M McNally - The Sable City

Dwarves live longer, if they are able, and Block had proven able so far. He had been there for all of it, even the early days, and the aches of his evenings and the scars on his body did not let him forget how hard it had all been. He knew that the friendly Miilarkian trader to be found today in any port city worth the name was the end of a long story, not the whole of it. Not even half, to tell the truth.

To an extent, the foreigners were right. Miilarkians as a people were warm, and friendly, and yes, fair in their dealings. But fairness, as any Miilarkian will tell you, cuts both ways. Of course it means that right is returned. Honor and justice, fairness demands it. But equally, it means that a wrong left unanswered is not just disagreeable, or unfortunate. It is immoral. For a Miilarkian, a true Miilarkian, to be fair is to be willing to be ruthless. A balance has no scruples. It is true, or it is worthless.

Captain Block knew that the House he had served for two centuries was in mortal jeopardy, and he knew that the dictates of inflexible honor had played their part in bringing the Deskatas to this place. The brink was before them, like a yawning doorway four stories above nothing but solid ground. House Deskata was the part of the Miilarkian story of which Block had become a part, and if their story ended now he supposed his did as well. A cornerstone with nothing built on it is just a rock in a field.

“I do grow melancholic, in my dotage,” Block muttered to the empty room. The oil in the lamp was almost spent, a small flame only left to flicker.

Block had no choice but to set out on Rhianne Deskata’s sad errand, for a man had to jump at the chance he could live with, no matter the risk or the odds. And now he had made the one choice that he did have. Matilda Lanai, she of the sickening fall and the miraculous, silt-spitting, quaking resurrection. It might be a sign at that. The Island girl wasn’t stupid. She knew how to work. And she had it inside her to be ruthless. Block had seen it plain as day.

Perhaps it was the jeweler’s eye of the hoary race of dwarves, or perhaps it was as simple as one true Miilarkian knowing another. The touch of the braid, that told friend from stranger, at the last.

Eighth Month is the middle of autumn, and it often brings storms to Miilark as the prevailing Winds blow from the north and northwest. The days are clouded and they reflect a somber time, for as the Islands mark the year according to the Norothian Calendar the month is beholden to the Eighth of the Nine Gods of the Norothian Ennead. Grim Ayon, the Destroyer, is also called the Storm King and the Oath-Breaker among other things, and He is no one’s particular favorite in the Islands.

But Matilda Lanai was not in Miilark. She was standing not by a sea of saltwater, but in the midst of one made of elbow-high grass. And despite wearing riding boots, woolen knee pants under wide cloth trousers, neck shirt, sweater, vest, jerkin, and a night-black half cloak with a hood, she was for the first time in her life, cold. Not extra-blanket-for-the-bed cold, not one-more-cup-of-tea cold, just cold. Tilda was learning that here, far beyond either the sight or smell of the ocean, autumn was a different animal.

It was not, however, the animal foremost in her mind at the moment.

While from horizon to horizon the steppe seemed one vast sea of dirty blonde grass with only sparse copses of scraggly trees doing for islands, it was in fact crisscrossed by ancient hoof-worn paths, numberless and impossible to map in their multitude and complexity. You had to be standing on one and looking straight down it to even know it was there. Tilda presently was, and so was the horse. They were looking at each other.

The horse was not of a kind with the rangy calicoes typical to the Codian province of Orstaf, with their prancing hooves, tossing manes, and a sprightly gait that Tilda’s hindquarters had become sorely familiar with over the last three weeks. Rather, the animal standing athwart the path a stone’s throw in front of her was a towering white charger. The horse looked as though it should have a knight on its back in full armor, despite being at this moment unsaddled and wearing no tack nor harness apart from a single strap of some kind back by its haunches. It stood as still as a boulder, facing Tilda at a quarter turn so that only one baleful eye watched her slow, careful approach. She hoped its focus was on the one spot of bright color in the otherwise cloud-gray and faded-blonde landscape: The bright red apple she held forward in one gloved hand.

“ Bol aloha, ma ut po’tsa gros,” Tilda said in her sweetest voice. She saw the horse’s ears twitch and had the ridiculous thought that the animal probably did not speak the Trade Tongue. She switched to Codian, which had been her main language of study back in school, and her primary mode of communication for the last two months on Noroth.

“Hello there, you big handsome fellow. My, but you’re a pretty critter, aren’t you? How the lady mares must swoon when you prance by, no?”

Careful footfalls had brought Tilda to within a few yards of the horse, which abruptly chuffed out a hard breath from its nostrils before lowering them closer to the packed-dirt ground. Tilda faltered and stopped creeping.

“Prance is the wrong word, I’m sure. You no doubt strut, in only the most masculine fashion.”

Tilda fought the urge to flash a smile, for she knew that if you grinned at monkeys, they took umbrage. She was unsure if the same was true of horses, but was not about to walk all the way back to ask the Captain. She settled on a tight-lipped grin and tried not to blink so much, which of course made her blink more.

“Now, all I want is to give you this juicy apple here, so there is no need for one of us to take a bite out of the other, honim da?”

Thinking that leather gloves had not been the way to go, as she edged nearer Tilda slowly brought her hands together and with small movements of unconscious nimbleness pulled both gloves off, one finger at a time, without dropping the apple. She stuck the gloves in her belt and held the apple further forward, all while still babbling like a brook running with honey.

“You see the short fellow, yonder? A bit wider than the pony he is on? That is my boss, you see. Sort of the head of my herd. He is a very important man, he was on the boat, you know. And anyway I would rather not look like a complete idiot in front of him if it can be helped. So if you could forgo kicking my head off my shoulders, or trampling me into the turf, I would consider it both a favor and a service.”

The horse raised its head, and its nostrils twitched.

“That’s right, everybody loves an apple. Back home they are yellow but these are good, too. A little tart for me, but I am not complaining. Truly.”

Tilda was close enough to be struck by just how big the horse really was. She would need a step ladder or a running start to get on its back, not that she had any intention of doing so. The beast raised its massive head and looked directly at her, though with only one eye as it still held the right side of its body away at a quarter turn. Tilda took a breath and stretched forward, smiling her closed-mouth smile that was more of a wince, and putting the apple right under the horse’s nose.

“Also, I am going to need all of those fingers back.”

The horse craned its neck forward a last bit, and plucked the apple out of Tilda’s hand with the merest flick of a raspy tongue. She exhaled.

“Thank you, Nine Gods. And the Wind and the Sea and the Stars besides.”

The horse crunched the apple, and Tilda risked raising her empty hand to scratch its forelock with her close-cut nails. She leaned to her left, and at last looked down the horse’s right flank which it had thus far held away from her. Her wince became sharper, and her dark brown eyes softened.