Barb Hendee - Through Stone and Sea

"You protect nothing," he said, and then anger softened into pleading. "There is nothing left to protect. Your family name has faded. It will be lost one way or another."

"To even say so shows you know nothing of me," Sliver answered, "let alone my heart. So how could I accept you?"

Wynn swallowed hard. Hammer-Stag's clan-kin had proposed marriage—and not for the first time.

"Your brothers are long gone," he said, stepping closer and holding out his hand. "They have abandoned you—I have not—and I do know your heart. Take my family's name. Our children will be so honored to have you at our table's head."

For an instant, Wynn thought Sliver might reach for his hand, but the smith backed away.

"I cannot, Carrow … you know I cannot."

His expression turned cold. "Then marry into some lesser family, and keep your name … for what it is worth!"

He strode for the door.

Wynn scrambled down the passage, fumbling with her burdens. She quickly spun, pretending to stroll idly the other way. Carrow stomped past without a glance, and Wynn slowed, watching him fade down the passage.

Poor Sliver. A clan-kin of the great Hammer-Stag was in love with her. Maybe she had feelings for him, but she valued her lost heritage more.

Dwarven matrimony was complicated, leaning heavily on notoriety, honor, and status. If Sliver married into a family lesser than her own, her husband would've taken the Iron-Braid name. But she hadn't done this, and from her state, living in the depths of underside, how could there be a lesser family? Sliver was proud to a fault.

Wynn turned back. With her arms full, she tapped her foot on the door frame.

Sliver raised her head where she stood slumped over the forge. At sight of Wynn, the smith's surprise quickly vanished under ire.

"What now?" she growled.

"Might we share a meal?" Wynn asked, trying to hold up the food.

"Unless you have something to tell me alone … be gone!"

"Is that your mother's wish?" Wynn returned. "Or are you now the matriarch of the Iron-Braids?"

Sliver straightened instantly but faltered in answering.

"Then your mother's welcome stands," Wynn claimed, and stepped in without invitation. "Shall we cook?"

She headed straight for the rear door, not looking at Sliver.

As she passed, the smith snarled, "Where is your tall friend?"

"He had business at the market," Wynn answered.

"My mother is resting."

"Then we'll prepare the food first and wake her when it's ready."

Wynn tried to grip the door latch but couldn't get a hold with all her burdens and her staff.

"Are you going to help?" she asked. "Or should I just kick it until your mother answers?"

Sliver appeared too weary for more argument. "You are persistent … little scribbler."

Wynn shrugged. "I've been called worse."

The smith's gaze slipped to the goods in Wynn's arms. Exhausted by labor or other pressures, or not having gone to the market herself, Sliver grabbed the latch and gave it a wrench. Wynn shouldered the door open, entering the hearth room with Shade.

Preparations proceeded silently as Wynn nosed about. Sliver often had to retrieve or point out whatever Wynn needed. Otherwise, they didn't speak. Sliver prepped the hearth with lumps of raw coal from a battered pail. But while peeling potatoes, Wynn couldn't stand the silence anymore.

"I understand your reasons," she began, "for not accepting Carrow."

Sliver half turned. "You were listening!" she accused.

"You were loud."

The smith turned back to the hearth. "At least this time my mother did not hear."

Soon the coals gave birth to small flames, and Wynn waited, even until the last potato was peeled and cut.

"If one of my brothers married," Sliver whispered, "our lives would have been different … maybe."

Wynn stopped cutting bread. Sliver's tone betrayed how deeply her brothers' chosen paths had affected her. It was surprising that she spoke of this at all. Perhaps Sliver hadn't had anyone to talk to in a long while. This tentative truce wasn't something Wynn wished to shatter.

"How did … Why did High-Tower leave to join the guild?" she asked.

Sliver glanced up in suspicion, but Wynn simply waited.

"He was always strange," Sliver said. "Both of them were. Running off the moment work was done or sometimes before. Father would go looking for them. After the first few times, he always went straight to the temples. In the latter days, it was always the temple of Bedzâ'kenge."

Sliver shook her head with a breathy scoff.

Wynn took up the bread to cut once more. So Ore-Locks must have spent time at that temple as well. But why? Intuition told her it wasn't the right moment yet to speak of him—not until Sliver actually spoke his name.

"And it remained so," Sliver continued, "at least for High-Tower. The shirvêsh told Father that my brothers would not stop asking about our family's history, trying to learn more than what we had from our own ancestors. And High-Tower wrote everything down … like a human." Her voice turned cold. "Then Ore-Locks started leaving for days at a time, showing up at every temple in every settlement of the seatt. Until the day he disappeared altogether …"

Wynn paused with the knife halfway through the loaf. Before she asked about Ore-Locks, she hesitated again. The smith's voice grew quiet.

"Not long after, High Tower told us he would join the order of Bedzâ'kenge. My father tried to show pride, but he was broken, his second son gone. When High-Tower left for your guild, we stopped speaking of him at all. Father passed over soon after, and I was left to tend the smithy."

"How long ago did High-Tower leave?" Wynn asked.

Sliver paused, considering. "Thirty-seven summers."

Wynn accidentally tore the next slice of bread.

She had no idea of the domin's age, but dwarves often lived to two hundred years or a bit more. High-Tower was at least middle-aged, and yet Ore-Locks appeared in his prime.

"My girl?" a thin voice called.

It came from beyond the left curtained doorway at the room's rear, and Sliver rose from tending the fire.

"Here, Mother," she called. "Come have some bread. Supper will follow soon."

The curtain pulled back, and Mother Iron-Braid shuffled out. Upon spotting someone else present, she squinted her old milky eyes.

"Young sage?" she asked, and then her voice turned manic. "Have you reached Ore-Locks?"

Wynn wasn't certain how to answer. Should she admit that she'd spoken with him? Was Sliver ready to hear of a banished brother who might appear this night?

The hearth room's door swung inward, and for an instant, Wynn was relieved by the interruption.

Ore-Locks stood in the doorway.

He still wore only char-gray breeches and a shirt in place of his traditional attire. But the thôrhk of a Stonewalker hung around his neck.

"Mother?" he asked. "Are you all right?"

Then he spotted Wynn.

Time crawled as Chane stood behind a weaver's booth, a quarter of the way around the market from the tunnel to the Stonewalkers' hidden passage. Half of the vendors had closed or packed up their stalls. Once the rest were finished, how long before a constabulary passed by on rounds and spotted him lurking about?

Chane tensed as a flash of white caught his eye.

Around the cavern's back, Duchess Reine and her elf and guards came out of the tunnel. They headed directly across the nearly empty market for the passage to Breach Mainway.

Chane bent down and rounded the market's back wall, keeping out of sight behind scant booths and the tall, painted columns. Once he had obtained a position behind the duchess's group, he pulled up his hood and quietly closed in.

The elf spoke in hushed tones as the group neared the exit, and the duchess paused and turned.