The pleasant expression on the standing dwarf’s face did not change. “The fee for merely studying the machines, instead of taking them with us when we leave, is, of course, smaller.” He still held the unadorned short sword loose at his side and made no moves with it, not even the idle gestures that would normally accompany conversation.
The old dwarf made a sign then. He waved the younger one over and indicated that he wanted to stand. The bondsman took one smooth step to his master, and, still not varying that loose, easy grip on his sword, extended his other arm. The legate made a wheezing noise as he pulled himself to his feet. The inelegant effort was painful to watch. He murmured something that reached only the younger dwarf’s ears.
“The legate wishes to begin our inventory of the mote’s machinery,” said the bondsman. “The sun begins to set, and he does not like to sleep above ground.”
The old dwarf produced a pair of silver canes, and began shuffling to the door, not even glancing in Azad’s direction. Azad started to speak, but to his surprise, Shaneerah interrupted him.
“There is a stairway cut out of the ground a few paces to the left. It is the closest,” she said, swinging the door open. “Please wait for me there, and I will take you down to the winch below our quarters. I ask that you not go down alone-the man working the machine will draw on you if I do not accompany you. I will be there in a moment.”
The legate never even slowed but simply hobbled through the door. Azad noted the old man did turn left, even though his bondsman had not offered a translation. The younger dwarf sketched a brief bow to Azad, then swept out the door.
Shaneerah put a hand on his shoulder, and Azad leaned his head over to kiss her weathered fingers. “You mean to kill them in the narrow spaces where the works are housed?” he asked.
His wife squeezed his shoulder, then withdrew her hand. “Oh, my husband,” she said, “did you never face any of the stout folk in the arena? Confine them in close quarters and they become twice as deadly. No, my love, your eye has grown dull if you believe that old man endangered himself coming here. I do not know what the one you called a ‘bondsman’ is, but I know my heart and head tell me he could kill us both with a thought.”
Though Cephas was trained to always think of gladiatorial combat as a show for a paying audience before anything else, at heart he was a warrior-the moves he made that elicited the guttural cheers and savage hisses of the unlawful arena crowds were theatrical because they were the moves he knew best. The nature of the arena floor, with its variation and unexpected threats thrown against the combatants to thrill the bettors in the stands, demanded a fighting style that was almost as much flash as it was edge.
So Cephas knew what a show was. But he had never seen one such as the halflings silently acted out in his cell.
The women were clearly capable fighters. They had the wariness of eye and the grace of movement that the best Cephas ever faced possessed, and they handled their keen weapons with easy familiarity.
But they were also storytellers.
The short-haired halfling rolled her shoulders and bounced across the floor. She untied her short sword’s sheath from her belt and twisted the scabbard through the air, rolling it across the backs of her hands in a move that exactly mimicked the attack of a flail. She gave Cephas a haughty look, threw her shoulders back again, and stretched to her full height before putting her back to the wall opposite Cephas and sliding down to a seated position that mirrored his own.
“I get it,” he said. “You’re me.”
The other woman gave him a curt nod but again indicated that he should be silent. She was making a performance of her own. If the two women were different in stature, Cephas would not have guessed it. Yet the long-haired sister now seemed taller, bulkier, slower. This time, the loosened scabbard was not a fast-spinning flail, but some huge and heavy weapon, wielded with such ease, Cephas realized, because the halfling woman was meant to be some warrior even stronger than he was himself.
The shorter-haired woman suddenly leaped to her feet, then leaped again in an arc that suggested a much greater distance than what she could truly achieve in the cramped space. Cephas felt the cell rock on its suspending chain, and he hoped no one outside would be curious about what caused the motion.
That first leap was familiar to Cephas. It was a diminished version of the flying attack he had made against the omlarcat the day before. Had these women been in the audience?
Then the other halfling-clearly not meant to be a cat but still some gigantic man spinning a polearm or greathammer-struck her sister a solid blow in the chest, knocking the woman to the floor. The hammer danced, and the woman holding it rushed to capitalize on the heavy strike she had just landed. Rise and fall, rise and fall, the hammer blows came down in such quick succession that Cephas could barely follow the moves. The halfling woman meant to be him avoided the strikes by twisting and turning on her back.
Cephas started to speak, but the women anticipated his interruption. Simultaneously, they glared at him, even while they kept up the moves and feints of what made for a fierce gladiatorial game.
His survival in the show-battle they were acting appeared in doubt. The short-haired sister simply stopped fighting, and, in an action conveying surrender, kneeled before her sister. The hammer rose again, but instead of striking a final time, the longer-haired woman gave her sister a friendly chuck on the shoulder. At this signal, the woman portraying him stood, then made a lightning-fast swing with her weapon directly at her sister’s head.
The woman watched, raising no defense, and the flail swung wide. Now it was the short-haired woman who gave her sister a playful cuff. Both women spread their hands, dropped their weapons, and embraced each other.
They turned to Cephas, eyebrows raised.
“If I fight a giant with a hammer,” he said, “he is my friend. We should make a show, as I did with the cat.”
The long-haired woman gave Cephas a broad grin and stepped over to pat him on the head. Even her sister, who was clearly of a grimmer disposition, smiled briefly.
“But why?” Cephas asked, ignoring their praise.
The smiling sister picked her short sword up from where it lay on the floor. She held it straight up above her head in the manner of a triumphant warrior, then angled the tip back and dragged the point across the rafter above her. The noise was soft, but clear-a steady scratch of metal digging into wood, punctuated by a rhythmic tick every time the point passed through one of the 640 marks Cephas had gouged there with his thumbnail.
As the halfling dragged her sword faster, the ticking sounds came closer and closer together until they made a steady hum; a hum that reminded Cephas of the song he had heard from the ground before Azad’s men struck him down. The woman was erasing all his past attempts to escape.
“If I make a story out of a fight with this giant,” he said, “you will help me escape Jazeerijah?”
Again, the smiling woman nodded.
“When?” he asked.
A roar rose from the arena. The first bouts, mastered by one of Azad’s lieutenants and featuring gangs of goblins fighting against merchants’ guards, had begun as the sun set. The short-haired woman jerked her head toward the noise.
“Tonight?” Cephas asked.
She nodded at him, then at her sister, who responded by gathering up their discarded sheaths and flipping her sister’s sword off the floor with the toe of her boot. The short-haired woman caught it and the scabbard that followed, then eased the grillwork door open. The cell had been unlocked the entire time.
Before the pair disappeared into the growing darkness, Cephas called out to them, suddenly recognizing the fatal flaw in their plan. “Wait!” he said.