Friendly Fire

by Dale Lucas

  “Moreover, Yenara’s postwar boom was so desperately needed—and so well funded—that the building never stopped. So for decades dwarves poured into the city in great road gangs, hauling their cargo from the foothills, then they’d wait around for months for the stones to be claimed by their customers and payment rendered. Since there was a slow, constant influx of dwarves who ended up making the city their home for months or years at a time, and since those leaving were always replaced by new arrivals, the dwarven merchant guild that oversaw the quarry arrangement started buying up lots in the quarter. Once the collective owned land here, it wasn’t long before they started making the place look more like the home they’d left behind.”

  Rem wasn’t entirely sure that the dwarven cities under the Ironwalls looked anything like the strange, muscular, beguiling architecture that surrounded them now, but he knew that what surrounded him was unlike anything he’d ever seen in a human settlement.

  The pyramids were the most impressive part, to be sure. They were often half a block wide or more at the base, and rose in gentle slopes toward leveled platforms, upon each of which stood another, smaller flat-topped pyramid, and then another. Shops and houses were crammed along the leveled terraces, all the way up to the flat summit, with switchbacked streets or steep stairways providing passage from one landing to the next. Apparently, living in the shadow of Suicide Hill—the highest point in the Fifth Ward—had inspired the dwarves to create their own vertical topography. And so they built hills of their own and turned them into prime real estate.

  Less wondrous but more pleasing than the pyramids were the canopies that covered the streets. When he’d first seen them, Rem thought them merely decorative—they were made of silk, after all, light but strong, in an unending host of rich, vibrant colors: sunny gold, bright vermillion, flashing emerald, and cobalt blue. But Torval had explained their true significance.

  “Most dwarves don’t like the open sky,” he’d offered, almost conspiratorially. “Gives them vertigo. Not to mention the sun’s light on a bright day can be blinding to one who’s lived underground all their life. Some of us out in the world get used to it, but many more don’t—or don’t want to. By tying those canopies up over all the streets, the dwarves can go about their daily business, out in the open, and they never have to be troubled by what’s above them.”

  Studying the canopy above them now—a fiery, autumnal orange, rife with strangely knotted geometries—Rem supposed he could understand why someone who’d lived underground might see such an adornment as utilitarian and not merely decorative. Rem simply thought it beautiful and comforting. Wouldn’t it be lovely here on a hot summer’s day, hidden from the midday sun and its skin-burning tyranny?

  “Here, I’ll ask this fellow,” Indilen suddenly said, and raced away from Rem to inquire at the workbench of a pewtersmith laboring over the tracing on a drinking stein outside the doorway of his little shop. At his elbow stood a dwarven boy, equivalent to a human nine-year-old, perhaps. In the shadows of the shop, another body moved among the merchandise. Rem watched as Indilen spoke to the craftsman, explaining her needs. He was half-afraid the little tinker might rebuff her questions—she didn’t have the look or poise of one who did business here regularly, after all, and dwarves could be rather suspicious and insular.

  But to his great delight, the bearded tinker smiled brightly, stood up from his workbench, and walked to the center of the street with Indilen, leading her by the hand. There he pointed out several other dealers who might have what she sought. When he’d finished with the gently zigzagging street before them, he started in on directions to other nearby finesmiths, off side streets or up on the tiers of the nearest pyramid. Indilen, beaming and offering a series of very gracious thank-yous, bid the tinker farewell and hurried back to Rem.

  “Success?” he asked.

  “He told me of a half dozen,” she said. “But he told me, very candidly, that if he were buying quill nibs, he’d only go to one finesmith: a lady, just around the corner on that next street up ahead. He said she does beautiful work and always asks a fair price.”

  “Well, then,” Rem said. “Lead the way.”

  They carried on, passing all manner of folk transacting everyday business. There were dwarves trading or haggling with dwarves; an elf or two perusing fine jewelry or browsing the offerings of local bladesmiths; and several humans, most of whom Rem marked as tradesmen—carpenters, stonemasons, wood-carvers and the like—in search of finely wrought tools for their various trades. He saw a few housewives buying bread or pastries, a human female apothecary haggling with a grocer over dried mushrooms, and a fat brewer and his sons filling a handcart with hogshead casks of dwarven ale—a very peculiar brew that tended to inspire intense love or virulent hate in most nondwarves who tasted it. The place was alive and bustling, alien enough to be enchanting, familiar enough to make them feel welcome.

  They turned the corner and found themselves in a very dark, narrow side street running along the foot of a pyramid, cold in its shadow. A blue-gray awning billowed restlessly above them, blocking any view they might have had of whatever structures squatted on the landing of the pyramid above their heads. There was only the smooth, sloping stone wall of the pyramid on their right, and another meandering line of close-packed, low-doored shops and taprooms on their left. As welcome as Rem had felt on the boulevard they’d just departed, this street left him feeling just a little lost and out of his depth. The dwarves seemed to stare here, more openly suspicious of their presence—or, perhaps, more eager to exploit it. Rem shot a glance at Indilen, to see if she was similarly afflicted, but she seemed untroubled. Her eager gaze searched the shops they passed, in search of the finesmith she’d been referred to.

  They stopped twice when Indilen thought she’d found her destination, only to learn that the woman she sought was still farther along. Rem was about to ask if she might have misunderstood the tinker’s directions, since they were nearing the end of the street, a very broad, sunny opening visible just beyond. Sunlight meant no more canopy, indicating that they must have reached the very edge of the dwarven quarter.

  “There,” Indilen said, pointing. “That’s got to be the one.”

  She hurried toward the little shop, dragging Rem behind her by the hand. He had to duck to fit through the low-linteled doorway.

  Inside, the shop was cramped, but tidy. There was a counter on the right, just past the open door, and shelves full of mixed merchandise off to the left—pendants, rings, bracelets and earrings, quill nibs, ceremonial knives, brooches, and cape clasps—all beautifully detailed and finely wrought. Rem wagered that if he stood in the dead center of the little space, he could probably touch both walls. He and Indilen could barely fit inside together. Worse, the ceiling was quite low. Indilen could stand straight with a fingerlength between her head and the roof, but Rem had to bend his head awkwardly to avoid thumping himself on the low-hanging rafters.

  The curtain that separated front from back was swept aside, and the finesmith appeared. She was plump, with full, rosy cheeks and deep-brown eyes almost as warm and welcoming as Indilen’s. Like many dwarven women, she sported well-trimmed whiskers—a gentle, wispy pair of muttonchops framing her round, friendly face. She swept one strawberry blond lock behind her ears and planted her thick hands on her wide hips.

  “Can you hear me up there?” she asked Indilen, bending back a little. “Glory be, I’m surprised you can fit in here, tall thing like you.”

  Indilen and the finesmith shared a laugh. Rem forced one. His neck hurt.

  “I’m in search of quill nibs,” Indilen said. “The tinker round the way said you’d be the lady to ask.”

  “Old Kraki, was it?” the finesmith said. “Widower, that one. Been trying to court me for years. Probably thinks sending me a paying customer’s like to win him my sweaty old hand at last.”

  “Missus,” someone said from the back, and another dwarf arrived—a boy this time. His thin face, large nose, and black
hair made it clear that he was no relation of Indilen’s new friend. When the boy saw Indilen and Rem, he froze, like a rabbit spying a fox among the ferns. “My pardon,” he said. “I didn’t know you had customers.”

  “My apprentice,” the lady said to Rem and Indilen. “Linger, lad, you might learn something.”

  “As you say, missus,” the boy answered.

  “Now, then,” the finesmith said, and rubbed her hands together. “Let’s talk nibs, shall we?”

  Rem tried to be patient, but after some time had passed and Indilen and the finesmith had proceeded no further than the laying out of a vast array of possible nibs on a velvet cloth for close inspection and laborious description, he finally decided to excuse himself. Indilen sent him off with a wave and a smile, deeply involved in her shopping. Rem returned to the shady little side street in the pyramid’s shadow and began a slow perambulation of the area, idly perusing all that there was to see: hand-carved woodwork, finely tooled leather, a bookbinder’s, and a brownsmith’s, the latter hard at work hammering the dents out of a well-worn brass platter.

  The bookbinder intrigued him, so he lingered there. He was more than a little disappointed to see that the books being sold were all blank—bound journals, ledgers, diaries, and the like—but the craftsmanship they displayed was nonetheless impressive. The binder had tomes of every shape and size, every thickness and thinness, and had encompassed between the colorful leather- or cloth-bound covers everything from thick parchment to thin paper, of all colors and textures. Rem was tempted to buy something—he loved books, and had always treasured them—but the sort of books that moved him had stories and histories already bound within them, not blank pages awaiting print.

  That’s when he heard the commotion. It was nearby, just around the corner at the end of the lane, in fact. It sounded like voices raised in declaration, punctuated from time to time by sudden cheers or the boos of a crowd. Turning toward the sound, Rem watched the narrowly framed opening at the end of the street, trying to see if he could determine just what was going on out there. Since he could see nothing from where he stood, he left the bookbinder’s and went to investigate.

  The covered street opened onto an oblong plaza of sorts—a broad, open area demarcating the edge of the dwarven quarter on one side and the resumption of human habitation on the other. It was the almost-even mix of warm bodies before him that first struck Rem as different from the Warrens themselves, the number of dwarves and humans crammed into this crowded little square being more or less equal, unlike in the streets he’d just been traveling, where humans were a rarity. Dwarven street sellers choked the periphery of the square, hawking everything from pottery to woven cloth, clearly making an appeal to the human passersby.

  But it was not the sellers or the buyers that interested Rem so much as a large congregation of humans at the far end of the plaza, all crammed elbow to elbow, surrounding a tall, wide-shouldered man orating from a raised platform. The orator seemed to be shouting at his fellow tall folk as they strolled among the dwarven stalls, idly admiring or keenly inspecting the merchandise.

  “—hundreds, nay, thousands of human craftsmen and human vendors, just blocks away! Why, then, do you linger here, haggling with the small folk over their trinkets, while your own kind scrounge or go hungry?”

  The crowd about him cheered, supporting the question posed. A few passersby shouted back.

  “Better prices!”

  “Better work!”

  “What are you selling?”

  “We sell nothing!” a thin, wiry man in the wide-shouldered orator’s retinue shouted back. “We’re stonemasons by trade, and proud to be so! We’re only here now because we’ve been put out of work, by these same half-pint hammer tossers you’re buying from!”

  The wide-shouldered man turned to the new speaker and seemed to quietly scold him or try to calm him. It wasn’t working, though—the thin man’s enmity was already permeating the crowd around them in the form of murmured assents and nodding heads.

  A dwarf stepped forward from a vendor’s stall crammed full of fired clay pots and cookware. He was covered in thick rusty-red hair, and his beard was hoary and unbraided. “I’m a potter, longshanks! Not a stonemason! How on earth am I taking work from you?”

  A number of passersby cheered in support of the potter.

  The first speaker—the tall, broad-shouldered one—held up his hands as though to beg silence. When the crowd’s noise subsided, he spoke. “You speak true,” he said, voice booming across the square, “so go back to your stall, sir! We’re here to address our people—our folk! This has nothing to do with you!”

  “Nothing to do with us?” another dwarven vendor—this one a boot maker—chimed in. “You stand there and say we’re stealing work from you lot—that’s got everything to do with us!”

  A man stepped out of the milling throng on the far side of the square, apart from the group gathered in protest. He took up a handful of cold mud from the street and threw it at the dwarven peddler.

  “Shut your gob!” he spat. “The man weren’t talkin’ to you!”

  The flung mud escalated things. As Rem watched, a few of the dwarven vendors stepped forward, all scolding the mud flinger at once. One of them scooped up his own handful of mud and flung it. The clod separated and splattered the crowd around the man, barely touching its intended target.

  The murmuring of the crowd rose toward a tidal roar. Rem could see, could feel, the tension in the square escalating. Fists shook. Eyes bulged in red, angry faces. Teeth were bared and spittle flew. The close-packed crowd rippled like a stormy sea.

  Someone touched his arm. Startled, Rem spun and found Indilen at his elbow. She looked shocked, as though she’d just caught him doing something unseemly. Rem glanced back at the crowd, then returned to Indilen. He was torn. Part of him felt he should intervene—at least give his watchwarden’s whistle a toot and call someone in to break things up. Another part of him just wanted to grab Indilen’s hand and flee the scene, as fast as their feet would take them.

  “What is it?” she asked. “What’s all the fuss about?”

  He was about to explain when he heard something new—the voice of that thin, wiry man again, raised and embittered.

  “Do you like to throw things, you stunted bastard?”

  As Rem rounded, he saw the thin man—the one who’d identified the angry men as stonemasons—separated now from his companions, stalking toward the dwarven potter’s stand. As Rem watched, the man snatched up a big clay pot, then smashed the pot on the ground at his feet. The dwarven potter, enraged that someone would so carelessly wreck his inventory, lunged at the wiry man. A few close-at-hand dwarves dove to stop the lunging potter. Some nearby men hurried to defend the thin pot breaker, forming a sort of cordon around him. As the potter foamed and spat, the thin man smirked and taunted him. Little by little the foul energies swirling between the two aggrieved parties rippled through the crowd. As Rem watched, things happened fast—too fast to be stopped.

  Someone threw a punch. Tugged hair. Kicked. A throng surged. Fists began to fly. A peddler’s cart was overturned with a crash.

  Time to go. Rem shoved Indilen back toward the street they’d come through, stealing glances back over his shoulder as they went, trying to get some picture of what was happening and where it might go. His look back gave him only fleeting glimpses: that tall stonemason raising his hands again, as if to calm his companions; the crowd, surging toward the potter’s stall; men snatching up the earthenware and hurling it to the ground; a few dwarves in hasty retreat; others charging to meet the agitators. Mud flew. Someone screamed. A donkey hitched to a cart brayed and bucked in its traces.

  “Rem,” Indilen said as he hurried her along, “shouldn’t you do something?”

  Absently Rem nodded, drew out his watchwarden’s whistle, and began to blow. The bleating sounded tinny and pale beside the fulsome jostle and roar of the rioting crowd. Even as he blew, Rem did not stop to see if anyone answe
red his call: his only concern was to get Indilen as far from the violence as possible.

  “Oh dear,” Indilen breathed, now stealing her own backward glance at the chaotic square, “someone’s bleeding and—Gods!”

  That last exclamation caused Rem to turn and look back. The violence was naked now, men and dwarves laying into each other with any weapons at hand: rocks, broken stall struts, grasping hands, and bare fists. The scene was total chaos. They turned a corner and Rem fell into a trot, dragging Indilen along beside him.

  “What started it?” she asked, quickening her pace to keep up with him. “What was it all about?”

  “Angry masons or something,” Rem answered. “But it’s spreading. We need to go, now.” He pulled up his whistle again and blew as they ran.

  In moments they reached the main street that they’d followed into the quarter. Rem turned right, Indilen in tow, intending to retrace their steps as quickly as possible. As they raced up the crowded street, however, threading a path among the shoppers and strollers, they found their way blocked. Up ahead, dwarves and humans fleeing the riot flooded the street and choked the intersection, desperate for any egress, every path blocked by a press of frightened, confused evacuees. So fraught and tumultuous were the surges and eddies of the confused crowd, Rem and Indilen were unsure which way to flee, pressed and jostled from all sides. Then, without warning, a tight band of dwarves in flight came barreling into the intersection with a pack of human agitators on their heels. The tall folk sowed discord as they went, overturning vendor carts and street-side merchandise indiscriminately. Somewhere in the distance, Rem heard the angry whine of watchwarden whistles, but he saw no sign of intervention. Driven by the new, oncoming threat from the human rioters and the few dwarves that engaged them, the crowd exploded outward in every direction. In the sudden pandemonium, Indilen was torn from Rem’s grasp.