Sounds like Cursing
Aturn or two before she went walking on the quays, Idgen Marte found Torvul outside a metal-monger’s shop along a street full of smiths of every description. The air was thick with smoke and the faint burnt scent of hot metal and it rang with hammers, though they slowly petered out as the afternoon wore on.
Inside, the alchemist conversed with a fellow dwarf in the harsh but flowing consonance of their shared language. The other dwarf was a bit taller than Torvul, and had a thick but carefully trimmed soot-black beard covering his face. When she came a few more steps into the shop, the conversation abruptly ceased as both turned to look at her, but Torvul smiled and said to the other dwarf, “She’s a friend, Murnock.”
As Idgen Marte walked to his side, the dwarf said to her, “You won’t mind if we continue in our native tongue—it is a more satisfying language to barter in than what you people use, after all, and besides, I can’t thoroughly defraud the good ironmonger here if I don’t use Dwarfish.”
“I speak the barony tongue too, wanderer,” the other dwarf said, and his tone, Idgen Marte thought, was a bit cold for a man hoping to make a sale. “You’ll defraud me in no tongue at all.”
“The problem for you, Murnock, is that when I outwit a man in a bargain, which is to say when I make a bargain, he doesn’t realize it till his deathbed.”
“Cease your nattering and let’s finish up. Past time for beer and bread.”
“I couldn’t agree more,” Torvul said, his voice suddenly honeyed. “But I couldn’t possibly pay more than three or four silver links per rod of your bar stock.”
“Price is a gold link per, ‘less it’s a lot-price, in which case I can go as low as six silver.”
“I only need two rods and I’d sooner walk out of here less my balls than two gold links for iron like this. Five silver links, not a bent copper-half more.”
“I’ll take no less than eight.”
Torvul snorted and pushed away from the counter, holding his hands up in mock disgust. “Then I’ll find another iron-monger.” He turned and started to walk out of the shop. He was at the door when the other dwarf smashed a fist against his counter and cursed in their native tongue, then barked out, “Six!”
I think he cursed, Idgen Marte thought. It all sounds like cursing.
Torvul pivoted on his heel and smoothly walked back to the counter, already digging in the purse he’d produced from up a sleeve. “I want to pick my own bars,” he said, before pulling free three linked chains of four bright circles of silver and laying them on the counter. Almost instantly, they were swept up by the other dwarf’s hand.
The dwarf grumbled, but he took the money, then lifted up a hinged section of his counter. Idgen Marte quickly followed him through the door behind the counter and out into the larger part of the building where metal was stored in stacks; it was mostly iron, but she saw stacks of white lead, green copper, others she couldn’t identify. Torvul gravitated instantly to a pyramidal stack of thick iron rods, and knelt down, tilting his head towards them and inhaling deeply through his nose. His eyes widened, briefly, but from where Murnock stood, he couldn’t have seen.
Torvul made a show of sorting through them, sniffing around the entire pile, tapping one or two with his fingertip—but Idgen Marte noticed that he went right back to the bottom and carefully separated out the first two he’d sniffed. He picked them up, handed one to Idgen Marte, and the two made for the door. They were almost out when the shopkeeper burst out with another rockslide of Dwarfish. Idgen Marte turned to listen, watching their faces carefully.
Torvul looked pained, his jaw tightening and his eyes narrowing just a moment before he answered. Idgen Marte couldn’t pick out where one word ended and another began, but she could’ve sworn she heard the word Thornhurst tucked into Torvul’s response. Then the dwarf turned and left so quickly she was stuck standing in the doorway with an iron bar in one hand.
When they were ten paces from the storefront, Torvul shook off whatever had bothered him and let out a cackle. “Still got it. Could’ve taken him to three if I wanted to—but the poor benighted bastard has no nose for the metal at all, and half a wagonfull of hungry mouths ‘round him.”
“And you didn’t because?”
Torvul shrugged, and pointed his free hand vaguely skyward. “Don’t want to anger Her Ladyship. I figure I can bargain shrewd, I just can’t rob a man blind anymore.” He sniffed disdainfully, and said, “It’s like deliberately leaving half a vein of ore in the tunnel. Goes against everything I was brought up to believe—there was actually a cult a few hundred years ago, preached that we ought to leave some of everything—ores, gems, where we found it, to appease the rock and the spirits inhabiting it.”
“What happened to it?”
“Nothing good,” Torvul said, darkly. “Now. Where is our man?”
Idgen Marte sighed, shifted the burden of the rod she was carrying, and pointed with a free hand towards the distant towers of the keep. “There.”
Torvul whirled on her. “What? Why did you say nothing?”
“He was summoned. Not arrested. Invited.”
“And he agreed to go?”
“Well, he was asked by a squad of soldiers—looked solid types, too.” She glanced around, and said, “We shouldn’t be talking about this on the street.”
Torvul nodded and quickened his pace, and soon enough they arrived at the inn he’d taken rooms at and unburdened themselves of their cargo. Torvul stroked the edge of one of the rods, and said, “Got traces of other things in it. With some coal and the right fire, I’ll make steel out of this that could string a harp.”
“What’re you planning to make?”
Torvul shrugged. “This n’that. You’ll see. Now—Allystaire went to the Dunes?”
Idgen Marte sat down in one of the chairs the room provided, surprised that it came cushioned. “Aye—he told me to wait till morning. That if we hadn’t heard, we ought to, well…go find him, I s’spose.”
Torvul spat into the unlit fireplace. “He’s a fool.”
“If he had resisted, maybe that squad couldn’t have taken us, but the city’s full of hundreds more soldiers—campaign season is over.”
“Haven’t they farms to go back to? Mills? Fishing boats?”
“Some, surely. Not all.”
“Well—what do we do?”
Idgen Marte shifted uncomfortably on the chair. “Wait till morning?”
Torvul shook his head. “I don’t like it. We don’t know what’s going on there. Could be he’s already dead, or in chains, tortured.”
“And it could be he’s having a bottle of brandy with the Baron and all is well.”
“How much are you willing to bet on that?”
Idgen Marte let out a breath and looked down at the floor, lacing her fingers. She tapped her boot on the floorboard once, twice, then said, “I think if he was dead, we would know it. Yet I hate sitting and waiting.”
“I could try and bluff us in.”
She raised her head and glared at him briefly. “Are Baronial Seats accustomed to allowing dwarfish peddlers in?”
“Point taken,” Torvul agreed, with an upraised index finger. “Nightfall?”
Idgen Marte stood up suddenly and wrapped a hand around the hilt of her sword. “I don’t know. I don’t know and I hate this…sitting, waiting, planning, wondering. I’ve never liked commanding, and this is why. I’d rather react than plan—”
“Idgen Marte,” Torvul said, his voice smoothed and calming. “Her Ladyship didn’t choose you for no reason. You’ve been followin’ Allystaire’s lead for months now, and I don’t blame you. He’s an easy man t’follow, and that’s precisely why this Baron is probably scared of him. And you know if you want to get into the keep, there’s no walls that can keep you out. Aye?”
Idgen Marte took a deep breath, her eyes still on her boots, and nodded. “Aye.”
“Good. I don’t think we wait till morning. Nightfall—you get inside, at least.”
“What’ll you do?”
“Doubtlessly something brilliant.”
“Haven’t the faintest idea, have you?”
“Ideas are but a very small part of brilliance,” Torvul said, with a wave of his hand. “And no rescue should go on empty stomachs.” He glared at the fireplace. “Or cold feet. That’s a bit of a Dwarfish saying, really, though it’s not rescue so much as ‘moving gold from one vault to another under threat of robbery,’ but it’s got a similar sense.”
Idgen Marte snorted. “Take your sayings and go get us food and fire.”
Torvul nodded and headed for the door, then paused and turned. “Whatever’s going on, Idgen Marte, we’ll find him. We’ve got too much work left to do. She wouldn’t let it end like this.”
Idgen Marte smiled faintly, but said, “She’s not the only god in the fight, I think.”
Torvul smiled in return. “She’s the only one who’s got us on her side.”