Steel and Stone

Chapter 3

"Amazing how a bath and clean clothes can improve a man," Kitiara remarked the next day while she and the half-elf inspected the teeming Haven market. "You little resemble the slimy creature I pulled from the quicksand, half-elf. Dauntless barely knew you-once we caught up with him, that is."

Tanis smiled. "The horses are enjoying oats and mash at the livery and could use a day's rest. We have the will-o'-the-wisp's treasure to spend, a sunny day, and time to enjoy it." He inclined his head. "May I buy you breakfast, Kitiara Uth Matar?"

Kitiara assented with an elaborate nod. They'd eaten once, in their room at the Seven Centaurs Inn, but now, at midday, their stomachs rumbled again. "It must be the result of weeks of those infernal elven battle rations," she commented, pausing to admire a vendor's wares-metal trays of fragrant venison sizzling with onions and eggs. "I'll eat anything but more elven quith-pa. Dried fruit, pah!" She was about to order a plate of the fried meat when her gaze was attracted by a display of flaky pastry filled with custard and drizzled with strawberry icing. She halted as if mesmerized. "Oh, the decisions," she murmured happily.

"We'll have a plate of the venison and two of those frosted pastries," Tanis told the vendor as Kitiara vacillated. "Lest you drool all over the man's wares," he told the swordswoman, who took the teasing with good humor.

Conversation took second place to eating for a time as the half-elf and swordswoman strolled down an avenue of the teeming market. Dressed in a short, split skirt of black leather and an overblouse of eggshell-colored linen, Kitiara drew many admiring looks from passersby, which she accepted with insouciance. Tanis, on the other hand, wore a pair of floppy, gathered pants in dark blue, plus a matching cotton shirt, both borrowed from the portly innkeeper at the Seven Centaurs. The shirt rippled with the slender half-elf's movements.

Kitiara eyed him again. "We need to find you new clothes to replace your ruined leathers, half-elf. I'm used to you in Plainsman garb; it suits you better than the dress of an overfed city-dweller."

Taller than Kitiara, Tanis had a better vantage, and in response he slipped a hand through her arm and drew her through the crowd. "I see just the place," he said.

The half-elf stopped before a large wagon, uncovered at the back but with a shell-like contraption over the driver's seat. Kitiara could see from the wagon's design that it took four mules to pull the top-heavy thing. Standing atop the ribbon-festooned vehicle was a hill dwarf with a rust-colored beard that curled down to his belt buckle. He wore homespun dyed forest green, plus brown leather boots scuffed with what was probably decades of use.

Tanis and Kitiara waited while the dwarf finished with a customer, a loud woman who couldn't decide between a pearl-and-platinum hair ornament and a seashell comb. "How old would you say this dwarf is?" Kitiara asked casually.

Tanis considered. "Flint's nearly one hundred and fifty, and this dwarf certainly looks younger than Flint. I'd say this fellow's been around about a century. About ten years older than me."

Kitiara protested, "I'm spending time with someone who was an old man when I was born?"

When Tanis nodded and murmured, "In human years, yes," she snorted.

"Do you care?" he asked.

Kitiara laughed. "No," she admitted. "It's not as though we're going to get married or anything."

The woman finally left with the comb and the hair bauble, and the dwarf who owned the wagon ambled over to Tanis and Kitiara. The vendor remained on the back of the wagon, glaring down at the crowd and picking his way among his wares with delicacy. "What do you want?" he muttered to the half-elf and swordswoman.

Kitiara looked annoyed by the dwarf's brusque-ness, but Tanis, accustomed to Flint's blunt ways, only smiled. Crustiness wasn't exactly uncommon among hill dwarves. "We're looking for clothes for me, and a dagger for the lady," the half-elf said.

The dwarf looked pointedly at Tanis's ill-fitting garb. "Thinking of leaving the traveling minstrel revue, then, are you?"

Kitiara bristled; Tanis put a restraining hand on her arm and signaled her to overlook the jibe. The surest way to annoy hill dwarves-or Flint Fireforge, at least-was to pretend to ignore their griping.

"Do you trade with Plainsmen?" the half-elf asked.

"I trade with everybody," the dwarf said grumpily, "and they all try to take advantage of me. Plainsmen, gnomes, even other dwarves. You'd think 1 was an infernal nabob, the way they try to cheat me."

"I'm looking for a pair of leather breeches and a leather shirt," Tanis interjected.

"With fringe, I suppose," the dwarf complained. "Everybody wants fringe. Damned frippery. What use on Ansalon is fringe, I ask you?"

Tanis smiled gently while Kitiara steamed, her brows knit over smoldering eyes. "Fringe would be fine," Tanis said, "but it's not necessary"-the half-elf paused significantly-"if you don't have it."

The dwarf rose to the bait. " 'Course I have it! What kind o' cheap outfit you think I'm runnin' here, half-elf?"

Kitiara pulled her arm away from the half-elf and pointed at the dwarf. Her voice crackled. "Listen, old dwarf, do you want us to spend our steel elsewhere?"

The dwarf slowly swiveled to glare down at Kitiara from the back of the wagon. His eyes were the same green as his breeches and shirt. "The name's Sonnus Ironmill, not 'old dwarf,' young lady. You the hoyden lookin' for a dagger?"

Looking over Kitiara's head, the dwarf addressed the crowd in general. "A sword ain't enough for this minx; noooo, she needs a dagger, too. How about a mace and pike as well?" He looked down at his fuming customer. "What kind o' folks you hang around with, anyway? Or"-he leaned over and whispered-"do things get a mite touchy at the ladies' quilting parties now and then?"

Tanis bent toward Kitiara. "He's enjoying this," he whispered.

Kitiara looked from Tanis to Sonnus Ironmill and frowned. "I'm looking for a dagger," she finally said. "I lost my old one in some quicksand."

The dwarf did a double take. "Eh? Quicksand?" Then he caught himself and recovered his grousing tone. "You'll want lots of jewels and pearl inlay and the like, no doubt. Damned unnecessary. Decoration can throw off the entire balance of a weapon."

"Listen," she snapped, "do you have a dagger to sell me or not?"

" 'Course I have a dagger!" the dwarf said, stomping over to a trunk, opening it, and tossing a folded bundle of leather at the half-elf. "Got scabbards, too, but I can see by the sheath showing from under that short skirt of yours that you don't need one of those."

Tanis caught the bundle of leather; it was a full suit in the style of the Plainsmen-fawn-soft deerhide the color of polished oak, fringed along the back yoke. Someone had embroidered the hem with beads. "May I try it on in your shack?" the half-elf asked, pointing at the turtlelike contraption at the front of the wagon.

" 'Course. Were you planning to take your clothes off right here in publ… Hey! Did you say 'shack'?" The dwarf pulled up short. As Tanis leaped onto the wagon, the half-elf took the full force of a vile stare from Sonnus Ironmill. Tanis merely shrugged and headed for the dwarf's quarters. The dwarf snatched a tray of daggers, plucked off a nest of silk scarves that had fallen over on the tray, and turned back toward Kitiara. " 'Shack,' he calls it," Ironmill groused under his breath. "Price o' leathers just doubled for that."

As Tanis changed into the garb in the dimness of the cramped interior, he heard a new, piping voice mingle with Sonnus Ironmill's complaining tones.

"Nice daggers, Sonnus! I found a jeweled sword once, which was a lucky thing because the owner showed up when I was trying to figure out who to return it to, and he was really upset that he'd lost it. I knew he was glad I'd found it, even though he was too upset to be glad, really. I guess he'd been plenty worried. I-"

"Get out of here, you wretched kender!" the dwarf shouted. "And if you steal just one more thing from this wagon, I'll… I'll sell you to the minotaurs for goat food!"

"Steal?" The little voice dripped with hurt feelings. "I wouldn't steal, Sonnus. I can't help it that everyone loses things and that I'm lucky enough to f-"

"Enough!" the dwarf boomed. "Out!"

Tanis heard a thump that might have been a kender hitting the side of a wagon. As the half-elf pulled Sonnus Ironmill's shirt over his head, Kitiara's cool voice was the next sound he heard. "How much for this dagger, dwarf?"

The dwarf named a price. Kitiara haggled him down, and they had just struck a deal as Tanis emerged from Ironmill's hut. "I'll take it," he told the dwarf, admiring the fit, "if the price is right."

"Well…" The dwarf stroked his luxuriant beard. "It seems to me that suit may well be the only one of its kind west of Que-Shu, which is where I got it, and didn't it cost me a pretty pile of coins… Its rarity increases its value, I'd think."

"Except no one west of Que-Shu but the half-elf would want it," Kitiara said as she fingered the gathered pouch into which they'd put the coins they'd found at the will-o'-the-wisp's lair. "You're lucky to be getting rid of it, dwarf. Maybe we should look somewhere else, Tanis." Tanis nodded.

Sonnus Ironmill frowned at them both. "Five steel," he pronounced.

"Three," Kitiara and Tanis said at the same time.

"Four."

"Done!"

Kitiara paid Sonnus Ironmill and slipped her new dagger, with its hilt inlaid with tiger's-eyes, into her sheath. As she and Tanis plunged back into the milling crowd, they heard the dwarven vendor greet a customer with, "Well, what do you want?"

Kitiara brushed past a female kender, a waist-high creature with the race's characteristic long brown hair gathered in a topknot. "That's the creature who tried to rob the dwarf," the swordswoman commented to Tanis.

"Rob!" the kender exclaimed. "I never steal. I do have incredible luck finding things. Do you think some people are just born with luck? I do. My sisters and I all have it. But I…" Brown eyes doelike with innocence, she was still chattering when a trio of teenaged boys shoved between Kitiara and the kender. The childlike creature was lost to view, her lilting voice swallowed by the cacophony of the late-morning marketplace.

Tanis and Kitiara slipped among the marketgoers. The din was practically deafening. A seller of tapestries argued with a vendor of leather footwear; each accused the other of letting his wares spill into the other's territory. Dozens of vendors tried to outdo each other in shouting their products' superiority to the crowd.

An illusionist charmed the crowd. A juggler balanced a bottle on his head while twirling flaming batons. A veil-draped seeress offered to look into the future of those with money enough-and gullibility enough-to pay for the service. A gnome sold cymbals and Aeolian harps, flat boxes with strings, played, not by fingers, but by the wind. Two humans, a man and a woman, sat on a grassy hummock overlooking the market, tuning a pair of three-stringed, triangular guitars.

Sellers hawked scarves, perfumes, and fine clothing, all of which Kitiara ignored, and swords, armor, and saddlery, which she stopped to admire.

"I'd like to find something for my brothers," Kitiara said. "A weapon for Caramon-he's athletic, like me. And a set of silk scarves for Raistlin, I think. They'd come in handy for certain magic spells."

"I may pick up a gift for Flint," Tanis rejoined. "His first choice would be ale, I'm sure, but I'm not sure I want to haul a keg of Haven ale from here to Solace."

"Isn't it lunchtime?" Kitiara asked, her attention arrested by the calls of a man stirring a caldron of soup, which scented the air with sage, basil, and bay leaves.

Tanis followed her obligingly to an open bench near the soup vendor. "You guard the seat," he told her. "I'll pay; I've got a few coins."

"We ought to divide up the booty from the will-o'-the-wisp," Kitiara murmured.

Tanis nodded. "After lunch."

He returned a few moments later, bearing a wooden tray upon which sat two steaming bowls of soup and thick slices of white bread sprinkled with toasted sesame seeds. They ate in silence for a while, savoring the chewy bread and peppery soup. Tanis carefully brushed sesame seeds from the beading on his new shirt, which prompted Kitiara to drop her hand to her thigh, where the sheath held-nothing.

"Tanis! My dagger's gone! The kender!"

The half-elf leaped up. So did Kitiara. Then they were off in different directions.

Tanis pushed through the packed lanes as quickly as he could, gazing right and left, but he saw no sign of the brown-eyed kender. He made his way back to Sonnus Ironmill's wagon. The dwarf was perched at the back of the vehicle, his short legs dangling off the back. Studiously ignoring several prospective customers, Ironmill clutched a tankard and munched a sandwich. Tanis smelled fish, garlic, and ale as he drew near and asked about the kender. He had to shout his question three times, each time louder, before the dwarf deigned to look down and reply.

"The last time I saw the thieving sneak, she was headin' that way." Ironmill pointed. "Guard your money pouch, half-elf. Drizzleneff Gatehop's a quick one." He paused, then resumed grumbling. "But Drizzleneff's no worse than most of the scalawags I have to deal with. At least a kender doesn't intend to be a scalawag."

Ironmill looked away; clearly he considered the conversation over. He was obviously startled a moment later when Tanis swung himself up onto the wagon next to Ironmill and stood on tiptoe, scanning the crowd for signs of the kender.

The view wasn't much better from the wagon than it was from the ground. Tents and banners gave the half-elf mere glimpses of what lay beyond the immediate row. Tanis's quick eyes did catch sight of Kitiara, who strode through the marketgoers, shoving and glowering at anyone who got in her way. He found himself hoping, for the kender's sake, that the half-elf caught up with Drizzleneff Gatehop before the swordswoman did.

He didn't get his wish. An outcry at the end of Iron-mill's lane and ripples in the crowd as marketgoers turned to watch the fracas alerted Tanis. He leaped down and shoved through to the middle of the commotion.

Kitiara had her dagger back. In fact, its glittering blade danced near Drizzleneff's neck. Kitiara's left arm was around the creature's chest; her right hand held the blade. "I should end your miserable existence right here, and no one could stop me, kender!" Kitiara shouted. A few of the vendors cheered.

"I was looking for you!" Drizzleneff squawked. "I found your dagger…"

"… in its sheath on my leg, you sneak!"

Drizzleneff Gatehop, breath rasping, stopped to consider Kitiara's words. Then she shrugged and went on. "Well, it did seem to be a dangerous place for you to carry it, if you ask me. What if there were pickpock-" Her sentence ended in a choking sound as Kitiara clamped down tighter with her left arm.

"Listen to me, kender."

Drizzleneff barely nodded. Her face grew pink.

"Never come near me again." Kitiara's voice was almost a whisper. The fascinated passersby had to lean close to catch her words. "Never. Understand?" The kender's eyes grew glassy as she struggled to break free.

Tanis moved to intervene. "Kit?"

Kitiara looked up and winked at the half-elf. Then she spoke again to Drizzleneff. "In fact, I think you should leave Haven-right now. Understand?"

"Kit!" Tanis interrupted. "She can barely breathe!"

Kitiara loosened her hold slightly and moved the dagger away a bit. "Understand?" she repeated.

Drizzleneff Gatehop nodded. 'Tomorrow morning," she croaked. "Right after breakf-"

"Today! This very afternoon."

"But…"

Kitiara waved the dagger. The kender nodded. "Well, okay. I was planning on heading out anyway because…"

The swordswoman released the kender, and Drizzleneff Gatehop, topknot bouncing, vanished into the crowd. The throng dissipated as soon as people realized the entertainment was over.

"Don't you think you were a little rough?" Tanis asked.

"She'll think twice before she steals again."

"No, she won't," the half-elf commented. "Kender don't steal, not from their point of view. They have no fear and no real sense of private property-just the curiosity of a five-year-old."

The swordswoman didn't reply. She was polishing her new dagger with the edge of her shirt.

"How did you meet this Flint Fireforge fellow?" Kitiara asked that evening.

They'd dined at the Seven Centaurs and were sitting in rows of near-empty benches that marked the circumference of the courtyard of the Masked Dragon, one of Haven's largest inns. Before them, minstrels were setting up a low stage. Ignoring the clouds

gathering overhead, servants of the innkeeper lighted torches set into brackets at intervals on the walls. People were just beginning to wander in.

"Flint came to Qualinost when I was a child," Tanis said. "We became friends, and when he left, I did, too. We've been in Solace for years."

It wasn't the whole story, of course. The dwarf, an outsider in the elven kingdom, had befriended the lonely half-elf, had eased him through one scrape after another, and in fact had often seemed to be Tanis's only friend in Qualinost. Later, when Flint decided to leave the Qualinesti city for good, Tanis, nearly full-grown, went with him with few regrets. Unlike the dwarf, however, the half-elf had continued to visit the elven city now and then.

Kitiara seemed disinclined to inquire into details, however. Her attention had turned to a pair of minstrels. The woman, a wispy creature with shoulder-length blonde hair and large blue eyes, positioned herself in the center front of the stage while her companion; an equally slender man with dark hair and a ready smile, set torches in freestanding holders at the right and left front corners of the platform.

The man stepped back and looked critically at the woman. "Light's too dim," he said to her. He moved the torches closer, stepped back again, and approached the stage.

"Better?" she asked.

He nodded and replied, "Perfect. The lighting, and the singer, too." Then he hopped up on the platform and kissed her. The couple's three children, an older girl and her young sister and brother, sat cross-legged on the back of the stage. They groaned as their parents embraced. The couple broke apart and grinned unabashedly at the youngsters.

Kitiara rolled her eyes. "How sweet," she commented acidly.

Tanis realized that this was the same couple that had been rehearsing in the Haven market earlier in the day. Trailed by the children, they disappeared under a wooden arch that must have led to a back room. The next moments saw the five come and go, bearing instruments of every type and laying them gently on the stage. Tanis recognized one as a dulcimer, a stringed instrument played on the lap, popular among ladies of the Qualinesti court. The man came out holding two triangular guitars. There was a clavichord, an oblong box with a keyboard, which the man set up on a stand in front of a bench. The woman placed a cylinder drum at the back of the stage; her husband helped her maneuver a slit drum, made from cutting a narrow opening in a polished, hollow log, next to it. The couple's older daughter set a gong in a stand next to the drums. The couple's younger daughter plopped down and practiced trills on a flute while her brother warbled on a recorder. Tanis watched raptly.

"You're looking at the stage as though you'd like to be up there with them," Kitiara teased, breaking into the half-elf's reverie.

Tanis indicated the family with a jerk of his head. "Music. That's one difference between elves and humans."

When Kitiara raised her eyebrows, the half-elf went on. "In Qualinost, it's assumed that every child will study an instrument. Often, at sunset, elves gather at the Hall of the Sky and hold impromptu concerts."

"So?" Kitiara demanded. "Humans like music, too."

Tanis frowned. "But humans see it as something only musicians do. I don't know many humans who play their own music. They come to places like this."

He gestured. The courtyard was filling up. They'd taken spots on the ends of the benches-Kitiara disliked being trapped in the middle of a crowd-and onlookers kept shoving past them for the few seats remaining.

"What do you play, half-elf?" Kitiara asked.

"Psaltery gittern…"

"Which are what?"

"The psaltery's a type of dulcimer," Tanis explained. "The gittern is like a guitar. I've tried other instruments, but I'm more enthusiastic than I am accomplished. Flint makes me practice outdoors." He looked at Kitiara. "Do you play an instrument, Kit?"

Kitiara's upper lip curved. "The sword's my instrument. But I can make it sing like nothing that pathetic crew can play." She gestured at the stage, where the family was lightly chanting a lilting but apparently endless melody designed to warm up their voices. "And my sword's a lot more effective against hobgoblins."

Kitiara's discourse was interrupted by the woman, who stepped to the front of the platform and welcomed the crowd. Her voice was dusky and low. She looked back at her husband, positioned by the drums and gong, and at her children, ready with flute, recorder, and clavichord. Then she faced the audience again, opened her mouth, and sang,

"There was a fair lady of old Daltigoth,

Was scorned by her lover, alone left to weep…"

Her voice was as rich as spring earth, and the portly man next to Tanis shivered. " 'The Fair Lady of Daltigoth,' " the man said in an undertone. "I love that song."

The crowd settled down to listen. Dusk had given way to evening. Solinari was high in the sky above the courtyard, and Lunitari, the red moon, was beginning to rise. The torches focused attention on the stage, but the half-elf could see spectators leaving through arched doors to the inn's tavern, then returning with foaming mugs of beer. Kitiara had also noticed, he saw. "Would you like some ale?" she asked.

Tanis had barely nodded when the swordswoman was on her feet, moving toward the adjoining tavern. Suddenly her way was blocked by a muscular man with black hair, black eyes, and a set expression. He wore ebony breeches and boots, white shirt, and a scarlet cape, and he stood before Kitiara with an air of self-assurance. "Kitiara Uth Matar!" the man said quietly.

"Caven Mackid." Her tone was chilly. She didn't introduce the man to Tanis, who'd risen silently from the bench and approached the two. A slender teenager with emerald green eyes sidled next to the half-elf, gazing on with interest.

Caven looked neither to the right nor left. "You don't take many straight lines in your travels, woman," he said. "It took me a week to pick up your trail, and more than a month to track you here." Caven seemed to notice Tanis for the first time. "Fortunately," he said to the half-elf, raising his voice, "Kitiara is the kind of woman that people pay heed to as she passes through. As I'm sure you've noticed." Caven looked back at Kitiara. "A suspicious man might think you'd been avoiding him, my love," he said.

Kitiara pulled herself up straight, but she was still came up only to Caven Mackid's shoulder. "I'm still your superior officer, soldier. Watch yourself." Her tone was bantering, but her eyes showed no warmth.

The minstrels' tune continued, but several onlookers, sensing a possibly greater show in the making, gaped instead at Kitiara and Caven.

At Kitiara's words, Caven's hands dropped to his sides, and the friendliness faded from his face. The big man gazed at Kitiara with a strange light in his eyes-anger mixed with something else. Something was afoot that the half-elf wasn't privy to, but he was experienced enough with women to realize that Kitiara at one time had been much more than a commanding officer to this man.

"I believe you have something of mine, Captain Uth Matar," Mackid said silkily. "A money pouch, perhaps? No doubt an oversight on your part; our personal belongings did get a bit mingled there for a while, as I recall."

The slim teen-ager snickered. "I'll say," he said with a leer at Tanis.

"And as I recall," Caven Mackid went on, disregarding the youth, "you left in quite a hurry, my dear-too hasty even to leave a message. Pursued by ogres, no doubt. But I trust you've kept my money safe and have it now."

The teen-aged boy leaned toward Tanis. "Took off while he was out hunting, she did, and nipped most of his savings," he whispered. "If she'd just took off, I don't think he would've minded much. But it was the filching that stuck in Caven's craw."

"Wode!" Caven gently reprimanded the boy. "Good squires keep their mouths shut around strangers."

Behind Kitiara, the minstrels finished the ballad and launched into a reel. The swordswoman finally noticed the half-elf. "Tanis, this is Caven Mackid, one of my subordinates in my last campaign."

Caven smiled in an almost friendly fashion at Tanis, but he addressed his words to Kitiara. "A half-elf, Kitiara? Lowered your standards a bit, haven't you?" His squire snickered again, but the man quelled the outburst with a look. Instead, Caven gazed directly at Kitiara. His next words were an order. "My money. Now."

Off to one side, unnoticed by any of the four, a woman with skin the umber of burnished oak pulled back warily into a shadowed portal. A soft woolen robe, the color of a dove, set off her dark features. Her gaze was direct, her eyes azure around pupils of surprising darkness. Her straight, blue-black hair poured over her shoulders, over the crumpled hood of her robe, and down her back.

"Kitiara Uth Matar," she murmured softly to herself. "And that dark-haired soldier… I know him, too."

Eyes narrow, slim fingers fondling the silk pouches that dangled from her waist, she continued to watch wordlessly from the shadows.