An Apprentice to Elves

by Elizabeth Bear

  “Noted,” said Rosemetal, just as if they didn’t all know very well who Tin and Alfgyfa both were. Just as if Rosemetal weren’t Tin’s mother Molybdenum’s grandmother’s sister.

  Pinchbeck also moved forward. “I am Master Pinchbeck of the Accountants, of the Galena Lineage. My apprentice Mischmetal is the alf with whom this apprentice interfered.”

  “Noted,” said Rosemetal, as if Pinchbeck weren’t a niece of hers as well.

  Tourmaline came forward, still carrying his rattling advocate’s cane, and he too introduced himself as the arbiter and was recognized. The rituals dragged on while Alfgyfa tried to look alert and interested, though what she really wanted to do was pick at her fingernails until the cuticles bled. Everyone spoke in turn, making predictable arguments in the most convincing harmonics they could muster, their voices ringing about the high spaces of the mootheall. Alfgyfa tried to look peaceable and serene. It probably would have been a more effective subterfuge if she weren’t already familiar with every scar on the stonework in the mootheall, from having spent so many hours of her life already studying them.

  Then, when everyone had had as many turns to discourse as they pleased and Alfgyfa’s feet were aching, Rosemetal turned to the assembled smiths and mothers and raised her staff.

  “Is there a consensus?” she asked.

  There was not, apparently, as five of the smiths and mothers began singing at once, discordantly, so Alfgyfa could barely pick out words in the clangor of mismatched harmonies. The voices rose and others joined them, supporting or arguing each theme. None sang loudly, but in the massive echoing chamber of the mootheall, the result was a dizzying whirl of echoes and overtones that made Alfgyfa want to slap her hands over her ears and curl up on the floor.

  Once or twice, when she was much younger, she had done just that.

  Now she stood very still, spine straight, and tried to let the vibrations resonate through her harmlessly. The smiths and mothers would proceed to a long series of disharmonic songs in counterpoint, comprising an argument that would only end when every single alf in the hall was singing some variation on the same melody.

  That could take a while.

  Alfgyfa settled herself to wait, tossing the thick braid that always wanted to creep over her left shoulder back to hang down her spine again. Maybe she should braid a chain into it, like an alf. Something in a white metal, and heavy with teardrop rubies that would catch light in her hair like a spatter of blood, to make Yttrium disapprove of her bloodthirstiness. The weight would hold it behind her back, where it was supposed to be.

  She let her eyes drift closed, throat relaxed, mouth half open to pick up the nuances of the sound. She would have cupped her hands to her seashell-pale human ears, but didn’t want to draw attention to how small and inadequate they were. Still, she thought she could pick out the three main melodies.

  Tin sang the plainest melody: a simple winding tune that could have been a round—that invited others to make it a round by joining in. It didn’t present a complicated argument, either; it said only that a child had been in danger and that Alfgyfa had acted selflessly to save him. Alfgyfa bit the inside of her cheek to keep from smiling—then had the smile startled off her when Tourmaline, of all alfar, joined in, adding harmonics of maturity and the untranslatable term that meant something like “overdelivering”: that Alfgyfa had provided more than she had promised—or, in this case, more than had been required.

  Alfgyfa was touched by this expression of goodwill. She would have been humbled, if she had allowed herself to feel anything that might leave her so vulnerable before the Smiths and Mothers.

  But Tin and Tourmaline weren’t the only ones singing. And when Alfgyfa concentrated on the others, each note was like a the sharp prick of a needle into a fingerpad.

  Master Pinchbeck sang the counterharmonies as aggression, as if they were a blow. She was angry, and within the constraints of svartalf society, this was where she could show it. She sang her apprentice endangered, face lost for both apprentice and master. She sang Alfgyfa’s irresponsibility and her heedless shattering of a sacred taboo.

  The third thread, though, that one troubled Alfgyfa far more, because it was the one that sang her as a mistake. And not just her: if she was picking it out correctly, at least one alf—an alf she did not know, and not a wizened old creature, but a young spry black-haired Master of the Singers’ Guild—reached back into the deep years of Alfgyfa’s birth and questioned why the smiths and mothers (and Tin, sang the bass harmonics like the sound of far-off thunder, suspect Tin, Tin the corrupted) had allowed Isolfr to leave the caverns, which he had invaded without invitation, and live and get this abomination that was inflicted on them now.

  It was factually inaccurate, Alfgyfa knew. She had been conceived before Isolfr met Tin, and she would have been born even if her father never returned from the Iskryne. Though her life—and her mother’s life—would have been very different if her mother, Hjordis, had not been able to give Alfgyfa up to the heall and marry her new man, Alfgyfa would still have existed.

  But would she have been Alfgyfa? Her very name arose from Tin’s kindness in letting Isolfr live. The gift was that he had seen his daughter born and been allowed to know her. The gift was that he had not died in the Iskryne.

  She would have been some other girl, and—her heart ached to think of it—she would not have a smith’s calluses. She would not live under the ice-jeweled mountains that crowned the brow of the world. She would not know that she could speak to wolves. The thought of losing that—no, of never having had that—Viradechtis and Mar and Kjaran and Amma, especially Amma who loved babies so much that she mothered every single one that came into the wolfheall, be it child or cub or kid or filly. No, Alfgyfa thought and straightened her spine where it was beginning to hunch.

  Not to mention that if the svartalfar had killed Isolfr then, they most likely would all have been eaten by trolls by now.

  The argument shifted and turned. Voices joined and fell away. Tin kept up her simple line, and Tourmaline supported it. Alfgyfa’s feet grew numb. Her ankles ached. The stone floor began to look restful and soft. She twisted her fingers together and tried not to listen, not to anticipate. It seemed more voices were coming to join Tin, but also that the harmonics around what Pinchbeck was singing grew more complex. Alfgyfa shifted her weight, trying to ease a cramped calf.

  Suddenly, brutally, she felt that her apprenticeship had been wrong. A bargain struck without her. A deal made when she was barely toddling. She shuddered and rocked on the balls of her feet. As much as she loved the feel of the hammer in her hand, she should never have come to Nidavellir.

  She argued with the Mastersmiths. She asked why. Why this and Why that? Why is thus and such done in such a particular way? These were questions that would have seemed commendable among the aettrynalfar, who had never once failed to answer, and answer again and again until Alfgyfa understood. But here, those questions made Alfgyfa the source of poison.

  Tin had left her side, moving forward to claim as much space as the circle would give her. Alfgyfa shook with the weight of tradition and ritual and expectation, and the deep brutal unfairness of it all. She had done—

  She had done her best. She had done what she had done, and she had done it for Girasol. Mischmetal didn’t even enter into it, no matter what Pinchbeck claimed. And it was not in any way Alfgyfa’s fault that her father had chosen not to abandon his wolf—his only true lifemate, no matter what Hjordis or Thorlot or Skjaldwulf or Vethulf might be to him—when she pursued a trellkitten into the alfhavens.

  Alfgyfa lurched forward, not really aware of what she was doing until she found herself standing in the crowded circle of smiths and mothers, right beside Tin. Her mouth opened, her heart and her voice both rising up her throat, and she said: “My father should have sent me to the aettrynalfar, instead. At least they know how to behave in a civilized manner!”

  The alfmoot stared at her in silence, their bright bead eyes sudden
ly hatefully alien. She kept her chin up, though more than that she could not do. She wasn’t quite sure how he got there, but Journeyman Idocrase was suddenly standing beside her. He didn’t speak, but he took her wrist—what had happened to his pen?—and uncurled her clenched fingers: open hands, she remembered Tin teaching all of them, alflings and human cub, were always less threatening than fists. Slowly, pace by pace, as one would gentle a nervy mare, he coaxed her back from the circle. He soothed her with his fan-stick hands.

  Master Tourmaline stood from the benches, his hair breaking over his shoulders. He sighed like a gust over a cavern mouth, on two sets of harmonics. He glanced at the other smiths and mothers. Some of them were hunched forward with their eagerness to speak, but no one would interrupt Tourmaline. Though he could not, of course, bear children, he was so great in age and so high in rank among his craft that he was treated as an honorary mother even by the inmost circle of Smiths and Mothers themselves.

  “Smiths and Mothers” was a shorthand you couldn’t be in Nidavellir more than half an hour without hearing. The form dated back probably millennia, to a time when only blacksmiths sat on the ruling council; in present times it really meant “all the masters of the crafts and all the ranking mothers.” Within that quite large body of svartalfar, the workings of rank and of politics within the crafts and lineages winnowed the field until it got down to ten or twelve svartalfar (each both a master and a mother) who did most of the decision making. They, too, were called the “Smiths and Mothers,” but always with quite audible third harmonic emphasis, indicating a title rather than merely a descriptor. It had taken Alfgyfa years to understand it, and of course she could not pronounce it at all.

  Master Tourmaline said, “I move to adjourn for private discussion.”

  “Done,” answered Rosemetal, before anyone could protest. “Let the committee talk about this under less contentious circumstances.”

  * * *

  An adjournment meant that Alfgyfa was excused. And she certainly knew what she should do. She should go back to Tin’s household and make herself useful—or at least busy—there. But now she watched the smiths and mothers, including Tin, sweep themselves up like a pile of dust and slip off to the inner chamber. It was a miracle how they managed to move in a group like that without treading on one another’s hems. The other alfar did not linger.

  And she alone was left standing in the middle of the enormous, empty, echoing mootheall.

  Or, no, not quite alone. Something rustled behind her. She turned, hand raised defensively, and found herself looking down at Journeyman Idocrase. Again.

  “Would you like water?” he asked gently.

  His kindness made her want to bolt, but she mastered herself and stood firm. She studied his face, wanting to be sure she would know him again. Dark and bony as any svartalf, and he’d chosen the pattern of his adulthood tattoos to extend the lines of his eye-folds and flared nostril-edges into branching curlicues like the tendrils of a climbing vine. They sparkled faintly as he tipped his head back in order to see her better. The svartalf master-inkers had disciplines, Alfgyfa knew, where they imbedded fine particles of gold or platinum in the skin to give that glittery shimmer. A platinum charm shaped like a pen nib depended from his largest earring. Or perhaps it was an actual pen nib. Alfgyfa could see scratches along the oblique edge as if it had been honed.

  Svartalf eyes caught the light. His flashed green—unusual—though when he cocked his head to the side, there was a flicker of gold.

  Suddenly, Alfgyfa felt the exhaustion of too-long standing roll up her body. Her knees buckled, and she caught herself on a bench. She settled into it with a sigh, trying to make the whole process look intentional.

  “Water would be welcome,” she admitted.

  A rustle and the sweet-pitched clatter of badges. The gurgle of water. He was back, offering her clear water from the font in a rock-crystal cup cut as fine as a sparrow’s egg. It was shaped like a partially opened blossom. Flaws in the quartz made it milky at the base, but the petals might have been wrought of the water they contained. Condensation beaded chill against Alfgyfa’s hand as she sipped. The water sourced from the heights of the Iskryne and the walking ice that surmounted them, and it tasted of all the rocks it had filtered through—brash and deep, bright and earthy. She sipped, gasping as her teeth protested the chill, then pressed the cup to her cheek and temple for the cold comfort it offered.

  “Thank you, Journeyman,” she said.

  He fanned out his robes—red and gold, embroidered with a pattern like tree limbs intertwining, or arteries branching between veins—and settled opposite her. “I am curious about you,” he said.

  Of course he was. They all were—and the alfar who hated her most virulently were perhaps the most so. She had grown accustomed to covert stares, in Nidavellir. Not among the alfar she dealt with regularly, of course—she suspected those had long since started seeing her as a sort of funny-looking alf with a speech impediment—but when she ventured into the reaches of the alfhame where she did not have usual business, she caused a stir.

  It was almost refreshing to deal with someone who just came out and said what she knew they all felt. And it explained why he was being so attentive. She sipped more water—less icy, as some of the chill crept into her flesh—and felt her shoulders relax. She hadn’t realized how much her head hurt until she put the cup to her temple and the pain began to ease.

  “About me?” she asked. “About Alfgyfa Isolfrsdaughter of Franangford, apprentice to Mastersmith Tin of the Iron Lineage? Or about men in general?”

  “Men in general,” he answered. “For now.”

  She finished the water and set the cup aside. The gentle click of stone on stone ran up the bones of her fingers. “I may not answer.”

  “You have that right.” A smile flickered at the corners of his leathery lips, making the platinum dust under his skin shimmer.

  “Then I give you the right to ask,” Alfgyfa said. She leaned back into the bench, which was not made to fit her body, and curled herself into something resembling comfort.

  He too resettled himself. “First, then, let me speak a little of myself. I am of the Rockworm Lineage. My mother’s name is Cerium, and my line-mother was Thulium. I was born in Nidavellir, and I have just returned from a journeyman-span.”

  This was alfish politeness. She couldn’t be expected to speak with him unless she was formally told his antecedents, both mother-line and craft. The journeyman-span was another seven years atop the apprenticeship, during which a journeyman would travel and work with many masters. At the end of this time, he would be considered qualified to work independently, and eventually to attempt his master-piece—though whether or not he was ready for such an undertaking was left as a decision to the individual artisan. Often, a span of a decade or two would pass between independence and mastery.

  With mastery came not merely the right to work independently (and the right to learn the Masteries of one’s craft), but also the right to keep apprentices of one’s own, and train journeymen, and run a shop that employed other alfar. Some alfar never bothered with a master-piece, content to seek bench-space from masters rather than directing their own shops. Some tried and failed at a master-piece several times before creating something that was seen as new and valuable by the Masters of their guild.

  She said, “You can count seventeen thaws, then?”

  “Nineteen,” he said. “I came to ’prentice late. My mother had started me as a cloth maker, as is the way of our line, but it turned out I was not suited. I could not be trained out of reading when I was supposed to be carding, or spinning, or making combs. I am fortunate that Masterscribe Galfenol believes that for working with words, it’s better to have a strong aptitude than an early start.” His smile was self-effacing, half hidden under his nose-tip as he angled his chin down. “I have always been a martyr to curiosity.”

  “That, we have in common,” Alfgyfa said.

  “What do you miss most?�
� he asked. “About your home?”

  She considered. Amma. Osmium. But that was too personal to say, and she wasn’t about to admit to missing the aettrynalfar. “Nidavellir is my home now,” she said, careful politeness. “But I do miss trees. The sky. I miss being able to go out into the forest and run for hours on soft pine needles, in the open spaces under the boughs. The trees are so large they shade out everything that might grow beneath them. They are like … like caverns made of wood.”

  “As alive as stone,” he said. She had learned the inside-out nature of alfar similes: to them, the stone was as alive as the mountains—huge, and slow, and perhaps not aware exactly. But not a dead unfeeling thing, either.

  “What are you most curious about?” she asked, in her turn, when it became obvious that he was waiting politely for her conversation. Tin had taught her the rules, even if Alfgyfa had had little chance to practice.

  “The people,” he said. “Their customs. Their traditions.”

  “My people.”

  He nodded. His rings clicked when his fingers steepled shyly.

  Alfgyfa wondered who her people were. She thought of the alfar on one side and men on the other, and how the differences between them created gaps into which she had fallen, again and again. And into which—she admitted to herself, bruised with honesty—she would probably always fall.

  She said, “We live in the cold above the soil. It makes us … hard, and fast to decide and act, for we do not have the time to argue over each note of the song as the smiths and mothers do.”

  She angled her head deliberately toward the recess chamber. He didn’t laugh, but she caught the dip and flick of his ears that meant he wanted to. He said, “We—svartalfar, I mean, not you and I—we have customs.”

  Of course, those weren’t his words exactly. Rather, he said “we” with the harmonics that meant a whole people, greater than a clan. And the word “customs” carried half its meaning in notes so deep Alfgyfa couldn’t even hear them.