She took it in turns to visit the shops she’d sought out the night before. The herbalists and alchemists were well-stocked, though they lacked for some of the more potent ingredients, or at least claimed to. She did not believe them entirely, but she had little need for such things among the elves. With the woods around, most were like to be found if she decided they could not be done without. The city was too orderly to expect she could simply kill a shopkeep and not become suspect. Whatever the mood of the people, they would come to expect she was the responsible party in nearly any curious deaths.
The smiths and leather shops were not nearly so bright a star in her eye. Poorly forged metal with no care for detail, and where that wasn’t the case the cost was preposterous. Telling of the state of the city that only the broadest ends of the trades could make coin enough to warrant remaining. She’d known another leatherworker in Aostacroí. Talented and reasonable with his wares. It was too far a ride. The gear she’d received seemed to be fit enough for a time, but there was no excuse in being unprepared.
The sign over the last bladesmith was curious as they went. Weapons was all it read. Not fine weapons or some elf’s weapons. Just the word, writ in simple letters. She walked into the store and before she managed to look around, she heard the voice of an old woman.
“Don’t much like Drow.”
She was a haggard thing, wrinkled and half bald. She kept an eye held tightly shut and Aile could not be sure if there was anything behind the lid. The store looked not much better. Only a small room for standing and a counter with nothing on it. There were no blades on display as in all the other shops.
“Don’t much like elves.”
The woman laughed at that. A cackle so rusted with age that she expected the woman to cough from the effort. Aile looked around the walls. They were unadorned.
“Nothin’ to see. Waste of time, you lookin’. You need steel?”
“Not at present.”
“Then git.”
“I have qu—”
“You have nothin’, Drow. Unless you’ve come to buy, stop addin’ stink to my shop. My steel’s for buyin’.”
Aile considered insisting, or lying, but she decided against it, leaving the woman behind and coming back out to the street. She looked up again at the sign. It was old, the carved letters eroded almost flat. She decided to watch the shop. There were stalls selling food near enough, so Aile took her lunch and put herself on a roof across from the woman’s shop. There were plumes of black smoke from the exhausts at the top throughout the day. Even as dark came, she saw no one enter the place. She would not part with gold simply to look over the woman’s work.
As the sky turned black, a pair of guards barked at her to come down from her place atop the roof. She did as they asked and they came to her when she reached the ground.
“What’s it you’re doing on that roof?” A woman, stern-voiced and tense. The man with her looked no less ready to have trouble with an unruly Drow. The truth would suit her now.
“The shop there…” Aile pointed across to the smith’s door. “The woman would not show me her wares. I waited, hoping to stop someone who made a purchase that I might see the quality of her works. I had no ill intent, else I’d have run.”
The woman mulled her words, seeming to find them satisfactory. She looked back at the shop across the way. “Istigh. She’s a mad old bat. Don’t know that she even works the steel anymore.” She looked to the man beside her.
“Aye, she’s mad. Couldn’t say what she does in that old shack. Stories about her, though. Stories mad as she is. I’ve heard half a dozen. She worked steel for the Sisters, she worked steel for the old Treorai, she pulled her tools from the earth with her own hands.” He laughed and the woman did as well. “What’s the odds on she made them all up herself?”
“Good as any,” the woman said, turning her attention back to Aile. “You’re welcome to watch her as you like. Just not from rooftops. Upsets folks.”
Aile nodded without a word.
The guards turned, discussing the old woman as they went. Aile looked at the roof of Istigh’s shop again. The smoke still came. She worked something in that place. The dark would do her no good, and the guards had made note of her now. Though they’d given her no trouble, it would follow soon enough, she expected. There was a way about those things. Staying away from it was the best she could hope to do.
She began a slow walk back to her inn. It felt as though the day had come to no value for her. She had no more than she would in a smaller city. Access to basic herbs, but shopkeeps who were too curious about her need of them and too guarded of the ones that had real value. The whole of the city was too earnest for her liking. They were honest and welcoming and polite and happy. It was a place she did not belong. Worse, if she knew how sorely she
