He brushed his moustache. ‘Well, to an answer. One way or t’other.’
‘Leoman,’ she began, slowly, as she hopped from rock to rock, ‘promise me one thing, won’t you? Should I fall into the Vitr and get myself burned to ashes.’
‘And what is that, lass?’
‘That you’ll shave off that idiotic moustache.’ She jumped down on to the black sands of the next long stretch of beach. ‘And stop calling me “lass”.’
He thumped down next to her, ran a finger along the moustache, grinning. ‘I’ll have you know the ladies always love it when I-’
‘I don’t want to know!’ she cut in. ‘Thank you.’
‘So you keep sayin’. But I promise you you’ll-’
Kiska had snapped up a hand. She knelt and he joined her.
Tracks in the sands. Unlike any spoor she’d ever seen, but tracks all the same. When they’d yet to see any at all. Some kind of shuffling awkward walk. She pointed to cliffs inland that the beach climbed towards. Leoman nodded. He freed his morningstars to hold them in his hands, the chains gripped to the hafts. Kiska levelled her stave.
They kept to the edge of the rocky headland, slipping inland, keeping an eye on where the beach ended at the cliffs. She saw the dark mouths of a number of caves. She looked at Leoman, pointed. He nodded. Reaching the cliff, she dodged ahead from cover to cover. Behind, a strangled snarl sounded Leoman’s objection. The first opening was narrow and she slipped within, stave held for thrusting. The cramped space was empty. But packed sand floored it, and depressions showed where people, or things, might have sat or lain. A population? Here? Of what nature? A sound raised the hairs on the back of her neck. A high-pitched keening. Leoman’s morningstars, which he could raise to a blurred speed greater than any she had ever seen or heard tell of.
She leapt out of the cave to see the man facing off a crowd of malformed creatures. Daemons, summoned monstrosities, all somehow warped or wounded. They grasped with mangled clawed hands. The faces of some were no more than drooling smears. Most raised limbs far too crippled to be any danger. Leoman held them off, his back to the cave mouth.
‘What do you want?’ she yelled. ‘Speak! Can you understand me?’
Then the ground shook. Kiska tottered, righted herself and peered up. A gigantic creature had joined the crowd. It appeared to have jumped down from the cliff. It straightened to a height greater than that of a Thelomen. Great splayed clawed feet, like those of a bird of prey, dug into the sands. Its broad torso was armoured like that of a river lizard. It brushed aside its smaller kin with wide, blackened, taloned hands. A huge shaggy mane of coarse hair surrounded red blazing eyes and a mouth of misaligned dagger-like teeth.
She sent one quick glance to Leoman, who nodded, and they both leapt backwards into the cave. In the narrow chute of the entrance she took the forefront; there was no room for morningstars.
A shadow occluded the opening. A deep voice of stones grinding rumbled, ‘Who are you, and what do you wish here?’
‘Who are you to attack us!’
‘We did not attack you — you trespass! This is our home.’
‘We didn’t know you lived here …’
‘So. Even when you knew you were the strangers here, you assume
Kiska looked at Leoman, who rolled his eyes. A lecture on manners was the last thing she expected. ‘So … this is a misunderstanding? We can come out?’
‘No. Stay within. We do not want your kind here.’
‘
‘You have proved yourselves hostile. We must protect ourselves. Stay within. We will discuss your fate.’
‘Let us out!’ Kiska stood still, listening, but no one answered. She edged forward a little and saw a solid wall of the deformed creatures blocking the exit. She slumped back inside against a wall, slid down to the sand.
Leoman eased himself down next to her. He glanced about the narrow cave. ‘Damned familiar, yes?’
Arms draped over her knees, she only grunted her agreement.
‘We could fight our way out,’ he mused.
‘That would only confirm their judgement, wouldn’t it?’
‘I suppose so. I wonder how much time we will have …’
She cocked a brow. ‘Oh?’
‘Because we might as well spend it profitably …’
‘
He shrugged expansively. ‘You need to learn to relax when you have no control over a situation. There is nothing you can do, yes? Now I will rub your back.’
She snorted, but fought a rising grin. ‘Leoman … you can rub my back if you promise me
Early in the morning Scholar Ebbin approached the main gates of the Eldra Iron Mongers in the west end of Darujhistan. Under the bored eyes of the door guards he waited as wagons and carts came and went, all stopped and inspected by tablet-wielding clerks, their contents counted, itemized and graded. Ebbin stood waiting. Smoke from the foundries belched overhead. A steady rain of soot added to the layers already blackening the helmets, shoulders and faces of the guards.
After waiting what seemed like half the morning — the guards staring ox-like at him the entire time — Ebbin thrust himself forward into the path of one of these soot-smeared scurrying clerks. ‘I’m here to see the master,’ he blurted out.
Sniggering laughs all around from the youthful clerks. ‘Hear that, Ollie?’ the addressed one said, and he turned his back on Ebbin to examine a wagonload of crates. ‘Here to see the master.’
The fellow Ebbin presumed to be Ollie answered with a mocking laugh. ‘I’ll just summon him then, shall I?’
More laughter answered that. Ebbin pulled a scroll from his shoulder bag. ‘He gave me this.’
The nearest clerk simply continued his tally. Finishing, he swung an exasperated glare to Ebbin. ‘What’s this then? You’d better not be wasting my time.’ He snatched the scroll from Ebbin’s hand and yanked it open, scanned it. He paused, returned to the top to go through it again, more slowly. After finishing the entire letter he raised his eyes to Ebbin; a kind of guarded resentment now filled them. ‘Follow me,’ said.
With the clerk leading, Ebbin wound his way across the busy yards of the ironworks. They crossed rails guiding wooden cars pulled by soot-blackened sickly mules, past great hangars where smoke billowed and sparks showered like glowing rain. They reached a building that looked to have once been a handsome estate house, but now stood almost entirely black beneath countless years of soot. Dead, or nearly dead, vines clung to its facade, some still bearing leaves thick with ash.
Just within the main doors they met some sort of reception secretary, or higher-ranked clerk. ‘Yes?’ the pale fellow asked without so much as glancing up. In answer Ebbin’s guide shoved the letter in front of him. The receptionist’s lips compressed and he took the now soot-smeared vellum between a forefinger and thumb as if it were a dead animal. He gave it a cursory glance, even in the act of tossing it away, then stopped suddenly and slowly flattened it before him. After reading the letter he said, ‘You may go.’ It was not clear to Ebbin whom the man meant. But the young clerk immediately turned on his heel and left without a word. The man blinked up at Ebbin. ‘Follow me.’
The receptionist led him up a wide set of ornate stairs of polished stone. Soot layered the balustrade and the steps were black with ground-in dirt and ash. The man knocked at a set of narrow double doors then pushed them open. Here in a slim but very high-roofed room waited another cadaverous fellow just like this one. The receptionist set the vellum sheet on the man’s desk then returned to the doors. He bowed to Ebbin and made a curt gesture that was somewhat like an invitation to enter. Ebbin did so; the man shut the doors behind him.
The secretary glanced at the letter as he continued writing. The scratching of the quill was quite loud in the upright crypt-like room. ‘You are lucky,’ he said without glancing up. ‘The master is rarely in. If you wait here I will announce you.’
Ebbin hardly trusted himself to speak. A breathless ‘Certainly’ was all he could manage.
