Friendly Fire

by Dale Lucas

  “This is official ward business,” Torval said. “Therefore official city business. I’m more than happy to honor the sanctity of your guild’s hall if you’ll do me the honor of answering our questions. Out here or in there, you decide.” Torval paused, licked his lips slowly, then added, “I would likewise urge you not to call me ‘old stump’ again, sir. That moniker’s reserved for my dearest of friends, which you most certainly are not.”

  The man in the doorway smiled wolfishly and appraised Torval. Through the half-closed door Rem saw the boy, Jordi, lurking in the shadows behind the man, trying to calm the agitated dog. The worry on the young man’s face was readily visible, as though he expected violence and dreaded it. His eyes were far too easy to read.

  “Hrissif!” someone called from within.

  The man at the door answered, but never took his eyes off Torval. “Here in the vestibule, chief!”

  Heavy, determined footsteps. A moment later two more men crowded into the dark little foyer beyond the door. The first was larger than the smug bastard who’d blocked them—taller, broader, stronger—a wolf to the other man’s fox. He looked about the same age as the belligerent doorman—Hrissif, the big man had called him—but gave an immediate impression of greater charisma and nobility, a more substantial presence. Beside the big man stood a much older fellow, bald, bearded, and graying, probably at least ten or twenty years the elder of the other two but still hale, hearty, and built like an ox.

  The big man slipped past Hrissif, placing himself right on the threshold, filling the doorframe with his height and his broad, muscular shoulders. As he stepped forward, Torval stepped back, giving him some room. Even the dwarf knew when to show a little respect.

  Rem recognized this man from the protest in the quarter as well. As Rem recalled, his words had been diplomatic—apologetic, even—but whatever good they might have done was smashed to bits once the deputy, Hrissif, had opened his mouth.

  “Is there a problem?” the big man asked.

  “We’re from the wardwatch,” Torval said, clearly growing impatient. “We’re here to ask a few questions. Now, which of you is most likely to cooperate?”

  Rem caught movement out of the corner of his eye. He turned his head to scan their surroundings. Their little standoff at the guildhall door was drawing a crowd. A dozen people were scattered along the street, before them, behind them, across the way. Some were just passersby, but a few had clearly come from the nearby taverns and pubs, for they carried tankards and cups with them. They all watched—probably hoping for things to escalate, praying for some excitement, maybe even fisticuffs. A good bloody row was a fine evening’s entertainment, after all.

  Rem turned back to the unfolding drama, praying that there would be no show for them.

  “I’m the steward,” the big man said, crossing his arms over his broad chest. “I’ll answer your questions.”

  “Perhaps we should talk inside?” Rem suggested.

  “We’re fine here,” the steward said. “Talk.”

  Torval studied the man for a moment—sizing him up, Rem knew, as the dwarf always did. He was a fine reader of folk, Torval, with an eye for detail and keen instincts regarding trustworthiness and motivation. Though Torval himself was the least duplicitous person Rem had ever met, the dwarf still had a knack for sniffing out and exposing the markers of dishonesty in others. And here, now, he seemed to relax a little. Clearly there was something in the stonemason that Torval sensed was honorable—more respectable, at any rate, than the wiry Hrissif.

  “What’s your name, sir?” Torval asked.

  “Valaric Loriksson,” the big steward said.

  “And these others?”

  Valaric stepped through the doorway so that he could better indicate the men crowded in behind him. “Hrissif, my deputy steward. Frendel”—that was the older man, who Rem could now see had his left forearm splinted and tightly wrapped—“our treasurer. And the young lad’s Jordi. Now, what crime is it we’re accused of?”

  Rem took that as an opportunity to intervene. “No crime at all,” he said. “We just had some questions to ask. You heard of the fire at the Panoply last night?”

  Valaric Loriksson nodded. His stony expression never moved. “I have.”

  “And it’s true that your guild was, until recently, contracted to work at that site?”

  The steward blew out a long breath through his nose. It plumed in the lamp-lit air like smoke. “That’s true, yes.”

  Rem cleared his throat. “So it’s also true that your guild’s contract was not renewed?”

  The steward raised his chin a little. He looked down at Rem as if he might reach out, grab him, and snap him in two over his knee. Though this Valaric was only a fingerlength taller than Rem, Rem still guessed he could do it if he chose. But he made no movement. After a long silence, he finally just shrugged. How much of human communication comes in shrugs? Rem wondered absently. What a marvelous, manifold gesture …

  “The clergy alleged that we had fallen behind,” Valaric said. “And so they did not renew our contract.”

  “Had you fallen behind?” Torval asked.

  Valaric looked down at the dwarf, frowning. “Any and every hindrance to our progress was reported, discussed, and evaluated for our benefactors. When we fell behind, they knew, and why. Always why. Raising a temple is not short work, and sensible people know that. Most of us my age, or older, know we’ll never live to see that temple completed. It’ll be Jordi’s children, or their children, who see the first worshippers climb its steps. That’s the nature of our work. Slow, steady, but always to a purpose.”

  “The stump’ll be there,” Hrissif muttered, staring into his cup. “His sort are long-lived, aren’t they?”

  Rem almost said something, but, thankfully, Torval gave no indication that he’d heard the man’s words. Stump. It was a terrible insult to dwarves—perhaps not as insulting as pickmonkey or the dread epithet tonker, but not far off. Old stump could be used only among friends, but stump, all by itself … that was an invitation to a bloody duel.

  Torval, bless him, seemed to have let it slide by …

  “And yet,” the dwarf continued, as though Hrissif had said nothing, “they fired the lot of you.”

  “They did not renew our contracts,” Valaric said slowly. “That’s not the same thing.”

  “Hear, hear,” someone said. Rem turned toward the voice. It was a single onlooker—one of many now. He stood in the middle of the muddy street, a smoking pipe clamped between his teeth, a mug of something in his hands. There were dozens now, many still hewing close to the places they’d drifted out of—nearby taverns, basement grogshops—and still more haunted the middle of the street. They gathered in a loose, ill-formed semicircle, whispering to themselves or to one another as the watchwarden and the steward stonemason traded barbs. Rem suspected that at least a few of them were laying odds and trading coin, betting on when or if the whole confrontation would turn bloody.

  “I should think,” Torval countered, and Rem turned his attentions back to his partner and the shop steward, “that the clergy would have wanted to keep the men who laid the temple’s foundations, if they were reliable enough.”

  “I should think, master dwarf,” Valaric said, “that you’d be more suited to joining your fellows at the work site than to walking this city’s streets and harassing its honest citizens.”

  Rem saw Torval bristle at that. The dwarf’s mouth twisted. His shoulders tensed. “I wouldn’t call a few simple questions harassment.”

  “Few,” Valaric said, as though the round of questions he’d endured had been anything but few. “Are we done yet?”

  Rem intervened again. “That fire was no accident,” he said, trying to appeal to the man’s good sense. “We were sent by our prefect to treat with you because the Panoply clergy told us about your business arrangements and their unpleasant ends.”

  Valaric shrugged again, a strangely provocative gesture for all its apparent indi
fference. “There were no unpleasant ends. Our client decided that our good work was too expensive for them, and they released us rather than renew our agreement. We were disappointed, certainly, but we were not bitter. There is no quarrel between us.”

  “Between you and the clergy, maybe,” Torval said. “What about your competition?”

  Valaric turned toward Torval. His crossed arms fell to his side. His hands were fists now. “There is no competition between us,” Valaric said, leaning down into Torval’s face. “Our work, our ethic, our honor, all speak for themselves. If the pagans of that temple want to throw their coin to half men while leaving their brethren unemployed and hungry, that is their business. Let them save a few coppers while your kind toil without so much as a fair wage or a day of rest, like slaves. In the end they’ll get the temple they deserve. We’re done with them.”

  “I think we should be done with these two, as well,” Hrissif said. “Our night’s vigil’s just begun—”

  “I am steward here!” Valaric barked, not even turning to look at his second. “I’ll talk for all of us and I’ll decide when the talking’s done!”

  “Let him talk,” Rem said, taking an awful chance. “Just like you did the other day, in the Warrens.”

  Valaric’s dark gaze swung toward Rem. “What did you say?”

  “I was there,” Rem said. “I saw your gathering, your demonstration, whatever it was. I saw that man”—he pointed to Hrissif—“break a potter’s wares. If you ask me, that’s what set it all off.”

  “I didn’t ask you,” Valaric said.

  Rem waited for a response to his jabs—some indication of how this man, Valaric, felt about what had happened in the quarter the other day. It was a terrible risk, winding him up, but if it revealed something …

  And then, suddenly, Rem discerned a strange sound from within the guildhall. The murmur of voices ceased, then coalesced into something new. The men inside were singing a song—a low, slow, dirgelike recitation that was, to Rem’s ears, immediately familiar. Painfully so.

  Torval heard it as well. Rem saw it on the dwarf’s face—a realization slowly dawning on him in answer to that melancholy canticle, that song for the departed.

  Rem looked to Valaric. “You’re in mourning?”

  Valaric nodded. When he spoke his voice was strangled, with none of the force it had carried only a moment before. “Just a boy. One of our apprentices. His family carried him out to the tombs today, beyond the walls. Now it’s our turn. We’ll be here all night, saying our farewells.”

  Rem looked to Torval, suddenly embarrassed. Gods, had they really just interrupted a death vigil? Rem saw that Torval was moved as well. He knew grief—and what it demanded of the grieving—better than anyone. His broad face seemed to be at war with itself, his desire to complete their mission and his desire to respect these men and their loss wrestling with one another.

  “Our apologies,” Torval said quickly. “We did not know—”

  “Didn’t you?” Valaric asked. “Your prefect sent you here seeking justice for the Panoply, and justice for your kind, master dwarf—where, then, are the watchwardens seeking justice for our fallen brother? Where are the inquiries into his death? Where is the manhunt for his murderers?”

  “Murderers?” Rem asked.

  “Aye, for murder it was,” Valaric continued. “He was separated from us in the dwarven quarter. There was no one to help him when those little bastards beset him. They beat him within an inch of his life, crushed his hands with their hammers, so that he would never work stone again! But they need not have bothered—his hands were useless, but their beating did the real work. He’ll never need those hands again now.”

  “Was it reported?” Torval asked.

  “Would you have cared?” Valaric asked, then turned to Rem. “Any of you, you bloody mercenaries?”

  “Are you seeing this?” Hrissif suddenly shouted, addressing the curious onlookers and passersby. “Do you see how peaceful, honest, hardworking men are now harassed by the authorities, just because a few priests have their robes in a bind? Because a few cowardly pickmonkeys decide that the powers that be need to do their fighting for them?”

  Murmurs and grumbles of assent moved through the crowd. Rem looked to Torval to see if pickmonkey had reached his ears. By the dwarf’s deepening frown and narrowed eyes, he guessed that it had. Clearly Hrissif’s verbal thrust had hit and drawn blood. The situation was about to spiral out of control, unless Rem could yank it back on track.

  He turned to the crowd. “All of you, on your way! This is ward business—an official inquiry! There’s nothing to see here and it’s too cold for the lot of you to be crowded into the bloody streets!”

  “So you’re our nursemaids now?” an old man with a voice like gravel shouted back. “You get to tell us when it’s too cold outside? When we need our bloody mufflers?”

  Laughter exploded from one contingent among the watchers.

  “Move along!” Rem barked in answer. “Any man still standing here sixty seconds from now will be upended and his pockets emptied to pay a heap of obstruction fines! Now move!”

  “Bloody catchpoles,” someone muttered, off to Rem’s left and behind him. “Moneylenders’ whores, the lot of them.”

  Rem fought to ignore that. There were more pressing concerns at hand than a few hurled insults. He looked back to the doorway, where Torval yet stood, staring down Valaric. Hrissif, having stepped out of the doorway when he addressed the crowd, now haunted the space off to Valaric’s right, still holding his cup of wine or whatever it was. As Rem rejoined the confrontation, he caught Hrissif staring at him, quietly sizing him up. Though he knew little about the man, he truly disliked him. He seemed the sort of man who’d throw a kitten on a swarming ant pile just to see what would happen.

  Torval was still trying to reassure Valaric.

  “… For that, we are truly sorry,” he was saying. “But that does not change why we’ve come here. We meant no disrespect, and I believe we’ve given none, but you must meet us halfway. You seem a good man—do the right thing and talk to us.”

  “I believe I’ve said all there is to say,” Valaric answered. Rem caught some strange set to his mouth, a sad sort of glint to his eyes. As though he wanted to say something—to offer something—but simply could not. “Please go now. We’ve a long night ahead of us.”

  “Fine,” Torval relented. “We’ll go. But this isn’t finished. We’ll have to come back. There are still questions to be answered.”

  “I’ve said all there is to say,” Valaric said.

  “The wardwatch decides when all the questions have been answered,” Torval responded.

  Rem hung his head. Not now, Torval. Don’t insist on having the last word now …

  Valaric stared at Torval, trying to read him. The dwarf, surprisingly, did not seem belligerent, but beseeching. “The next time, it might not be the two of us,” Torval said. “Whoever comes next might not be so kind.”

  Valaric took a single step that planted him right in front of Torval. He leaned down, his face just inches from Torval’s own. “Look up and down this street, master dwarf. That hostel down on the corner? We laid those foundations and paid for the framing from our chapterhouse coffers. The cellar stew kitchen just behind you? Rebuilt, better than before, after an unexpected fire—our gift to the widow who owns that lot and runs the place. The three-story town house down at the end of the block? A pension gift to the children of one of our own, who died on a work site, crushed by falling scaffolding. Our silver and gold—our labor—built that place, and it’s now a boardinghouse whose proceeds keep those children schooled, clothed, and fed, and that will continue to provide for them in the decades to come. This block, and several that surround it, can tell many such stories, stories of loss, or need, or deprivation, all of which were answered and countered by our generosity, our largesse. This whole neighborhood, and nearly everyone in it, owes us one debt or another. Debts we’ll never collect on … unless
we need to. Unless we need their aid against hostile outsiders intent on painting us as criminals and troublemakers.”

  Rem laid a hand on Torval’s shoulder. “We should go,” he said. “We’ll get no more from them tonight.”

  “We’re not your enemies,” Torval said to Valaric.

  Valaric shrugged a little. “Aren’t you?”

  Torval’s eyes remained locked on Valaric’s. “I reckon you think you’re a good man,” the dwarf said. It was an odd statement—part idle observation, part challenge.

  “Better than some,” Valaric answered.

  “And you’re their steward,” Torval said. “Their leader.”

  “We’re done here,” Valaric said, and turned to go back inside.

  “Whatever happens to them,” Torval shouted as the man left them, “will be upon you! Upon your shoulders! Upon your conscience!”

  Valaric, filling the doorway, turned back to Torval. He seemed to study the dwarf for a long time, as though he meant to say something—something barbed and poisonous—then thought better of it. “My conscience is clear,” he said finally, and disappeared into the shadows of the guildhall. Hrissif followed, gave Torval and Rem a smug half smile, then yanked the door shut behind him.

  Torval bared his teeth. For just a moment Rem thought he might sound one of his great, bellowing battle cries out of simple frustration. But after blowing out a long, pluming breath into the cold night air, the dwarf finally just shook his head and stalked away from the guildhall. Rem hurried after him.

  “It’s all right, partner,” Rem said as they hurried along, side by side. “We did our duty. If Ondego wants more from us, he’ll tell us.”

  “Gods, save us from the depredations of proud men,” Torval grumbled.

  Rem knew that prayer well. He’d said it himself—or something close enough to it—on hundreds of occasions, usually after an unpleasant confrontation with his father. A very proud man … the sort of man whose pride could wound his loved ones and get his subordinates killed.

  “Do you think they had anything to do with it?” Rem asked. “I mean … just based on your first impressions?”