Steel and Stone (13 page)

What will you do now?
When Kai-lid looked up questioningly, the giant owl continued.
Will you go back to Haven to watch this Matar person and the other two?

“I won’t have to.” Kai-lid felt a question quiver in her mind, but no words. In reply, she held up the button. “I can watch them magically.”

Chapter 7
A Gnome and a Jewel

T
ANIS AWAKENED BEFORE DAWN THE NEXT MORNING
to find Kitiara on her knees in the dark, retching into the empty chamber pot. He rolled over in bed and watched her wordlessly.

“Either offer some help or stop staring, half-elf,” Kitiara said. She sat up on the braided rag rug next to the bed. The movement sent her clutching her temples. “By the gods, I ache all over.”

“Too much ale.” Tanis’s lips curved.

“Don’t be a prude. I can drink any man under the table and wake up to fight a hundred hobgoblins the next morning.” She moaned suddenly and leaned over the chamber pot again. Her skin was clammy
and ashen.

Tanis took his time swinging his legs out of bed. “You came in rather late.” He kept his voice deliberately neutral.

Kitiara, still kneeling with her head down, surveyed him with bloodshot eyes. “I thought you were asleep. Anyway, I had to put Caven Mackid off our trail.”

“Oh?”

“Get me a blanket, will you? I’m freezing.”

Tanis didn’t move. “Perhaps you should have worn something to bed,” he said laconically instead.

“And perhaps
you
should—”

“Mmmm?”

Kitiara didn’t finish the sentence. Instead, she crawled over to the bed and, when Tanis shifted aside, hoisted herself back in. “By the chasms of the Abyss, I’ve never felt like this. Maybe I’ve caught something.” She collapsed with a groan, facedown on the feather mattress.

“And maybe you’re getting too old to drink like that.”

“That’s fine advice from someone who’s over ninety.” She reached back, still facedown, and pulled the down comforter up over her head. The bedding muffled her voice. “I spent the time telling Caven all sorts of lies to put him off our track. We can sneak out of town and never see him again. He thinks we’re staying at the Masked Dragon, the gullible idiot.”

“Mmm-hmmm.” Tanis padded over to a chair near the door and pulled on his breeches.

Kitiara rolled over with an effort.

Tanis slipped on his fringed leather shirt.

“Which means …?” She tried to sit up but fell back against the pillow with a mild oath.

Tanis groped under the chair for his moccasins. “Which means I think the results of that faro game may not have been left entirely to chance. Which means I think Captain Kitiara Uth Matar, under certain circumstances, is entirely capable of ‘acquiring’ a man’s savings and disappearing.”

Kitiara changed the subject. “Where are you going, half-elf?”

“To have the kitchen boy bring you some weak tea and something to eat, and to walk about Haven thinking up ways we can earn ten steel to pay back Caven Mackid.”

Shock registered on Kitiara’s features. “Pay him back?”

“One thing I’ve learned in my ninety-odd years,” he said smoothly, “is that it’s a bad idea to leave debts unpaid. They always come back to haunt you.”

“You damned moralist.” Kitiara was smiling, however, her arms crossed against her bare chest.

“Besides,” he continued, “if we repay Mackid, then we’re rid of him for good, and you and I can be on our way to Solace.”

Then he was out the door.

*   *   *   *   *

Stopping in the kitchen on his way out, Tanis found the scullery boy dozing on the hearth. The lad leaped to his feet when the half-elf entered the room. “Kin I help y’, sir?” His sandy blond hair was tousled, his hazel eyes crusty with sleep.

“Have you made tea yet this morning?”

The lad nodded and gestured toward a pot steeping atop the mantel. A slice of bread leaned against the pot. “One. For the missus—the innkeeper’s wife. Herself
is w’ child and can’t start the day w’out her tea and dry toast. And,” he added, as if warming to an old grievance, “it’s gotta be winterberry tea with rosehips and peppermint. Herself says some herbalist told her it’ll help the unborn babe, but I think it’s just ’cause she likes the taste of it and it causes more work for everybody. But to tell the truth, once she drinks it she don’t upchuck no more, so maybe …”

Tanis, visions of Wode dancing in his head, interrupted the lad’s monologue. “Send some of that up to my room, will you? With more toast.”

The boy got busy pouring hot water from a kettle, which was setting on an iron spider placed over the fire, into a second pot, next to the steeping one on the mantel. “Y’ have a lady w’ you, true? One mug or two?”

“Just one. I’m going out.” Tanis handed the boy one of the few coins he had left. “Oh, and one more thing.”

“Eh?”

“Make sure the lady knows the tea is especially good for pregnant women, but don’t tell her that until she’s drunk a good bit.”

“Ah! The lady’s w’ child, then?” The youth looked wise.

“No,” Tanis replied.

The boy grinned. “A joke, then. I see.”

Tanis smiled down at the lad and nodded. “Just make sure you’re standing near the door when you tell her.”

“Ah,” the lad repeated. “A temper?”

The half-elf laughed.

The lad winked. “I’ll be careful.”

*   *   *   *   *

Wode looked on as Tanis paused in the Seven Centaurs’ doorway, filled his lungs with soft morning air, then strode toward the center of town. Wode had been watching the front door of the inn since Caven had trailed Kitiara there after she pretended to enter the Masked Dragon. The mercenary had a pallet behind Maleficent’s stall, back at the livery stable. Wode looked about, momentarily uncertain. Should he follow the half-elf? No, Caven had said Kitiara, not Tanis, was the one to watch, and she had not left the Seven Centaurs. The lad settled back on the bench, pulled Caven’s cloak up around his shoulders, and waited.

*   *   *   *   *

“Great Reorx at the forge!”

Heading down the main street of Haven toward the marketplace, Tanis heard the oath, one of Flint’s favorites, before the half-elf actually saw the creature responsible for the racket. The voice was too high, too nasal to be dwarven. That left one possibility. Early-morning vendors and traders were giving a wide berth to an abandoned stable from which lantern light spilled. Tanis waited. Soon a small explosion cracked, seeming to surprise no one, and a short, round figure, trailed by rolling gears and a great deal of smoke, tumbled end-over-end through the building’s open door. “Hydrodynamics!” cried the figure in midroll.

No one but Tanis moved to help him. Instead, three Haven men ran to put out the small fire that licked a corner of the building. Tanis squatted, which put him on eye level with the figure, and dusted off the gnome. “Are you hurt?” the half-elf asked gently.

The creature, sitting on the sandstone that made up this stretch of Haven road, looked dolefully up at Tanis through violet eyes. Soft white hair, dusted with bits of ash, festooned the gnome’s head and chin and upper lip. His skin was rich brown, his nose lumpy—no doubt the result of earlier experiments—and his ears were rounded. He was dressed in typical mismatched gnome fashion—baggy silk pants in purplish pink, teal-colored linen top, brown leather boots, and a gold scarf shot with silver threads. “Are you hurt?” the half-elf repeated.

“Itmusthavebeenthehydroencephalatorbecausel’d-alreadygoneoverthedrive—” the gnome replied. “Thechaininhibitorandthegearratiowereexactlywhat-mycomputationssaidtheyshouldbeexceptofcoursethe sunhasn’trisenyetandperhapsthere’saluminary-quotienttherethathasn’tbeeninvestigatedyet.… Yes! Aluminary quotient!”

Then the gnome jumped up and, ignoring the half-elf, dashed back into the building, paying no heed to the humans, now numbering nearly a dozen, who were dashing in with buckets of water. The half-elf followed. “Shouldn’t you stay out until the fire’s extinguished?” he asked the gnome. The fellow clambered onto a tall stool placed before a contraption that stretched from wall to wall and from the floor two stories up to the rafters.

The gnome glanced back at the opposite corner. Flames no longer flickered, but smoke streamed from blackened boards that occasionally glowed orange and red. “Perhaps,” the gnome said, “afireinhibitorymechanismwhichlcanseewouldhavetohave—”

Tanis interrupted. “Speak more slowly.”

The gnome looked up from the computations he was already scrawling on a slip of parchment. “Eh?”

“Slowly,” the half-elf repeated.

Light dawned in the gnome’s face. With a visible effort, he interjected a half-breath between every word. “I’m … sorry.… I … forget … I’m … not … among … my fellows.” He inhaled deeply. Obviously it took more energy for him to speak slowly than to blurt out the unending sentences that marked the speech of the gnomes. Gnomes, who could talk and listen at the same time, believed continuous speech by all conversants was more efficient than the balky give-and-take chatting of the other races.

Tanis introduced himself. “What’s your name?” he added, then saw his error too late. “Wait!” “Speaker-SungearsonofBeamcatcherSungearillustriousinventoroftheperiluminohighspeedelevatorand-grandsonof …”

The rest of the name—gnomish names, which included genealogical history stretching back dozens of generations, could go on for hours—was muffled by Tanis’s hand, clapped over the gnome’s mouth. The piping tones trailed off, and the creature glared up at Tanis. Behind them, the last bucket of water extinguished the last of the blaze with a splash and a hiss, and the grumbling fire fighters left.

“What do
humans
call you?” the half-elf asked in the sudden silence, releasing his hand gingerly.

“Speaker … Sungear,” came the reply. “Of the Communications Guild.”

Gnomish workers were divided into various guilds—agricultural, philosophical, education, and many others. “I haven’t heard of the Gnomish Communications Guild,” Tanis observed.

“You will, once I’m through here,” Speaker said, turning back to his project. Speaking slowly seemed to come easier now that the excitement of the fire was
past. “I’m going to form it as soon as I perfect this mechanism.”

Tanis looked up at the contraption, fashioned of gears of all sizes, wire in three colors, and a gigantic horn shaped like a morning glory blossom. The horn’s tip fit into a small box the size of the half-elf’s thumb. “It seems a bit large to call it a mere mechanism,” the half-elf observed.

“Oh, it has a much longer name, of course. It’s actually a …”

“No!” Tanis shouted, just in time. “Mechanism is fine.”

Speaker looked disappointed. But he shrugged and continued adjusting dozens of knobs and toggle switches on the machine. Finally he stood atop the stool to reach one knob, which he called “an adjustatory demarcation facilitator.”

“What does it do?” Tanis finally asked.

“Do?” Speaker repeated. Standing on the stool, his exasperated face was mere inches from Tanis’s. “It facilitates the adjustatory demarcation option. Isn’t it obvious, half-elf?”

Tanis gazed again at the shiny but ash-spotted apparatus. Then he looked back at Speaker Sungear. The gnome sighed heavily and sat down on the stool. “This apparatus will revolutionize life on Ansalon,” the gnome said.

Tanis looked from Speaker to the machine. “Really.”

The gnome nodded vigorously. “It will allow all races to speak to one another
without being anywhere near each other
.”

“Really.” Tanis wondered if Speaker Sungear had received a knock to his noggin when he tumbled through the door.

“Really,” the half-elf reiterated, gazing at the machine.

“Why?” the gnome demanded. “What does it look like it would do?”

Tanis strolled before the contraption. “It looks like its chief purpose is to make noise.” The gnome looked askance. The half-elf reached out to touch a toggle switch, only to bring Speaker Sungear tumbling from his stool in frantic haste.

“This is a carefully adjusted mechanism! Not for
amateurs
to fool with.”