Ruhm’s face split into that wide grin once more, an expression that was at once endearing and not a little terrifying. “Could you?”
“Our forge isn’t big enough, nor our quenching tank. But with the right equipment and materials, I could do it.”
“One day?”
“One day, Ruhm. Not today, but one day. Now, get out of the doorway. I’ve a sword to deliver.”
Aric’s building was a temporary structure, small but all he could afford, made of wood from the Crescent Forest and clay bricks. As a temporary structure, it didn’t have to abide by the law applying to all permanent buildings, those of sandstone, laterite or granite, decreeing that the exteriors must be completely covered with carved images, mostly scenes from the Shadow King’s life. As a result, the shop was plain, dull. Just as he liked it. It didn’t call attention to itself.
But because it was cramped on the inside, and contained the forge, it was always hot. The smells of half-elf and goliath sweat had permeated every surface, so no matter how clean Aric might be when he walked in, the place still reeked. He had a tiny apartment at the back, just a room really with a space for a kitchen, a cistern, and a mat for sleeping.
He had been to the homes of nobility, many times, but that familiarity didn’t make the contrast between their residences and his own any less stark.
To even reach the estate of Tunsall of Thrace meant cutting through the winding, busy streets of Nibenay—made busier to the eye by all those carvings in the walls, creating the effect that every street was a single undulating surface, part of something alive—to the Cliff side neighborhood. Here, luxurious estates carved from the sheer cliffs rose up behind the city’s north end. Once there, Aric had to enter the Snake Tower. The turret’s outside was carved to resemble a writhing mass of tangled serpents. Its windows were shaped like scales, its opening like a snake’s fanged maw. Aric suppressed a shudder as he walked beneath those fangs and started up the stairs.
The House of Thrace was a well-known noble house in Nibenay, with a huge emporium facing onto Sage’s Square, and a spread of cultivated fields outside the city walls. While some of the city’s nobles had reputations more for their decadent behavior than for honesty or discretion, the House of Thrace did not fall into that category—the members of the family were considered beyond reproach in almost every way.
Each Cliff side estate was at a different level, each with its own skywalk extending from the tower to a front entrance. Aric had been to the Thrace estate once before, to measure Rieve for her sword, so he knew which tower exit to take. He was glad when he broke into open air again—the tower had been almost as hot as his shop, and scented with cloying incense. Presumably the aroma appealed to nobility, but Aric greatly preferred the sweat-stink of his own place.
The skywalk came to an end at a large bone gate. Standing before the gate was a goliath, wearing loose linen trousers of a bright yellow color, a leather cuirass, a yellow, red and black krama on his head, and sandals with straps that went up to his calves. On the center of the cuirass, on a circle of white, was the red silhouette of a jalath’gak, the monstrous wasp that the House of Thrace had adopted as its crest. A fist almost as big as Aric’s head was wrapped around the shaft of a gouge, a long-handled weapon with a grip at the base and another just beneath a sharp-pointed, double-bladed head.
The goliath looked at Aric with unbridled curiosity. Aric didn’t blame him—the guard was in the employ of a wealthy family, and here came an obvious commoner, a half-elf no less, carrying a long bundle wrapped in a threadbare, moth-eaten blanket. The goliath was past his prime, probably retired from the Nibenese army, but he would still be hard to take in a fight.
“I’m expected,” Aric said. Unconsciously, his right hand went to the medallion that hung around his neck, a metal coin with a hole punched through it suspended from a leather thong. He had worn it so long he almost forgot it was there, but when he was anxious he often caught himself toying with it. “Aric, to see Tunsall.”
“Just Aric?”
Aric had never known his human father. His mother had been doubly cast out from her clan—if the fact that she was half-elf hadn’t been crime enough, the fact that she had fraternized with a human male, and had a child with him, had done the trick. As a result, she refused to use any name other than Keyasune. Aric had never even been sure if she’d been given that name or adopted it on her own. At any rate, she had become indignant any time young Aric asked if he shouldn’t have a family name of some sort.
“Just Aric,” he said. “He knows me.”
The goliath raised one bushy eyebrow and regarded Aric with suspicion. But he called through the bone gate, and when someone came, he muttered a brief, unflattering description of Aric, focusing mostly on peaked eyebrows, oddly half-pointed ears, and long scraggly hair the color of burned butter. When whoever was on the far side bustled away, the guard turned back to Aric. He didn’t speak, just gave Aric a frown and eyed him as if he’d like to hurl him from the skywalk.
Aric waited, trying to maintain a casual air. Once he started to whistle tunelessly, but the goliath cleared his throat and Aric stopped. After several minutes, he heard footfalls beyond the bone gate, and then it opened with a rattle and squeal and Tunsall himself appeared.
“Aric, my boy,” he proclaimed, earning him a look of surprise from the guard. “Is it done?”
“It is, sir,” Aric said. He held the bundle up. “Would you like to—”
“Not here, boy, not yet.” That, Aric remembered, was what he liked least about Tunsall—his habit of calling anyone younger than forty years old “boy.” Aric had seen twenty summers; he was no boy. But Tunsall’s coins spent as well as anyone else’s, so he was willing to overlook that small fault. “Inside, inside now.” He turned around and disappeared through the gates again.
Still toting his bundle, Aric followed.
As was customary among the Nibenese nobility, Tunsall of Thrace wore little in the way of clothing, just a sash tied below the waist, the ends dropping to mid-thigh in front. He was an elderly man, fifty or more, and the years had not been kind. Though his eyes were bright, his eyebrows looked like two small, furry gray mammals had settled there and were twitching in their final death spasms. Decades of chewing betel nut had stained his uneven teeth blue. His chest was sunken, his limbs scrawny. He wore his gray hair long and straight in back, cut just above the brow in front. His neck looked like a thin, wrinkled tube with a ball of cheese jammed in it.
But the wealthiest and most powerful citizens of Nibenay didn’t have to wear clothes, and given the heat of the average Athasian day, to many people that was the best reason to aspire to wealth. Aric wore loose linens and a checked krama wrapped around his head, from which his own long hair descended.
Tunsall led him into an inner courtyard with a long table down the center of it. A small fountain, with real water, burbled against one of the walls. The air was cooler here, sheltered from the sun by virtue of having been dug right into the cliff’s face. Torches provided some light, and more streamed in over the walls, from outside. Tunsall smiled and patted the stone tabletop. “Here you go, boy, let’s see it!”
“Yes sir,” Aric said. He set the bundle down, slightly ashamed that his ragged blanket should be seen in such a luxurious setting. Chairs made of wooden frames with stretched animal hides surrounded the table, and a goblet that looked like brass stood at the far end, as if Tunsall had been sipping from it just moments ago.
He unrolled the blanket, revealing the sword. Seeing it shine, Aric’s heart swelled with pride, and he forgot about his shabby blanket and his old clothes. “Here it is.”