“Wait!” cried the Aghar with uncharacteristic emotion. “You tell me names before you go! I Highbulp Stuggleflump, Lord of Caergoth sewers. These sewers, anyway. What names yours?” He pointed a grimy finger at the mountain dwarf.
“I’m Dram Feldspar,” said the dwarf, with a stiff bow and a formal nod. “Honored to make your acquaintance, Sir Highbulp.”
“Yes! Me a Sir! Call me ‘Sir’!” said the filthy creature, beaming. His eyes narrowed as he glared up at the human, shifting the aim of his finger to the tall swordsman’s chest. “Who is you?”
The man squinted, hesitating for just a moment.
“Jaymes. I am called Jaymes Markham,” he replied. “I, too, am honored to know Sir Highbulp Stuggleflump. Now we must part ways.”
The warrior started to climb up the shaft of the drain pipe, which connected to the street overhead. At the top he pushed a heavy grate to the side, then climbed to his feet and stood, watching impatiently, as the dwarf followed him up the rusty ladder and rolled onto the worn flagstones. They were in a dead-end alley that was so narrow Dram could almost stretch his arms out and touch the buildings on either side of the street.
“This is Firesplasher Lane, huh?” the dwarf noted skeptically.
Still, it did look like a gnome neighborhood, with small wooden doors leading into little stone buildings. Just a stone’s throw away the alley joined a street. Several gnomes passed, glancing at the two unkempt figures, smeared with mud-and worse-from their passage through the wretched sewer
The swordsman strode up to a solid-looking door, only chest-high to the man, and knocked his fist sharply against the panel.
After a beat, an irascible voice squeaked from within, “Go away!”
The warrior repeated the pounding. A few seconds later they heard the same response, this time a higher-pitched squeak. When Jaymes knocked a third time, they heard a burst of noise-like a chair scraping across a stone floor, a jar slamming down hard onto a countertop, and muttered curses and complaints growing in volume as the speaker stomped closer.
The door swung inward, and a chubby gnome, long-bearded and utterly bald on his scalp, stared fiercely up at the man. “Don’t you understand Common? I said, ‘Go away’!”
Jaymes stooped and brushed past him as he squawked. The gnome turned to glare at the warrior as the dwarf, who only had to duck his head slightly, stepped past, following Jaymes.
Despite the low ceiling, the room was quite large, though most of the floor space was given over to an assortment of tables jammed haphazardly together, in some places so closely that even the gnome must have had trouble fitting between them. Near the door was a fireplace and cook stove between a pair of chairs apparently made from salvaged bits of kindling. As crowded as the floor was with tables and counters, likewise each tabletop was covered by a clutter of miscellany: jars, tins, and boxes filled with powders, ointments, liquids, and indistinguishable substances; papers and parchments scrawled with tiny handwriting, or sprawling schematics; burners and boilers busy heating little kettles, or scorching plain-glass vials. A haze of smoke made it hard to see to the far side, and a layer of fine dust covered the floor, tables, walls, and everything else with a black coating.
“Go away!” the gnome demanded once more.
“No!” Dram declared, planting his fists on his hips and meeting the indignant gnome’s eyes with a bristling glower of his own.
The little fellow shrugged, apparently undismayed by the dwarf’s stubbornness. “Then stand back,” he declared, “and cover your ears.” The gnome followed his own instructions as he turned and dashed across the room, shouting. “Ready?”
For the first time they noticed a second gnome, almost invisible behind a large kettle on the far side of the cook stove. This one, a female, replied, “Ready!” She covered her face with the crook of one arm while, with the other hand, she extended the end of a red-hot poker into the kettle.
“What are you-”
Dram was interrupted by a whoomph that drove the breath from his lungs. The blast of pressure was followed immediately by an ear-stunning crack and a great billow of black smoke, shot through with sparks of orange fire. The cloud erupted from the black kettle, quickly filling the room with choking, gagging vapors. Eyes stinging, coughing uncontrollably, Jaymes and the dwarf had no choice but to retreat to the narrow street. They stumbled out, fanning the air, leaning over until they could beathe.
The two gnomes emerged too, though they didn’t seem as discomfited. Indeed, the male seemed satisfied as he nodded and stroked his beard.
“That went well,” he said to his partner.
The female was just as chubby and short as her companion. Perhaps because she had been closer to the experiment, she was still blinking, wiping soot from her face and shaking her head as if to clear her ears.
“Who are they?” she asked, as-apparently for the first time, to judge by the widening of her eyes-she caught sight of the two visitors. “Who are you?” She promptly forgot all about the human and the dwarf, turning back to the other gnome. “Make a note: I think we are still using too much sulfir, but it went pretty well. Still, I wish Pete was here to help.”
“Well, of course, Pete,” said the male gnome. “But he’s not.”
“Look,” Dram interjected. “We are looking for someone you might know. We heard he might have come here.”
“Nope, don’t know you, don’t know anyone who knows you,” said the male, with a firm shake of his head. “Unless his name is Pete.”
“His name is Brillissander Firesplasher,” Jaymes said tersely.
The name provoked a startling reaction. Both gnomes stood at abrupt attention, the male placing his hand over his heart while his comrade let a fat tear roll through the smudge on her cheek.
“So you know him?” Dram probed.
“He was our Pap,” said the male. “He’s dead, though. So if he knew you, he doesn’t know you any more.” He blinked suddenly, as if remembering something. “Go away!” he snapped.
With a roar of exasperation, Jaymes grabbed the gnome’s collar and twisted, lifting the little fellow right off of the ground. The warrior took a similar grip on the second gnome and none too gently hauled them through the door back into the still-smoky room.
“Hey! Ow! Stop!”
Ignoring their strangled protests, not to mention their flailing resistance, Jaymes and Dram firmly plopped the gnomes into a pair of chairs, both of which creaked and swayed. The man knelt so that he could confront the gnomes, leaning close into their faces, scowling.
“Now listen good. Your Pap had something that I want, and I’m not leaving here until I get it. That doesn’t have to take such a long time. Or it might last until tomorrow. That’s up to you.”
“Pap had somethin’ of yours?” snapped the bearded gnome. Abruptly, he sniffled. “Hah! Pap was no thief, and I never laid eyes on you before. How could he have something of yours?”
“Look, let’s be reasonable about this,” Dram said in a bluff attempt at friendliness. “What’s your name? The short version?”
“Pap himself named me,” said the little fellow sentimentally. “He called me Carbonfoundationremnantbasicintermixturefour partstoseven-”
“No, the short version of your name!” spluttered the dwarf.
“That is the short version. The first part of it anyway. You can call me Carbo.”
“All right. Carbo.” Dram turned to the female, his beard splitting into a grimace which he intended as a friendly smile. “And who are you?”
“I’m… well, you can call me Sulfie.”
“All right, Carbo. Sulfie. I’m sorry about your Pap. Let’s start with what happened to him. Tell us.”
“Well, it wasn’t just him. It happened to most all of Dungarden. We were just lucky that day-Pap sent us out to chop stones. Us and our brother, Salty Pete. He was working on the compound.”
“Who? Pap, or Salty Pete?”
“Pap! It was Pap’s compound! Usually we helped him, but that day he sent us out to chop on the coal vein. Said he needed more black rocks, even though the hopper was still half-full. So we were gone when it happened.”