David Chandler - A thief in the night

“Of course, of course,” Cythera said, her voice warm with soothing tones. “Forgive me. I actually meant to inquire how it is that you speak our language, the tongue of Skrae?”

The elf looked deeply confused. Judging by the way his brow beetled and his eyes narrowed, it was a common expression for him to wear. “I don’t speak Skraeling. I speak the tongue of the ancestors.”

“Ah, well,” Malden said, “that explains everything.” He made a face at Cythera, crossing his eyes and sticking his tongue out of one side of his mouth. She almost giggled in response. She had to raise one hand to her mouth to stifle it.

In the process she dropped one of Slag’s ankles. The dwarf stirred in Malden’s arms. One of his eyes opened a crack. “Lad? Am I dead?” he asked.

“I got your antidote, old man,” Malden told him.

“Ah,” Slag said, his chin drifting up and down with the rhythm of Malden’s footsteps. “And then… the elves…”

“They’ve taken us captive. But they have orders not to kill us. We don’t know why that is.”

“Well,” the dwarf slurred, a sleepy smile playing around his mouth, “that’s easy. They haven’t killed us yet because… because …”

“Because?” Cythera asked.

“… because they’ll want to torture us first. That’s an ancient elfin custom.”

“I’m Balint, by the way,” the female dwarf announced when the two warriors had accepted that their demon had gotten away.

“Well met, milady,” Croy said, bowing low. “I am Sir Croy, a knight of Skrae, and this-” He turned to indicate Morget, but the barbarian was halfway across the room, pouncing on something. Croy thought he must have found one of the demon’s animate pieces, but when Morget stood up with a nasty grin, he held something small and wriggling and humanoid in his clenched hand.

“Got you!” the barbarian announced. “Croy, look what I found!”

“That would be mine,” Balint said, sounding annoyed.

Croy shook his head. “It’s all right,” he told Morget.

“Some kind of cave imp! It was spying on us!”

Croy smiled as politely as he could. “It’s just a knocker,” he explained. “The dwarves use them to scout their tunnels.”

The barbarian stared at the blue-haired thing he clutched. It was tapping frenziedly at his forearm with its long fingers.

“You can put it down now,” Croy said.

Morget scowled, but he dropped the thing. It came running over to Balint and hid behind her legs. Croy bent low to pat it on the head, but it snapped at his fingers with its nasty teeth.

“Does it have a name?” he asked.

Balint stared at him. “It’s not a pussycat,” she said. “It’s a tool. I don’t name my hammers either.”

“I see.” Croy glanced at the barbarian, who had crouched down and was staring at the knocker with the shrewd eye of a hunter. “Ah, this would be Morget,” he told the dwarf.

“We’ve met before,” Morget said. He turned his head and spat copiously on the ground.

“You… have?” Croy asked.

“Briefly,” Balint concurred. “Though our meeting was approximately as enjoyable as having the skin flayed off my buttocks.”

“Oh,” Croy said.

“At Redweir,” Morget explained, “I sought information on this place, and on my demon. The dwarves there were less than helpful. She is the lieutenant of the dwarven envoy there.”

“Ah,” Croy said, “so you must be of noble blood. Well, milady, I-”

“Fuck nobility,” Balint said, scratching one armpit. “My father was a bricklayer, and my mother a cook. I got my job by being more useful than the dwarf who had it before me.”

“I see. And what do you do for the envoy? See to his appointments, watch his accounts, that sort of thing?”

Balint laughed. “Mostly I go in for surprising his enemies with nasty traps.” She shrugged. “It’s what I’m good at.”

“And… is that what you came here to do?” Croy asked. “Forgive me, but I’ve never heard any dwarf mention a desire to enter the Vincularium before. Those of my experience always seemed willing to leave the past alone. Yet you came here, facing terrible dangers, and-here’s the rub-at exactly the same time as we did. I suspect that might not be a coincidence.”

Balint glared over at Morget, who refused steadfastly to look back. The female dwarf squinted one eye, but when she failed to cause Morget to so much as turn his back on her, she sighed. “In my line of work secrets are a valuable commodity, but I don’t suppose that matters now. All right. When yon friend of yours came to Redweir, we could tell he wasn’t the sort to be turned away by a friendly warning. He was going to come to the Vincularium, open it up and stir up the past, whether we liked it or not. There are some old secrets buried here we didn’t want disturbed, and a lot of history we didn’t like thinking on. The history of this place ain’t something to be proud of.”

“I suppose not,” Croy admitted.

Balint scowled. “I was sent here, tell the truth, to keep an eye on your barbarian. Make sure he didn’t find some things we didn’t want found. The dwarven king had no idea this place was as full of squatters as a goblin’s larder is full of roaches. We didn’t know anything about the squishy bastards, for one thing.”

The knocker climbed up her arm and perched on her shoulder. Balint headed back to the body of her fellow dwarf. Croy saw that much of the corpse had been devoured by the demon despite her efforts. She wasted no time on tears, however, nor did she offer any prayers for the dead dwarf’s soul. Instead she merely picked up his remains and hauled them into one of the nearest houses. “We need to make haste. One of those wet farts will come soon enough-the little ones that got away will come back, or send one of his brothers. There are more of them out there than I have traps to deal with.”

“You’ve seen more of the demons?” Croy asked. “We thought there might only be three. One of which we already slew.”

Balint gave him a nasty look. “Really, now? And how did you manage that?”

Croy looked away. “We… allowed it to swallow me, and then Morget stabbed its… heart.”

“Sounds like a wonderful plan,” she told him. “Here, help me, will you? Or did you just want to watch me break a sweat? Maybe that’s what gets you stiff, sweaty dwarf girls.”

Croy frowned, deeply discomfited by Balint’s words. Yet he knew that she meant no real offense. Dwarves made an art of vulgar oaths and blasphemous curses. Instead of poetry they wrote bawdy farces, and instead of high-minded rhetoric and grand speeches they tended to tell jokes about-well, about bodily functions.

So he did not chide her for unladylike speech, but helped her move the other body-the one with the ruined face-inside the house as well. Then she started to wall off the doorway with paving stones that she pried up from the floor, gluing them in place with paste from a pot affixed to her belt.

“You wish to give them a proper tomb,” Croy said, admiring her quick and thorough work.

“I just don’t want them getting eaten and then shat out by the likes of that thing,” she told him. “Murin and Slurri were layabouts and scum, honestly, and not worth the salt they put in their soup. Just two fools I picked up in Redweir who needed a quick bit of coin. Still, I’d hate to see them end up as luncheon for those snot monsters. Murin knew some jokes even I thought were nasty, and they were both at least adequate at fucking.”

Croy tried not to let her see him blush. Instead he turned to look at Morget, who was busy sharpening his weapons over by the fountain. Apparently the barbarian had no desire to renew his acquaintance with Balint.