their running dog lackeys, as well,' he added for Fost's benefit. The peephole slammed shut.
As the clang reverberated down the valley, Fost thought Moriana's hair was about to start smouldering at the roots as Synalon's had done when she was angry.
'Why, that horrid upstart, that, that groundling! How dare he take that tone with me!'
'He's got three inches of iron and a foot of anhak between you and him,' pointed out Fost. 'That's how he dares.'
'Small good that protection will do him when I loose my wrath upon him.' She let reins fall and raised her hands.
'No, no, don't start flinging salamanders or deathspells or anything like that,' Fost said quickly, waving his arms in hope of breaking her concentration. 'And why not?' she demanded.
He pointed upward. Forty feet above the poorly kept road two grotesque figures squatted in alcoves set on either side of the gates. Spindly limbed with squinty eyes and oddly spurred elbows and knees, they regarded the travellers over ludicrously attenuated noses and mouths thrust out to form. lipless tubes. 'And what might they be?' She eyed them with distaste.
'Old dwarven caricatures of true men,' he said. 'The mouths go to funnels in a room dug out of the rock. The dwarves keep a pot of lead bubbling by each in case applicants rejected for entry react the way you were about to.' Moriana dropped her hands to her sides.
'We'll have to find lodgings in the Outer Town. It's only a few miles away on the other side of the mountain.' 'But it's getting dark!' 'All the more reason to start now.'
When they got to the Outer Town they got some insight into the nature of the recent developments in the Realm. The moons hung high in the sky when they came around the tip of Northernmost, the mountain cradling the dwarvish citadel of North Keep. Built on a slate beach butting up against the western face of the mountain, the Outer Town was an odd conglomeration of black dwarf masonry, scattered cosmopolitan edifices of Imperial dome and column marble, prim Jorean geometry, pastel stuccoed Estil, and shanty-town. The streets were paved with rubble and indifferently repaired. Though the dwarves ruled the Outer Town, it was primarily a place for the gangly Other Folk to stay while doing business. The dwarves weren't noted for their hospitality, though Fost had hoped they would invite Moriana to stay in their keep because of her royal status. For the most part, the Others entered North Keep solely to strike bargains and were ushered forth with varying degrees of politeness when the deals were done.
A smell of fish and less identifiable refuse hung in the pitted street in front of the inn Fost chose. A faded clapboard sign portrayed a flatfish grinning with drunken goggle-eyed delight.
'The Happy Flounder,' Erimenes read as the pair dismounted and tied reins to a sagging hitchrail. 'I believe they take fancifulness too far in naming these establishments.'
The innkeeper was a young dwarf with a thready beard and a premature bald spot on the top of his head. He was skinny for a dwarf but had the usual protruding eyes. He examined his prospective guests with suspicion. 'What do you want?' he rapped. His prominent nose wrinkled.
'Lodgings for the night, possibly longer,' Fost said hurriedly. Moriana was getting a dangerous glint in her eye. 'But who knows? We may spend some time sightseeing in this quaint and hospitable town of yours.' Sarcasm was lost on the innkeeper, as it was on most dwarves. 'Vouchers?' he demanded, in a tone of bored antagonism. Fost had no idea what the dwarf asked for and told him so.
'Well,' the little man said, folding his arms across his chest and tilting his fringe beard disapprovingly upward. 'I must accommodate you even if you can't pay, unless I want a drubbing from the damned militia, may their barracks roof fall on their pointed heads.' He drummed blunt fingers on the counter and turned to peer through a door leading to a muddy yard in back. 'I suppose there's room for you in the kennels.'
'We haven't any vouchers, whatever they are,' said Moriana, 'but will you accept this as payment for room and meals?' She held up an emerald from the pouch Sternbow had given her.
The innkeeper goggled more than usual. He snatched it away with deft fingers, held it to the dismal light of the guttering taper, scratched it along the table, and finally bit it. 'By the tunnels of Agift,' he murmured. 'I do believe it's real.'
He pulled in a breath that swelled his barrel chest until Fost thought the jerkin would burst. He looked from the emerald to Moriana, and an avid light danced in his immense dwarf eyes. Then the glint faded and he expelled a heartfelt sigh.
'I cannot but tell you that a stone such as this would pay for my finest accommodations for a fortnight – possibly longer, depending on the water of the stone.'
Moriana shrugged it off. The Zr'gsz had been generous paymasters. There were many more where this one came from.
'For however long, then. I doubt we'll stay more than a couple nights at most.'
'I cannot change this with any currency you'd want to have.' Sweat stood out on his high, broad foreheadforehead. It cost him great anguish to tell them this.
'Don't bother.'
He came out from behind the counter, waddled to the door, stuck his head out into the noisome, muggy night. Nothing stirred in the streets except a fat yellow-striped tomcat roving in search of ship's rats on shore leave.
'You're strangers to North Keep,' he accused.
'Not altogether,' said Fost. His fingers played with his sword hilt. The publican's nervousness made him uneasy.
'But you don't know how things have stood in the dwarflands since the revolution, that much is clear.'
'Revolution?'
'Of the proletariat. Since the Worker's Party seized power a year ago, the use of money and barter are outlawed. Outlanders are compelled by law to convert their negotiables into credit vouchers before dealing with dwarves.'
'Who's head of state now?'
'Maanda Samilchut is the Party Chairman.'
Fost frowned but said nothing.
'Normally I'd have to report your presence to the Militia headquarters on Exchange Square – er, pardon me, it's Liberation Plaza now. But, by your leave, I think I might overlook this procedure.' Moriana nodded assent. The innkeeper sighed with relief and mopped his brow with a gray linen kerchief. 'I take it you'd prefer accommodations above ground, gentles?'
When the thick wood door of their second-floor room shut behind the now overly solicitous innkeeper, Fost dropped onto the low bed and broke out laughing.
'What's so funny?' asked Moriana, lowering herself more cautiously onto a bandy-legged stool.
''Maanda Samilchut is Party Chairman,'' he quoted. 'Up till a year ago, North Keep was a republic; the President for Life was Maanda Samilchut. Before that it was a parliamentary democracy, and the Premier was Maanda Samilchut. And just before that, the dwarves had a constitutional monarchy, with, as self-crowned queen, Maanda Samilchut.' He fell back across the bed and rubbed his eyes. 'Need I go on? Dwarves have devilishly long life-spans.'
Sitting as much at ease as he could on a chair built for someone with legs a quarter the length of his, Fost batted idly at the fly circling his head and studied the bust of Chairman Samilchut in its alcove on the wall.
'How much longer will they keep us waiting?' Moriana stopped pacing a groove in the worn stone floor long enough to ask.
'A while longer, I suspect. The folk we're dealing with are bureaucrats as well as dwarves, and both groups tend to have cosmic sense of time.'
Over by the wall the two satchels had been laid side by side so that Erimenes and Ziore could carry on their perpetual squabble in relatively soft voices. Though every now and then a voice rose in a crescendo of indignation, for the most part their quarreling blended in with the incessant murmur of North Keep.
The North Cape Mountains lacked the size of the Mystics or the Ramparts, but they were second to none in ruggedness. Taking the coast road along the western face of North Cape had spared Fost and Moriana from struggling through the sawtoothed range until the road forked inland to the southern gate of North Keep. Northernmost was the tallest mountain in the North Capes, home to that peculiar, industrious, delving, grasping
