by Dale Lucas
A verdict arrived weeks after their personal testimony had been given. The surviving members of the Stonemason’s Guild, Sixth Chapter, would be impressed to repair the damage done to the Fifth Ward watchkeep. Their chapterhouse would be torn down to its foundations, the debris burned to ash, and some new structure raised in its place. There would no longer be a Sixth Chapter of the Yenaran Stonemasons’ Guild, that number henceforth being banned. The survivors were welcome to seek membership in other chapters, subject to the acceptance of the sitting members of those chapters, but any of them caught within the city limits working stone without a license after two turnings of the moon would be subject to prosecution. In short: get someone to vouch for you henceforth, or get out of the city and never come back. When Rem heard of that resolution, he supposed he could not think of a better one. Apparently there had been discussions regarding harsher punishments, especially for the half dozen remaining stonemasons who had either been named by their fellows as, or outright confessed to, being present at the murder of Docent Therba. But, in a rare instance of Yenaran justice opting for mercy instead of castigation, the courts decided that enough blood had already been spilt, enough lives ruined.
How to deal with the violence and unlawful magic attributable to the dwarves was a more sensitive matter. The greater share of blame clearly lay with the priest, Bjalki, who had summoned the Kothrum, and with the belligerent ethnarch, Eldgrim, but as those two poor sods were stone-cold dead, no punishment could be meted out. Any members of the Swords of Eld with permanent injuries or handicaps resulting from the violence were deemed to have suffered enough and released. Any who would heal normally were told to leave the city forthwith and never return. When the issue of who should stand for the dwarven people in the ethnarch’s stead was raised before the court, the Lady Leffi was readily enlisted. So far as every dwarf who testified was concerned, she was the only choice to lead them now that the ethnarch’s seat was empty.
The judges thus decided: the Lady Leffi would be nominated as the new dwarven ethnarch in Yenara, as there was ample evidence now in the record that she had tried, at several junctures, to keep the situation in the dwarven quarter from spiraling out of control while her husband had exacerbated it. Her position would be secured pending the approval of the Brood of Elders back in Bolmakünde—but no one expected them to overturn the appointment. Leffi’s sense of quiet command and humble satisfaction left everyone sure that she expected to be confirmed without opposition.
And just like that, after weeks of cleanup, deliberation, and whispers of promised punishments, it was all over. They had passed the five cursed days that ended the old year and ushered in the new by then. Most of the way through the month of Kythras, the air was far colder, but a warmer world was visible just over the horizon. However terrible the winter had been, spring would arrive, and not a moment too soon. The city—and the wardwatch, and Rem and Torval—had weathered the storm and come through it bloodied but still, wondrously, alive.
With all said and done and their routines more or less reestablished, Rem and Torval found themselves finally enjoying a free evening at the King’s Ass. The fires were stoked, the great room was lively but not overcrowded, and Torval was recounting their harrowing adventures to a genuinely enthralled Aarna. The special that night was a slow-roasted boar provided by a local hunter, and the spiced ale was wonderful.
Indilen, warming the seat beside Rem at the corner table they all occupied, bumped Rem to get his attention. Rem hadn’t even realized that he’d withdrawn into himself, Torval’s tale and the rumbling conversation in the room around them all having receded to a dull murmuring at the edge of his awareness. But the moment Indilen nudged him and he raised his eyes to see her smiling back at him, he knew that he’d drifted and she was doing her lover’s duty by drawing him back to the here and now.
He offered a smile. “Sorry.”
“And where were you off to?” she asked. “Torval’s just getting to the best part, I think—where he saves the day single-handed, and you once more owe your life to his quick thinking and unrivaled ferocity.”
“No need to hear it,” Rem said, and lifted his ale mug for a long sip. “I lived it.”
He drank. When he lowered his mug, he glanced sideward and saw that Indilen still stared at him expectantly.
“I’m still waiting,” she said, leaning closer. Her hand fell on his arm. He laid his own free hand atop it and smiled again.
“I was just thinking,” Rem said quietly, “that when we’ve had our fill and left this place tonight, I might have a story of my own to tell you.”
Indilen’s eyes widened. “Do tell.”
“It’s all about a boy who ran away from his home and family,” he said, “off into the wide world, to find a new home, and make a new family, all on his own.”
Indilen’s eyes, always warm and crystalline, now flashed, offering the first hint of joyful tears. Her smile widened. “That,” she said, “is the sort of story I never tire of. I can’t wait to hear it.”
“Can’t wait to hear it, eh?” Torval asked.
Rem and Indilen, the spell broken, both looked to the dwarf. He was on his feet now, half-bent over the table before them. Aarna had bustled away to fetch their boar.
“Sorry?” the two lovers said simultaneously.
“The story is yet unfinished,” Torval said. “Didn’t you hear me?”
Rem and Indilen exchanged puzzled glances. They shook their heads in unison.
Torval’s eyes rolled. “We should like you back at our table,” the dwarf said. “The both of you. Our Fhryst feast was interrupted—the tale remains unfinished!”
“Another dwarven holiday?” Rem asked. “Less exciting than the last, I hope.”
Torval only nodded. He wore something of a strange, bemused expression—wistful and a little melancholy. “We should hope so,” he said. “Just say you will.”
“We’d be delighted,” Indilen said. “Perhaps you should invite Aarna as well?”
Torval started to answer—mouth open, breath drawn—but then, as Rem watched, the dwarf stole a furtive glance over his shoulder, saw Aarna approaching bearing a huge platter of roasted boar meat and vegetables, and shook his head.
“Not this time,” Torval said, then sat down again. His final words were spoken quietly, almost to himself. “Someday, perhaps …”
Rem felt Indilen’s grip on his arm tighten. “It’s your table, Torval. Just tell us when …”
And so, a week later, Rem and Indilen once more took a long walk on a bitterly cold night through the Third Ward down to the riverfront, and there climbed the stairs to Torval’s door and knocked. It was a moonless night, the sky black as a vein of coal, the city twinkling beneath that ebon dome like a great convocation of banked coals, smoldering, waiting to be stoked. Rem almost imagined he could warm his hands by that malevolent light. Torval greeted them as always, with compliments for Indilen and insults for Rem, then ushered them inside. All was as it ever was: Lokki attacked Rem as though he were an ogre from an old bedtime story, Tavarix told tales of his ongoing education and training—for he had been readily accepted back into the dwarven stonemasons’ fold as an apprentice—and Indilen lent a hand to Osma and Ammi as they prepared the meal and laid the table. In short order, everyone took their seats. For a moment, before Osma started speaking, Rem studied all now jostling for a place at the table—their familiar faces, their smiles, the love and concern for one another that all but wafted off them, like smoke from a bevy of bright candle flames. In that instant Rem had a strange and comforting thought.
Yenara was no longer his adopted home. It was simply home, and that was that.
Moreover, these people—Torval; his sister, Osma; Torval’s children, Ammi, Tavarix, and Lokki; and most of all Indilen, the lovely girl beside him—they were no longer merely his friends. They were his family. At that moment, basking in the warmth they created from their own hearts, about to share their lore and their bread and their celeb
ration of another day of remembrance and a new turning of the seasons, Rem thought that they were the only family he would ever need.
The reason for their gathering: the completion of their interrupted Fhryst feast. The rituals were repeated, including the lighting of the candles and Osma’s harrowing account of the dwarven creation story. Rem loved it even more this time, and found himself strangely primed—strangely eager—when they finally came back to where they’d been so rudely interrupted on that night so many weeks ago.
“And so,” Osma said, “the Spirit of the Earth, long tiring of Stormblight’s rages and tyrannies, found the finest stones it could in the very bowels of the earth, and from these carved the first dwarves.” She lit the final candle on the table, the one nearest Torval. “There was Leinar, the All-Father and first of our kind; Thendril, the Womb of the World; Athura, the Sower; Yangrol, the Smith; Wengrol, the Warrior; and Kondela, the Speaker, and ever thereafter the Judge of All. In its stony bosom did the Spirit of the Earth succor and wean these first of our kind, knowing that only patient formation and robust design could fortify them against Stormblight’s depredations. When they were, at last, so plentiful that Stormblight’s attentions could be avoided no longer, the Spirit of the Earth set them loose, and bade Stormblight do its worst to hinder and hamper them. And who knows what happened then?”
“They tore Stormblight to pieces!” Lokki cried.
“Stormblight found them strong and resilient,” Tavarix said, his eyes settling on his father, glimmering with the possibility of tears yet beaming with pride, “and Stormblight punished them for their resilience.”
Rem and Indilen stole looks at one another; seeing the rupture between father and son now healed warmed them immensely.
Osma nodded proudly at her nephew. “You are correct, and we know well the end of it all. The dwarves were strong, and so they fought when Stormblight assailed them. They were also tough, so they endured, even when Stormblight punished them. And oh, how Stormblight cursed! Those dwarves—our people, our forebears—were too stout and too grounded to be tempted by sensual wonders, by earthly riches, or by any of the offerings that had so punished the dragons and ensnared the elves and made sporting fools of humankind. Though beasts were sent against them, the dwarves hewed them down. Though storms and floods and fires and rains were brought down upon them, they stood, and smiled, and took all that Stormblight offered, and asked for more. Being made of stone, and bound to the earth, the dwarves were as the earth—abiding, eternal, slow to move, slower to change … but also resilient. Stormblight sought their tears and their lamentations, and all it received for its pains were defiant laughter and bitter scorn.
“In its rage, great Stormblight made the earth a wasteland. It slaughtered its own eternal progeny, the Great Spirits of Wood, the River, and the Earth, and their progeny in turn—elves, men, dwarves, and the last of the dwindling dragons—made their homes among the bones and the unquiet spirits of those that had first made them. Yet still our people would not yield.”
Osma had reached the first candle again now. “When Stormblight burned down their houses, the dwarves settled on the riverbanks.” She blew out the candle and retreated along the table again, to the next in line.
“When Stormblight flooded the riverbanks, the dwarves took to the woods.” She blew again. Another candle went out. The room grew darker.
“When Stormblight tore down the woods with frost and wind,” Osma continued, then blew out yet another candle, “our people stole fire from Stormblight’s own gaping maw, then retreated into the deepest caves and the darkest caverns, and there they made their home. And that home, despite all of Stormblight’s best efforts, could not be taken from them.”
She had arrived at the head of the table again, and stood just behind Torval. The dwarf’s blue eyes—glinting in the candlelight in a way that Rem had never before known—focused deeply on that last, lonely candle burning before him. They all did. That candle was the last hope for their people—for the world. That candle was the survival of the dwarven race—of all races—the lone light of hope, sanity, and goodness in a dark world built to satisfy one mad god’s bottomless hunger for pain and suffering. Rem thought it one of the most beautiful stories he’d ever heard, and the light of that candle the brightest he’d ever seen.
“When others cried or begged or lamented, or simply lay down and died before Stormblight’s fury, our people stood, brave and proud and unafraid. We opposed. We endured. And down to this very day, to the light shining in the center of each and every one of you at this table”—she seemed to make a point of including Rem and Indilen in this pronouncement, and Rem felt himself profoundly moved by the gesture—“we stand as a testament to their courage and their defiance of a mad god’s tyranny. We have all struggled. We have all lost. We have all cried in despair, or wept for that which the mad god’s wrath has taken from us—but as of this moment, around this table, before this single, enduring flame, we live. We remain. We are … until we are no more.”
She leaned forward and blew the candle out. Once more the room was dark, the only light the glow of the hearth and the dim illumination from those burned-down candles against the far wall.
“And that,” Osma said in the darkness, “is why we give thanks, and remember.”
Without another word she moved back down the length of the table to her seat and took it once more. There was a long, solemn silence. Rem looked to Torval and his children, to Osma herself, and realized that it was not simply a pause, but a prayer of sorts. Each seemed to be peering into a dim, half-remembered past that could never be recovered. No doubt they were all remembering Olian, Torval’s slain wife, along with Gedel and Rinnit, the children’s lost siblings, who had died when their mother did, under the same terrible circumstances. Rem saw the warring emotions in all their eyes—the warmth, the grief, the gratitude for the time they had known with their mother and siblings, the bitterness at having only that brief season to hold on to now that they were gone. The feeling of bearing witness to something personal and profound—something that by rights Rem should not be bearing witness to, something that should have remained private among this scarred and loving family—filled Rem with a deep and abiding sense of appreciation.
“We give thanks,” Osma said, and the spell was broken in an instant. “And so we feast.”
The children all smiled and repeated, in unison, “We feast.”
Their hands went for the food before them.
Rem felt Indilen squeeze his arm lightly. “Hello?” she said. “Are you still in there?”
He leaned close and gave Indilen a long, sweet kiss. Clearly she hadn’t been expecting that. She stared at him when he withdrew, pleased and puzzled. Rem vaguely realized that the children were watching, too, with wide eyes and open mouths.
“Here now!” Torval said from his seat at the end of the table. “What’s all this kissing about? There are wee ones present here!”
“Sorry, old stump,” Rem said, and squeezed Indilen’s hand. He looked into her eyes when he offered his next words. “Just happy to be home.”
He turned to see what Torval thought of that. The dwarf was beaming, his smile so true and bright Rem could scarcely believe it was on that dwarf’s broad, rough-hewn little face. Torval took up a pitcher from the table, bent forward, and proceeded to slosh beer into all their cups. When he’d finished, he raised his cup to Rem. Rem raised his in answer.
“Welcome home,” Torval said.
“Home,” Rem added. “Among friends.”
“No,” Torval corrected him. “Among family.”
They all drank to that.
The story continues in the next Fifth Ward adventure,
THE FIFTH WARD: GOOD COMPANY
Keep reading for a sneak peek!
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Friendly Fire is a book about building a home in a place you didn’t come from, building community with strangers whom you don’t always understand or even like, and growing famil
ies from bonds other than flesh and blood. It was born of my desire to show my heroes as members of families and communities, and to test the limits of the bonds and loyalties that define (and confine) them. Little did I know when I conceived of that story and began it that the year ahead of me would basically dramatize all of those thoughts and fears, and force me to confront both the best and the worst that I, my family, my country, and the world at large are capable of.
In 2017 I got to make my major imprint debut; I got to watch my country wrestle with its better angels and its most pernicious devils; I got to shepherd my five-year-old through a scary—but ultimately successful—surgery; I got to enter bitter, heated arguments with members of my own family about what is right and wrong, and soon after thanked those same family members, with tears in my eyes, for their generosity and compassion; and amid all of that, I got to revisit Yenara and follow Rem and Torval as they wrested order from chaos, struggling to see justice done in an often unjust world. Hopefully, we’ve all come out the other side as they have: beaten, battered, but somehow smarter, stronger, more humble, and more aware, knowing a little more now than we knew before.
Whatever else I’ve learned, I know this: when someone helps you, you say thank you, and you mean it.
So special thanks go to Lindsey Hall, my now-former editor at Orbit, who decided the world needed to meet Rem and Torval, and who guided me through the hard work of shaping Friendly Fire. Lindsey’s blazing new trails on other frontiers now, but her faith, support, and rigorous editorial instincts were instrumental in bringing Yenara to life, and I can’t thank her enough for the opportunity she gave me to share this world and its denizens with all of you.
