Steel and Stone (9 page)

He didn’t get his wish. An outcry at the end of Ironmill’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,

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 teen-ager 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.

Chapter 4
Double Trouble

T
HE WHINING OF A THOUSAND MOSQUITOES
couldn’t mask the thud of the monster’s footsteps or the complaints of the beast’s two heads in the darkness.