Or rather, Chane could not stop picturing her upon the platform, pretending to clutch the heart of an Anmaglâhk.
Chapter 5
Wynn sucked air, trying to clear her head of pipe smoke as she stumbled from the greeting house. That was why she felt dizzy and nauseous. She wasn't drunk—not on a few gulps of ale.
Limestone Mainway was a dim and hazy umber in her sight. Chane still gripped her arm, and she pulled away, instantly unsteady under her feet.
"Five tunnels down … on the right," she mumbled.
Shade pricked up her ears with a whine.
"No, we go to an inn," Chane stated flatly.
"I'm fine … now come on."
"You need to sleep this off."
Wynn flushed indignantly. "Sleep what off?"
Who did he think he was? He wouldn't even be here if not for her, and now he was acting like … like High-Tower—sanctimonious, overbearing, and stuffy.
"I'm fine," she repeated. "I just need some fresh air."
"Where would we find that, this far underground?" he rasped back. "I grew up among nobles who started drinking as soon as the sun set. I know someone drunk when I hear them!"
A pair of dwarves in laborers' attire stepped from the greeting house and glanced at the two humans arguing in the empty mainway.
"We are going to an inn," Chane whispered.
"No! To the Iron-Braids … now!"
Wynn spun about—and all the tunnel's columns suddenly leaned hard to the right. Great crystals steaming on pylons blurred before her eyes. But no one was ever again going to order her about. Not even Chane … especially not Chane.
"It is late," he said behind her, and then paused. "But we will locate their smithy, so we know where it is. Then return tomorrow evening at an appropriate time."
Even through Wynn's haze—from smoke and glaring crystals, not ale—this made sense. So how could she argue if he was right? She hated that. Rational counters were another ploy her superiors had used to manipulate her.
Wynn found herself leaning with the columns, until she accidentally sidled into one. She braced a hand on its gritty stone until the columns straightened.
"Very well," she finally agreed.
Shade huffed, and Wynn found the dog peering around her side.
"Don't you start," she warned, and headed off.
Her boot toe snagged in her robe.
She teetered for an instant and righted herself in a few tangled steps. She wasn't going to give Chane's accusation any credence. She wasn't drunk, damn him. It was just the greeting house's stinky air.
Shade padded beside her, intermittently whining and huffing. Chane caught up on her other side. Why was he so tall? He towered over everyone here among the dwarves. That too annoyed her.
They passed varied closed shops so worn and nondescript she couldn't even tell what they were.
"You never told me that story," Chane said, catching her off guard.
"What … what story?"
"About the white woman—the one you call Li'kän. I did not know that you had kept her from killing you by the power of words."
Wynn peered up at him and almost tripped again. His pale features were drawn and pensive.
"Oh … that." She hesitated. "I didn't figure everything out by myself."
"I assumed as much," he answered.
"What's that supposed to mean?"
"Nothing," he returned quickly. "It seemed too brief and simple—but necessary for a tale. I see that."
"Chap figured it out," she admitted. "I helped once he understood what we should do … embellishment is part of dwarven ‘telling.' The teller has to be the hero. Facts wouldn't have gained fair trade."
"You did well," he said. "Very well. I had no idea you could give such a performance."
Wynn flushed, surprised by the effect of his praise.
"I thought they would jeer you off the floor in three or four phrases," he went on.
She stopped in her tracks. "You thought what?"
Chane's expression went blank. "I only meant—"
Wynn hissed at him, mocking his voice, and trudged onward. Jeered off the floor? Indeed! Was that what he thought of her? She lost count of the tunnels, and spun about to check again.
"Five!" she said tartly, and turned back to the last one they'd passed. "Let's find the smithy."
Then her stomach rolled. Or the stone beneath her seemed to do so. An acrid taste coated her tongue.
Chane's mouth tightened, as if he were still puzzled by her offense—the dolt.
Just as Hammer-Stag had said, they couldn't have missed the smithy. Of the few establishments or residences cut into the dark path's stone, it was the only one still aglow. With its old door shoved inward, warm red-orange light flickered upon the tunnel's floor and opposite wall.
"It's still open?" Wynn said in surprise.
"Not likely," Chane answered. "It is well past the mid of night … unless …"
Wynn didn't need him to finish. How long had they lingered in the greeting house? Was dawn already near?
Shade sniffed—and then sneezed—as she crept toward the door.
The scent of char and metal increased around Wynn, sharpening her dizziness, but she spotted no smoke. That seemed impossible at this depth. She stepped in beside Shade, peeking through the smithy's open door.
Inside, a young dwarven woman pounded on a red-hot mule shoe gripped in iron tongs. Sparks flew at the hammer's dull clanks. Although wide like her people, she looked slight for a dwarf. A mass of sweaty red hair was tied back at the nape of her neck.
Her simple shirt was of some coarse, heavy fabric and rolled up at the sleeves. She wore leather pants with a matching apron darkened from labor. Strangest was her glistening, soot-marred face.
All dwarves had small, pure black irises, but hers seemed a bit larger than High-Tower's. Her nose was a touch smaller, and she didn't have his blockish wide jaw. Hers was smoothly curved. Severe-looking, she still didn't bear much resemblance to her older brother.
Was she an Iron Braid or a hired craftswoman in the family's smithy?
Glancing into the red-lit space, Wynn took in the long, open stone forge, its hot coals so bright they stung her eyes. Thick-planked tables lined the walls, laden with tools as well as rough collections of goods either finished or needing more work. A pile of mule shoes rested on the table nearest the door. A way back was another table burdened with ax, pick, and sledge heads, and other implements for miners.
There was so much for such a small, out-of-the way place that Wynn realized other workers must be employed here. But on this late night, the young woman labored alone. That didn't seem right for hired help.
Then, upon the rearmost table, Wynn caught a soft glint—two glints, actually.
A pair of swords lay beside one heavy buckler shield. One was shorter and broader, with a thickened hilt obviously made for a dwarf. The second was a single-handed longsword suitable for a human. Both had the distinctive dark, mottled gray sheen of dwarven steel.
Not all smiths were weaponers. It was a specialty of great skill, though Wynn knew little about the craft either way. But those weapons, simple and unadorned, as preferred by the dwarves, looked finer than all she remembered from her travels.
Someone here had higher skills than the making of mule shoes.
A strange sound filled the smithy, like a rhythmic puffing of breath, as a gray mass slowly descended beyond the open forge. Two cask-size iron counterweights, one rising as the other fell, hung on a chain over a cart-wheel-size gear mounted to the ceiling. At each jolting descent, a smaller gear did a full turn, driving an iron arm connected to a bellows pump. But the coals did not pulse with the bellows.