Authors: Vox Day
The inn’s ale wasn’t anything close to what a self-respecting dwarf would consider drinkable, but it wasn’t all that much worse than the equally thin, equally yellow, beer-flavored water that more prosperous breeds of men called ale and drank in loftier establishments. The ale served its purpose, at any rate, in lubricating a situation that could all too easily become difficult, if not downright violent.
“Your health,” Lodi grunted, lifting his flagon and gesturing half-heartedly toward his companion.
“Health,” muttered the man, noisily gulping down a mouthful of the hopswill. “They never said nothing about no dwarf.”
Lodi nodded agreeably and twirled a coin in his fingers. He did it deftly despite their dwarven thickness. “No, they don’t. I give them reason not to.”
“So I guess you knows I got four of your kind.” The man’s eyes narrowed. “Because you thought I wouldn’t have met with you if I knowed…”
“Would you agree to come if you knowed?”
“Maybe. Depends what I thought was in it for me. But I ain’t freeing nobody nohow unless you makes it worth my trouble.”
“You must make great trouble,” Lodi agreed, nodding his head. “To take four dwarves prisoner is no small thing even for a great warrior. How many men did you lost?”
“Didn’t lose none. I bought them off some orcs. Big ugly bastards—mountain orcs, most like. They said they captured them dwarves only a few hours before I run into them down by the river.”
“Any dead?”
“Nah, not that I knows. Orcs say they caught them fishing alongside the Dunbois, so they didn’t get no chance to do no fighting. The black-haired one got hisself banged about a sight, but he’s all right now. I saw him doctored. I treat ’em right, you just ask ’em.”
Lodi nodded, satisfied that the slaver was merely an opportunist, not one who made an object of preying upon Lodi’s people. Dwarven slaves commanded a premium price in certain markets, but it would take an unusually ambitious and greedy man to risk making a habit of attempting to acquire them. The man seated before him possessed no shortage of greed, but he appeared to lack both the ambition and the ability to be a genuine danger to Lodi’s kind.
Coming to a decision, Lodi reached under his belt and withdrew a rough cotton bag about the size of his fist. It clanked as he slammed it down on the table.
“I buy all four,” he said, stroking the thick hair, still short enough to be coarse, that hung down from his chin. It had been nearly a year since he’d been able to start growing his beard again, but it would require at least another decade to return it to its former splendor.
The man’s eyebrows rose, but he didn’t reach for the coins in the sack. “If that’s silver in there, it ain’t enough. And I’m thinking it ain’t gold.”
“Silver, and a fair price,” Lodi said, with a smile that exposed two broken teeth. “And I say you take it, so you take it.”
“I can get fifteen silvers each for them in Amorr. There ain’t even thirty in that there bag!”
“There is twenty-eight. The silver is from Iron Mountain. Pure. As good as forty Imperials.”
The man’s eyes narrowed speculatively, but he shook his head. “I’ll give you that, but even so, forty ain’t sixty. Throw in fifteen more of them dwarf silvers, and I’ll consider it.”
“I didn’t tell you consider it. I tell you take it.”
The big slaver snorted, unimpressed. “Now, why would I do that, dwarf? Ain’t no point in trying to scare me. I knows you ain’t starting nothing in no Man city unless you’re a lot stupider than you looks.”
Lodi shook his head, smiled, and raised his glass to the man.
“You take it because I save you big trouble and maybe a little profit too. I think you have not sold dwarves before. In Amorr, two of the stables pays sixty silvers for just one dwarf, but he must be warrior. They pay fifty times more for true smith, but no smiths leave the Deep. So, they gots to train your dwarves for months or lose them the first week on the sands.”
“How do you know they ain’t warriors?”
“No dwarf warrior is capture by orcs. Never. We say is better to die in battle than cook in the pots. If what you bought was more than bones, you bought no warriors.”
“You said, ‘we.’ You saying you’re a warrior?”
“I am what you see. Maybe ask yourself this question. How come a dwarf ain’t got no beard. And how do a dwarf like me know about the gladiator stables in Amorr?”
The slaver’s eyes narrowed. “You saying you supply them, or you saying you fought there your own self?”
Lodi smiled grimly and leaned forward so that his bulbous nose nearly touched the man’s much narrower one. “I am saying you take the silver in the bag.”
The slaver sat back and swallowed hard. He was not a coward, but neither did he appear to harbor any desire to see if Lodi was bluffing. He stared at Lodi for a long moment, then reached forward and took the leather sack.
“All right, dwarf. They’re yourn.”
“One thing more. If you find yourself any more of my people in the future, you bring them here, and you receive seven silvers for each. Iron Mountain silvers.”
The slaver raised his eyebrows. “Seven silvers a dwarf, no questions asked?”
“No questions,” Lodi confirmed. “But I hear you be taking them yourself, my axe take your head.”
The man grinned sourly.
“I ain’t no fool, dwarf. I sees you’re a serious man. I’ll keep my eyes open. Any interest in other breeds, or you just want dwarves? There’s no shortage of goblins and orcs about, and I even heard tell an elf was brought in about a month ago.”
Lodi’s first reaction was to shrug off the news, but then he reconsidered. The elves would pay well to get one of their own back, enough gold to finance his operations for many months. Especially, he mused, in the unlikely case that the elf was a high one from Elebrion. “No need for goblins and orcs. But you tell me where to find elf, I give you that fifteen silvers you want.”
“So elves are worth more, even to a dwarf?” The slaver laughed. “Done, dwarf. But you’ll pay me when I bring the news. I ain’t helping you fetch nothing. That’s all on you. Meet me here in a week’s time. If there’s an elf about the city, I’ll know by then. Where you want your dwarves?”
“Bring them to the Axe and Pick before nightfall,” Lodi told him, giving him the name of one of the five city inns that catered to a dwarven clientele. He would have liked to leave this horribly bright stinking Man city and return to the underground comforts of Iron Mountain on the morrow, but once he had Arnor Tallsmith’s son and the lad’s three friends safely in hand, he could afford to be patient. A week was a small price to pay for the gold that an elf might bring. “I come here in seven days. If there is news, I pay the silver. If there is none, I pay nothing.”
He rose from the crudely hewn bench and stalked away toward the door, leaving his jar of piss water for the slaver. It was hard to say which of the two he found the less palatable.
• • •
The Merry Widow was moderately less dreadful than Nicolas was expecting, but if it wasn’t an establishment that catered to the gutter, neither was it one that could be expected to accommodate the more esoteric tastes of the sort for which he was searching.
It was located in the southwestern district, surrounded by cheap taverns, one-room offices rented to the nominal professionals who operated outside of the guild structure, and other brothels. It wasn’t in the worst part of the district, but Nicolas had absolutely no expectation that he would find what he was seeking. Still, he had seen longer odds pay off before, and if nothing else, establishing a reputation as an inveterate whore chaser would be useful in providing him with an excuse to ask the sort of questions he needed to ask of nearly anyone.
And if he was honest with himself, it had been more than two months since the last time he’d had a woman. For once, duty and desire were in perfect alignment.
There were five girls lounging about the poorly lit room. One was an alarmingly thin blond girl. There were also three brunettes of varying sizes and a pretty young woman with red hair whose more refined features suggested she might be a noble’s by-blow. He signaled the madam, a thickset woman with large breasts who might have been attractive ten years ago. Her suspicious mien tended to belie the sign outside. A widow she might be, but merry she was not.
“What a captivating collection you have here, madam. Is this the complete set?”
“Aye, my lord,” she replied. His disappointment must have showed in his voice, as she responded a little stiffly. “My girls are young, and they’re clean. Ye’ll have no complaints, of that ye can be sure.”
“I mean no offense, madam. The red-haired one, in particular, is lovely. But I was wondering if you might be keeping anything more exotic on hand for those whose tastes have become, shall we say, a little jaded over time.”
The woman eyed him suspiciously. “Ye won’t be hurting any of my girls, captain. No one got enough coin for that, not even the Bankers Guild. And if ye’re looking for boys, ye’d best go elsewhere. I don’t hold with no abomination.”
Nicolas shook his head. “I fear you misunderstand me, madam. I spoke with a friend earlier, and he happened to suggest that in establishments of a certain refinement, there were occasionally…unusual experiences to be had.”
“Unusual experiences?” The madam’s eyes, set deep in her fleshy face, widened with disbelief. “Ye want to stick it in a gobbo or something?”
Nicolas managed to suppress the laughter that threatened to erupt from him, but it was a close-run thing. He had no doubts that this was not the place for which he was searching. The woman’s vulgar bewilderment was sufficiently convincing testimony, as far as he was concerned.
“No, madam, I most certainly do not wish to befoul anything by sticking it in a goblin, least of all my sword. However, I should like to inquire if your little redhead there might be amenable to a private
tête-à-tête
.”
“Ye don’t have nothing strange in mind?”
“Nothing out of the ordinary, I assure you.” He held up five copper coins.
The madam adroitly relieved him of them.
“All right, then. Ye’ll find that what Dalérie misses in exotics, she makes up for with her enthusiasm.”
“Indeed.”
The girl, responding to an unseen signal from her owner, stepped forward and met Nicolas’s eyes. Her eyes were green and served as a pleasing complement to her hair. She smiled with what appeared to be honest pride that she had been the first girl chosen tonight. That, or she was simply pleased that Nicolas was not a fat old man with rotting teeth.
Nicolas took her slender, unpainted hand and made a mock-bow over it. To his surprise, the wry gesture made the young whore blush.
“
Enchantée, mademoiselle
. Shall we dance?”
• • •
The slaver was already sitting at the same wooden bench as before when Lodi entered the shabby tavern a week later. Except for the fact that he had only one jar of ale instead of two in front of him, he looked as if he might have been sitting there since Lodi had left. No, Lodi saw as he approached the man, the slaver’s grungy vest showed that he had received a bloody nose at some point since their last meeting.
But he had news. Lodi could see it in the avaricious gleam in the slaver’s eyes. Lodi slipped the pouch of the fifteen promised silvers from his pocket and placed it on the table, then sat down facing the man.
“Where?”
The slaver grinned and reached out for the pouch, but drew his hand away when Lodi lifted a finger.
“You tell me first.”
“I heard tell that a man from Orontis called Jericas Servilio caught hisself an elf girl not far from the lands of the tree elves. Sold her to Quadras Aetias.” He leaned back and nodded knowingly, as if he expected Lodi to recognize the names.
“Who is Aetias?”
“You ain’t heard of him? He’s the richest whoremonger in Malkan. Runs at least three brothels that I knows of. Has a couple taverns too. I ain’t never been to one, though—too rich for my blood. All cats is grey in the dark, hey?”
Only if you’re blind as a man. Lodi shrugged. “If you like cats, maybe. You say he have three brothels. Where do he keep the elf?”
“Don’t know. But my guess is the Golden Rose. That’s the swankiest whorehouse in the city. It’s where the bloods and the bankers go. Aetias didn’t pay Servilio no twenty gold bears just to trick her out for coppers in one of his taverns.”
Lodi silently pushed the pouch toward the slaver, who winked at him and scooped it up.
“Looks like I got my price, after all, dwarf. And since I wouldn’t mind collecting if I runs across more of yourn, let me give you a piece of advice. You got what you came here for, right? So leave the elf be. You can threaten folks like me if you like, but a rich man like Quadras Aetias is too big for you to touch. Cross him, and he’ll put a bounty on your head faster’n you can dig yesself a hole.”
Lodi frowned, then held out his hand. The man might be a slaver, but he wasn’t a bad man as such. He’d treated young Tallsmith and his friends well, according to them, and the warning was well-intentioned. It was also beside the point, however, as Lodi already had a rudimentary plan in mind.
“For the advice, I thanks you, Man. Fare you well.”
“Likewise, dwarf. And do me a favor…if Aetias catches you, don’t you be telling him it was me who put you on to him.”
For the first time in their brief acquaintance, the dwarf found himself warming to the man. “I tell no one nothing,” he promised sincerely. “But no fears. No Man can catch a dwarf once he go underground.”
• • •
Nicolas had known more scintillating conversations at sieges than the one in which he now found himself trapped. In fact, he mused, as the merchant Jervais continued to fret about the likelihood that their plans would go awry, there had been sieges he enjoyed more than this dreadful Malkanian party. Hosted by one of the city’s leading importers, the wine was mediocre, the music was off-key, the women were dressed in drab fashions that had been out-of-date for two years in Lutèce, and his companion was tedious in the extreme.