle, and Limp. That is all that is necessary.”

“Come now, Yellowhood. This is a time to show your worth. To celebrate your fortune! Surely you can think of more. Now, take a piece of that lambskin and a pen and we will write.”

Limp arrived just as Bronzebucket left. The smelter was carrying off a rolled piece of lambskin—the kind for writing runes. Limp was already smoking even as he walked into the chamber. He glanced back at the door.

“And what was that?” he asked.

“She agreed.”

“Is that so?” Limp took a long pull on his pipe, then let the smoke out in a slow stream. “Unexpected.”

Yale smirked.

“Ay, yes. And so it seems I am to marry.”

“So we don’t kill them?” Limp asked. His face and voice remained as flat as ever.

“No. Again, no. For an absurdly high bride price, a potential enemy is now an ally.”

“Kin.” Limp said. “But don’t we have somewhere to be?” Now Limp fished another lambskin from his shirt and set it down on the table in front of Yale. Yale unrolled it and his eyes moved across the runes.

“Ay, yes.” He stood. They had spices to move, finally.

9

The Feast

“How have you returned so soon?” Yale asked in his muffled, hoarse whisper. Sayfoot leaned against the pumice on the passage wall, smoking.

“The humans are building a way-camp at the fork of the Nunegik River. They can navigate by barge and raft that far.”

There was only one fork of the river that Sayfoot could refer to, where the two branches of the Nunegik joined just two-hundred fifty miles away.

“Ice-Cloak claims that territory.”

“Ringhand gave permission, so long as they bring the trade to Ice-Cloak and not the other colonies.”

“Do they have ought but spices to trade?”

“Some wheat, but they wish to deal in spices. The humans have little else, but they trade our gems and gold with the elves for spice, and it seems they come off the better.”

Yale rolled a strand of his beard between thumb and forefinger as he crouched in the tight vent shaft. Ringhand loved the elven spices, and they said he set such high tariffs on it merely to claim a portion for his tea and mead and ale. High risk but high profit.

“How much this time?”

“Two thousand pounds total, cloves.”

“Two thousand?” That was as much as came into the gates in half the summer trading season. And trade nearly stopped in the snow moons, especially from humans. They were not hardy in the mountain cold.

Yale wasn’t sure he had enough gold to pay for that much, not with the bride price to pay as well. Silver, perhaps. Maybe some gemstones. He had only just passed the last of the previous supply of spices to his contacts in the markets. It was nearly impossible to move spices past dwarven noses without notice. It had taken Yale a full week to come up with the idea of sealing the spices in clay jars and submerging the jars in casks of mead and ale. He’d taken a loss on trade of the drink from a Southcaver brewer to the Upper Caverns, but it was nothing compared to the profit on the spices.

“If you cannot take it all, they will take the rest through the gates. But they prefer to deal with you if you can.”

“I take it you saw the king’s new gates?” he asked.

“Ay, yes. And by the time you pass through the gate-hall and the plaza, you’re lucky to have your pants on.”

“The tariffs are higher than ever.”

“They make the process a machine. A meticulous damned machine.”

“Shit,” Yale said, but it worked in his favor. If Ringhand kept on this way, the merchants and traders would grow tired of it, and they would find a way to deal with these blasted scales. Bribery might work in the long run, but it was too early for that.

“And they say Ringhand sits in a gallery above the gate-hall sometimes,” Sayfoot went on, “watching as his servants strain the gold from his guests. In the old days, they called great kings ring-givers. Now, the so-called king of all dwarves is a ring-taker.”

Yale had heard that Ringhand had plated the gates in embossed silver, and that he did it only to make more room for gold in his treasury.

“We will take the two thousands. So long as they don’t ask for living steel.” Unfortunately, Yale had little choice but to take the spices. With the Scales scouring the slopes night and day, almost all his dwarven trade had dried up. If the humans were still willing to risk it, then he would let them. Even if the Second Gate were discovered, there was nothing material to connect it back to him, so long as no one talked. And those who knew who the Smuggler Prince really was, well, they were complicit in breaking the king’s law.

“They will ask and ask again,” Sayfoot said. Yale made a face, though Sayfoot couldn’t see it. He wasn’t going to admit it, but he didn’t own any living steel. He’d like to some day, but it was only bought dear. Even with miners in the far north, the stuff was beyond rare. Quite a few gallery dwarves had it, some even had weapons and armor like the king’s. But it was a sign of supreme status, and risky even to show south of the Upper Caverns. Theft was punished vindictively by the Southcavers too, but living steel would push a dwarf far.

“I have something else to ask,” Sayfoot said. Yale didn’t respond, just waited. “The boss human has brought wheat, to keep up appearances. He means to bring it through the gates. I met a purveyor named Yellowhood. What of him?”

“He’s a fool. And he deals mostly in metals. But he might be competent enough to trade your wheat. More than that I cannot help.”

“That is enough.”

“There are new rules. When we meet, no donkeys, no mules. No animals at all.”

Sayfoot shook his head.

“It’s two thousand pounds.”

“Take it or leave it,” Yale said. “The king has set patrols on the valleys.”

“We will have to bring more folk to carry.”

“So long as they’re less inclined to bray than a donkey.”

Sayfoot said nothing for a time.

“Shouldn’t we wait till a dead moon?”

“They’ll only be searching harder then.”

“You’re a bold dwarf, doing what you’re doing.”

“Shit on them.”

“Shit on them,” Sayfoot agreed.

Sayfoot sat across the table from Yale, sipping on a mug of hot spiced mead from the new silver samovar. Most of those who came to trade with him would not mind a hot brew, and Yale would not mind if they felt a bit heady during negotiations. Mostly, it was to please a maid who had recommended it last he’d seen her.

“I do remember you,” Yale said. “You came into the hall looking for that smuggler, is that right?”

“Ay, yes.”

“So I take it you’ve come to your senses and wish to do business the king’s way?”

“The caravan boss has. I merely translate.”

“Right.”He noticed the dwarf’s accent again. “Where is your home, Sayfoot?”

“The Ridges. I and my folk for a hundred generations. Now the old colonies are little more than worked-out mines and trade-stops.”

Yale saw again the smoke and stained marble of King’s Quarry in his mind, and he shook his head as if to shake away the thought. He was a dwarf of Ice-Cloak, but one day. . . One day they would go somewhere far and dig a hold where the rock smelled fresh. He would live as the dwarves of old, like Brokenspear, forging a new life without kings or taxes or wars. . . Someday. He felt a sinking in his chest. How would that old dream collide with a wif?

“And what can I do for you here in Ice-Cloak?”

“We are bringing in wheat. Ten tons.”

“Ten tons? Wheat is not a common grain, here. It is a human food. The folk prefer barley and oats. Few have the taste for wheat.”

It was true, but he knew that he could trade some of it to Sudbeard at the Miner and Barrel and other hosts of Southcaver stewhalls. They’d use it to thicken their stews on the cheap.

“If you do not want it, we will look elsewhere.”

“I may know some market dwarves who would buy, but it would not be at a high price.”

“We sell for fifteen ounces of silver per ton.”

“Five would be better,” Yale said. “But seven ounces and a half, that will be the most I can give you.”

“That’s unacceptable.”

It took another twenty minutes before Yale spread his hands on the table and wrinkled his nose.

“Ten and a half or leave.”

Sayfoot finished his mug of mead, then set it on the stone table.

“Done.”

Yale leaned back. Sayfoot might be a translator, but the humans trusted him to bargain for this deal. Yale could have driven a harder bargain, himself, but the wheat would provide cover for the cloves.

Topaz, too, was keeping her hands busy. She had finished her veil weeks before, but now she prepared her new wrap gown, blue from lapis and yellow from ochre worked in a gorgeous, thick raised brocade of interworking geometries. She wished she could occupy her mind as much as her hands.

She had not joined in any of the other preparations. It was tradition for older wifs to handle the rest. So Topaz’s mother, Spinel’s mother—with help from Spinel herself one day—and the wif of Topaz’s living uncle had set their mark on a wide stone-hall often used for Southcaver feasts, and already they'd started cooking and baking. In a few days, the carcasses of sheep and goats would arrive, and the kegs of drink. Even Yellowhood had contributed a few kegs, though it was far from traditional. “He said he had them,” her mother said. The Bronzebucket stonehold was warm from the heat of the cooking braziers and lively with the chatter of wifs.

She was going to marry. She had decided it, but as the feast approached, she found her nerves increasing. Sometimes, her heart was racing before she even realized it. She hoped Yellowhood was gentle. She tried not to think of when it came time for him to take her back to his chamber. When she did, her chest tightened, her hands trembled, and she would have to stop the brocading until she collected herself, else she would make a mistake. If only there was a way to have a babe that didn’t involve such anxiety, but she knew better. She had made a decision, and she could only hope it would be well in the end.

When she was a young gilna, her mother had taught her that traditions showed them how to live, how to pass on their knowledge of craft and story and heritage and family. Yet sometimes she wished she didn’t have to go through all the traditions and preparations, that she could just walk over to Yellowhood’s hold and begin her new life without putting it all on display.

The final week before his marriage, Yale had trouble sleeping. The situation felt abnormal in the truest sense of the word. He’d lived his whole life as a gurk, until he was too old to even be counted one, and then one day he would simply go to a feast, bind his life a to a maid, and take her home to his chamber to wif and lie with her just like that. His heart pounded as he lay on his pallet in a bare, undecorated chamber. Why hadn’t he bought furs and pelts and hangings? He couldn’t bring her to this barren bit of granite. And he hadn’t widened his bed. And he needed to make its cleft in the rock taller, he was fairly sure, or else things could get even more awkward than they must be.

In a week's time he had to join with this maid. He wondered if she would be as terrified as he already felt. He’d faced death many times, but facing death felt far easier. Did she know more than he about how it must be? He couldn’t sleep, so he rolled out of his bed. At least he could work. When all other peace escaped him, he could work.

Yale’s stonehold extended fifty yards into the rock from the main passage, and it was nearly as wide. He had purchased the claim ten years before, but he barely used a third of it. He had never planned for it to be home forever. It was necessary for Yellowhood so long as Yellowhood existed, but not for Yale.

Things were changing, though, and he wasn’t sure what it would all mean yet. Maybe he would dig more, for Topaz. He went to a storeroom and retrieved his mining tools. He would get to work on the bed. That was better than just lying on it with his eyes open. Then, he would go and buy lambskins for the floor and for the bed coverings.

The feast arrived. The stone hall was full not just with the guests of Bronzebucket's family, but per Bronzebucket’s wishes there were also many of Yale’s Southcaver contacts. They had not bothered to invite Upcavers besides those who came originally from the Southern Caverns, such as Thinweave and Spinel, nor did they invite Yale’s contacts in the Face, many of whom were Gallery Dwarves. Such would never deign to attend a Southcaver wedding.

The hall was already full of dwarves when Yale arrived with Limp and Halfscuttle at his flanks, each wearing bright new clothes—they in blue, Yale in bright yellow with fine border stitching. The air was hazy with smoke from pipes and braziers and fragrant burning incense and laden with aromas of spices and roasting meat. The hall was two hundred feet long and half as wide, and in the center fire trench whole kids and lambs roasted in rows. Kegs of tapped ale and mead already flowed freely into mugs and flagons. Over the din of voices, he could hear the harmonics of throat-singing on the far side, along with the high haunting music of a stone-flute.

There was a hush as Yale entered. All eyes turned to him. He flushed red and started to sweat, but there wasn’t anything he could do, so he accepted it. The amount of attention was agonizing. Oh for the smuggler’s mask! But he had to accept it. He had done harder things. . . Or so he told himself. He was most anxious of what came after the feast.

Trestle tables were arranged in rows and a high table sat along one of the side walls opposite the pit-fire. There was so much heat in the hall he could feel the draft of the vent-holes near the buttressed chamber roof. At the high table sat Bronzebucket. The big dwarf’s eyes locked onto Yale as soon as he entered the chamber. He nodded.

Yale glanced at Limp and Halfscuttle.

“Alright,” he said in a low voice, then strode over to the high table and stood in front of Bronzebucket. Total silence fell in the feasting hall, but for the crackle of the fire and the sizzle of dripping grease.

“I am here as we agreed, to take your daughter to wif.”

“I doubt again whether I can give her up to you,” Bronzebucket said. His face was red, and it looked like he had already had a share of the mulled drink. “She is a treasure to my hold, a jewel in my crown.”

“I understand,” said Yale. This whole exchange was traditional, though not memorized by wrote. “I have brought the bride-price we agreed.” He motioned to Limp and Halfscuttle. They each carried a heavy skin bag of gold ounce-ingots. Yale had given one to each, wishing them to share the honor. The two dwarves set the bags on the table in front of Bronzebucket, letting them thunk down heavily onto the wood.

Bronzebucket looked down at the bags, and managed to contort his face into something like the appearance of sorrow.

“A kingly offering, but it is for a jewel beyond price.” His voice filled the hall. “Again I doubt and I grieve.”

“I understand,” said Yale. He reached into a pocket and retrieved another bag, as heavy as the first two. For hundreds of years, the added price had been merely a traditional display only and was included into the agreed upon bride price. But Bronzebucket must have noticed that the two bags made up the agreed upon weight, and that Yale was giving beyond the agreement. The big dwarf’s eyes grew round for a moment. Yale hefted the bag, then let it hit the wood with a thump.

There were mumbles and whispers in the hall. Dwarves could tell a weight of metal by sight and sound and size. Little escaped their notice, and many saw that Yale had fulfilled the tradition in earnest. In truth, he had only decided to do so that day. But he relished the effect it had in the hall.

Bronzebucket stared down at the three bags before him. Then, he slowly rose to his feet, pushing up from the table with his hands.

“My honored guests,” he shouted. “Today the maid of my hold becomes wif to Yellowhood.”

The folk cheered.

“Bring her in!” Bronzebucket shouted.

The peaked doors at the far end of the hall opened. Everyone turned as Topaz stepped through. Yale felt like he couldn’t breathe. He had never seen anything so beautiful, and he had gazed upon the great gems of the mountain, the Tukith-i-Illenfärner and even the Shor-i-Illenfärner in the crown of the king. Topaz wore a dress of blue and gold brocade so intricate that the geometries appeared to move in the firelight. Her dark eyes pierced through the gap in her long wif’s veil. The veil itself wrapped around her forehead but let her hair rise in a towering heap of shining oiled braids upon her head, gleaming and luxuriant.

With steady dignified steps, she walked to stand behind the high table next to her father. Bronzebucket took her hand. At that moment, Yale felt like his heart was beating in his face, and he felt heat emanating from his skin. If only he had a veil like hers. He could only see her eyes, and she wasn’t looking at him, her eyes cast down. Whether she was happy or sad or terrified, he did not know—only that she was marvelous.

“Yellowhood,” Bronzebucket said, motioning for him. Yale walked around the table to stand opposite her. Bronzebucket called: “The chain!”

Topaz’s two brothers came forward from the crowd, carrying a silver chain between them. Bronzebucket took Yale’s hand and brought the arms of groom and bride together side by side. Topaz’s brothers wrapped the chain from their wrists to elbows, fastened it tight with a silver clasp, and stepped away. Bronzebucket put a hand on Yale and Topaz’s shoulders as they stood side by side, facing across the high-table to the crowded hall.

“From this hour, the two are joined as one. No chisel nor pick, no axe nor hammer can separate them or break them asunder. Let the feast begin!”

Yale felt a shallow pang, even amid his overwhelm, as Bronzebucket said both parts of the father roles. If he had lived, Yale’s father would have shared that declaration with Bronzebucket.

Once more, the crowded hall erupted in cheers, but it did not die down into silence. The music began again, and merry voices joined in conversation. Hired hands carried drink and platters of seasoned meat along with delicacies of baked honey throughout the hall. Plates and flagons appeared on the table in front of Yale and Topaz, though Yale didn’t see who brought them. The couple were still standing, and many dwarves began to file past the high table to offer congratulations.

Topaz remained quiet. The speakers addressed themselves to Yale, and he found himself smiling and nodding and thanking more dwarves than he recalled ever having met. He could barely manage a sip from his flagon for some time. Many in the hall had loaded their granite trenchers for a second time before Yale tasted a bite of his food. Topaz had waited in silence and only ate when Yale himself did.

At length, he looked over at her for the first time as his wif, she to whom he was bound. She noticed the motion and turned her head toward him. Her dark eyes gleamed, deep and inscrutable. He could smell her. Mostly she smelled of spiced oils, but now and then he caught hints of her own aroma. His heart thumped as she looked him in the eye. He was certain the veins on his brow must be visibly pulsing.

No one else sat at the high table but Yale and Topaz. Her father, mother, brothers, uncle and aunts sat at a long trestle on the far side of the fire. Bronzebucket’s voice often rose in merriment above the rumble of the crowd, and he drank freely from a horn-carved flagon banded in silver.

Time had never felt so never-ending and yet so instant to Yale as that evening. Hours flowed by, and the crowd grew louder and merrier. Songs rumbled under the stone roof. Yale stared around as if in a daze, feeling the warmth of Topaz’s arm bound against his, more intoxicated by her presence and aroma than the ale and mead. At last, Bronzebucket rose and made his way, somewhat unsteadily, to stand before the high table. He leaned on it with his hands to steady himself.

“No matter how we started down this tunnel,” Bronzebucket slurred to Yale, “Do not think that we aren’t kin. We’re kin! Anything before now—” he waved sloppily “—doesn’t matter. To prove it—”

He reached into his pocket, and what he pulled out made Yellowhood and Topaz both gasp. It was a medallion of living steel the size of Bronzebucket’s palm, a chain of silver with it. On it Yale saw thready emboss-work. When Bronzebucket spoke again, it seemed he had grown more sober, his words distinct.

“My grandfather was the first smelter in our family, and the first to come to Ice-Cloak. When he was young and strong, he made a pilgrimage to the north, to the Mouth of Fire, and he returned with ore, though even then it had nearly ceased to be found. When he was old and I was young, he smelted the living ore, and cast this medallion depicting the mountains of our new home, and in honor to its first king. I give this in trust to you as the husband of my only daughter, and for her children. You are husband to my daughter! We are kin! You will be father to my eldest grandchild.”

“Oh, papa!” Topaz stood so quickly that she yanked Yale forward by the arm as she leaned over the table to hug her father. After they released the grasp of their hug, Bronzebucket pushed the medallion into Yale’s hand. Yale shook his head, at a loss for words. In a matter of hours, he had gained a wif, and now this kingly gift, worth as much even as the bride price. Such magnanimity Yale had not expected from Bronzebucket. This medallion was no bargaining chip. This was something else. He remembered what Limp had spoken: He had not just made an ally. He had found kin.

Bronzebucket seemed to both recover his sense of custom and his intoxication.

“Now!” he shouted, clapping his hands. “It is time for the dwarf to take his wif to hold!”

This time, the cheers that erupted in the hall were much sloppier. Ale and mead sloshed from the mugs and flagons and horns thrust into the air to accompany the cries. Yale reached for his flagon and drained it in one go. The feasting and drinking and singing in the hall would go on for many hours, but Yale and Topaz were ushered away, arms still bound together by silver chain. Many of the younger dwarves followed until they reached the outer door of Yellowhood’s stonehold. They cheered again as Yale and Topaz entered and shut the door behind them.

Without a word, arms still bound, Yale led Topaz back beyond his chamber of business, down the inner passage and into his own private bedchamber. As they walked, he felt the movement of her steps beside him, the press of their arms together. Outside of the heady feasting hall, she was like a moving lamp of spiced incense and oils. She had yet said no word to him.

The gentle light of oil lamps spilled out of the bedchamber as he opened the door. White lambskin rugs covered the floor. More were piled high on the widened alcove bed, the roof raised four feet above it. He had even put up hangings, though he felt stupid about it, knowing that with her experienced, tasteful eye they could not hope to meet her approval. But at least it was not the cold blank stone it had been.

He swung the door shut, behind them, accidentally yanking on her arm, then walked with Topaz to the center of the chamber, his throat feeling tight. With his free hand, he unclasped the chain and unwrapped the silver, laying it in a neat coil on a narrow side-table. He took a breath and turned around.

She stood still as a marble statue and far more beautiful. She was silent, watching him with her dark eyes. Yale’s hands trembled as he stepped toward her and reached for her veil. He tried to lift it, but it wouldn’t rise, somehow held in place. He looked for clasps, but found none. Topaz saw his difficulty, and she lifted her hands to guide his to the silver toggles hidden below her braids. His hands felt incredibly clumsy, clumsier and rougher and more uncouth than ever they’d felt in his life.

The toggles released, and the veil slid away and revealed her face, and for the first time Yale saw the anxiety and the tension there, and his heart reached out to her. She was blushing, but she reached up to the pile of braids on her head and drew out one after another of the long, slender silver pins. All together then, the braids fell down her back, their scent pouring down with them.

What happened was fumbling and short and bewildering, but it happened. They lay at last side by side with a sheepskin pulled up to their necks, even then preserving modesty. For a long time they didn't speak, instead just breathing, staring at the new-carved stone above them that already glimmered with the tracery of young miner’s eye.

Only one thing now remained.

“My name is Yale,” he said. Steady. Topaz looked over at him. He could see the tops of her perfect strong shoulders. He had felt their strength.

“I am Eyagklin,” she said. He knew the words: She Carries Far.

10

The Kara-Indal Snows

After only two weeks, Topaz missed her mother and father and even her brothers. Her new stonehold was much bigger than her family’s, and the private section was at the back, divided from the low chamber where Yale met his trade partners by a long passageway. Where her family’s hold had been compact, Yellowhood’s was expansive and mostly empty. There was only one room that had any hominess about it, and that was the bedchamber. Even that needed re-done. The rest of the rooms were store-rooms except for a larder that looked as if it had been dug as an afterthought and had no clear method of organization. In horror on her third day as a wif, she had thrown everything from the larder alcove, including rotten scraps of old food that had been left there to mold.

It was slovenly, even for a gurk. The dwarven miners kept to strict rules about cleanliness to prevent illness and maintain discipline, but there was no mine boss ordering Yellowhood around. It was of little import, now, though. She was the wif of the hold.

Yale saw her clearing out the larder. He stood and watched her for a few moments before speaking.

“Is there ought that I can do, to make this more a hold for you?”

She looked at him, still feeling abashed by his presence.

“In truth, it is more store-room than hold,” she said. “There is no place to receive guests.”

“I receive guests in the front chamber.”

“Not to do business, to visit.”

Before the seventh day had passed since their union, Yale began expanding their bedchamber and opening up a new hall at the end of the passage. Halfscuttle and Limp lent their help, the strike of their picks and the rhythm of their songs heavy and constant. She had spoken with the other two dwarves even less than with Yale. Limp rarely spoke in her presence, and she had not yet learned to interpret all of Halfscuttle’s mumblings. The two dwarves slept in a small chamber off a little-used side-passage further west in the caverns.

She was scrubbing the granite in the larder when Yale stepped inside. He was covered in dust from the rock, grimy streaks on his bare pate from the sweat. He’d been digging the new hall for many hours, and for the first time that waking, Limp and Halfscuttle were not with him. Yale lifted a mug from an iron hook and went to fill it at a small barrel that held a weak beer, a common drink of miners. The fermenting cleansed the water and kept it safe.

“Why do you not dig a chamber for Limp and Halfscuttle. Many masters keep a chamber for their laborers.”

“I am not their master.”

She knew that the relationship between Yale, Limp, and Halfscuttle was not a normal business arrangement. A master did not bring their laborers to serve in a place of honor at their wedding, and Limp and Halfscuttle had born the bride price. There was so much she did not know.

“What are you to them?”

“We are companions since. . . since the war.”

The words of the old wif came to her memory. Don’t ask about the war. She wanted to anyway, but asked something else instead.

“Do they have their own trades?”

“Well. . . They were miners. We all were, or meant to be.”

“Before the war?”

“And after, for a time.”

“But they don’t mine anymore?”

“No.”

“So they labor only for you?”

“When first I purchased this hold, I offered for them to stay here. Limp refused. He would not be seen as a laborer to Yellowhood or anyone else. They aid me, and I trust them as I do no one else.”

The last part pricked Topaz, but what did she know? Did a dwarf trust other dwarves more than his own wif? Certainly, she couldn’t expect him to trust her. He barely knew her. Maybe with time. But all she felt was a gulf, the obvious truth that Yale did not want to tell her everything about his past. Did she have the right to know? She wasn’t sure. But she wanted to know. Yale drained the mug and hung it back on the hook. He looked at the stone in the larder.

“It. . . looks clean,” he said. Topaz looked at him, unsure how to respond. He made a short nod, pursed his lips, and left the larder.

She was queen of her hold, and when it wasn’t echoing with the sound of pick and spade, it was a lonely bit of stone. She had brought her looms, her finished wall hangings and rugs from her old private chamber. She had found that Yale owned little of what was necessary to maintain the foodways of a hold, but he gave her silver to trade, and she made her way to the West Branch Market. Yale must not have known what such goods should cost, or that Topaz was no stranger to bartering for goods in the markets. He’d given her far too much, so she decided to bring the indulgence of some small luxury to the hold. She arranged for a delivery of braziers, cooking platters, skillets, griddles, pots, cutlery. There were sacks of salt, barley, and oats, as well as ceramic jars crammed with fermented goat-ears, turnips, sliced wurzels, sheep-tongues, pickled goat shanks and sheep tripe, and other choice foods preserved in honey and vinegar. While she was at it, she ordered sacks of fine-crimped wool for spinning and weaving.

Once, as a gilna, Topaz had tangled a loom and became frustrated in the meticulous untangling. Her aunt Thinweave had been teaching her a family pattern. Topaz threw the loom down in a juvenile fit. Thinweave stood up, imperious where she had been patient. She pointed at the loom.

“Pick it up.”

Topaz dared not disobey. She reached down and picked up the loom, but as soon as she had straightened Thinweave slapped it out of her hands. The wood thumped on the rug.

Topaz jumped in surprise.

“Pick it up,” Thinweave commanded. Topaz obeyed, and again Thinweave slapped it from her hand.

“Pick it up.”

Seven times her aunt did this, and after the last she asked:

“Do you know why I have done this?”

“So I will remember.”

It was a normal question to ask a gilna or gilke after discipline.

“Correct.”

They sat back down and Topaz returned to the untangling, still struggling with the dexterity of her fingers but chastened. Thankfully, her sturdy learner’s loom was unharmed.

“Aunt?” she asked after a time.

“Ay?”

“How did you become the greatest weaver?”

“Some would argue otherwise.”

“I think you’re the greatest.”

Thinweave made no reply.

“How?” Topaz pressed.

Her aunt looked up from her work, meeting Topaz’s eyes.

“Greatness is determined by our capacity for suffering.”

Even at that young age, she’d understood, and she had toiled and strived and suffered in the development of her skill as a spinner and weaver. Topaz had no shortage of takers when she put her work up for trade, though it would have taken another half a century and more to approach her aunt’s skill.

Yet now she was a wif. What did greatness mean for a wif? Was it just bearing and suckling babes? She wanted babes deeply, that’s why she’d chosen to wif, but certainly there was more. Or had she given up greatness?

By their second week, she had begun to cook what to her felt like lavish meals. Yale sat and ate with her, but she wasn’t sure whether she felt annoyed or insulted or simply lonely when he left for that smoky loud stew-hall after eating the meals she cooked, even though she’d brought in a keg of mead and kept a brew warm in the samovar.

“Why are you going?” she’d asked.

“I meet folk there, for business,” he said.

She wasn’t sure if he was telling the truth or if he didn’t want her company. He had his own hall for business, after all. Why go to the stew hall? Married dwarves did not usually frequent stew halls. She’d never known a purveyor. Yale did not keep the same hours and habits as a smelter—or even a miner like her uncle. So she wove and cooked and tended the miner’s eye. She visited her mother, and sometimes her father’s smeltery, but for some reason she did not want to seem as lonely to them as she was, so she didn’t go as often as she wished. Maybe it was pride. She’d made her choice, after all.

As much as she could, she kept to the same routine of sleeping and waking as Yale, although he sometimes changed without warning. She knew they must couple to have hope of pregnancy, and she did find herself thinking of the touch of his hand and the warmth of his body. And he did reach for her. At those times, she knew he wanted her, at least in that way.

Topaz’s self-restriction about visiting her own family redirected her feet toward the Upper Caverns to visit Thinweave. But she found her aunt somewhat at a loss for topics of conversation. Topaz tried to keep the conversations to weaving and spinning and the intricacies of the craft. There was still so much she didn’t know. But then, she had chosen not to apprentice, and skills were not easily learned through words alone.

She visited Spinel more as the summer grew long. Their now-shared status as young wifs made their conversation feel somehow easier, a division gone, though always Topaz visited Spinel. Spinel had deigned to attend her wedding, but it was too much to expect her to make social calls to the South Caverns. One day as they sipped their tea, Topaz noticed the taste and aroma of cinnamon and cloves within.

“This is a fine brew you’ve made me,” she commented.

“The prices have dipped,” she said, then quickly added: “—though I’d be happy to make it for you anyway.”

“Oh?” Topaz hadn’t even considered looking at the spices when she’d gone to the market. It had seemed an extravagance, besides the salt and peppermint she’d traded for. Maybe she should purchase some for Yale’s brews.

“Ay, yes.” Spinel’s eye gleamed, a look familiar from their gilna-hood when something exciting was afoot. “It’s smugglers.”

“Smugglers?”

“Oakspear told me. There are far more spices to be found in the markets than the tariff books at the gates account for, and the king is angry. He called the merchants together, but they said that trade within the mines have never been questioned before.”

That was true. It was only trade through the adit—the gates now—that was taxed. Once inside the mountain, how could it be accounted for?

“What will he do?”

“He has levied a special account. An inspector within the mine will now keep track of all trades and stocks of cinnamon, cloves, nutmeg, coriander, and others, I forget which ones. The merchants must have record in rune of all stock.”

“So we have to write runes to buy spices?”

“Oh, no,” Spinel said, laughing. “I don’t know how to carve runes! Only for purveyors and traders and the like, not those who come to barter at the markets.”

Topaz looked at the smoke curling out into the chamber from the alcove of the old dwarf-wif. She must be burning hill-smoke in there. Even without the dwarf-wif present, Topaz wasn’t sure she could speak her mind plainly to Spinel, not anymore. So she didn’t say the choice words she wanted to about the gold-fat king.

The snows came early and deep that year, and the second gate was buried under twenty feet of dense pack. To dig it out would be to announce it’s presence to all, and so Yale settled to do his middling trade as a Southcaver purveyor. Much of his trade came from Bronzebucket, who now dealt exclusively through Yellowhood. And Yale gave him good prices, even at the occasional loss.

Sayfoot and his human contacts returned two additional times before the snows arrived, but it had not taken Ringhand long to catch drift of the illicit influx of spices, leaving Yale with thousands of pounds and fewer folk than ever willing to trade and face the inquiries of the king’s inspectors.

But it only took Yale and the few merchants left with grit a short time to realize that without a provable record of how many dwarves bought and traded for the spices in the markets, all that mattered was that the merchants kept less spices on hand than they had record of receiving from the gates. It slowed Yale’s distribution down terribly, resulting in more frequent trades for smaller amounts. But there was still profit for the merchants to make from tariff-free spices, despite Ringhand’s increased scrutiny. How long before Ringhand grew so greedy that he forced even wifs to prove their trades at the markets? Yale did not know.

One evening, Yale rose from their shared table. The table was carved into an alcove in the wall of their private chamber. They had just eaten a meal of mushroom-stewed goat with cave-bread dumplings. Topaz had worked for hours to prepare it.

“I’m going to the stew-hall,” he said.

“Yale.”

He stopped in his tracks at the sound of his true name.

“Ay, yes?”

“Don’t.”

“Don’t?”

“I thought maybe we could play a game of Ingots.”

Yale laughed.

“I haven’t played Ingots for. . . for decades,” he said. The skin around his yellow eyes crinkled as he smiled. “Do you even have a stone?”

Topaz had found one at the West Branch Market, and she had traded for it on an impulse. She remembered her father had liked to play the game and had taught her brothers, and she hoped Yale might like it as well. She brought the stone down from a shelf and knelt on one of the sheepskins covering the floor. Yale sat down cross-legged across from her.

She slid the polished cover out of the grooves in the stone. The cover was of marble, but the stone itself was granite—a long, narrow piece of carved granite with sixteen dish-like hollows arranged in rows. Careful geometries of carvings were cut in patterns between the rows. The carving was decoration only. What mattered were the hollows. Topaz had stared at it for nearly an hour that morning, trying to remember how it worked. Half of the hollows held little iron ingots, and half held little bronze ingots.

“Bronze or iron?” she asked.

“Iron,” he said, looking serious again. She spun the stone around so the iron faced him. “Have you played?” he asked.

“A few times.”

He nodded.

“Go ahead.”

“No. You begin,” she said. She wanted to watch his move and make sure she remembered aright.

It was odd, but her heart was beating. Ingots was a game that friends played together. Could they be friends? Not just dwarf and wif? Even as she wondered she knew she wanted it.

“Alright,” he said. He lifted an iron ingot and moved it laterally into one of his other hollows.

Topaz wrinkled her brows. She picked up a bronze ingot and dropped it onto an iron ingot in one of Yale’s hollows. She scooped both ingots out and set them aside, watching Yale's face while she did so. His cave-eyes were narrow, and a smile barely flickered on his face. She didn’t actually know what she was doing, not beyond the basic concept, and he probably thought her silly.

Whether or not Yale thought her silly, it was true that she didn’t know what she was doing. Yale cleared her ingots off the stone with no difficulty. He smiled at her, then made to rise.

“Again,” she said, starting to drop ingots back into their hollows across the stone. He paused a moment, then settled back down.

“Alright. This time you begin.”

Topaz copied Yale’s move from the first match. She noticed he was looking at her and not the stone.

“Where did you learn to play?” Yale asked.

“From watching my brothers,” she said.

“Ah.”

Ingots was not normally played by maids, but she didn’t know why. She’d always wanted to play with her brothers, but they never would. It was a little lie to say she'd played before; she’d only played against herself.

“What about you?” she asked. He looked up from his move—another lateral stack, opposite Topaz’s.

“Me?”

She nodded.

“Halfscuttle loved to play. Before, I mean. He taught me.”

“What happened to him?” She made a backwards stack. Yale looked up at her.

“There was a collapse,” he said after a time. He tapped his head. “He was unconscious for days.”

“Where were you mining? Did you not see the signs?”

She saw his jaw flex. He made a forward move of his double stack into Topaz’s empty hollow.

“We saw the signs.”

“You should have stopped, then.”

“You’ve no idea what you’re talking about,” he said. She’d never heard him speak with an edge, but there was a fell edge in his voice, then.

Topaz pulled her hand back from the stone as if from a sharp knife. Her fright annoyed her, as well as what he’d said. She did not like being called a fool.

“Then teach me,” she snapped. “I’m sure if you set your hand to a loom you’d look a proper fool yourself. Just like your stonehold looked like a proper fool’s before I came.”

Yale stood and walked out of the chamber without a word.

She didn’t have to say that about his stonehold. It wasn’t fair. It was clear when she stepped into the chamber on their wedding night that he’d tried to make it comfortable, as clumsy as the effort was. He'd bought brand new sheep pelts and hangings—though with no common theme or order. A dwarf could not make a hold like the hand of a wif. But his effort wasn't lost on her when she’d seen it that night.

It was barely a minute after Yale left that she wept. Why had she cut him? Why had he cut her?

Topaz was in bed beneath the sheepskins when Yale returned and lay down next to her. He didn’t turn to her. She smelled the smoke and aromas of the stew-hall on him. She did not sleep well.

The next waking, Yale continued the work on the new hall. Limp and Halfscuttle joined him for much of the day, the three barely speaking except the simple necessities of their labor. The passage rang with the sound of metal on stone. Halfscuttle trundled back and forth with the barrow, disposing of the tailings.

That night, Yale washed himself off with a rag, then sat with Topaz to eat the meal of sheep’s tongue and turnips she’d prepared. He ate heartily, but they sat in silence until the platter was empty. He started to rise.

“We didn’t finish our game,” she said. He looked at her, and the muscles around his neck and shoulders relaxed. He took a breath and nodded.

“No we didn’t.”

“I’m sorry I put it up. We can set up a new match.”

He nodded and sat down cross-legged on the rugs.

Topaz brought the stone down from the shelf and together they set up the match.

“Iron or bronze?” she asked.

“Iron. Unless you want to be iron?”

“No. I like bronze.”

“A family trait,” he said.

She inclined her head and made the first move, a diagonal.

“Sorry, I didn’t ask.”

He waved his hand, then made his counter. They played a whole game. He beat her handily and then he set up another round without asking. This time, he opened.

“Why did the tunnel collapse?” Topaz asked. If she didn’t get to know this dwarf, it would not be for a lack of trying on her part. They were coupled—would spend a hundred years and more together. She didn’t want to live with a stranger.

This time, he didn’t hesitate.

“We were sapping King’s Quarry,” he said. “The southern approach. It was loud. Digging everywhere. They broke it from above.”

“Oh.”

“Halfscuttle jumped on me.”

“Was Limp there?”

“He dug us out, but. . . it took a while.”

Topaz made a move, knocking off two of Yale’s ingots. He frowned, as if not sure how that had happened. But he countered quickly.

“Why did you marry?”

Topaz looked up, an ingot in her hand.

“Why?”

“Instead of apprenticing with Thinweave?”

She finished her move.

“Babes,” she said.

He nodded.

“Why do Limp and Halfscuttle work for you at all? They both saved your life.”

Such a debt would normally have made a subservient arrangement unthinkable.

“More than once.” He took two of her ingots. “I think they work with me.”

“But you make the decisions. You are the purveyor.”

“It’s. . . . They don’t have to. But they’ve always listened to me. And I make sure they’re alright. And they make sure I’m alright.”

“Sounds nice.”

“I guess so.”

Topaz made a lateral forward move, knocking away three of Yale’s ingots and opening up the middle of his formation. His brow furrowed, and he looked up.

“How—I didn’t see you doing that.”

It hadn’t taken Topaz long to realize that if he was talking, he grew careless with his moves. She would keep him talking.

“Just took the opportunity,” she said. He began setting up the stone again. “Now why did they call you Roughcoat?”

Yale smirked.

“The winter of the siege,” he said. “I was so poor, I had no coat. We killed a goat for food and I cut holes in the pelt for arms and wore it to stay warm. I don’t know if I’ll ever live that name down.”

They played two more games. The talk flowed back and forth, and as they played she felt a warm sensation spread over her, like a long sip of warm honey-tea, thick and sweet on the tongue.

Yale reached across the stone to her. He did not leave the hold that night.

From that day on, they played Ingots regularly, and Yale went to the stew-hall less and less. There was little trade that winter beyond Southcaver ores—mostly iron and bronze. But despite the slow moons of Kara-Indal snows, it was the happiest time Yale had known.

11

A Search

Topaz was weaving in the private chamber when she heard voices down the corridor. Then she heard the tramp of boots and the sound of doors opening in the passage. She set the loom aside and stood. The door to the private chamber swung open to reveal a strange dwarf in steel lamellar coat and helm, with a handaxe tucked in his belt and a long heater shield strapped behind his shoulder. He wasn’t a King’s Guard—they wore burnished plate, meticulously inlaid and gilded.

“Yellowhood!” she screamed.

“Let me through, now, that’s my wif!” Yale appeared past the dwarf’s shoulder. Other armored dwarves moved in the passage beyond.

“Let him through, Bearfoot,” another voice said. The warrior who spoke followed Yale inside. Yale strode over to stand beside Topaz. Two other warriors came in, lifting rugs and rummaging through shelves. They carried hammers and tapped the stone of the floors and walls, listening.

“Yellowhood, what’s going on?” Topaz instinctively grabbed his elbow.

“Pardon our intrusion good-wif, but we have the orders of the king,” said the dwarf in command. He wore a silver captain’s sigil of a merchant’s scale on his helm.

“Yellowhood?” she asked. She wanted to take his hand, but she wouldn’t in front of these invaders, and she forced herself to let go of his elbow. The shields the intruders wore strapped to their shoulders all bore the sigil of a silver scale on a gold field. She recognized it by description; they were Scales, Ringhand’s customs warders set on the search for smugglers. They were the group taken from the Ridgewards that Spinel’s dwarf had been recruited to serve.

“Tell me who accused me,” Yale snapped at the captain. “I will make them give me an account. I will bring it before the king’s justice. Let them dare lie before the face of the king, himself!”

“Easy, there,” said the captain “It’s not you in particular. It’s every Southcaver purveyor. By order of the king.”

Yale appeared to relax and breathe a bit more.

“Well. . .” He watched the Scales searching his chamber. “I take solace that you have removed any suspicion from me by searching my hold. You are welcome. I marched under the banner of the king’s father, the late King Silvertongue.”

“Ay,” the dwarf said. “A great victory, King’s Quarry.”

The Scale captain looked no more than sixty or seventy years, Topaz thought. There was no way he had served at King’s Quarry.

“None like it,” Yale responded.

“My elder brother served,” the warrior said. “Maybe he would know you. What approach were you?”

“That was a long time ago.”

“You would remember, if you were there.”

“The south approach.”

“I’m—I. . . I forgot about the Southcavers.”

“All in the service of the king,” Yale said without any hint of sarcasm.

“Right.”

Topaz wasn’t sure why, but there was hesitation in the warrior’s demeanor. She had never heard Yale willingly bring up the war before, and certainly not speak of it in terms of pride. He had mentioned only the barest hints and pieces. She realized that she knew too little about the whole King’s Quarry campaign. It had never much interested her, and she had no family members who served.

“Wif,” Yale said. “Pour our guests drinks.”

Topaz glared at him, but she saw the look of command in his eye. She stepped out into the passage, where other armed dwarves in the same kit came and went from within the storerooms.

What were they doing here? Spinel had said the King’s Guard still kept authority under the stone. The Scales and Ridgewards served on the surface.

She went to the larder and filled a large platter with mugs of mead. The captain still spoke with Yale, but the two had stepped back out into the passage.

Topaz offered a mug to the warrior who was heading into the larder as she left it.

“Rinlen?” the warrior asked. The captain glanced over, then nodded. The warrior accepted the mug from Topaz and took a long swallow. Topaz gave a mug to each of the six Scales who had come to search their hold.

“I was under the impression that the Scales were Ridgewards. Ridgewards do not serve in the mountain,” Yale said to the captain. The dwarf shrugged.

“Some duties the king has seen fit for the Scales to handle, and that includes searches.”

“Is Oakspear here?” Topaz asked.

“Oakspear?” the captain said. “Do you know him?”

“I know his wif well.”

The captain nodded.

“He is in the second cadre, at another hold now.”

Topaz nodded.

One of the Scales stepped up to the captain.

“There’s bronze in the first storeroom, and there is an unfinished hall, fresh mining.”

The captain looked at Yale.

“Digging lately?”

“I married in the summer,” he said.

“My congratulations.”

“There’s a false floor in this storeroom,” one of the Scales called out a door. The captain squinted at Yale and strode to the offending chamber. Yale and Topaz followed. She had no idea about a hiding place.

“It’s empty, but it’s there,” the Scale said to the Captain as he entered the chamber. The storeroom was empty, but they’d lifted a wide slab of stone from the floor to reveal a hole.

“Smell anything?”

“Tallow.”

“I kept a store of tallow here last winter,” Yale said.

“Do you need to hide anything?”

“You’d be hard pressed to find a Southcaver hold without such a spot. Until recently it held a bride price.”

“Do you have gate runes for the bronze?” the captain asked.

“It is from my father-in-law Bronzebucket, a smelter here.”

“Then I wish to see all your other gate runes from this past year.”

“I have none. I have purchased nothing from the gate since the king’s command, and rarely before that. I trade Southcaver ore to the Face and the Upper Caverns. Sometimes drink. There was some wheat through the gates, but during the warm moons.”

“A thin living, Southcaver ore and the rest. . . But a fine hold and a well-stocked larder. The samovar in the front. . . Solid silver, ay?”

“Ay, yes. A dwarf may. . . indulge in some excess with a new bride. It may have taken until I was ninety-two and gray-bearded, but here I am.”

The captain smiled, but Topaz couldn’t tell if his eyes followed suit. She was distracted to learn just how old Yale was. Her father had told her he was in his eighties.

“Well, again, you have my congratulations, and I think we will leave you at peace shortly. We have others to see as well, before we cause an uproar.”

The captain kept his word, and soon his dwarves followed him out of the stonehold. Topaz walked with Yale to see them gone. Halfscuttle still sat in his chair near the door, smoking his pipe and muttering under his breath, his eye twitching.

“Why are they searching our purveyors?” Topaz asked. “Is this about the spices?”

Yale looked a bit surprised at the question.

“I suppose,” he said. “Probably that Smuggler Prince has annoyed the king more than I knew about.”

Limp hurried around the corner, dragging his bad foot across the stone in his haste. He glanced at Topaz, then at Yale and Halfscuttle.

“I heard,” he said.

“They’re searching all the purveyors,” Yale answered. Limp nodded.

“Come.” Yale turned and walked to the samovar. “We could all use a hot brew.”

‘The hiding place the Scales had uncovered was not Yale’s best. It also showed Yale that the Scales were not yet as keen as they might be. If they had taken their hammers down into the hole and carefully tapped, they may have found the second chamber to that hole. Of course, there wasn’t anything in that, either. All the holes in the stonehold had been wiped down with water and tallow and beer once they’d moved the spices out. There wasn’t a hint of contraband in the whole stonehold—at the time. With the king’s growing ire, Yale had feared such searches.

The latrines in private stoneholds used ground quicklime to keep smells and diseases away, but the latrines needed scooped and hauled to a communal cesspit on a regular basis. After a time, even the cesspits needed shoveled out, but the mushroom and fungi farmers put it all to good use. Such was simply the way of life underground. The cesspits lay down unused mined-out tunnels where the smells did not offend the dwarves on their homes.

Spices also had a strong and distinct smell, and Yale had realized quickly that he could not keep so much in his private hold—especially not with Topaz there. It had taken a full week prior to the wedding feast to arrange an alternate hiding place, but a cesspit ventilation shaft, blocked at both ends, had served them well. It was also convenient to one of the Southcaver brewers, so they could arrange their submerged vessels for transport to the Upcaver merchants. Yale wasn’t sure the smell of latrine didn’t taint the spices after a while, but no one had complained yet, and no one else but Limp and Halfscuttle knew the details.

Topaz moved the strand of yarn from one groove on the carved stick to another. It was a mindless habit she’d kept—like most maids and wifs—since she was a gilna of her twenties. It was used to count off the days between the triads. Two more days. She knew it was coming. The first hints of spring had come to the valleys above, a thaw that sent streams of white frigid water gushing down the ridges and mountain slopes. Yale had told her.

The discomfort had started early this time, days ago, faint and dull, but in another day she would start her flow and spend the next two weeks bundled in a blanket and wearing compressed cloths of washed wool, gritting her teeth against the pain. Dwarf-wifs menstruated three times a year, called the triad, and it usually lasted a viciously painful two weeks. She knew it meant she was not pregnant, but she hadn’t expected to be pregnant yet. That would have been exceedingly rare. Her mother did not give birth to her firstborn for fifteen years after her wedding feast.

That night, Topaz made a fine meal—lamb ground with dried mint and baked in a sheep’s stomach within an iron coal-pot. It had slow roasted for hours, and when Yale entered, she saw him breath deep of the scent.

“Sit,” she said, and with two bits of leather to shield her hands from the heat, she lifted the cast iron pot out of the coals and brought it to the table. She lifted off the lid and the steam billowed out. The broth was simmering. With a sharp bone-handled knife, she cut into the stomach. Another cloud of steam and aroma poured out. She picked up a carved spoon and filled a platter for Yale, then for herself.

He scooped the first bite into his mouth, then held his mouth open and breathed fast.

“Careful!” she said. “It’s just off the coals.”

After a few more puffs, he closed his mouth and chewed.

“Delicious,” he said.

“Thank you.”

“I will need to hike the width of the West Vale every day of summer to lose the weight you’ve packed on me this winter.”

“You’re welcome,” she said. Yale grinned.

“Trade should pick up handily here in another month,” he said.

“Why?”

Yale looked at her for a moment, stopping mid-chew.

“Hmm?”

“Why would trade pick up. You said you rarely deal through the gates.”

“Right,” he said. “I may have to start. It’s been a slow winter.”

Topaz nodded. It had seemed slow. She’d caught Yale asleep at the business table more than once. He had finished expanding their bedchamber and also delved a new private hall, though. He’d carved the hall with an arched and peaked ceiling. The first propagation of miner’s eye traced along the seams. She had already laid a fine rug and hung several tapestries. It would be a fine place for a family—maybe, one day, a babe on the rug. She hoped for a gilna first.

“You need to sleep in the new hall tonight,” she said.

“What?”

“It’s my time again.”

“Oh.”

This time he caught on much quicker than the first or second times. The first time she’d told him to sleep elsewhere, she practically had to describe it for him. He’d had gone paler than sand shale when he realized what she was talking about. As strange as it had been to say anything to a dwarf about her triad, she couldn’t help but smirk.

“Will you. . . Can we play a match of Ingots, then? After we eat? Or do I have to go right away?”

Topaz tilted her head.

Then? What did he mean? Was he going to miss her?

“No. I mean, no you don’t have to go right away. We can play Ingots. But let’s play it at the table.” She didn’t feel like kneeling on the floor for long.

After they’d eaten, Yale cleared the table off himself and then brought the stone. He slid the lid off and arranged the ingots. Over the winter, Topaz started to beat him more and more frequently. Now, it was no sure thing who would win, and the more she won the more Yale seemed to want to play the game. In truth, she had begun to feel the game itself grow dull, but it was something they shared together, and a time when she asked questions. She enjoyed that. And there was one question she’d been thinking about.

She didn’t ask right away. She waited until Yale made an aggressive move, one which threatened to box her in.

“What was the south approach?”

Yale glanced up at her.

“Why do you ask that?”

“The Scale rinlen asked you about it,“ she said.

“Ah.”

She made her counter to Yale’s move, but he just stared at the stone. She wasn’t sure he was seeing it.

“Yale?” she asked, using his true name.

“King’s Quarry,” he said. “Four approaches to the siege. East, West, North, and South. They put the Southcavers on the south approach.”

She could still hear the old dwarf-wif, Spinel’s mother-in-law telling her not to ask about the war, but she was curious, and if she wanted to truly know this dwarf, then she needed to know his past.

“What happened on the south approach?”

Yale tapped his fingers on the table, fast and percussive. He didn’t seem to notice he was doing it.

“A relief host from Morningstone and the Ridges came from the south to fight us.” He made a play, a lateral slide that didn’t advance either of their positions.

It was her move, now, but she didn’t play. She waited, and she wasn’t wrong.

“The Southcaver conscripts were sapping in the tunnels,” he said. “Silvertongue pulled his warriors away to form battle-line in the north. They didn’t tell us.”

Yale’s face was flushed, and she noticed a sheen of sweat on his bald head. She looked down and made a hurried move.

“They didn’t tell you they were leaving?” she asked.

“They didn’t even tell us the enemy was coming.”

“They just left you?”

“They always said it was an accident. An oversight in the moment.”

“And you don’t believe them.”

”I do believe them. I believe that it didn’t even occur to them.”

Tourmaline knew that few Southcavers had come back from that campaign, but she'd never known the story.

Yale made his move. It wasn’t a wise move, either. He’d missed a threat. Topaz almost didn’t want to take advantage of it. But she did, moving three of his ingots off the stone.

“I’m surprised you spoke so highly of the king’s service, then.”

“Shit on him,” Yale said, then glanced up. “I’m sorry.”

“It’s fine. I’ve heard my father and brothers say the same many times.”

“He lives by taking,” Yale said. “Not by making.” He moved a stack of ingots forward. She countered on the diagonal.

“You’re a purveyor. What do you make?” She realized it wasn’t a smart question to ask, but he didn’t seem to get mad.

“A way.”

Yale moved his stack of ingots straight forward, mining to the back of the stone and dividing her entire strategy.

12

The Thaw

The king gave the Scales authority to command all the Ridgeward patrols within ten leagues of Ice-Cloak, and they began searching the valleys in earnest as soon as the weather and snows allowed. Limp watched them night after night from concealment on the ridge above West Vale, bringing news of their patterns and tactics back to Yale and Halfscuttle. They sat on the floor in the center of Limp and Halfscuttle’s bachelor chamber. They had taken to meeting there more often to avoid Topaz overhearing anything that might raise her suspicion.

“They act like they’re still hunting ürsi. They patrol in cadres, walk in straight lines, and keep moving. They don’t wait and watch.”

“Ridgewards have hunted ürsi for a thousand years. It’s what they know,” Yale said.

“They should use sentries every hundred feet. We would never get through.”

Limp was right about that. Dwarves could see well up close with little light, but their eyes were never so keen at a distance. But keeping stationary guards over so much terrain. . .

“That would take thousands for both valleys.”

Yale was relieved that the Second Gate hadn’t been discovered already. The Ridgewards had scoured the West Vale in long sweeping lines of hundreds of armored dwarves bearing spears and shields. But Halfscuttle and Yale had heaped even more goat offal up around the door. The valleys were full of goats and sheep and stone cairns that marked the tops of the shallow holds of the goatherds. The Ridgewards had gone so far as to search the innumerable sheepfolds, but they had not dug through every compost pile. Not yet.

“It is only a matter of time before they learn,” Limp said, puffing on his pipe.

In Ice-Cloak, trade was war.

And Yale knew he was the greatest warrior of the far weaker side. That made him the chief target.

“They will catch us.” Yale didn’t mean himself, Limp, or Halfscuttle in particular, but those bringing their goods to the second gate and traversing the lower West Vale. Yale and Halfscuttle could keep close to the adit, retreat and disappear back into the mountain at the first sign of trouble. But if those bringing goods were caught, that would be the end of it all. The Ridgewards would learn about the meeting place along the dry creek. It would not take much from that point. Yale was surprised that the compost heap at the head of the creekbed hadn’t come under scrutiny, already, but when it did, the game was up. Then, Yale would truly have to make a living as a poor Southcaver purveyor. He’d spent much of their horde on a bride price. Letting Bronzebucket extort him would have been cheaper by far, but then, he couldn’t bring himself to regret his marriage, even with the guilt he felt toward Limp and Halfscuttle.

“I will meet our contacts at the forest’s edge and guide them past the patrols,” Limp said.

“That is risky.”

“Maybe I’ll be lucky and find one of the Upcaver Scales alone.”

“Do not kill except to defend yourself.”

“Right,” Limp said, blowing a stream of smoke.

It was spring above, but that made little difference to Topaz—more, perhaps, for the wif of a purveyor who depended on trade than it would for the wif of a miner. She was sweeping the private passage when Limp strode through the door with a brisk pace, his face dark and fierce. She flinched when she saw him, startled, and for his part he halted and stared, as if he hadn’t expected her to be there. There was something wrong with his glint, she’d always felt. Glint was an offhand way that dwarves used to refer to the clarity of precious stones, but it was used as well for the gleam of light in the eye. Limp’s eyes frightened her, more now than usual. He wore a long, thick padded jacket of wool and leather, sewn tight in vertical seems and bound in the middle with a wide belt in which were tucked an unusual number of knives.

“Where is Yellowhood?” he asked.

“How would I know?”

He seemed to acknowledge the point. Yellowhood did not explain many of his comings and goings to Topaz.

“When did he leave?”

“Hours.”

Limp stared at her, his eyes unwavering.

“What do you need him for?”

He didn’t answer her question, but he did speak.

“If you see him, I will be at the stewhall.”

That irritated her. She didn’t like that this dwarf thought he could just barge into her private hold. Limp turned to leave.

“Limp,” she said. He stopped. She squared her shoulders and tried to put some granite in her voice. “I am wif of this hold now. I thank you to knock and announce yourself if you come without Yellowhood. There will be decorum.”

Limp smirked at that, but it didn’t seem joyful.

“Decorum. . . How far my friend has come. We carved this hold together, long before you.”

She did not respond to the goad. Limp watched her face, as if deciding whether or not he would take her seriously. She stared back, trying to act firm though she did not feel it. At length, Limp smirked again, but he made the slightest incline of his head.

“I will be at the stew hall. Tell Yellowhood.” He strode back to the door, and paused. “I will knock.” With that he left, and Topaz took a deep breath.

Ragged clouds scudded across the sky. Yale stood in the old creekbed beyond the second gate in the dark of a crescent moon. The stars looked pale and wintry still, and the wind had a sharp edge. Patches of snow lingered beneath the ridges, and everywhere the sound of snowmelt freshets reached the ear.

He wore his mask and dark hood, his ragged smuggler’s clothes, and he felt the weight of his long dagger tucked into the back of his belt. Before him stood Sayfoot and the human merchant, along with several other dwarves and humans serving as grunts to pack in the sacks.

“No more spices this year,” Yale said, using the low, grating voice he reserved for the Smuggler Prince. Sayfoot spoke in the human tongue to the merchant, and the merchant spoke back.

“He asks why.”

“Like I told you, the king is paying close attention to spices. I’ll take this, but no more. Bring me something else. Wheat, even. Or buy from me out of the mines. I can bring you lapis, thrice-refined metals, antimony, bismuth, cinnabar, umber. . . ”

“He wants gold, and he deals in spices.”

“Then they can take it to the gates from now.”

Sayfoot translated, and the human grunted and replied.

“He wants living steel. He says he will bring anything you want in exchange.”

Yale rolled his eyes behind his mask.

“No.”

The human must have understood that, because he spoke again.

“He asks if you would trade the knowledge of how to smelt the ore?”

“I don’t know that secret,” Yale said, honestly. He wondered if Bronzebucket did. It was a guarded secret, but surely his grandfather had told him. That didn’t matter, though. He wouldn’t tell a human.

Sayfoot translated, and the merchant stared at Yale with narrowed eyes and folded arms. Even with the mask, Yale didn’t like that gaze on him. He would have been happy not to deal with humans. But it was true. Spices were the only thing that the dwarves truly wanted from the humans—apart from gold and silver, and the humans had limited amounts of precious metals to use for trade.

Yale extended the bag of gold to Sayfoot, not the human.

“Leave the sacks and go,” he said.

Sayfoot hefted the bag slightly and nodded. He handed it to the human who opened it by the drawstring and looked inside.

“I wouldn’t linger,” Limp said. He stood a short distance from Yale, leaning on the spear he insisted on carrying. “There could be another patrol soon.” He had met them at the forest, but he would not take them back.

Halfscuttle walked past Sayfoot to the nearest sack, hefting it over his shoulder, muttering about living steel. Sayfoot hesitated as the human merchant and the others headed back down the creek. He watched Halfscuttle walk past with the sack of nutmeg, then looked at Yale.

“The tariffs on wheat are low,” he said. “They’ll trade that through the gate.” With that, Sayfoot followed the humans away.

Yale sat in his business hall carving a new Ingots stone from a piece of white marble when Sayfoot entered. Halfscuttle roused at the sound of footsteps on the granite and started muttering about interruptions.

“Ah, welcome back,” Yale said, reaching for a mug to pour his guest a cup from the samovar.

“Thank you,” Sayfoot said, sitting in the chair opposite Yale. “My boss wishes to trade wheat again.”

“Alright, but don’t expect to raise the price this year. It took me a month to distribute the last you brought.”

“The previous price would be acceptable,” Sayfoot answered.

“How much this time?”

“Fifteen tons.”

“Give me a time at the gates and I will purchase it. Thankfully the tariffs on wheat are not terrible, but you will be responsible for it.”

“There’s something else.”

“Ay, yes?”

“Spices. My boss wishes to arrange for a delivery of spices. Not this trip, but in about a month. It may be the biggest load of spices ever brought to the mountain.”

Yale leaned back, raising his brows.

“Spices? How much?”

“Two tons of cinnamon, another of nutmeg, and two of cloves. Also, fifteen ewers of myrrh.”

“Ice-Cloak ewers or King’s Quarry ewers?”

“Ice-Cloak.”

“You realize I have never dealt in spices before. . . That is not something often brought to Southcaver purveyors. I will be honest with you. It may be difficult for me to afford so much.” Of course, Yale had traded in spice before—but not as Yellowhood.

“The human would rather deal with someone he knows than make new contacts.”

“How many folk do you have that you can bring so much at once?”

“Wagons,” Sayfoot said. “The humans have cut a wagon trail nearly here. It will reach the lake before a month. Ours will be the first caravan. The boss wishes to offer you the trade first, but he will go elsewhere if you cannot.”

“I appreciate the offer. What do you propose for a price?”

“Ten ounces of gold per ton of cinnamon, nine for nutmeg and for cloves. And two per ewer of myrrh.”

Yale spread his palms on the granite table, feeling the smooth polish of the cool stone.

“I would purchase myrrh at two hundreds of silver, ” he said. “I cannot afford the spices. As friendly advice, I would seek to barter with the kings agents for the spices. You may receive a better bargain, as the king has taken a special interest in it.”

“Ay, yes, we had heard about that. My boss wished to make a single trade for the lot, but he might grant you a trade for a few ewers of myrrh at two-hundreds and twenty of silver, for the sake of friendship.”

Yale nodded assent.

“I doubt you will meet many single purveyors who could account for such a total shipment without barter,” Yale said. He might have, before the bride price. Certainly not now. Record of a legitimate purchase of spices through the gates might have helped move his contraband as well, but he could not afford it for so little margin of profit. “But I appreciate your boss’ willingness to trade. When can you bring the wheat?”

“Tomorrow, midday?”

“So be it.”

Halfscuttle still muttered away by the door, but Sayfoot paid him no heed as he left.

Topaz stared at her polished Triad Stick and the yarn. She was counting, wrapping and re-wrapping the notches. The dull aches in her hips and belly continued, but she had not started her flow. Ten days had passed. Soon, Yale would expect her to invite him back to the chamber. But she had not started.

There was only one reason she knew why her triad would not come. Usually it arrived with precision, every seventeen weeks and two days, give or take. But not give or take ten days. A dwarf was pregnant for nearly a year, with some variation, but it was too early to know much except the absence of her triad.

This was what she had wanted. She just hadn’t quite been prepared in her mind for so soon. Not just less than a decade, but less than a year. It’s not that it was impossible. Just so unlikely. She put a hand on her belly, as if maybe she could tell by the feel. It felt normal, and yet? She leaned her forehead against the cool stone and laughed and cried at once.

Yale had kept count. It had been fifteen days since he had last entered their bedchamber. In the meantime, he had eaten at the stewhall and slept in the new hall he’d carved in the hold that winter. He was eager to see Topaz emerge, but he would not knock and inquire. Not yet. He had heard her come and go to the latrine throughout the weeks, and even to the larder, but he had not spoken to her or seen her—such an intrusion would be improper. He had carved a new Ingots stone all of marble, and carved looms on one side and a dwarf and wif standing side by side on the other. Truly, he missed her.

So when he heard footsteps behind him, his heart leapt. There she was, dressed in a fine yellow dress with a blue apron. Her hair tumbled in loose braids past her shoulders, and her dark eyes gleamed.

“Yellowhood,” she said. She looked pale, but that was not unusual he’d heard.

“Ay, yes?”

She paused, looking around.

“I am going for my cleanse in the steam-hall.”

“Alright.”

Such was the custom, but she shouldn’t be gone more than a couple of hours.

When she returned, entering the business chamber from the outer passage, her hair was wrapped up tightly in a bright blue cloth wrap.

“I have relit the samovar,” he said. “Would you like a mug?”

“I would,” she answered. As he stood to pour it, she asked:

“May I speak with you?”

“Of course.”

She didn’t speak, but glanced at Halfscuttle where the dwarf drowsed at the door and then toward the private passage. Yale nodded and spared Halfscuttle not a glance as Topaz led back to their bedchamber. She entered and sat down at the table, sliding onto the stone bench gracefully. He looked at her face. It was as if, having not seen her for two weeks, her beauty had only increased. The miner’s eye glowed on her cheeks. Where she had looked pallid at first, now she looked flushed.

She motioned for him to sit, and he slid onto the opposite bench.

“I. . .” she started, then hesitated, avoiding Yale’s gaze. He waited, watching as Topaz appeared to weigh her words. At last, she appeared to decide. “I wanted to play a match of ingots.”

Yale laughed.

“Alright,” he said. “Just a moment.” He stood. He would present to her the new stone of fine veined marble. They could give it a first try.

The smell of the ground lamb, cinnamon, and cloves filled the chamber. The previous day, Yale presented Topaz with a pound each of cinnamon and cloves—she did not want to think how dearly he’d bought them. After grinding the lamb, she'd mixed it with spices, formed it, and now the spiced lamb roasted on long silver skewers over the brazier. She'd prepared plenty of extra, both for their own meal and to take to her father and brothers at the smeltery. She’d realized she had not visited them in close to two months. Over the winter, her sense of loneliness had dissipated. She still visited Spinel and her mother, but she spent more and more evenings in the company of Yale, enjoying long meals, games of Ingots, and their own union.

But now, she was nervous. Or excited. Both. She wanted to see her brothers, although she had told no one about her missed triad and growing certainty and didn’t intend to. Not yet. She’d wanted to tell Yale, but. . . Somehow, she worried that if she said anything, something bad would happen. Maybe her triad was late, or she had made a mistake, even though she’d counted again and again. She could barely think of being disappointed herself, let alone having to tell Yale that she’d been mistaken.

She put on her half-veil, wrapped a bundle of skewers in waxed cloth and put them in a covered basket. Yale and Halfscuttle weren’t in the business hall as she left. Where they’d gone, she didn’t know, but they didn’t keep her apprised of their trades. She knew they sometimes went as far as the Face. She padded down the tunnel toward her father’s smeltery. The smeltery itself was on a higher level than where most of the Southcavers lived, due to the need for ventilation shafts that led into the main caverns. Now that the great gates stood open much of the day, the air in the caverns had grown cleaner. That was one positive.

Topaz turned a corner. The door to the smeltery was closed. That was odd. She approached and pressed on it, feeling no need to announce herself despite her long absence. The door cracked inward. She saw the gleam of firelight and smelled the burning coal, as familiar as any scent she knew. She heard the roar of the kiln. She opened the door a bit more and felt the hot air flow against her face. Her father and eldest brother stood watching glowing ore trickle into an ingot crucible. They wore long, thick leather aprons with sleeves and gloves and padded work masks. Her youngest brother was pumping a massive bellows. Their backs were to her.

“Yellowhood says we should expect three grams,” Bronzebucket said.

“That’s less than last time.”

“There’s less demand for nickel right now.”

“I don’t see why we have to trade to the Face,” her youngest brother interjected as he pumped. There was an edge in his voice. “What’s the use of having the Smuggler Prince for an in-law if you don’t make use of it? Tell Yellowhood to trade it to the humans or to Iron-Deep.”

“Shut up, branna,” Bronzebucket snapped. “You don’t even breathe that aloud! Yellowhood will trade it where he thinks best, and if that’s the Face, it’s the Face.”

Topaz retreated into the tunnel and stood back from the door. She felt a flutter in her chest, and her heart beat rapidly. A pang of nausea gripped her stomach. That couldn’t be true. Was that true? She headed back to Yale’s stonehold at a brisk pace, not bothering to close the smeltery door, trying to gather her wits as she moved. The basket still swung from her arm, but she had no intention of delivering it now. She’d always just believed what her father and Yale had told her. But she did not know what Yale’s dealings truly were. Heat washed over her body, but not from kiln or forge.

13

The Liar

She could have married any Southcaver dwarf and more than a few Upcavers, besides. Her father should have told her the truth. Did he think she was a complete idiot? As much as she felt like one, Bronzebucket must have known she’d find out, eventually. But then, the bride price had been large. Absurdly large now that she thought of it, much greater than any of the other offers. Bronzebucket had been evasive about telling her the offers, but she had insisted. Why hadn’t she wondered about that more? Had she truly thought he’d wanted her that much? There must have been more to it than that. Cave-eyes were trustworthy, they always said. What a fool she’d been. Just a tool at their forge.

If Yale was caught, he’d be killed, and the king could confiscate their whole hold and horde. A childless young widow would have a chance at remarriage, but with a child? No other dwarf would have her to wif. The whole course of her life hung on the safety of an outlaw, and they hadn’t even let her choose for herself. Had her mother known? Surely she must have. . .

When Topaz reached her aunt’s workshop, she still carried the basket of now-cold spice lamb, and there were tear-streaks on her cheeks. Thinweave turned, glanced at her face, and then motioned for her to follow into her private chamber. She shut the door behind them.

“What is it?”

“Father. . . Yellowhood. . .”

“Easy. Take some breaths.”

“Yellowhood is the Smuggler Prince and father knew it.” Topaz’s shoulders shook as she cried.

“What? No.”

“It’s true.”

Her aunt looked at her face, reading the truth in the tears and distress she saw there. She let out a breath and walked over to the table and sat down in her chair. Her forehead wrinkled even more deeply than usual. She laid her hands on the smooth stone.

“Shit,” she said.

“Did you not know? Tell me you didn’t know,” Topaz said.

“Of course not. I ought to go down there and beat your father like I did when he was a rank gilke. How dare he!”

“No,” Topaz said. “Don’t go.”

“Not even a tongue-lashing?”

“No. It would just make more trouble. There’s nothing I can do, now, anyway.”

Thinweave frowned, then shook her head.

“Nothing. Maybe nothing. Except. . .” She opened her hands and raised her eyebrows.

“Except what?”

Her aunt stood back up.

“Here, you come and sit. I will pour you tea. It’ll take me a few moments to warm it, but a hot brew is in order.”

Topaz sat in the stone chair and tried to steady her breathing as Thinweave lit the coals to warm the samovar. When at last she poured Topaz a cup, the smell of cinnamon wafted toward her. She remembered the cinnamon that Yale had given her and the tears came again. Of course . . . He was smuggling spices.

“Easy, niece, easy,” Thinweave said, setting the mug down on the stone and patting her back. She poured a mug for herself and sat down across from Topaz. She waited a while before speaking, sipping her tea.

“You have only just married, and disaster has not yet struck Yellowhood. I have never married, but I have watched. There are two wills at the start of every marriage. They struggle until they become one. It doesn’t happen on its own. You must struggle.”

“There’s something else,” Topaz said.

Thinweave raised her brow.

“I think I’m pregnant.”

Her aunt sat up straight.

“No,” she said. “Can’t be.”

“I missed my triad.”

“For how many days?”

“For three weeks.”

Thinweave’s jaw hung slack.

“Three weeks,” she muttered. Then she laughed, starting slow but gaining strength. “My niece. You married the most hunted outlaw in all dwarfdom and are pregnant with his babe in less than a year.” Her shoulders shook with the laughter. “I’m sorry, but. . . This is strong fate, but I don’t know what kind.”

“I don’t find it funny!” Topaz snapped.

“I know, I know.” Thinweave shook her head. “I’m sorry.”

“You’re the only one that knows about this,” Topaz said.

“Is that so?” Thinweave smiled. “Then we should plan. You cannot spin a tapestry without a plan.”

Nor can you live life. That was the second half of the statement. Thinweave didn’t bother to speak it. She had ensured her niece knew the adage well.

“What choices do I have to plan?”

“Choices are easy and plentiful,” Thinweave said. “What matters are the consequences. Consequences for you, your child, and for Yellowhood. Plan the consequences.”

When Topaz entered their bedchamber, Yale was standing next to the shelves carved into the stone walls. He held the medallion of living steel in his hand, and he was staring at the embossing on its face. He looked up as she entered and smiled.

“I was wondering where you’d gone,” he said, but then his smile faltered. Something in Topaz’s face made him hesitate. He slid the medallion back under the sheepskin that covered the shelf.

“I’m three weeks past my triad,” Topaz said.

“You just had your triad,” Yale replied, tilting his head at a questioning angle.

“No. I waited for it. It never came.”

“But. . .” Yale looked like someone had just told him a mountain had changed places while he slept.

“I think I’m pregnant.”

She watched Yale’s expression pass through gradations of emotion, from stunned, to shocked, to terrified. A stupid grin crept finally over his face. He raised his hands and stepped toward her. She held out her arm and stopped him.

“No,” she said. “Don’t touch me.”

He frowned.

“What?”

He was so infuriating.

“I know what you are. I’m going to go live with my aunt.”

Yale’s face went blank, but Topaz saw an artery pulsing in his neck. Sweat broke out on his forehead as he stood there, struck dumb. At that moment, fear surged and overpowered her anger. Up to that moment, she’d only thought of the king discovering Yale, killing him, and confiscating their hold. But now she remembered something else. The Smuggler Prince was a known killer. Could that be Yale? It didn’t seem right, didn’t fit the Yale she’d glimpsed, but everyone knew what the Smuggler Prince did to those who crossed him. He’d been so gentle to her. But she’d been deceived about everything, and there was no reason to think she wasn’t deceived about that. She backed toward the door. She’d asked her father for a gentle dwarf. . . and he’d done this.

“Eyagklin,” he said, reaching a hand toward her.

“No. Don’t you dare use that name.” She kept backing to the door.

“Wait, let me talk to you.”

She turned to flee, but Yale grabbed her arm, and with the other slammed the stone door shut as if its weight was nothing. She turned and swung a fist at him, striking his face.

“Get away from me! Let me go!”

Yale raised his hands to guard his face, but he pressed his body against the door, blocking it. Topaz retreated across the room, her back to the stone. She slid down the stone wall and wrapped her arms around her knees, drawing them up over her belly. Tears of fear and anger streamed down her face.

“What do you think I am?” Yale asked.

“The Smuggler Prince. You’ve lied to me the whole time.”

“It was safer that you didn’t know.”

“Don’t make this about me,“ she snapped. “You could have kept me safer by leaving me a maid in my father’s hall.”

“Do you so love Ringhand, that he should sleep on a bed of our gold, and that you should hate me for denying him?”

“I don’t care about Ringhand. You’re a killer.”

Yale squinted.

“I have never killed.”

“Liar.”

“Ay, yes,” he said. “I am a liar. That is true, and so is this. I have never killed, neither dwarf nor human.” He was even pretty sure he’d kept Limp from killing.

Topaz snorted.

“So the Smuggler Prince has his reputation for nothing.”

“It was not for nothing,” Yale answered.

Yale was there, the first time the “Smuggler Prince” killed. It had been a horrid mining accident, a freak occurrence that folk would suspect a foul deed no matter what he could have said: a dwarf miner with a small but profitable claim, no relatives, and his throat cut from ear to ear. The blood was everywhere, and Yale was there, setting up a deal, and no one else knew he was there. A faulty bracing had snapped as they talked, landing on a shovel and flinging it through the tunnel with dire force. The dwarf fell and bled out in moments despite anything Yale could have done.

The smuggler’s first kill was a complete accident, but he took advantage of it to forge a reputation for the Prince in the stewhall. Since then, the Smuggler Prince had supposedly killed many other times to protect his identity and trade. Many of the tales Yale didn’t even have to invent—other imaginations did it for him. He’d given a few black eyes, sure, roughed a few folk up that needed it, but nothing more. He always found money more persuasive to dwarves than threats. Threats worked better on humans.

“I invented those stories because I was afraid,” he said. It was better to make others fear him. But it had all gotten too big. Even some Southcavers had turned against him, and now the Scales hunted him as if he was responsible for all the smuggling in dwarfdom.

And worst of all, Topaz sat there with pain and fear on her face. He’d thought that if Bronzebucket’s daughter found out, she’d realize her family’s lives would be on the line, too. But now he knew that he did not want Topaz to live with him out of coercion and fear.

Topaz didn’t respond.

“Is it wrong to kill a smuggler?” he went on. “Is it wrong to rob a thief? Better they fear me, I thought, than fight treachery at every turn.”

“I thought you fought in the war. Did you not kill then?”

“I survived!” he snapped, and then caught himself. “I. . . I don’t know for sure. Maybe. Probably, from the sapping.”

Topaz stared at him. He sat down to try to get on her level.

“Why do it?” she asked. She wasn’t sure she believed his story about the made-up killings, even though she found it hard to believe him a killer. “Why live in constant fear? You could be a purveyor. Don’t you have enough?”

“Not enough to start my own mine.”

“Your own mine?”

“Somewhere west of here. Like the Crippled King.” He knew how silly that sounded. “Maybe so far that no king rules me or can tell me to go to war or to pay tariffs. We were saving, but. . .” He’d given much of it to her father as a bride-price.

“Is that what it’s about?”

“It doesn’t matter, anymore. I’ll stop,” he said. “If that’s what you want. I’ll give it up. I’ll live here as a purveyor. We’ll be poorer. Much poorer. But I can make it work. I’m a father, now.”

“And I’m supposed to believe a self-avowed liar who tricked me into marriage and blocked me in our chamber?”

Yale stood up and pulled the door open, then stepped away and knelt down on the stone.

“I’m sorry. I can only ask forgiveness. Go to your aunt, if that is your decision. I will never harm you. I will make sure you do not lack, nor our child, even if you never speak to me again. This, at least, I can prove with time.”

Topaz knocked on Thinweave’s workshop door. It was a few minutes before Thinweave cracked it. She wore a wrap gown tied sloppily with a fine embroidered sash. It was after her work time, and it looked like Topaz had woken her with the knocking. When Thinweave saw who it was, she opened the door wide.

“Niece,” she said. Topaz stepped forward into the hug. “Come and tell me everything.” Thinweave guided Topaz into the chamber. She heard Topaz’s account while forcing her to drink peppermint tea. Then, her aunt had her share her own bed to sleep, for Topaz had not slept in many hours.

When Topaz awoke in the morning, it was to the aroma of frying cave-bread. She heard the snapping of the oil. She rose and sat down at the table. Her aunt wore the same wrap gown, but a different, even finer sash. Intricate weaving was everywhere in her aunt’s hold. They ate their breakfast quietly at table. Instead of tea, Thinweave poured mugs of hot mead. It was her aunt’s habit to drink mead in the morning.

“I’m alone and wealthy,” Thinweave had once told her. Perhaps now she wouldn’t be so alone, Topaz thought as she sipped the last of her mead. Hardly had she thought it than Thinweave spoke:

“Well, you’d better get on back, now. I have to get to work.”

“Get back?”

“To your stonehold and dwarf.”

“I’m staying here.”

“Why?”

“Why?” Topaz asked, hardly believing her ears.

“Your dwarf has promised to stop the smuggling. You are with child. He is the father. You are married. Go home.”

“After all he did?”

“After all you did together. You wrapped the silver chain. Go home. Live your life.”

“He’s a liar.”

“Every dwarf is something. The silver chain has bound you.”

“It cannot mean this!”

“Maybe I never tied the chain because I took it seriously. You weren’t promising each other perfection. You were promising to make a stonehold, to do your duties to that stonehold, so that your children might grow strong as dwarves, and the line of our folk persist. Go home.”

Yale sat at his worktable when Topaz returned. Halfscuttle roused and stared after her as she strode past them without a word or glance. She disappeared down the private passage beyond. Yale heard the stone door to the bedchamber grind closed. He wasn’t sure what this meant. He was sure he’d been miserable since the night before.

If it weren’t for smuggling, he would never have been able to marry her. And she was the best thing that had ever happened to him. But she wouldn’t have married him had she known he was a smuggler, that was sure. He didn’t know yet how she’d found out, but he could guess well enough. He wasn’t angry. Just sick. He’d lied and taken for so many years that when it came to her, he’d done the same. He was sick with himself. Smuggling had gained her and it may have lost her.

A few minutes later, Limp entered the chamber, dragging his foot toward the table. A rolled up sheepskin hung from his hand, and he set it down before Yale. Yale opened it and read, then pushed it away.

“No,” he said. “No more. It’s over. The Smuggler Prince is dead.”

What should have been a month of wonderment and awe as she felt the first intimations of life growing in her womb was instead filled with dread and bitterness. Topaz kept much to her chamber. She did not visit her family, not even her aunt. She could not stand the thought of looking her father in the face after what he’d done. She didn’t even visit Spinel. The idea of trying to hide what had happened, what she’d learned, was unbearable. And she could do nothing but hide it. The best thing that had ever happened to her was cast into shadow by the worst thing that had ever happened to her, and the only souls she could speak to about it she did not wish to face.

Yale stared at the stack of scraped sheepskins on the table in front of him. Halfscuttle watched from a chair near the door. Yale picked up the top sheepskin and read the runes again, his lips moving. He sighed and dipped the skin into a basin of water. The water darkened as he scrubbed away the runes written in charcoal. The requests kept arriving in the old borehole beyond Scuffler’s Grotto, and Limp kept bringing them to him, and he kept erasing and ignoring. He could tell Limp was annoyed. Halfscuttle slept and mumbled and smoked and acted as if nothing had changed.

After washing away a few more sheepskins of runes, he saw Halfscuttle straighten and look past him. Yale turned to see Topaz standing at the door to the inner passage. She did not glance at Yale but looked to Halfscuttle.

“Halfscuttle. Go to the West Branch Market and bring me two bales of cleaned unspun wool, black, and an ewer of bread-fungi. Yale will give you what you need.” With that, she retreated into the inner passage.

Yale reached into a pocket and drew out a few small silver ingots and set them on the table. He caught the words “married” and “temperament” amid Halfscuttle’s mutterings as the dwarf took the ingots and left the chamber.

Picking up another sheepskin, he dropped it into the basin and began to swirl it in the water. New footsteps sounded and Yale pushed the basin to the side and set his useless rune ledger atop the stack of sheepskins. Sayfoot turned the corner and entered the chamber. He looked grim of face, without the usual smile of meeting. He came and sat down on the chair across from Yale.

“Gont,“ Yale said. “I’m surprised to see you.” They had made the trade for the myrrh and wheat two weeks ago at the gate, all paperwork and tariffs accounted for. “I would have figured you to be a hundred miles south by now.”

“We never left.”

Yale squinted and Sayfoot continued.

“For the past two weeks, we've been trying to contact the Smuggler Prince. But it seems he does not wish to respond. What’s more, from everything I can learn within the mountain, he has responded to no one for some time. And that during the busiest of the trading season.”

“That has nothing to do with me,” Yale said. “I told you before to stay away from that killer. It may not matter now. I’ve heard a rumor that he got what was coming to him. Stabbed in the back, they say.”

“Stop it with the shit and lies,” Sayfoot snapped. “I may be foreign, but I am not all the fool I have let you think me, and you are not as clever as you think yourself.” Sayfoot turned and looked at the empty chair near the door. “Did you finally excuse your mumbling companion? Did you think I wouldn’t recognize the sound of his prattle, mask or no?”

Once, Yale’s heart would have sunk at this, but he did not feel his mood or expectations could get much lower since Topaz had learned his identity. Next to the realization of that fear, Sayfoot mattered little, and the accusation had little evidence. But then, it was still a dangerous situation. Ringhand’s wrath might not need much by way of evidence. He set his elbows on the stone and pressed his hands together.

“Who else knows?”

“Myself, and the boss. And you can be sure that if something happens to us, the king will know as well.”

Yale nodded. That old trick, again.

“And what do you want?”

“My boss wants living steel.”

Yale snorted.

“Do you think me that rich? You’re a dwarf. You should know better. I can not trade what I don’t have. You’d be hard pressed to find a Southcaver with even the unsmelted ore, let alone the steel. I may be a smuggler, but I am no Gallery Dwarf.”

“My boss won’t believe it. You’re the Smuggler Prince, after all.”

“Believe it or no, I can’t trade what I don’t have.”

“Get some.”

“I don’t have enough gold and silver. You know how rare it is.”

“You’ll need to figure it out.”

“And if I don’t?”

“He’ll tell the king. If you won’t trade with him anymore, he’ll make you worth something.”

“Why are you helping this kulkur?”

“My business is my own.”

Yale leaned back.

“So what now?”

“One week from tonight, we will meet you at the usual place. You bring living steel. If you don’t.” Sayfoot raised his hands with a shrug as he stood to go. Yale saw Limp’s hand on a dagger in his belt. He shook his head, but for a moment he wasn’t sure that the dwarf would heed him. His dark brows were furrowed deep.

Wisely, Sayfoot gave him extra berth as he left.

“I know where they’re camped. We could come on them in the dark.”

“They've ensured a message will be sent if harm befall them, and they would expect an attack, now.”

“Then we kill them and flee. There are places in this world beyond the reach of Ringhand.”

“It may come to that, my friend. . . the fleeing part, at any rate.” Yale thought of Topaz. He doubted she would flee with him, and she pregnant. But what other choice was there? “But they gave us a week. We may find use of the time.”

14

Betrayer

Yellowfoot pushed open the door to the Second Gate tunnel. After tonight, he planned to collapse the inner end. He didn’t intend to use it again. They ducked through the doorway, Halfscuttle behind Yale and Limp in the rear. Yale let his hand slide across the rough stone walls as he walked. He had spent years in this tunnel, digging it and smuggling through it. All three of them had, in truth. They’d put their anger in it, and their hopes. Yale had told stories of the Crippled King to them and to himself. One day they’d use this mine to leave the mountain with wealth, go west to unknown mountains.

And yet here they were, decades later, walking with mail under their shirts, helms under their hoods, their dull masks covering their faces. Their belts held axes and daggers. Limp held his thick-hafted hewing spear. Halfscuttle always favored his tapered leaf-bladed spear. They’d had to bring out their shields, unused for so long. Yale knew he was no great hand with either spear or shield. He had spent much of the war with shovel and pick and axe, and Silvertongue had allowed his conscripts only what training suited his purpose.

Yale wore his shield over his shoulder, as was the dwarven way when not in use, but in his hand he carried a long spiked warhammer on a thick ash haft. In a line of battle or a narrow tunnel, it was not ideal, but for close dirty work on a hillside, it more than sufficed. The hammerhead could break bones through armor and the spike on the reverse could pierce mail. He assumed that Sayfoot and that human—he had never bothered to learn the human’s name—would not come alone, and if it came to blows, then dirty would no doubt describe what followed.

Limp had argued to bring Bronzebucket and his sons, but Yale had refused. He’d also refused to bring Hidehorn and his family, even though the Second Gate opened into their compost pile and his life could be on the line as well. Yale had taken precaution that news would reach them if needed. There were still those who owed him favors. Yale had even asked Halfscuttle and Limp to let him go alone to this meeting, and they had refused him outright.

At last, they came to the sharp rise near the tunnel’s end and then to the door itself. Like he’d done hundreds and hundreds of times, Yale cracked the door inch by inch, letting the stench of manure flow inward. He peeked outside.

It was habit. Yale didn’t fear an ambush. If they’d told the king, the king would take him in the mountain easier than in the West Vale. And there was no profit for the human in killing Yale here. It was a clear night, with a half moon shining on the valley, but the green grasses close-cropped by grazing goats and sheep did not give the light back to the sky. On such a night in the winter, it would have been as bright as day with the snow glittering and trading light with the heavens.

There was yet no sign of Sayfoot and company. Limp and Halfscuttle sat against the bank of the old stream out of sight, but Yale stood and watched in the rendezvous spot. There would be Ridgewards patrolling the valleys and mountainsides, but none could reach them unseen. They would have plenty of time to escape.

The moon arched across the sky, then descended toward the ridge. Still, no one came. Hours crept by, and Yale stood barely moving, lost in thought.

“Little shits,” Limp said, standing up and shaking his leg. It must be cramping again. He shuffled over to Yale and surveyed the valley. “Why wouldn’t they come?”

“I don’t know.” It was long since they had expected them.

They waited until the moon set, and then an hour more, but still no one came. They returned to the tunnel. Of everything they had planned for or feared, they had not foreseen a no-show.

When they came back to the populated tunnels, Yale told Halfscuttle and Limp to go get some sleep, and they left for their small chamber. Yale would have dug them a chamber in Yellowhood’s stonehold, but a purveyor would not do that for hired help, and they kept up appearances. He had told Topaz the truth of their friendship, but it was not widely known.

Yale walked back to Yellowhood’s stonehold alone, down the private passage. He shut the stone outer door behind him and bolted it for good measure. Topaz would be inside the bedchamber. He wanted to see her, to talk to her. He’d never known such a weight as this. Without stopping, he walked past the chamber door and into the new-dug hall. He removed his helm and hood, shirt and mail, and lay down on a pallet of sheepskins, pulling a rug atop himself.

Days ago, he’d told Limp and Halfscuttle to flee without him, but they’d refused. So they had gone at the appointed time to meet the human merchant prepared for several outcomes—bribery, extortion, tributes, promises, threats, even death. Yale’s first hope was simply to stall. He’d prepared a gambit about trying to acquire living ore, a lie to buy more time. Now he felt unnerved. He had anticipated many things, but he did not know what to anticipate now.

Something slammed against the outer door of the hold. Yale jerked up and reached instinctively toward the warhammer that lay nearby, but he did not pick it up. He heard a shout, and another blow struck the stone door. He rose to his feet, bare to his waist, and moved down the inner passage toward the business chamber. There was no reason to fight what was coming. It would only make it worse for Topaz. Even though he die, at least his line would persist beneath the stone. He did not think that Ringhand or the humans would harm Topaz. That could cause an insurrection. At least he had that sense of assurance.

Another blow, and the steel bar that bolted the door snapped, and the stone burst inward on greased hinges. Two scales with shields forward pushed side by side into the business chamber, then stepped to the side as two more came through, then two more, until a shieldwall crossed chamber, spears all pointed at Yale’s bare chest. They had stormed the entrance in mere breaths.

Through the door stepped the same rinlen who had led the raid on Yellowhood’s hold before. The captain’s shield was slung behind his shoulder, and he had not even drawn his axe. More scales followed him inside.

“We come in the name of the king,” the captain said.

Yale did not reply. Somehow, he just felt tired. His silence seemed to surprise the captain, but the dwarf gave the order.

“Take him.”

Two of the guards came forward.

“My wife is in the bedchamber,” Yale said. “She is pregnant. Please leave her be.”

The captain approached, searching Yale’s face.

“Where is the contraband? Where do you hide it?”

“There’s nothing,” Yale said. “I have none.”

The captain rolled his eyes.

“You will talk.” He turned to his dwarves. “Take everything but the stone.”

There were at least a score of Scales in the business chamber. They spread out. He watched one dump the samovar out on the stone. Others headed down the private passage to search the storerooms. Another moved toward the bedchamber. Yale lurched after him, but his two guards grabbed his arms.

“My wife,” he said. The captain looked at Yale.

“The wife of the Smuggler Prince does not get privacy, pregnant or no,” he said, then nodded to the two guards who held Yale. “Bring him .” The captain went to the bedchamber door, swung it open, and strode inside, followed by two other Scales, and Yale with his guards.

“What are you doing?” Topaz shouted. The captain stopped in his tracks, his whole body gone rigid. Topaz knelt in the center of the room on a sheepskin, a stack of woolen pads next to her, the back of her skirt spread out behind her.

The captain hesitated.

“How could you barge in on me, when I’m in my blood?” she shouted.

The captain’s face flushed bright, and the other Scales stood motionless, shocked.

“I. . . We. . . The king commands.”

“Will the king come too?” Topaz snapped. “To bring this shame himself?”

The captain turned to the other Scales and motioned to the chamber.

“Strip everything out,” he said. Then he pushed past them and back out into the passage. The two guards hauled Yale away with the captain. Topaz had not glanced at him, but Yale was not sorry. He did not feel he could meet her gaze. He hadn’t thought he could be more crushed than he already was, but if Topaz was on her triad, she could not be pregnant. It was like a hammerblow. He would not be a father. Or had something worse happened? The guards nearly had to drag him out into the passage, his legs felt so weak.

“I thought you said she was pregnant,” the rinlen snapped at Yale. Yale didn’t respond.

“Just a liar,” one guard said. “A thief and a liar.”

The captain looked at one of the other guards.

“Oakspear, make sure they take everything. I mean it, leave only the stone. Then search the stone for signs. Leave the wif her. . . things. . . for her. . .” He trailed off.

Oakspear nodded, his face also flushing.

The captain motioned to a few others, and soon Yale was marching shirtless through the caverns in the center of a cadre of Scales. He barely noticed the gaze of all the dwarves they passed along the Lower Way. They took a tunnel east near the Gallery entrance to a stair that delved at right angles deeper into the rock.

They arrived in a warren of barracks and armories. King’s Guards, some in off-duty clothes, stared as the Scales brought Yale through their hold. Yale had heard of this place but had never seen it. It was Guardian’s Deep, the home of the King’s Guard and the weapons and armor caches of the hosts of Ice-Cloak. It was also where the king had his dungeons and oubliettes. Few were ever imprisoned there, but fewer returned. In dwarven custom, by the time one was imprisoned, death was near certain. Most of the time, a dwarf remained free until he was killed outright for his crimes.

At the end of a corridor, they entered a long, narrow room cut with a low ceiling and right angled walls. A long row of round cast-iron grates ran down the center of the floor. There was a foul latrine smell rising. Two dwarves in King’s Guard plate stood up from a table where an oil lamp burned. There wasn’t so much as a scrap of miner’s eye in the chamber.

“So this is him, eh?” one asked.

“This is him,” the captain responded.

“Southcaver shit,” said the other guard, spitting. The spittle hit Yale’s leg.

“Do you need him healthy?” asked the other guard.

The captain shrugged, motioned for his Scales to follow, and left.

“Didn’t feel like getting dressed?” asked one of the guards. The other walked along the row of circular grates.

“What if we put them in the same hole. Do you think they’d kill each other?”

“One way to find out.”

It was the placidity of the exchange, devoid even of mirth or enjoyment, that put a knot in Yale’s belly.

The guard moved to a grate, slid a bolt, and yanked it up out of the floor. Beneath it was a hole two feet wide. The other guard put his hand on Yale’s back and pushed him forward. When Yale reached the hole, the other guard slammed the edge of the grating into his stomach. As he doubled over, the guard behind kicked Yale’s legs forward, and he fell. His bare back slammed into the edge of the hole and scraped as he slid down.

He landed on something soft. The grate closed above, blotting out almost all the light. There was a yell beneath him and hands grasped at him. They wrestled in the close space, both trying to get away from the other with nowhere to go, the dwarf beneath him struggling to free himself from beneath the weight. Yale pressed his back into the stone wall of the pit. The bottom of the pit was wet. There were about two inches of water there—though by the smell he was not sure it was water. Warding off the other dwarf with his hands, he drew his knees up in front of him. The other dwarf twisted and cursed. There was no more room, though thankfully it was not as small as the hole above. They both crouched, legs pressed together, knees against their beards, backs to the stone. In the low light, all Yale could see was the vague shape of the other dwarf’s head.

“Who are you?” the other prisoner asked, gasping. The voice sounded familiar, but Yale wasn’t sure he could place it.

“Who are you?” Yale asked. He realized he should have disguised his own voice, but he was still hurting from the fall, and his wits were addled. The other dwarf didn’t respond. The pinpoints of light that came from above flickered and disappeared. The guards must have removed the lamp in the chamber above. No light at all remained, not even for a dwarven eye.

Yale crouched in the cold fluid feeling the sting on his back and trying to collect his breath and thought. He was shaken, and he felt the beat of his heart in his chest. To some degree, he had thought himself prepared for death. The whole week past he had known that grave risk had come. Yet he had not believed that the humans would betray him. Certainly, they might have sold him to the king, but Yale had expected that they would only do that once they had finished extorting him. Yale had been hedging for time.

What had the guard said? Other than being crammed into a small hole together, was some reason to think he and the dwarf across from him might kill each other? Who might Yale have a blood feud with that could be there?

“Sayfoot?” Yale asked. There was no answer, but he felt the muscles in the dwarf’s legs tense. Yale leaned his head back against the stone.

“Shit,” he said. Then he couldn’t help but chuckle. He was doomed, now, and he wasn’t as upset as he would have thought. As long as Topaz was safe, he could accept his fate, or so he thought. He didn’t think the Scales would harm her. They’d take everything, ay, yes. He wondered how vindictive Ringhand would be. Would they stop with him? He hoped that Limp and Halfscuttle were already leagues to the west. He had told them to flee at the first sign of trouble. Would the Scales go after Bronzebucket? He had no reason to believe that Ringhand would show any leniency, especially not to Southcavers.

“Bronzebucket, you fool,” Yale muttered. He shouldn’t have tried to extort Yale.

“Who’s Bronzebucket?” Sayfoot asked.

“Hmm?”

“Bronzebucket. You called him a fool.”

“Doesn’t matter. Not as much of a fool as I.”

“Nor I,” Sayfoot muttered.

They were quiet for a time. Yale wondered how long they would keep him in this stinking pit. He didn’t want to be tortured. He’d seen that in the war. If they asked where the tunnel was, he’d tell them. No doubt Sayfoot had told them about the creekbed. If they just searched from that point, they were sure to find it. But torture would not be for the extracting of information in his case, of that he was certain.

“Who else did you give up?” Yale whispered.

“I only told them about you.” Sayfoot dropped his voice to match.

“Thank you.”

“You’re thanking me?”

“Why’d they put you down here? Shouldn’t they give you a reward?”

“They caught us when we tried to meet you last night,” Sayfoot said. “Scales jumped us coming out of the trees into the West Vale.”

“You didn’t see the patrol coming?”

“They weren’t patrolling. They were waiting.”

“Who tipped them off?”

“No one. They were lying in wait in different spots, not just patrolling.”

Even Scales learned. Yale had stopped smuggling for the sake of Topaz, but in his gut he’d already known it had grown too dangerous. It had been a matter of time. If it weren’t for Sayfoot, he could have walked away. Maybe he should throttle the dwarf. He could sit on his body to keep out of the wet.

“So they caught you.”

“Ay, yes. And they told us we’d go free if we told. So we did.”

“And they lied and threw you in here.”

“Let that piece of shit kulkur and all the other humans go free, and threw me down here.”

“Well, they could have killed you outright. They must hope you know something else.”

“They haven’t asked yet.”

“Give them time,” Yale said. He sighed. There was another lull in the talk. It might have been minutes, or an hour.

“Would he have gotten it?” Sayfoot asked at length.

“What?”

“That kulkur shit,” Sayfoot said. “Would he have gotten the living steel?”

Yale chuckled.

“No.”

“Were you even there for the meeting? I figured you’d run, but he had folk watching the Vale and the main gates.”

“If you don’t like him, why’d you aid him?”

“The humans are ignorant and foul, but at least they didn’t kill my father.”

“The Ridges, you said?” Yale asked.

“Ay, yes. Ice-Cloak has made it nothing but a glorified mine indentured to Ringhand. I found out you fought in the war, when I asked around. My father went in the host from the Ridges to break the siege of King’s Quarry.”

“I remember that host well. I was a conscript on the south approach.”

“At least they shed Ice-Cloak blood before they met Silvertongue’s line.”

“But to give a human the living steel, the treasure of our folk?”

“It was the living steel that made Ice-Cloak supreme over all the colonies. You hoarded its secret and the mines for its ore.”

“Not I. I know it no more than you, and those mines were exhausted half a thousand years ago.”

“And yet by that time, half the colonies had come under Ice-Cloak dominion. What should I care for the life of an Ice-Cloak criminal?”

“I am an enemy of Ringhand, as much as you,” Yale said.

“You’re still an Ice-Cloaker.”

“A Southcaver. But it doesn’t matter. Here we are.”

“I’m . . You don’t seem angry.”

“Angry? No.” Yale didn’t even feel irritated. He’d always known Halfscuttle was a liability. But it didn’t matter. Some things were more important. He imagined Halfscuttle and Limp crossing a distant ridge. The image was a comfort.

Yale had made his decisions. He’d set his own course. Yet he’d made those decisions before Topaz had come into his hold. He’d imagined before what would happen if he were caught, the defiant things he would say. He had no spirit for any of it, now.

“How?” Sayfoot asked.

“I’ve no one to blame but myself.”

“I figured out who you were, and we gave you up to the Scales.”

“Giving me up was your best chance,” Yale said. “You’re not to blame that I’m a fool ripe to be given up.”

“All this for that stupid shit of a human.”

Yale actually chuckled.

“When you put it that way, you might be the bigger fool of the two of us.”

Sayfoot grinned.

“Shit on us.”

“Shit on us.”

They stripped everything from the bedchamber, even the sheepskins and rugs and weavings. They took her looms, too, and when it was bare, they brought in hammers and picks and worked over the walls, hunting for any sign of hidden spaces. What they found in the rest of the hold she didn’t know, but in the bedchamber it was soon clear there was nothing. The sound of tools on stone rang for hours, and the whole time Topaz knelt on a sheepskin, her arms folded low across her belly, staring down at the chamber floor. The back of her skirt she'd spread out behind her. In short, the normal way a wif or maid on her triad might sit to keep their clothes from staining. Pads of wool were helpful, but not foolproof.

She fervently ignored the Scales, and at length, without speaking a word to her, they left. She remained still in place even after they left, glancing from time to time around the barren room, afraid that someone had stayed behind in hiding. She heard footsteps hurrying down the passage, and a familiar scraping sound. Limp turned the corner first, carrying a spear and wearing mail and helm and shield. Halfscuttle was behind, his own helm askew on his ahead. Limp glanced at the bare room, then at Topaz as she knelt. He looked confused, even fearful, and took a step back.

Topaz stood, letting her skirt fall down behind her.

“Don’t faint,” she said. She reached into her skirts and pulled out the medallion of living steel. She held it in her hand, shifting the metal in the light of the miner’s eye. They had taken everything—all Yale’s gold and silver and bronze—but they had not taken the living steel.

“Yale?” Limp asked.

“They took him.”

Limp turned to go.

“Where are you heading?” Topaz asked.

“I’m going after them.”

“No. You’re staying here.”

“We will go after him.”

“I am Yellowhood’s wif,” she said. “And you will do nothing until you take me somewhere safe and bring me something to eat and drink.”

“I am not your servant.”

“No. You are Yellowhood’s friend. And what is better, going off and dying as if you could wrest him from the Scales by yourself, or making sure his pregnant wif is looked after.”

Limp froze, his eyes widening. Halfscuttle started muttering and took a step back.

“I’m carrying Yellowhood’s babe,” she said.

Limp stared, and then his shoulders dropped.

“We’ll take her to our chamber,” he said to Halfscuttle. He motioned for Topaz to follow. “Come.”

The rest of Yellowhood’s hold was just as bare as the bedchamber. She glanced in the larder as they passed. It had been stripped like the rest. They’d truly left nothing but the stone. She could go back to her father’s stonehold, and maybe she should. But the thought of it made her feel ill. Nor would she go back to her aunt’s workshop. She was too angry. Whatever decision she made next, it would be hers alone.

15

The Bells of Ice-Cloak

The hold of Halfscuttle and Limp was less a hold and more a single chamber cut into the rock a quarter-mile west of Yellowhood’s own hold, much closer to the old worked-out shafts and tunnels of the upper levels. The chamber was small and smelled strongly of stale dwarf and old ale. Two inset bed alcoves were cut into opposite walls, covered by hangings of sewn goatskins. A simple wooden table sat in the middle, dirty platters and mugs sitting atop it. A variety of tools and weapons hung on hooks on the far wall, and they at least were organized. It was an odd collection, as if the owner could not decide if they were a miner, a warrior, a smith or a jeweler.

“You can’t stay here,” Topaz said.

“We will sleep in Yellowhood’s hall,” Limp answered.

“Not there either. Do you think the Scales won’t know you work with Yellowhood in a matter of hours? They’ll come for you, and they will watch the hold.”

“Let them.” Limp hefted his spear.

“And him?” Topaz asked, nodding to Halfscuttle. “Does he get to die with you?”

“I decide myself,” Halfscuttle said. “I’m no fool. I make my own decisions.” He repeated that he wasn’t a fool two or three more times in a lower and lower voice.

Limp glanced at Halfscuttle, then back to Topaz.

“So what, then?”

“You stay in the tunnels. No Upcaver could find you there, not without a thousand to search.”

It was true. There were untold miles of tunnels branching through the stone in many levels beneath the South Caverns, some abandoned for hundreds of years. Even the Southcavers only knew the tunnels they lived and worked in. Few dwarves ever got lost, their sense of direction uncanny beneath the stone and the practice of marking tunnels and passages with cave runes helped ensure that no one was lost, but to try to hunt a dwarf within that labyrinth? That would be difficult, indeed.

“For how long?” Limp asked. “I’d rather die than skulk. They’ll kill Yellowhood, and I’ll not let them without striking a blow.”

“Just wait. There’s a way I might find out more. You can’t just go charging into the Guardian’s Deep. When I know something about what they’re planning, I’ll mark a kor rune in charcoal on the wall of the third junction west. When you see it, come here. But be careful. They might try to watch even this hold.”

“We should bribe them,” Halfscuttle said. “Buy him.”

“They took everything. We’ve no money.” Without thinking, her hand felt the medallion in her pocket. It was all she had for her babe’s future. What was more valuable, the living steel or Yale’s freedom? What did she want more?

“We have gold and silver,” Limp said.

“You do?”

“Of course. Yellowhood did not keep it all, and we were prepared to flee.”

Topaz looked around the chamber, barely ten feet by ten feet of stone. He may have shared the gold, but it didn’t look like they’d done much with it.

“Bribes won’t work. What Scale would risk selling the Smuggler Prince out from under the nose of Ringhand? He’d kill them instead.” Topaz had never thought of such things before, but it felt self-evident. Ringhand had formed an entire new company of dwarves just for the purpose of stopping smuggling, and the Prince of Smugglers represented his greatest foe. She thought of the king parading up the Lower Way atop a mammoth, wearing armor of living steel, the Shor-i-Illenfärner refracting in his helm like flashing fire.

And here she was, wondering how to free that liar who had done this not just to himself, but to her and her babe.

“If we try to bribe anyone, they’ll just take our payment and kill Yellowhood anyway, and maybe us too. They’ll know we are his collaborators. We can trust no one.”

“No one but us,” Halfscuttle said. “Never anyone but us.”

Limp nodded.

“I still might be able to find out more. Go,” Topaz said. “Check every day for the mark at the third junction. Come if you see it.”

“I will not wait long,” Limp said.

“Now or in a week’s time, rushing there won’t save Yellowhood. You may wish to die, but know this. There is a babe in my belly, and I will do whatever I must, risk whatever I must, suffer whatever I must, to ensure its life.”

Limp’s beard twitched around his mouth. Halfscuttle began rummaging on a shelf.

“Fine,” Limp answered.

Topaz had a sudden thought:

“Please, go give a warning to Bronzebucket,” she asked. Limp dipped his head in assent.

The two dwarves left, taking only a bit of food and a couple mine flasks, wearing their armor and carrying their weapons as they slunk away into the tunnels. Any dwarf who saw them would know something strange was afoot. The dwarves did not walk armed for war in their home under the mountain, but Topaz wasn’t going to try convincing them to lay aside their kit. She sat down at the table, trying to ignore the dirty platters for now.

She wasn’t sure she would call Limp and Halfscuttle back, but she wanted the option. She needed more time to think, to consider. Would Ringhand truly let her be, the wif of the Smuggler Prince? It was unheard of to punish a wif for the doings of her dwarf, but it was not unheard of to punish a father for a son, or a son for a father. She put her hand on her belly. She’d grown only more certain that life grew within her. Are you a gilke or a gilna? More than ever, she hoped for a gilna, but she could not know, and Ringhand may not want the son of the Smuggler Prince lurking in the South Caverns.

There were more Southcavers than Upcavers by far, but Ringhand’s power lay with the wealthy, not the scrabbling miners of the deeps. Maybe she could go east to the old colonies, or even to the dwarves of the northern plain, though Ringhand ruled them too. Distance may give some shelter, but what did Topaz know of the world beyond the mountain?

Her father and brothers could not help her, now. They were in danger, themselves. Ringhand might eradicate all Yellowhood’s closest kin and associates once he learned their identities. She could cry if she dwelt on it, but they had done this, and she had to see to her babe. Her aunt would be safe, she did not doubt, but what could she ask of her?

A widow with a babe driven from her own mountain. Maybe the medallion could purchase something, but she had learned now that dwarves were liars and takers. To even show the treasure would be to invite its theft, and perhaps worse. She couldn’t even safely trade it, not without the protection of a dwarf—or many. What was a maid or a wif in the stone, without the strong arms of kith and kin ready to bring blood on those who’d do her wrong? She didn’t think she could rely on Limp and Halfscuttle for long.

Her fury could have boiled a goat, but her fury would do neither her nor her babe any good. She needed to find opportunity and take it, but first she needed to know as much as possible about the danger she faced.

When the Scales assaulted the door of Yellowhood’s hold, the noise had jarred Topaz from sleep. She’d only had time to put on a wrapper dress and grab the medallion and some wool pads. She’d barely sat when the Scales entered the bedchamber. They’d taken everything, even her clothes she wasn’t wearing. She wished she had an apron or something to put over the front of the wrapper to make it look more presentable, but she only had what she had. They’d even taken her veils. Her hair was hanging freely still, and she took the time to plait it before she headed to the Lower Way.

She arrived at the familiar stonehold door in the Upper Caverns and knocked. Spinel was normally awake at that time. The door pulled open, and the old dwarf-wif peered out. She saw Topaz and slammed the door shut. In that brief glimpse, Topaz had seen one of her own fine-woven hangings on the wall of the chamber within. It had hung in Topaz and Yale’s own bedchamber. Topaz knocked again. There was no answer. She heard the grate of a bar sliding into place.

“Spinel, please,” she said. But the door did not budge.

She turned and left. She had only wanted information, to see if Spinel had heard of the Scales’ orders and what Ringhand had planned. But she knew it was a dead end, now. She’d expected as much, but her determination to serve her babe had overcome her pride and driven her to take the chance.

Topaz walked back toward the Lower Way. She wondered how many times she had made that hike through the beautiful caverns. The natural cavern walls shone with polished minerals and ores, the stalactites hanging far overhead laden and illuminated with miner’s eye. She saw the beautiful carven banister of the Upper Way running along the cavern wall above, crossing side-caverns and passages on arching bridges of stone that seemed to float in air or grow from natural rock. Though she saw it all, she did not heed its beauty as she’d done before. Nor did she heed the many other dwarves who also traveled the Upper and Lower Ways. It was summer, and there was always traffic to the adits—now the Gates of Ice, as they’d already come to be called from the way Ringhand’s new gates shone with silver plating.

She turned at the branch of the South Caverns and glimpsed a flash of yellow color ahead. A column of Scales bearing their gold-painted shields moved toward her down the path. There were other dwarves walking between them, and Topaz diverted her steps toward the north wall of the cavern branch beyond a rising stalagmite. She did not want to encounter the scales, or even be seen by them.

She did want to see who they had with them, and so she peeked around the stalagmite. Walking in the middle of the cadre of Scales, their eyes cast down, were her brothers and father. Chains bound their arms, and the dwarves in the cavern stared as they passed. She counted over twenty Scales at a glance, many laden with heavy packs or with arms full of spoils. She saw one holding a silver-plated samovar, and she thought she recognized the pattern. Topaz ducked back behind the stalagmite until the cadre passed by, then she hurried on.

She went first to Limp and Halfscuttle’s chamber, but the door was open. The inside was ransacked. It had been searched, but the Scales had not bothered to take much. Some tools were missing, the less valuable ones piled on the floor. The wooden chairs and table were shattered. She did not wait around. Her family hold was on the next level down. She took a nearby stair that wound below, and then rushed down the tunnels. She heard her mother’s wails before she even came to the open door of her family hold.

The Scales had done a more thorough job with Bronzebucket’s hold. Much was left discarded on the floor, but she could see at a glance that anything of value had been taken. Her mother lay weeping on the stone. Topaz went to her and put her arms around her shoulders. Her mother looked up, and when she saw Topaz she clung to her and wept harder, and Topaz wept with her. Such a fate was unthinkable, that this should have happened. Topaz didn’t know whether or not her mother had known about Yale. Topaz had avoided seeing her because she didn’t want to find out for the worse, but in that moment it didn’t matter. They held each other. When at last their tears were spent, and they stared at the bare stone walls, Topaz learned that her mother had been there alone when the Scales came. They must have taken her father and brothers from the smeltery.

Topaz wasn’t sure what to do or where to go. She feared to go to her uncle’s or aunt’s. She did not know how far the king’s wrath would extend, and she did not want to draw attention to them. No one would be likely to shelter them for that same fear. If Ringhand had intended to punish Topaz and her mother in life or limb, he would have done so already. But how much different was leaving them destitute? Who would take Topaz in, and her pregnant with a widow mother to care for?

If the king didn’t bother divvying out Southcaver stoneholds, others would come for Yellowhood’s claim and for the smeltery by sheer right of strength and possession. She just hoped the scavengers would at least leave them this one stonehold.

There was no food, no warmth, no drink, just the two dwarf-wifs soon-to-be widows sitting together on the bare stone in the steady luminescence of the miner’s eye. How long they sat there, Topaz didn’t know. Her mind wandered, and at times her thoughts seemed to cease at all.

It was through this haze that a sound reached Topaz, distant at first but growing clearer and stronger. Before she was even fully aware of it, she knew what it was—a bronze bell. Then she heard shouting as well. It was coming closer. Her mother looked up, returning from a great distance. Topaz went to the door and opened it. The sound was clearer in the passage beyond. Other dwarves up and down the passage had stepped out of other holds to listen.

The ringing grew nearer, and then a crier turned the corner of the passage at a fast stride, rhythmically raising and lowering a large bronze bell.

“The Bells of Ice-Cloak!” he shouted. “To the gates! The king calls to arms!” He rang the bell again and again, while again and again he cried “The Bells of Ice-Cloak! To the Gates! The king calls to arms!”

The crier passed Topaz, giving her no heed. All through the mountain such criers would be moving through the populated tunnels and passages and caverns, shouting the same message. Topaz gaped after him. This meant that the great bells of Ice-Cloak were ringing somewhere high on the mountain above the Face, blasting their great resonant tones across the valley to echo from the mountainsides. The Ridgewards would scramble to their outposts and the goatherds and shepherds would rush their flocks to folds and holes. The folk said the great bells could be heard for twenty miles, but under the mountain, criers carried smaller bells to spread the word.

Criers came often enough,but not with bells; the bells meant danger and warning. Bells meant enemies and battle. The king called to arms. A hundred or more years ago, a few bands of ürsi had caused the great bells to ring across the valley, but bells below the mountain had not been heard in hundreds of years. Already, dwarves were jogging down the passage, old spears and shields in their hands, old family helms on their heads. Topaz stepped back inside and looked at her mother.

“The bells."

“There is no one left to march against us.” Her mother was right. No one could attack Ice-Cloak. “Is it humans?” her mother asked.

“What human could attack a mine?” Topaz had always heard they were inept below stone. But they could still hear the ringing of the bells.

16

Three Days

Topaz followed a stream of dwarves moving toward the gates with shields and spears and hammers. They clustered together, whispering in hushed, hurried tones. Topaz walked alone. She didn’t expect the other Southcavers would know much more than her, anyway. When they joined with the main cavern and the Lower Way, she saw more dwarves rushing south from the Upper Caverns. Many wore mail and some even had plate, their weapons were finer with gilding or silver, but their expressions showed the same confused excitement and fear.

As she approached the Gate Plaza, Topaz saw a cadre of King’s Guards in their shining plate, wearing grim warmasks beneath their burnished helms. One guard stood in front of the others, shouting orders at the arriving levies.

“Form in columns to the sides!” he shouted, pointing to the sides of the Lower Way. “Leave room to move! Columns to each side!”

“What’s going on?” someone yelled at him.

The King’s Guard ignored the question and just kept yelling.

“Form in columns. Stay clear of the center.”

As Topaz went past, one of the Kings Guards who stood silently behind the first glanced at her.

“Oi, you!”

Topaz froze, her heart pounding. She looked at the guard and pointed at herself.

“Ay, yes you! Come here!”

Topaz approached. She could make out no expression behind the dwarf’s warmask. His beard fell down from beneath it in warrior’s plaits.

“What are you doing here, maid?”

Maid. . . That meant he didn’t know who she was.

“What?”

He glanced down at her wrapper dress and her bare feet. It was not unheard of for a dwarf-maid to bear arms, though it was rare. Even the legendary Queen Jade was a warrior, but Topaz looked nothing like she meant to fight.

“Oh. I want to know what’s going on.”

“Shit on your curiosity,” the guard said. “Go back to your hold. This is no place for you.”

“Tell me what’s happening. Why the bells?”

The guard glanced at the others around him, hesitating.

“It won’t be a secret for long,” Topaz said, motioning to the dwarves streaming past. “Tell me and I’ll go.” She could see from the breath he took that he conceded the point. He leaned forward to talk, but it seemed like the words did not wish to come.

“There’s a. . . It’s. . . Shit.”

The guard next to him leaned in. Obviously, he’d been listening.

“There’s a dragon at the gate.”

Topaz stared.

“What?”

“There’s a fucking dragon at the gate,” he said louder. Topaz didn’t even notice he’d use speech improper before a maid or wif. She was too bewildered by the dragon part.

“No.”

The second guard shrugged.

“Get out of here,” the first guard said, his voice growing sterner. “Now! Back to your hold.”

Topaz turned and pushed back against the flow, but as soon as the stream of dwarves blocked her from view, she turned again, moving to the edge of the cavern where she would be hidden in the movement of the mass. The lead guard still yelled.

“Stand to the sides in column!”

Topaz walked with the flow of dwarves until they reached the Great Plaza behind the Gates of Ice. King’s Guards hurried back and forth, pushing and shouting the dwarves into lines. She clung against the cave wall, standing barefoot on smooth flagstones. Once, the reservoir had filled that whole area. She couldn’t quite see all the way down the passage to the gates themselves—it was too crowded in front of her and she was at a poor angle—but she glimpsed lines of King’s Guards wielding heavy halberds and blocking the opening of the passage itself.

Nearby, a King’s Guard shoved a slow-moving dwarf toward a line of levy dwarves, making the dwarf stumble to his knees. She could tell by the fine clothes and the mail that it was an Upcaver, at least. She’d never seen a King’s Guard show such ferocity to an Upcaver. She didn’t believe the tale about a dragon. No doubt the guard just wanted to get rid of her. But whatever caused this uproar, the King’s Guards were beyond worried.

She pressed against the stone wall as the Plaza continued to fill with armed dwarves, mixed together regardless of status. It was a noisy throng, despite the guards screaming for silence. The pack of dwarves extended up the Lower Way, now, the King’s Guards pushing to keep the center of the road clear. There would soon be thousands. She could tell from the light that either the gates were closed or it was night out, but of course the gates were closed, with the King’s Guard so flustered.

She did not see any Ridgewards with their shields bearing the pine-green field and the Ʌ rune sigil that represented the peak of Ice-Cloak. But she did see a number of Scales moving about amid the King’s Guards, their faces also hidden by warmasks. Their lamellar armor and scale sigils made them obvious. It grew harder to see across the plaza, merely because she was not taller than any of the other dwarves who packed in close.

Maybe she shouldn’t have come. She looked up the Lower Way and knew it would be hard to make her way out, at least without taking the center path that the guards kept clear. She didn’t want to be that exposed to eyes of all present. But if there was a battle, she could be trampled, let alone killed. The idea of a battle felt absurd. Who could hope to fight their way through the gates?

A rustle and then a hush passed over the throng, moving like a draft through a tunnel. Heads turned to see the reason for the contagious quiet. Topaz saw the movement. Forty feet above the inner opening of the gate passage was a narrow balcony that overlooked the plaza. A dwarf had stepped into the opening. He wore King’s Guard armor, but it was gold plated. His warmask and helm he held tucked beneath his arm. He looked down at the throng and raised a hand for quiet. At last, he spoke.

“I am Grimaxe, commander of the King’s Guard. Long live King Ringhand!”

There was only a dull response from the throng, but Grimaxe pressed on. “The bells of Ice-Cloak ring. The king has called all able-bodied dwarves to arms to protect our home.”

Many in the throng looked around at their fellows, no doubt wondering why such a call was made. Topaz waited as Grimaxe seemed to hesitate.

“It is of utter importance that you hold still and silent when I tell you what I have to tell. You must obey the orders of the King’s Guard. They will arrange you into companies and assign commanders. Be quick and silent and bear yourselves like dwarves of Ice-Cloak. Let us not disgrace the bones of our forebeards, the legacy of the Crippled King, or the beard of King Ringhand. There will be no confusion and no chaos. Stay still and stay silent.” He looked back and forth across the plaza, hesitating again.

He took a deep breath, his voice even louder when he continued, a voice for battle, filling the Plaza and spilling up the Lower Way despite the packed bodies.

“Three hours ago, the bell lookouts saw a creature fly over the mountain from the north. The bells rang. The pyres at Queen’s West and Lookout Ridge were set ablaze, followed by all others we could see. The gates were shut only just in time. Even now, a dragon sits outside the gate.”

Murmurs and exclamations filled the plaza. The King’s Guards bashed their hafts against the stone to bring order. Grimaxe raised his gauntleted hands and shouted for silence. Topaz saw some dwarves laughing, looking around as if utterly bemused that such an absurd joke could be played. Topaz hardly knew what she felt. She had not expected Grimaxe to speak of a dragon. She’d expected the truth. She could hardly bring herself to take him seriously.

At length, with threats and shoves, the King’s Guards regained enough decorum to hear Grimaxe’s voice.

“The dragon demanded the king come and bend the knee to him.”

“It talks, too!” shouted a dwarf nearby. There was laughter. One of the King’s Guards strode over, clutching a halberd, but it was impossible to tell who had shouted.

“The dragon demanded to be our lord. King Ringhand—“ Grimaxe paused again. She could practically see the muscles working beneath his face. His beard was dirty-white. Though still straight and hale, he must be near two hundred years, certainly. Topaz knew of him. He had risen to command of the King’s Guard in the years of Silvertongue after distinguishing himself in the Siege of King’s Quarry. “King Ringhand has refused to come. . . to bend the knee. The dragon has given us three days.”

“Does the dragon want a cup of mead?” someone shouted. Grimaxe ignored the shout if he heard it.

“The king has summoned the levies. By his order, you will stay here, be fed here, sleep here until the threat has passed. I and the other King’s Guards will be with you. We will stand in the fore to show the mettle of dwarves. No serpent shall break the strength of Ice-Cloak. Just obey the orders you receive. That is all.”

Grimaxe turned and disappeared back into the rock. Above the gates and the gate passage, the guards no doubt had a warren of tunnels for defense and observation. When Grimaxe disappeared, the cavern erupted into speech again. The dwarves may have tried to speak in hurried and hushed tones, but thousands together made a sibilant din.

Topaz elbowed and pushed her way to the narrow path the King’s Guards were keeping open. When she reached it, she set off at a jog. Many faces turned to watch her, even the King’s Guards. She couldn’t tell which might have been the guards she’d spoken with before, and she hoped they didn’t see her. No one tried to stop the unarmed barefoot maid trying to flee from the gates wearing a wrap gown. Those who glanced turned back to their hurried conversations or their rushed duties. Her flight was far from the strangest circumstance to hand.

Topaz was hungry. She hadn’t eaten in two days, and she’d had only water to drink. She sat in her family hold, staring at the wall. Upon returning from the plaza, she’d told her mother the news. Her mother had laughed and refused to believe it, but something about the story seemed to bring her out of her frozen state. Her mother rose to her feet and began cleaning, and she didn’t stop until she had removed everything broken, put back what remained, dusted and swept—the Scales had not taken her broom—and brought as much order as could be. Then she spent hours slowly walking from chamber to chamber in silence, looking at every surface as if she’d find something she had forgotten.

Topaz had not helped to clean. She couldn’t bring herself to care. Instead, she tried to imagine a dragon outside the gates, sometimes chuckling to herself at the absurdity of the past few days. But what would happen once the three days the dragon had given elapsed? How could anything assault a dwarven colony held by thousands of spears and axes? In her bitterness, she couldn’t tell whether she hoped the dragon would prevail or not. Topaz no longer had much to lose, except for the babe she carried. She wondered what Yale would have done. Would he have gone to stand guard at the gates? Then she wondered about Halfscuttle and Limp. Had they gone, or did they still lurk in the dark empty mines? Did they even know what was happening at the plaza? There was no reason for the bell ringers to go through the worked-out tunnels to the west.

She stood up.

“Come with me,” she said to her mother. The older wif looked at her, then shook her head. “Come,” Topaz said, grabbing her mother’s hand. She didn’t resist and followed Topaz out of the hold. Topaz led her down the tunnel and up the stair, then down more long passages until they arrived at the door to the chamber of Limp and Halfscuttle. The door still stood partly ajar, and it looked like the inside had been picked over even more, probably by opportunists among the Southcavers, but whoever they were, there was no sign now. The passages had all been empty. She gently guided her mother into the chamber, then picked up a piece of coal spilled on the floor by an upturned brazier.

“Stay here,” she told her mother, then left, closing the door behind her. She made her way to the third junction and marked a thick kor rune on the rockface between the splitting tunnels. When she returned, she found her mother trying to clean again. This time she helped her, mostly because it was the only thing she could think to do for her.

In a colony as extensive as Ice-Cloak, with hundreds of miles of unmapped tunnels and passages layered not just in width and breadth but depth as well, there were plenty of isolated places. To the outskirts of the populated tunnels, news did not come of its own. It had to be sought. War could rage in the Upper Caverns, and a Southcaver deep in the stone might not know. Some of the deep miners did not even climb to the upper levels but once or twice in a moon’s time. Hundreds, maybe thousands went about their work without a clue as to what transpired above.

Topaz wondered if anything had changed at the gates, but she did not go to find out. She cleaned and waited.

They’d slept again before Topaz heard the hinges grate as the chamber door cracked open. She looked up to see half of Limp’s face peering through the crack. He saw Topaz and slipped inside, Halfscuttle following. They closed the door behind them. Topaz got to her feet.

“Topaz?” her mother asked, a look of fright on her face at the sight of the armed dwarves.

“It’s alright, they’re friends.” She knew her mother had seen them at the wedding, but she couldn’t put any trust in her mother’s frame of mind at the moment.

“What is it?” Limp asked.

“Do you know about the dragon?”

“The what?”

“The dragon at the gates.”

Limp and Halfscuttle looked at each other. It was the first time Topaz saw an expression on Halfscuttle’s face that implied that someone else was not of sound mind.

“The bells rang. Ringhand sent criers who called all to arms at the gates. Grimaxe himself told about the dragon. The dragon said he would attack if Ringhand would not bow to him. There is one day left. . . If nothing has changed.”

“A talking dragon?”

Topaz nodded.

Limp smirked.

“ Shit,” he said. “A talking dragon.” He raised his eyebrows at Halfscuttle.

But Topaz’s expression didn’t change.

“Go and see for yourself,” she said. “Draw your hood down over your helm and go armed. No one will recognize you and you will not be out of place. Just don’t let the guards force you to stay.”

Limp squinted.

“Stay here,” he told Halfscuttle. He left, closing the stone door behind him.

“Do you have anything to eat?” Topaz asked Halfscuttle. The dwarf rummaged in a pouch at his side and brought out a lump of hardened cave-bread biscuit. He held it out. Topaz took it and broke it in half, giving part to her mother. It was old and moister than it should have been, but they were hungry.

They all waited in silence. An hour had passed before Limp returned.

He didn’t knock, slipping inside in a hurry. He looked at Topaz, then at Halfscuttle.

“It’s. . . there’s. . . They stretch nearly to the South Cavern junction.”

“The dragons?” Halfscuttle asked.

“No, the levies. It looks like the whole mountain is there.”

“Dragons are stories,” Topaz’s mother said. It was the most she’d heard her speak in days.

“What now?” Limp asked.

“We wait to see if it attacks,” Topaz answered.

“I’m hungry.” Halfscuttle rummaged in the pouch where he’d found the biscuit he’d given Topaz, but he found nothing. “I swear I had a biscuit.”

“I saw Hidefoot and his sons at the rear of the levies,” Limp said. “I can go get food from their hold while they’re gone.”

“You can’t just steal,” Topaz’s mother said, looking shocked.

“They’re shitheads. They’ve owed Yellowhood five ingots of silver for the past ten years, but he wouldn’t let me do anything to them. Besides, his wife died three years ago. There’s no one there and they won’t miss a little.”

“It’ll be barred and locked.”

Limp grinned.

“That’s alright.” With that, he left.

“Less than what they deserve,” Halfscuttle muttered, nodding.

When Limp returned, he carried two large sacks stuffed with what was likely the entirety of Hidefoot’s larder. Topaz was ravenous, and it felt good to have a full stomach again. As she gulped from a skin of honeyed water after stuffing herself, she felt some of the haze lift. The whole mountain was at the plaza, Limp had said. She felt a strange certainty and rested her hand on her belly. It’s alright. I’ll give you the best chance I can.

And she knew the best chance she could give was not raising the child alone.

“Here’s what we do,” she said. “When the dragon attacks.”

Topaz, her mother, and Halfscuttle were resting when they heard the running of feet. Limp swung the door open from outside.

“It’s happening!”

Two frightened levy dwarves raced past the door behind Limp. Shouting echoed down the passage from the eastward junction. Limp and Halfscuttle’s chamber was not in a well-used tunnel, but the eastward junction led towards more stoneholds.

Topaz climbed to her feet and looked at her mother’s frightened face. “Stay here. Keep the door closed. Nothing will harm you.”

“You should stay, too,” Limp said.

“Shut it,” Topaz snapped. She’d already argued enough with him. “I’ll follow if you try to leave without me.”

Limp held out a long dagger in a sheath. It was called a punch dagger, four-edged, long and wicked. She tucked it into the sash of her wrap-gown.

“You know the way?” she asked. She’d already asked, but she felt compelled to ask again. Limp nodded.

“Ay, yes.”

“Then go ahead.”

17

Fire and Death

More fleeing levy dwarves passed them, their eyes wide and lungs heaving. Some had lost or dropped their weapons and shields. Twice Limp tried to hail them, but all ignored him and Limp gave up. The three of them were the only ones trying to move east toward the Lower Way. They could hear shouting, screaming and wailing echoing down tunnels and up stairs as the fleeing dwarves reached their holds. But soon, the route of dwarves ceased, and they were alone.

They left the dwarven-cut tunnel and stepped out into the deserted natural caverns. That’s when the smell struck them. It was something like hot grease, cooking meat, and scented oil together. The air in the caverns was full of dust and smoke.

Limp crouched down and stared ahead into the haze, but nothing moved. A few shields and spears lay abandoned on the stone. They crept onward toward the Lower Way. Limp led them from stalagmite to stalagmite. In the South Caverns, the king had not bothered to pave and destroy. The air was smokier, the smell stronger as they approached the Lower Way. It grew hot. Topaz’s skin crawled.

“Stay here. I’ll signal if it’s safe.”

Limp moved quickly, considering that he dragged his foot at an odd angle, barely bending his knee. He raced up to a curve of rock and slowly edged around, checking south, north, and then south again. He seemed to see something, because he stared for a while before he motioned for Topaz and Halfscuttle to join him. They hurried to his side, but Limp held up his hand before Topaz looked around the curve.

“Do not look to the south,” he said.

“Is the dragon there?”

He shook his head.

“Just don’t look.”

With that, he hurried around the cavern wall, toward the Lower Way. Topaz heard shouts echoing in the caverns to the north.

She did not heed Limp’s warning. As they reached the fine-paved Lower Way, she turned and looked south.

There was a haze of smoke, and dark lumps on the ground. And then she realized the lumps were bodies, still smoking. Her stomach turned, and she felt a rush of nausea as she realized that the smell of cooking meat was dwarf. She bent and vomited on the stone.

“I told you not to look,” Limp said. She glanced up, wiping her mouth with her sleeve. Halfscuttle was looking south, a faraway expression on his face.

“Come on,” Limp said. “This isn’t a place to stop.”

They passed more bodies as they went, scattered alone or fallen in clumps, all encased in char like crust on a pastry, mail melted and fused, the hafts of weapons smoking or reduced to glowing ember. The smell was so strong, Topaz heaved again and again until nothing remained of the meal she’d eaten to fill her stomach. They passed by the ruins of a bridge that used to span a side-cavern, part of the Upper Way. It was collapsed as if crushed by a giant hammer.

How big was this thing? Topaz couldn’t imagine it. She had expected chaos when it attacked, but there had been thousands standing against it, not to mention the great gates encased in silver. The Gates of Ice.

They saw movement along the Upper Way, running dwarves and wifs. There was shouting ahead. It was less than a mile from the South Caverns to the Chamber of Waters, and less than that to the West Branch. As they passed the West Branch, they saw more figures moving, crying, shouting, wandering near the market. But they did not see any bodies that way.

The smell of grease and smoke and that other scent—like oil spiced with something she’d never smelled before—came strong and steady on the current of air that always moved south from the Chamber of Waters and its waterfall. She had only gone north beyond the West Branch a handful of times, but Limp plodded on without variance of pace or aim.

Soon, he veered east toward a side passage, but before they entered, Topaz caught a glimpse of the cavern before the entrance to the Chamber of Waters. It was as if a lumpy bed of ashes had been spread across the opening, smoking and gleaming.

A few hundred yards down the side passage, Limp stopped before a wide stone door set into the passage wall. Limp gripped the inset handle of the door and pulled, but it did not budge. He knocked.

“Open in the name of the king!” he shouted. He knocked some more, then put fear in his voice. “For pity’s sake open for the King’s Guard! They’re wounded!”

The door grated open a crack. As if they’d planned it, Halfscuttle darted a hand inside and pulled the torso of a King’s Guard through, knocking the door ajar. Limp slammed a punch dagger through the guard’s coif, just below the edge of his helm. The guard gasped and wheezed and Halfscuttle dropped him to the stone.

“Limp!” Topaz gasped.

“What?”

She stared at the blood leaking onto the stone as the guard wheezed and gasped through his rent throat.

“Did you think we were going to ask politely?” Limp asked.

“Shits,” Halfscuttle muttered, wiping the guard’s blood off the palm of his hand onto his trousers. “Shits.”

“You needn’t have killed him.”

Limp shrugged and walked through the door, leaving the body on the threshold where it continued to spasm. Topaz stepped over the guard to follow.

Beyond the door was the wide upper landing of a stair leading below. They followed it as it turned at right angles at least a hundred yards further down into the stone. They saw no one on the stair, and no one at the bottom, either. Limp stopped at the lower landing. A single passage ran south, crossed by three other passages east-west. Rows of doors lined the tunnel, and the walls were covered in banners, some old and stained, some new-woven and fresh-dyed, with polished and glimmering shields and weapons hanging between. Limp squinted and stared.

“Where now?” Topaz asked.

He shrugged.

“Never been here,” he said.

There was no sound, and no sign of life.

Topaz cupped her hands around her mouth and yelled.

“Yellowhood! Yellowhood!”

“Shit!” Limp swore and ducked back into the stairway out of sight, pulling Halfscuttle after him. “Brain-addled crazy wif,” Limp said from around the corner.

“Yellowhood!” Topaz called again. “Yellowhood!”

No one answered, and no one came. She took a deep breath and called one more time. “Yellowhood!”

A door opened far down the passage, and a King’s Guard stepped out, but he wore no helm nor mask. His beard hung in warrior’s plaits. He looked up the passage and saw Topaz standing at the foot of the stair.

“How in seven ovens did you get down here maid?” he asked, walking toward her at a quick pace. He had an axe tucked in his belt, but no other weapon.

“Where is Yellowhood?” she asked.

The guard ignored her.

“How did you get here? What’s happened?”

He reached Topaz, but before he could react, Limp turned the corner, his spear closing the gap in an instant, the spear blade resting on the guard’s throat.

The guard’s eyes went wide, but he made no sound as he raised his empty hands. Halfscuttle slid the axe from the guard’s belt, then reached around and found a knife as well. He tucked them into his own belt, which already held several knives and an axe.

“The dragon burnt everyone,” Topaz said. “There’s no one left. Tell me where Yellowhood is.”

“That’s impossible,” the guard said.

“The spear at your throat would disagree,” she said. “Where is Yellowhood?”

“He’s in one of the pits,” the dwarf said.

“Take us.”

The guard nodded and turned slowly, watching Limp with side-eyes. He led them down the passage to the same door he’d come from. Inside, they saw a long hall with a row of round grates set into the stone of the floor. It was lit only by a single oil lamp sitting on a table in the corner. There was no one else inside. The guard continued down the row of grates until he came to the sixth one. Reaching down, he slid a bolt out of two clamps on the side of the grate, then grabbed a handle and lifted. There was a narrow pit beneath, and Topaz looked down and saw two huddled forms in the dark. One she knew was Yale, but she did not know the other.

“Get them out,” she said.

“If they stand they can pull themselves up. I can’t reach them,” the guard said.

“Yellowhood?” Limp asked, glancing down but keeping his spear trained on the guard.

“Topaz?” Yale said. “We can’t . . . We can’t move.”

“Help him out!” Limp snapped at the guard.

“I can’t do it myself,” the guard said.

“Halfscuttle,” Topaz said.

The guard and Halfscuttle knelt next to the hole and reached down. Yale reached his arms up, and the guard and Halfscuttle each managed to grab a shaking hand. They strained and hauled and Yale came out, his body locked in a bent position, his knees up in front of his beard. There was a foul smell, and his clothes were soiled. Halfscuttle and the guard laid him on the stone. Topaz knelt next to him.

“Can you move?” she asked. “Can you stretch out your legs?”

Yale tried and grimaced.

“They’re. . . help,” he said. Topaz looked at his filthy boots, but she took one in each hand and started to pull. Yale cried out.

“Slow! Slow!”

She slowed down a little. It wasn’t easy. It was as if his muscles and bones were frozen. Halfscuttle and the guard dragged the other dwarf out as well, and he too lay on the stone, his legs bent in front of him.

“Water,” the stranger begged.

“Is that Sayfoot?” Limp asked.

“Water, please.”

Limp looked over at Yale.

“Do you want me to kill him?” he asked.

“No!” Yale gasped. “Leave. . . him alone.”

Limp frowned.

“Give them water,” Topaz ordered. Halfscuttle had a flask, and he gave it first to Yale, but there was little in it.

“There’s a skin on the table,” Limp said. It was true. It turned out to be full of watered-down mead, and Sayfoot and Yale each drank and spluttered.

Sayfoot was able to extend his legs before Yale, and he rolled over onto his stomach, gasping and grimacing in pain. Then, he struggled to his knees.

“Help me up,” he said. Halfscuttle went to him, taking a shoulder and lifting him to his feet. He wobbled, trying to steady himself, holding onto Halfscuttle’s belt.

“You,” Sayfoot said, looking at the guard. “Grab my other arm.” The guard stepped forward, but as he did Sayfoot drew a knife from Halfscuttle’s belt and drove it into the guard’s face. The guard screamed and fell back, and Sayfoot fell atop him, stabbing until the guard went still. Topaz looked on in horror, but she did not speak or even vomit, this time.

Sayfoot rolled off the body and pushed himself up on an elbow. He saw Topaz’s face.

“Made us. . . lick the stones. . . Drink piss.”

Topaz looked back down to Yale who was trying to roll from his side onto his belly. Halfscuttle and Limp lifted him up. Yale tried to take a step, but he nearly fell.

“They brought your father and brothers,” Yale said. “ I heard them. They’re here somewhere.”

Yale leaned on Halfscuttle as Limp went down the grates until he heard faint voices. Thankfully, they were each in a separate hole and Limp helped them out one by one, Bronzebucket first and then each of Topaz’s brothers. They could barely speak, their voices hoarse with dryness. The holes were not big enough to stand or lie down, but with only one dwarf inside, they had not suffered as much as Yale and Sayfoot. Bronzebucket and sons could stand, though they clutched at their backs, Bronzebucket especially.

“Topaz!” her father said when he saw her. “How are you here?”

Topaz stared at him. She did not feel the surge of anger she might have expected, but then she felt little at all. She said nothing.

“Is there anyone else in here?” Limp asked, walking up and down the row of grates.

“Not that I know of,” Yale answered.

“Looks like the others are empty.” Limp peered down into the last of the gratings and shook his head.

“The guards told us they were saving us for a demonstration,” Bronzebucket said. Yale was bearing some weight on his own feet by then, and Sayfoot stood without aid, though with a lean and a hunch.

“How are you here?” Yale asked, looking at Topaz. “What’s going on?”

Topaz did not have the energy to explain that.

“Halfscuttle,” she said. “Hold him steady.”

Halfscuttle braced Yale obediently.

She slapped Yale hard. Halfscuttle barely caught him. Limp’s eyebrows rose halfway up his forehead, but he said nothing. Topaz glanced at her father, and he took a step back.

“I deserve that,” Yale said.

“Ay, you do. But you’ve got work to do. You need to make sure our babe lives a long healthy life.”

“But, I thought the babe was not. . . You. . . your triad.”

“That was for the guards, idiot. I was sitting on this.” She pulled the medallion from her pocket, holding up the living steel. “Here,” she held it out to him. “Do you want it? Riches? You were supposed to protect this and me, weren’t you?” She pushed it into his hand. “Do a better job.”

Yale didn’t respond. He slid the medallion into a pocket of his trousers as if he wanted to hide it from sight.

“I’m sorry.”

Topaz ignored him.

“We need to go.”

Halfscuttle helped Yale move to the door, followed by Sayfoot and Bronzebucket and Topaz’s brothers. Limp stepped into the lead in front of Topaz as they re-entered the passage. They moved toward the stair, but as they reached it, Sayfoot stumbled and fell. Limp looked back to see, but even as he did, a King’s Guard stepped through the doorway. Like a surprised animal, he struck with his dagger, biting into Limp’s back. Topaz screamed, but too late. The guard’s armor was smeared and dull, his shield missing and his shield hand hanging useless and burnt, the leather glove seared into his skin. Beneath his mask his eyes were wide.

Limp grunted and fell, but before the guard could recover, Halfscuttle leapt over Limp and bore the guard to the ground. The guard’s yell was cut short by gurgling. His legs kicked, then stilled. Halfscuttle slid a knife out of the guard’s throat.

Topaz and Yale both knelt next to Limp. Blood flowed along the stone as they lifted him. The dagger had pierced his mail and body.

“Limp!” Yale said. “Shit, no. Shit. Limp!”

Limp raised a hand.

“It’s alright, brother. I’ve been waiting. . .”

“What?”

Limp inhaled, but it looked wrong.

“Since King’s Quarry.” He took another ragged breath and as he exhaled he said again: “It’s alright.”

Those were his final words.

“We must take him,” Yale said.

“We can’t,” Topaz answered.

“Why not? What’s going on?” Yale’s eyes looked as white as the dead guard’s.

“Dragons, fire, death,” Halfscuttle murmured.

18

The Second Gate

Topaz had no patience for the gradations of disbelief and shock that Yale and the others experienced when she explained.

“You’ll see it for yourselves,” she said. Limp was still, his eyes staring at the stone above, his blood running in the seams of the pavers beneath. She slid his handaxe from his belt. She’d never wielded a weapon before, but if ever there was a time, it was then. Yale and Sayfoot armed themselves with handaxe and dagger, and Topaz led them up the stairway. They stepped over the body of the guard lying on the threshold at the top of the stairs. They shouldn’t have left him there. No doubt the wounded guard who’d come down the stairs knew to be alert, and he was prepared to kill when he saw Limp. Topaz shook the thought away. This was not the time for regrets or remorse. She didn’t need a guide to return to the South Caverns, and so she led them down the passage to the Lower Way. Limp and Sayfoot could keep nothing like a quick pace. Even her father and brothers lagged. It irritated her, but she forced herself to go slowly.

They arrived at the arched opening to the natural caverns. The smell of grease and oil and smoke and flesh was stronger even than before, or maybe she’d just had a reprieve in the Guardian’s Deep. The freed prisoners were smelling it for the first time, their noses wrinkled. Nothing moved in the caverns that she could see from the charred remains at the entrance to the Chamber of Waters south toward the West Branch. She stepped out toward the Lower Way, but no footsteps followed her. She turned to see Yale and the other prisoners staring toward the entrance to the Chamber of Waters.

“Come on,” she hissed in her loudest whisper. “Before it comes back.”

That spurred them to move again, but when they reached the opening of the West Branch, it was Topaz who stopped cold. There were no more shouts and cries in the West Branch. Instead she saw bodies—charred like the others and still smoking. The dragon had been there, had gone down the West Branch in the time since they’d passed. Was it still down there somewhere?

Thinweave.

Even as the horrible thought struck her, she saw movement only feet away. A head raised up above the level of the stones that paved the edges of the stream channel.

Yale saw it too, and he lurched forward with the axe to get in between the dwarf and Topaz, but the stranger was no warrior. The dwarf ignored them, pulling himself out of the stream channel. He was soaking wet, yet his clothes were of fine weave, and many thin silver chains hung around his neck. Rising, he looked at them with a wild eye and turned to flee. Yale grabbed his arm.

“Where is it!” Yale asked, but the dwarf wrenched his arm free of Yale’s weak grip. Halfscuttle stepped forward and blocked the dwarf’s path with a drawn dagger.

“Run! Before it comes back!” the stranger said.

“Where is it?” Yale asked again.

“Up the Great Stair!”

“Did you see it?”

“I hid beneath the waterfall,” he said. “The folk in the Chamber of Waters. . . They burned.”

“What about the king?” Bronzebucket asked.

“It went into the throne room. I was in the stream when it came out of the West Branch and headed toward the Great Stair. Let me go!”

Yale nodded to Halfscuttle and the dwarf stepped aside. The stranger ran south down the Lower Way, headed for the gates.

Topaz turned and hurried into the West Branch.

“Topaz!” Yale called after her. “We have to get to the gates!”

“My aunt,” she said back.

Yale scrambled after her, and behind him came the others, even Sayfoot.

There were bodies in the market, but some dwarves had emerged out of small side tunnels and passages, heading for the Lower Way and the gates. They carried bags and bundles on their backs and in their arms, fear imprinted on their faces. When they reached Thinweave’s workshop, the door was open.

Topaz rushed inside. There was no one there. She checked the private chamber, but it was empty too. Everything was like it had always been. She had no doubt the tea in the samovar was still warm, but there was no sign of Thinweave.

“I’m sorry,” Yale said as Topaz looked around the room. “We have to go. She must have made it out already.”

Topaz nodded.

“Right,” she said. She followed Yale into the passage. He led them back through the market and toward the Lower Way. They kept in a tight cluster as others fled past them, some alone, some in family groups, carrying what possessions they could manage and giving no heed to anyone else. There was an unusual number of maids and wifs compared to dwarves.

Everything ached, but Yale felt like his balance was returning. The muscles of his lower back and legs trembled. He struggled to grasp the situation, but he could see with his own eyes that something beyond reckoning had occurred—was occurring. Now was not the time to think about Limp—there was nothing that could be done. He had to get Topaz away. He had thought her lost to him, their baby gone, his own life soon to end. Now he led her by the hand along the Lower Way, unable to take the time to let it all make sense. Topaz seemed disoriented since they left her aunt’s workshop, but she followed, so Yale took the lead, heading south. If this dragon creature had gone up the Great Stair toward the Face. . . he shuddered to think of the smiths and artisans he knew there. There was one way in or out of the Face, and that was the stair.

But there was nothing he could do for them. They moved south in a tight cluster, a ragtag group of dwarves clutching weapons and looking over their shoulders. Others fled south past them. He could hear shouts from the Upper Way, and he saw the collapsed bridge. Some dwarves high up in the caverns had to backtrack to get further south. Their cries of confusion rang out from above. Many in the far reaches of the mountain would not have even heard the news. Deep miners could wander up to the caverns in two weeks, expecting nothing. Again, he tried to shake the thoughts from his mind. His priority had her hand in his.

As they came to the South Cavern branch, Topaz tugged against him.

“No,” she said. “Mother is this way.”

Yale paused.

“I’ll go to the hold and get her,” Bronzebucket said. “You get out the gates. We’ll catch up.”

“No,” Topaz said. “She’s not at home. She’s at Limp and Halfscuttle’s.”

“Where’s that?” Bronzebucket asked.

“I’ll go,” Yale said. “I know it. You get them out of the gates.” He did not want to leave Topaz, but it was the only option he could see.

Bronzebucket hesitated. “There’s no time,” Yale said. “Go!” He hurried off into the South Caverns. It would only take him an hour to get Topaz’s mother to the gates. He hoped they had that much time. If the dragon headed south again. . . But at least the others could flee.

Yale burst through the chamber door. He was out of breath, with sweat running down his face, his clothes fouled, his beard wild. Topaz’s mother screamed.

“Come with me!” Yale shouted, reaching out a hand. She didn’t move. He grabbed her arm and pulled her from the chamber. She did not fight him, thankfully, but neither would she run. He tried to urge her to speed, but she pulled back, staring in fear when a cluster of refugees raced past them carrying bundles of possessions toward the gates.

“Please,” Yale said. “Your husband and sons are at the gates waiting.” He didn’t think she believed him, but she followed.

They reached the Lower Way, turning south toward the gates. He did not know if it would be night or day on the surface. He hoped for the cover of night. They should put as many miles between themselves and the mountain as possible before finding somewhere to lay low during the daylight. At last, the Great Plaza came into view, and Yale slowed to a halt.

A vast disorderly crowd of refugees filled the plaza—or what portion of the plaza was not covered by the fall of debris. The tunnel gate was collapsed and buried as if the mountain had caved-in upon it. Piles of stone had tumbled far out into the plaza, and the destruction reached to the cavern roof. He knew it was close to a hundred yards to the cliff and the lake. There was no way to tell if it had all collapsed. Parts of the cavern roof had fractured and looked in danger of falling. The trapped dwarves were yelling, weeping. A few fought each other, fists flailing—over what Yale couldn’t imagine. Others attacked the sloping pile of rubble and rock with whatever they could, a few with tools, others with their bare hands, trying to dig their way out.With so much rock, it could take days just to clear the inner opening, and that with the proper tools. An air of desperation filled the plaza, and the folk looked near frenzy. Panic was setting in. He had seen it once before, on the southern approach to King’s Quarry. He’d never forgotten the buzzing sound and feel of it. His body shook like it hadn’t since that day. He and Limp and Halfscuttle had made it out, but they’d left so many behind. So many.

“Yellowhood!”

Yale saw Topaz. She and the others huddled against the stone wall not far away. He rushed over to them. He was so focused on her that he barely saw Bronzebucket embrace his wife, tears running down their faces. Yale wanted to put his arms around Topaz, but he dared not.

“What power could have done this?” she asked. Yale looked at the collapsed cavern wall. He shook his head. The stone above the gate passage had been cut through with passages and chambers. But that did not explain this. Maybe some of those tunnels still existed, but any entrances were lost in the jumble of stone.

“I don’t know.”

Was the dragon so mighty as that, or had the King’s Guards somehow collapsed the tunnel on purpose to try to keep the dragon out? But the dragon was inside. It had to have collapsed after the dragon entered. Had the dragon shut them in on purpose?

“Dragons,” Halfscuttle muttered. “Dragons and dragons.”

“There’s no way out,” Topaz said. She held one hand on her belly, and with the other she grasped hold of Yale’s wrist. He wasn’t sure she was aware of it, but even that touch made him catch his breath.

“There is,” Yale said. “But I have to break a promise. I have to smuggle you.”

“What?”

He looked around at the chaos. Some folk were already running from the plaza, even as more arrived. There were hundreds of refugees and growing. They had to nearly yell to be heard above the din.

“Follow me,” Yale said, and motioned to the others. They had to get back to the South Caverns. They followed the cavern wall north, but even so they had to weave through other dwarves. Some seemed frozen or stupid, others wept or rushed around in a frenzy. Yale saw a mother clinging to a gilke barely old enough to walk. He stopped.

“Come with us!” he yelled to her. But the wif didn’t listen, didn’t even look up. Yale looked around at others nearby, motioning and shouting. “Come with us! There’s another way out!” But his voice was swallowed in the chaos and those that noticed him looked angry or terrified.

“We have to go!” Bronzebucket shouted. Topaz pulled on Yale’s wrist. He followed, making sure Halfscuttle kept close, but still he shouted.

“Come with us!”

No one did. They left the plaza behind, heading for the South Caverns. Other dwarves streamed past them toward the gates. Someone up the tunnel screamed. Others looked back.

“It’s coming!” someone yelled, and the scream rose and spread south. They heard it arrive in the plaza, and the chaos behind swelled. The rush of refugees to the gates grew into a headlong flight. He looked back and saw folk trying to push back up the Lower Way, out of the plaza, pressing into those just arriving who hadn’t yet grasped the situation.

“Run!” Yale said. But running wasn’t an option. They had to push and dodge and elbow a path. In another two hundred yards, they reached the South Cavern branch. Yale looked north up the Lower Way. He saw nothing, but he could still smell that strange scent on the south-moving air. And then he saw the tunnel come alight in the north, the glow of flames shining on the walls at a bend in the cavern. He heard more screams. Others pressed behind them, fleeing back into the South Caverns, and he lost sight of the Lower Way.

“Hold on to each other!” he shouted, pulling Topaz westward. They had to get into the smaller tunnels and passages that led out of the natural caverns. They formed a chain, Yale leading the way, now, holding Topaz behind him, who held onto Halfscuttle, to Bronzebucket, to Topaz’s mother and then her brothers. Sayfoot came in the rear. And so they kept together in the sloshing flood of panicked dwarves locked beneath the mountain with a dragon. The screaming in the rear intensified but Yale did not pause to look back. He clung to Topaz, dragging her along.

They rushed under the archway of the first tunnel, but Yale did not lead them down the deep stairway where many others were heading. Instead, they followed the tunnel further back toward the old drifts and mines. The further west they went, the quieter it grew, until they were alone again, climbing along uneven drifts dug centuries past to follow natural seams and veins of ore and minerals. The tunnels were rough and twisted and braced with old pine. But Yale had learned their ways decades ago. They had slowed down and released their grips on each other. There was no longer risk of being separated in a crush. He looked back. The only light shone from small fledgling colonies of blue miner’s eye. He thought of the mother with the gilke. Had she made it out?

He couldn’t worry. They had to make it out. It was another half an hour of following the old tunnels before they turned down the familiar dead-end drift. He placed his hands on the stone and pushed. The old door gave way.

“Watch your heads,” he said, and ducked down.

“What is this place?” Bronzebucket asked when he entered the tunnel. “These walls. . .” He ran his hands along the stone.

“An old stream,” Yale said.

“Where does it lead?”

“To the Second Gate.”

“Your smuggler’s route.”

“Ay, yes.”

Leaning up against the stone were the litters they used for sledding ores and spices through the tunnel. Beyond them, a long shelf was inset into the stone. On it were three rucksacks, a row of mining tools in case of cave-ins, and a few spears. Had the Scales not found the tunnel? If they had followed the creek bed to the compost pile, then surely they would have seen it. How much time did the Scales have between their capture and the coming of the dragon? Yale still wasn’t sure of the timeline.

Halfscuttle was already tucking tools into the tool-loops that hung on the back of his rucksack.

“Bronzebucket, you and one of your sons take the other two rucksacks. Take what tools we can.” Bronzebucket and his eldest obeyed. Yale didn’t feel he could carry a rucksack yet. Even the walk through the uneven tunnels had exhausted him. He was struggling to catch his breath, and his heart raced. He picked up a skin from the shelf and took a long drink of weak ale. His muscles trembled.

“What is in these?” Bronzebucket asked.

“Dried rations, some tools, bandages, fishing line, a set of clothes, some silver.”

“Why leave silver here?”

“Limp always kept them ready in case we needed to flee at a moment’s notice.”

“How far is it to the surface?” Sayfoot asked.

“Half a mile.”

The others looked ready, so Yale motioned for them to follow and led westward. The pace was slow, and it was most of an hour when they reached the top of the sharp incline. Yale put his hands against the stone and pushed. The hinges grated, and the air sucked. There was no crack of light. It was night.

“What is that smell?” Topaz asked.

“Manure.”

“What?”

Yale pushed the door the rest of the way open. They had piled the compost high all around, leaving only a narrow gap to move through, and even that path climbed overtop manure. He looked for tracks, but he saw nothing to indicate the Scales had found the entrance.

He stepped outside, then turned and offered Topaz his hand. She hesitated, looking out from within the door. He lowered his hand. Now that the danger was further away, she might not wish to touch him.

“It’s alright. It’s all clear,” he said. Topaz stayed rooted to the stone.

“What is it?” he asked.

“The sky,” she said.

Yale looked up. It was night, and the moon hung over Queen’s West. He wondered what the Ridgewards were doing. There were near a hundred in Queen’s West. Would they try to dig their way into the mountain?

“It’s good,” he told Topaz. “We will be harder to see at night.”

“It’s so big.”

Yale squinted.

“What?”

“The sky.”

“Have you never been on the surface?”

“No.”

“It’s alright. But you have to come.”

“I know,” she said. She took a breath, and with one deliberate step, she brought her head out from under the stone and beneath the night sky. Yale took her hand. She looked so hunched and cowed. He led her through the piles of composting goat manure and along the dry creekbed, the others following behind.

As they trekked along the loam and gravel of the old creek, Sayfoot pressed forward until he reached Yale.

“I’m surprised,” he whispered.

“At what?”

“I would have figured the entrance was further from the meeting. I told them so. I never thought it would be so close.”

“It’s hard to carry all of that.”

Sayfoot shook his head.

“We should make for my boss’ caravan.”

“You think they stayed?”

“Maybe, but we could follow the new road south and reach the human camp at the Nunegik fork.”

“Do you think they’d welcome us?”

Sayfoot looked around.

“We can find out.”

“We should go to Queen’s West,” Bronzebucket said. “Find the Ridgewards.”

“And what are they going to do?” Yale asked.

Bronzebucket didn’t reply.

Yale didn’t feel like abandoning his distrust of the king’s warriors yet. They could always move east to the old colonies, or north toward Round-Hold, but they weren’t equipped for such a journey. But a caravan would have supplies. They could always decide to head elsewhere if the humans had left.

Yale nodded to Sayfoot.

“Lead on.”

19

The Caravan

The moon had set by the time they reached the eaves of the forest to the south, but Sayfoot led without hesitation, striking on a path beneath the pine and spruce. Beneath the fragrant dark pine needles, the night was quiet and calm. The stars glimmered in the sky in the gaps between the trees, and the whole world acted as if peace reigned. But Yale’s mind was back in the mountain. He couldn’t shake the sights of smoking remains and the sound of screaming. Once again, he was fleeing when others were trapped.

They traveled another mile in silence until they came upon a clearing. Within it was a circle of seven wagons. Yale had seen wagons during the war. They were used to carry supplies and equipment. Those had been open-bedded things covered in heavy felt. These were different, wide boxes with rounded roofs all made of wood with wheels stuck to the sides. Ponies stood in a long line near the wagons, tied to a rope that stretched between the trees. Their tales whisked and flicked. One nickered as the dwarves emerged from the path in the trees.

“Is there anyone here?” Sayfoot asked in a voice barely above a whisper. He barely waited for a reply before he called again, a little louder and this time in the human tongue.

“Ho, is that Sayfoot?” a voice replied in dwarvish. A figure stepped from beneath a tree near the ponies and a door in the back of a wagon opened. A massive human stepped down from the wagon. He wore a fur coat, and he held a knife. He yelled something in human, and Sayfoot yelled back as he went forward to meet them. Yale and the others held back, unsure of their reception.

The human looked in their direction, squinting, and then spoke loudly to Sayfoot who responded in the same tongue. Yale couldn’t make out the discussion, but it seemed to grow heated. The human gestured at the wagons with his knife, and then at Yale and company. Sayfoot replied, his own voice rising. The other dwarf stood in silence. The human snapped something angrily in his sibilant speech and pushed Sayfoot. Sayfoot staggered back and fell to one knee. When he rose, he spoke in a softer tone, holding up his palms as if conceding a point.

The burly human turned and spoke to the other dwarf, but in that moment Sayfoot drew a long punch dagger from behind his back and rammed it into the human’s side. The man cried and twisted to the side as he fell. Sayfoot held onto the dagger, wrenching it from the falling man’s torso. The human held onto his own knife, and he shouted and waved it at Sayfoot from the ground, his other hand clutching his side. The second dwarf looked from Sayfoot to the wounded man, then slid an axe from his belt. With a quick blow, he split the man’s skull open. The ponies pulled at their high line, nostrils flaring at the smell of blood.

Topaz flinched and turned away. Sayfoot wiped his blade on the loam and pine needles at his feet and motioned for Yale and the others to come forward.

“What was that about?” Yale asked.

“He wasn’t being cooperative,” Sayfoot said. Sayfoot motioned to the other dwarf. “This is Elmear of Red-Vein. He’s a friend.” He turned back to Elmear. “Why didn’t you leave already?”

“We were waiting to see what happened. The boss and the rest were in the mountain for the king’s hospitality. I think Ringhand wanted to keep them close.”

“I’m surprised Ringhand didn’t throw you in a hole, too.”

“I made myself scarce when I heard they’d caught you.”

“Forget about them now. We’ve got to head south.”

“What’s going on? The news has been. . .”

“There will be time for stories later.”

“I’ll hitch the wagons.”

“Can you drive these?” Yale asked.

Sayfoot nodded.

“Elmear and I can. One of you will have to learn fast. We should take three wagons. We’ll toss everything we don’t need or can’t sell when we get south.”

Sayfoot and Elmear got to work, and Yale and the others waited by the near wagon. Bronzebucket and his sons stared at the still body of the human teamster. Yale touched Topaz on the arm, and she looked over at him.

“I have to ask you a question,” he said. She didn’t answer, but she didn’t say no. “Why did you come for me?”

She paused.

“The babe needs a family to survive. Now more than ever.”

He glanced down at her belly.

“Family?” he asked. “Are we still. . . Could we. . .”

“Don’t ask me now.”

Yale took in her face in the starlight. Even disheveled as she was, she was beautiful, and she was strong. She’d proved that well. If he ever got the chance to ask again. . . He would ask as often as she would let him for the rest of their lives, though he did not deserve it.

“You need to go with Sayfoot,” he said. He glanced over at Halfscuttle. The dwarf stood waiting with uncharacteristic quiet. “You too, Halfscuttle. Stay with Topaz. Look out for her and the babe.” Halfscuttle didn’t respond.

“What do you mean?” Topaz asked.

“I have to go back to the mountain. I’ll catch up if I can.”

“You’re not going back there,” Topaz snapped. “What are you thinking? Didn’t you just hear what I said?”

“She’s right, Yellowhood,” Bronzebucket said. “There’s nothing worth going back for.”

“Nothing?” Yale asked. “Didn’t you see all those folk? There could be thousands left in the South tunnels, and they’ve got no way out. I could get them out. Some at least.”

“We have to think of our babe before them!” Topaz nearly shouted.

“I am! But there are babes and wifs still inside.” He pulled at his beard, exasperated. “Limp, Halfscuttle, and I—we weren’t hording just for us. We were going to bring folk with us. Away from kings and armies!”

And Limp and Halfscuttle had watched without so much as a single grumble as Yale had traded a huge portion of their horde to marry Topaz. They had loved him, his friends, and now Limp was dead. He couldn’t think of that, now. There may be years to think on that later, if he made it out again.

“There’s something worse than a king or an army in that mountain, now,” Topaz said.

“I know. I know. But I have to try.”

“You betrayed me once. Do you think I’ll forgive you if you do it again?”

“It was selfish to marry you. I’m sorry.” He wanted her with all his heart, not in shame as before, but truly. Yet he could never look into her face or the face of their babe if he turned his back on his folk now, when it was in his power to save them.

Sayfoot passed by, leading two ponies by rope halters toward the front of the wagon.

“Sayfoot,” Yale said. “I don’t care what’s happened before now. Take my kin south. I will follow when I can.”

Sayfoot frowned.

“I’m going to lead more out,” Yale said.

“You’re a fool, Yellowhood. But I’ll do it.”

Yale lifted Topaz’s hand to his mouth to kiss it. She pulled her hand back and turned away.

“You’re the jewel of my life,” he said. “I’m sorry.” He’d never deserved her. But if he saw her again, it would not be with the blood of thousands on him. Enough ghosts followed him already. He nodded to Bronzebucket, who stared dumbfounded as Yale strode back toward the path into the pines.

Yale had just reached the Second Gate when he noticed a weight in his pocket. He reached down and felt the medallion of living steel within.

“Shit,” he said. He should have given it to her. It could buy a new life somewhere. He would have to catch up, once he’d saved as many as he could. He would. Looking back toward the forest, he hoped they were already on their way south. He took a breath of the early dawn air, thick with the smell of manure, and plunged back beneath the stone.

The wagons had rolled for at least two miles along the new south road by the time the full dawn came. It was an unpaved track, already rutted by the passage of wagons on the wet ground that spring. It was not an easy ride on the jolting wood. Topaz sat at the front with Sayfoot, for the movement in the back of the wagon made her sick. At least the fresh air on the bench helped calm her stomach. Her mother sat in the closed wagon behind with her father. Her brothers followed in the next wagon. Sayfoot had told her brothers only to pull the reins in case of emergency and to let the ponies follow the other wagons.

“They’re smart beasts,” he’d said. “They’ll take better care of you than you could of them.”

Elmear drove the third wagon at the fore. The tears that had wet Topaz’s cheeks as they pulled away had dried in the early morning air. The sky was turning blue overhead, and she stared at it. She had never seen anything like it. It both dazzled and terrified her, the vastness of that space. She longed for the security of stone around her. It felt like anything could happen beneath that blue emptiness.

Yale. You fool, Yale. She hated that he left her again. She hated that she felt somewhere deep that he was right. She wanted to hate him, and she wanted to love him. And that was the worst of all.

Oh gilna, she thought, instinctively calling the babe gilna and not gilke, despite the odds. This was not the world I hoped for you.

She pulled her eyes from the sky. They carted through pines mixed with birch, tall and lean. The woods were open enough to see for a distance. There was a glimmer of movement to the left, far in the trees. It was a creature, huge and covered in brown fur, but marked on its near shoulder with white. It looked fearsome, and it glanced over at the wagons, walking parallel to their course within the trees. Topaz’s muscles clenched.

“What is that?” Topaz asked, pointing. Sayfoot squinted and followed her point. He stiffened as well.

“Shit,” he said.

“What is it?”

“It’s a Mountain King. Beg it doesn’t come closer.”

“So close to the mountain?” She had heard stories of such bears, far mightier than the small black bears that occasionally wandered into the dwarven valleys. No mountain kings lived within a hundred miles of Ice-Cloak, she’d always heard. The bear matched their course for a time, and then it was gone. Sayfoot craned his neck, around the side of the wagon, scanning the forest for any sign that it still followed. Topaz lifted her eyes up to the sky again, staring with distrust as the wagons trundled slowly southward.

Thank you for reading! Please consider leaving a rating, review, or simply telling a friend about this book. Your kind support helps independent authors like myself reach new readers.

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A. Trae McMaken

About the Author

From the struggles of a dwarven prospector to the adventures of a diminutive squirrel-rider, A. Trae McMaken’s decades-long passion for writing fantasy literature has led him into many worlds and introduced many characters. He lives and works near the shores of Lake Huron, as his flock of sheep munch grass. He has had a varied career as a traveling storyteller and folklorist, a fiddler and singer, but these days he much prefers to stay put and write.

Also By Trae

As of July 2023

The Dwarves of Ice-Cloak

The Cripple King (Vol. 1)

The Mouth of Fire (Vol. 2)

The Second Gate (Vol. 3)

Bones of Stone (Vol. 4)

The After Adventures

After the Wish Dragon

After Endok

Stand-Alone Titles

Tale of the Timberlost: A Novella

Those Who Dwell