dozen dialects. The bardling ached to examine the pile of scrolls one dealer offered, or the harps and lutes hanging in another booth, but he didn’t dare let the rest of his party get too far ahead. He’d never be able to find them again in this crowd!
“It stinks,” Eliathanis muttered.
Well, maybe it did, of animal and cooking oil and too many people of all sorts crowded in together, but overwhelmed by wonder as he was, Kevin hardly minded.
Lydia unerringly led the way to a livery stable, a well-kept place warm with the friendly smells of horses and hay.
“Smells better than the city,” the White Elf muttered.
“Stop complaining.” As Kevin dismounted, the woman asked in an undertone, “Before we start spending: you do have the bribe money with you, don’t you?”
The bardling started to pat the purse Count Volmar had given him, but Lydia caught his hand in an angry grip. “Don’t be a fool! You want to bring every thief in town down on us?”
Stung, he straightened. “I am not a fool.”
But Lydia, bargaining with the stable-keep, ignored him. Only after she was finished, and she and the stolid man had shaken on the deal. did she turn back to Kevin.
“I don’t like the idea of you wandering around without a weapon. The first thing we do, kid, is get you a new sword.” She glanced at the elves. “We’ll be back as soon as we can, okay?”
They nodded. Lydia grinned.
“Come on, Kevin.”
As they stepped back out onto the streets of Westerin, the bardling was overwhelmed—and this time not by wonder—While he’d been up on a horse’s back, he’d been raised up out of the worst of it, but now the crowd surrounded him like a noisy, smelly ocean trying to drown him.
“This way,” Lydia called, and he struggled after her. After the first few “Excuse me’s” and “Pardon me’s,” Kevin gave up and pushed and shoved his way like everybody else, elbows jabbing his ribs and feet tromping on his toes—City life might be exciting, but he guessed it wasn’t so glamorous after all!
“Looks like a likely place,” Lydia noted.
Kevin frowned, puzzled. The only indication that this might be a weaponry shop was the sign creaking back and forth over the door, roughly painted with a weather-worn picture of crossed swords. Ah, of course! With all the different races in Westerin, who knew how many of them could actually read the common tongue —or read at all? But anyone could figure out what a simple picture meant!
He followed Lydia inside, and found himself in a small, crowded room, facing a counter piled with a staggering variety of knives. Behind the counter a curtained doorway presumably led to a storeroom, and axes and swords and the occasional shield—its surface left blank so it could be painted with a customer’s coat-of-arms—covered most of the walls.
“What can I do for ya?” a rough but undeniably female voice asked.
Kevin jumped. He could have sworn the room was empty except for Lydia and himself.
“Down here, boy.”
He looked. The look became a stare.
A woman she most certainly was, but one who barely came to his waist—and who was definitely not of human-kind. Buxom and brawny, she was almost as wide around as she was tall, but Kevin suspected that little of that roundness was fat. Her flat, high-cheekboned face was no longer young, and gray streaked the red braids coiled in an intricate knot on her head, but she looked about as fragile as a boulder.
“I’m Grakka, owner of this place.” The woman stopped with an amused snort. “What’s the matter, boy? Never seen a dwarf before?”
“I... uh ... no. I mean, yes. I mean, one of your race stopped in Bracklin once, my—my village. But he was
“That dwarves only come in one kind: male?” She gave a sharp bark of a laugh. “Where’d ya think we came from? Jumped up outa rocks all full-grown? Bah, humans! Ya come to gawk, boy, or to buy?”
