the way, and other dangers yet unguessed once we get inside the Vincularium.” He everted the doublet again and showed her the elaborate pattern of brazen rivets that held the plates fast. “Rather beautiful in its way, hmm? But of course, one doesn’t choose armor for how it looks.”
“Perhaps you’ll marry me in it,” she told him, then leaned close to whisper, “of course, you must remove it before the wedding night, or I shall be quite sore the next morning.”
He flushed red and stepped away from her. Picking up a round shield, he held it high between them. “Now, this will stop any blow. Yet it’s light as a buckler, made of basswood in overlapping strips, then faced with boiled leather. Truly exquisite craftsmanship. As you would expect from a dwarf of Snurrin’s reputation.”
The proprietor of the shop bowed low, his head dropping nearly to the level of Croy’s ankles. “Your very presence in my shop only serves to enhance my meager fame, Sir Knight.”
The armorer looked like any other dwarf from Croy’s experience, with corpse-pale skin (dwarves shunned the sun’s rays, being subterranean by natural inclination) and a tangled mass of dark hair sticking up from his scalp. Yet he had never heard a dwarf speak so prettily-or with such couth. Normally they swore oaths and laced their sentences with profanity as much as did sailors. It was the reason Croy patronized Snurrin. Though the dwarf was known to be the most expensive armorer in the Free City, Croy knew he wouldn’t be embarrassed by strong language while picking out his panoply.
“I’ll want to see this brigantine proofed, of course, but I think it will suit,” Croy said. He smiled sheepishly and then let out a little laugh. “Ha, I have made a jest, I think. This suit of armor, you see, will-”
“Fie!” the barbarian shouted, coming out of a fitting room near the back of the shop. He was naked save for a pair of faulds that wouldn’t quite buckle around his waist. For a man as large as Morget that was a lot of nudity. “Have you nothing big enough for a real man? Or do you make armor only for tiny creatures like yourself, shopkeep?”
Croy saw Cythera staring at the barbarian and took her elbow to lead her toward the back of the shop. There was a yard behind the main building, where a number of Snurrin’s human apprentices were cleaning hauberks and coats of plate. To get the blood and sweat and less identifiable substances out of the metal armor, they loaded each piece in a barrel full of sand wetted down with vinegar, then rolled the barrels endlessly back and forth across the yard.
“A rather tedious method of doing one’s laundry,” Cythera observed.
“Armor must be cleansed after every battle or it rusts. I expect you to have little knowledge of what it’s like to wear a rusty hauberk, but I assure you, it’s unpleasant,” Croy told her. He could remember plenty of times in the field when he’d had no chance to keep his mail clean. The chain mail had chafed his skin until it was red and raw. “But this is what I brought you to see.” He led her to a wooden post mounted near the back of the yard. A crosspiece stood at its top and padding wrapped around the two beams of wood, while a hank of straw had been nailed to the top like a wig. It looked to Croy like an emaciated scarecrow. He slipped the brigantine over the wooden form and then took Cythera back to a table near the door where wine and three cups had been provided. There was even an awning to keep the sun off the two of them while they waited. In short order, Morget emerged from the shop, holding a barbute helmet big enough to make soup in. It looked like it might just fit his massive head. It had a sharply pointed nasal and an elaborate aventail of mail to protect the neck.
“This is all he had,” Morget said with a shrug. “I’ve never favored armor anyway. It’s always too heavy and slows a man down.”
Snurrin came out of the door next, a broad-brimmed hat on his head to protect his eyes from the sun. He held a crossbow in his arms that was almost as big as he was. The dwarf did not seem overly taxed, however, with the work of cranking the bow to its full extension, or with loading a heavy quarrel. He mounted the weapon on a forked stand, sighted on the brigantine, and bowed.
“Perhaps you’ll do the honors?” he asked Morget.
The barbarian waved one lazy hand. “You go ahead.”
The dwarf frowned in shame and looked to Croy.
“He can’t do it,” the knight said. “I imagine you don’t know about Skraeling history. We signed a treaty with the dwarven king many centuries ago, back when we finished off the elves. Until that time men and dwarves were only the loosest sort of allies, you see, and after the long and wearying battle we waged against the elves we had no desire to fight another. So the dwarves kept their kingdom, and their borders were guaranteed, but in exchange they had to agree never to harm a human being. Now all dwarves are forbidden by both law and honor to use weapons-even the weapons they build themselves. It’s part of our alliance with them.”
The barbarian looked confused. “But how do they defend themselves, then?”
Croy laughed. “Why would they need to do that? We protect them. In fact, we made it a law that any man who harms a dwarf is subject to being roasted alive. I assure you, the dwarves of this city are the safest of all its citizens. No one would ever rob them or harm a hair on their heads.”
The barbarian squinted at the dwarf. “You agreed to that? Really?”
Snurrin smiled and bowed low again. “I assure you, sir, I was not personally consulted, seeing that I was not to be born for many centuries. But I find the arrangement quite suits my taste. It’s a dangerous world and I am most grateful for the protection the laws offer me.”
Cythera smiled knowingly at the barbarian. “They make it sound so very courtly and noble, don’t they? Don’t let them fool you. There’s a reason the king of Skrae keeps his dwarves so close to his bosom. They’re the only ones who know how to make good steel. If he wants proper weapons and armor, he has no choice but to appease them.”
“That’s interesting,” Morget said. “Quite interesting. Very well, then.” The barbarian stepped up to the mounted crossbow and squeezed the trigger.
With a resonant thwock, the quarrel slammed into the brigantine just to the left of center, high up on the chest. For a moment it stuck out straight from the armored doublet, but then drooped and fell away.
“Oh, well made, well made,” Croy said, jumping up and applauding vigorously. He rushed over to the brigantine and stuck a finger through the hole the quarrel made in the canvas. “The plate beneath is barely dented!” he called back.
“I’ll hammer it out anyway,” Snurrin insisted. “Now, for the shield and yon basta-yon warrior’s helm,” the dwarf said, nearly slipping into vulgarity, if not an outright obscenity.
The shield and the barbute were mounted on the wooden form, and Snurrin began to crank his bow back to tension.
“Croy,” Cythera said, grasping the knight’s hands.
He squeezed her hands in return but his eyes were fixed on the shield. He barely heard her, for he was working out in his head what device he would put on it. As a knight errant, he was not permitted a proper heraldic coat of arms but he could paint it with some element of his family crest. Some way for anyone who saw him holding it to know who he was.
“There’s something I want to tell you,” Cythera went on.
“Hmm?” he asked. “Oh, yes, of course. That’s what your message said. I’m sure we have much to talk about concerning the wedding and such. What is it in particular you wished to discuss, my pet?”
Morget stepped in to fire once more. The crossbow’s string thrummed with pent-up energy waiting to be unleashed. “It’s not about the banns.” Cythera took a deep breath, then said, “I’ve decided I’m going with you.”
The quarrel leapt from the bow and smacked into the shield, this time sticking in place with its deadly point fully penetrating.
“I-I beg your pardon?” Croy asked, turning in his seat.
She had his full attention now. “I’m going with you to the-” She glanced over at the dwarf to make sure he wasn’t listening. “-to the Vincularium. I will accompany you and Morget.”
“I can’t permit that.”
Cythera frowned. She must have known he would say as much. He was sworn to protect helpless women, the aged, and the infirm. There was no way he could take her into a place of danger.
“As your husband-” he began, but she shook her head.
“You are not my master yet,” Cythera said. “Once I sign the banns, you will own me like chattel. That is the law. But until that moment, I make my own decisions.”
“That’s… true,” Croy admitted. He liked this not at all. “Yet I am also leading this expedition, and I will
