Dren had only ever heard stories and read some articles in periodicals about the way life worked in the Freehold States cities, and found himself slightly disappointed by how similar things seemed in Bios to what he’d grown up with in Desanadron. True, Bios was, at best, a tenth of the geographic size and population density of the metro he called home, but the way in which people carried on about their routine day-to-day business did not strike him as being that much different.
“Where’s the license cards,” Holly suddenly asked as they made their way together down a broad market street lined on either side with both brick-and-mortar businesses and mobile merchant wagons. Dren cast about briefly, eyes sweeping over the counters built into the sides of the wagons, searching for the telltale woodcuts that mobile vendors had to hang in plain sight on their carts back home if they wanted to sell goods or services out of their wagons.
“I don’t see them,” he replied. Still holding his hand in hers, Holly approached one of the stouter wagons, manned by a dwarven fellow in yellowed leathers with a pale green sash strung from his right shoulder to his left hip and wrapped around his waist. The dwarf smiled up at them through a haphazard beard and moustache as they drew near, Dren’s eyes glued to the various tiny figurines lined up on the fold-down countertop behind the merchant’s head.
“Welcome welcome, folks,” the dwarf said by way of greeting as Dren and Holly stopped, the cuyotai mage narrowing her eyes on the figurines. “Rigby’s Fine Designs, at your service,” said the dwarf with a flourish of his hands toward the figurines as he took a step to the side, so that his potential customers could get a closer look. “All-purpose figurines available for everything from pok-chi to chess, to strategy games, or just plain decoration, folks,” said the dwarf.
“Are these two here made of ash wood,” Holly asked, gently plucking up two of the figures, one of what looked like an elven archer of some sort, and the other fashioned into a hobgoblin dressed in chain mail, a hooked blade in each hand.
“Indeed they are, young lady, very good eye on you,” said the merchant, planting his hands on his hips proudly. “Worked quite long and hard on those, I did,” he added.
“No, you didn’t,” said Holly, holding the figurines up to Dren to inspect. He wasn’t sure what she was talking about; the figurines were exquisitely detailed, the painting alone having had to take quite a lot of effort. Holly had that knowing look on her face, though, a kind of wry grin that doesn’t seem hostile, at first, but which could quickly become combative if pushed hard enough. The cuyotai folded her arms over her chest and leaned down toward the dwarf, quietly saying, “You used woodhelvening.” The merchant blinked rapidly at her, taking half a step back. “I recognize the energies from my studies of lesser-glorified forms of magic. I’ve never heard of a dwarf using woodhelvening, though; I guess I just assumed they only ever learned stonehelvening.”
The merchant made a hand motion begging for quiet, looking around rapidly to see if anyone had drawn within earshot. “Pipe down, all right? Yes, I used woodhelvening,” said the merchant, somewhat deflated. “Look, me family, we’ve been artists fer generations, right? Stonehelveners going back eight steps. But me? I just never figured it out,” he said, looking at the ground between his feet.
“Dwarves rarely use magic in the first place, right,” Dren inquired.
“Very true, lad,” said the merchant, looking up at him. “And when we do, it’s usually very practical stuff, very straightforward. Throwing fireballs, bolts of lightning, stuff like that, you know? Very war-based, combat-driven spells and the like, nothing too fancy or roundabout and complicated. We don’t do rituals or traps, or anything that takes a lot of time to dicker about wiff,” he added, flapping his hands around. “Anyhow, I was helping my uncle Boran try to fix his wagon one day, his wheels had gotten warped from years on the road, and when I went to pull one off, I felt this thrum in the wood. When I tried drawing mana, it came freely, and I was able to shape the wood in my hands. It was exhilarating, and terrifying at the same time.”
“Why terrifying,” Holly asked.
“Woodhelvening is usually thought of as more of a, well, elfy, kind of thing,” said the craftsman. “Thankfully, my family was just thrilled I’d found my path, and they started getting me materials to practice wiff. That pretty much brought me to the road, and I’ve been here in the Freeholds for coming up on ten years.”
Dren and Holly ended up walking away with two of the figurines each, a completely unnecessary purchase, yet one they both felt good about as they packed the objects away in their bags. Dren had selected one that looked like a little smithy, complete with metalworker’s apron, and one that was a tiny anvil. Holly had selected a pair of what looked like multicolored dogs with feathery wings.
Going about a handful more errands before parting ways so that Holly could go visit the constabulary to speak with Andrei, the duo learned by observation and occasional questions a few other facets of life in the Freeholds that they found intriguing, when compared to what they knew of in Desanadron. For starters, in the Freeholds, guilds didn’t own their halls, but rather, leased the buildings and compounds from the city in which they operated. Secondly, in the city of Bios, the use of combat-oriented spells or abilities was monitored by a specialized unit of constables, who would ultimately track down and question the spell-user to discover the reason for the spell’s use. If it was a low-risk or harmless usage, it was noted, and everyone went their separate ways happily. If it was determined to be somewhat risky or dangerous, however, a fine would be levied.
The last and most notable difference they noted was specific to Bios, and had been observable from the moment they’d arrived in the city; mechanical vehicles were universally banned from use inside the city proper. Dren didn’t find this curious in the least, given how narrow many of the side streets were throughout the city. Most mechanical vehicles were low, wide contraptions, and they were one and all complicated to pilot.
As he gave Holly a quick parting kiss before heading back toward their rented room, Dren found himself wondering where Norto had gone.
**
Dario looked his partner in the eyes, scowling with one hand open, palm-up, indicating the snoring, foul-smelling human sprawled on the floor under the table. “This is not what I was expecting,” he said. “At all.”
“I don’t think either of us was,” replied Stephanie. The pair had owned and operated Merry Times Tavern in downtown Bios together for fifteen years, starting it as a small, one-room knockdown watering hole and expanding every couple of years, until it now stood as a two-story tavern/inn combination with one of the most reputable kitchens of any alcohol-serving establishment in the city.
The Merry Times Tavern was usually pretty booked up for its lodgings, but Dario and Stephanie had had the good fortune of having a free room available when the realms-renowned smithy, Norto Bialik, had come striding through their front batwing doors a couple of days earlier. Dario had offered the famed smithy a comped room for as long as he wanted to stay, up to a couple of weeks, so long as the man agreed to recommend the tavern to everyone he could. It had seemed like an ideal blend of marketing and celebrity endorsement.
Now, however, he and Stephanie stood over the snoring, drooling and inert form of the smithy, whose filthy, matted hair lay mere inches from a puddle of his own sick in the morning hours. “Did he spend the night down here,” Dario asked, scratching his stubbled cheek.
“Must have,” Stephanie replied. She stepped into a yellow, rubberized pant leg, pushing her foot through the narrow hole at the bottom before leaning with one hand on her partner’s shoulder, putting the other leg into the heavy duty cleaner’s pants. Next came a pair of yellow rubber boots into which she stepped, finishing the equipping with a yellow, Velcro-patched slicker coat and a pair of pale green rubber gloves. “Brian said he was nursing a scotch when he issued the last call and people started heading out or upstairs.”
“So what happened here?”
“Apparently Norto convinced him that he’d be just fine to see himself up to his room afterwards, even offered to shutter the bar area for him.” Dario rolled his eyes with a sigh.
“Lazy git.”
“And we see here the results of that laziness,” said Stephanie. “You want to do the honors while I get the mop bucket?” Dario nodded, letting her disappear from the main tavern area before he grabbed the table and dragged it away from Norto, who grunted and rolled onto his side, away from his puddle of sick. Dario came back over and used his rough dark red boot to nudge the old smithy in the ribs.
“Come on, old-timer, get up,” Dfter said evenly, sidestepping and leveling a swifter, stiffer kick to Norto’s shin. The smithy’s eyes shot open as he sucked in air through his clenched teeth, legs drawing up instinctively in response to the pain, hands clamping around the spot he’d been struck. “Hey heyyyyy, there, welcome back to the land of the living,” said Dario theatrically, throwing his arms wide in greeting. “How’s your head?”
“Feels like there’s goblins stabbing the backs of me eyes,” Norto snarled, dragging himself upright, sniffing the air and wrinkling his nose. “Gods, something’s foul,” he muttered.
“That stench is you, Norto,” said Dario. He pointed a finger like a blade down at the drying vomit and unidentified fluids on the floor, as Stephanie returned, rolling a heavy-duty janitorial bucket with her. “Well, you, and whatever liquor you threw up here.” Norto rubbed his mouth with the back of his hand and belched violently, shaking his head.
“Come on now, Dario, you know I’m good for this,” said the smithy. He ran his hands up and down his tunic shirt and jacket, grimacing at the grimy feel of himself. “I fink I’m gonna just, you know, head on up to my room, use the shower and change me clothes. You have laundry here?”
“Across the street,” said Dario with a sniff. “And Tarik Maelevog will probably be by later on to have a word with you,” he added, pulling a crinkled piece of parchment from an inner vest pocket, offering it to the smithy. Norto unfolded it and read his own sloppy handwriting, which said: ‘I, Norto Bialik, agree to pay to Tarik Maelevog the sum of 50 silvers for wagers at pok-chi’. Norto half-turned to look about, spotting a pok-chi set over on one of the other tables in the tavern’s serving room.
“Well, shit,” he muttered, tucking the paper away. “I don’t even remember the fellow.”
“Hard to miss,” said Stephanie with a snort, using a deck brush soaked in soapy water to scrub at the drying vomit, her voice muffled by a patients’ mask over her face. “He’s the only gotrin in Bios.”
“A wererat,” Norto asked incredulously. “I’d never gamble wiv’ a wererat! They’re liars and cheats, every last one of ‘em!”
“Yeah, well, you did, and you lost,” said Dario, strolling away from the smithy. “If he comes by, I’ll tell him you’re either here or over at the laundry.” Norto grunted, heading past the tavern owners toward the stairway up to the guest rooms. Along the way, he made a small, subtle movement, pitching the wager note into one of the domed trash bins against the wall, before heading upstairs.
He’d be damned, he thought, if he’d pay on a bet with a gotrin.
**
“The ropes?” Holly pulled a length of rope up out of one of the burlap bags around her feet for his inspection.
“Check,” she said, stuffing it back in.
“Guilder sticks?”
“Check, though they weren’t cheap here,” Holly commented. “You’d think people had no use for them here or something.”
“Well, not a ton of folks here in Bios spend their time going up into the hills and mountains,” Andrei replied. “Where’d you end up getting them?”
“A little enchanter’s shop over on Wexler Avenue,” Holly replied, pulling out a bundle of the sticks, all tied together, practically glowing with the magic that had been locked within them.
“Good, good. Um,” Andrei said, going down the short list he’d written out on a notepad the lockdown sergeant had grudgingly given him. “Travel coffee packets?”
“Check.”
“Healing potions?”
“Check, but I was only able to get five of them,” Holly answered, shaking her head. “You’ll have more need of them than I will, though. Remember, I’m a lycanthrope; I have a natural regeneration.”
“Sure, but it’s nothing like what other breeds or jafts enjoy,” Andrei pointed out. “But you’ve also got those spells of yours for healing. Speaking of, mana potions?”
“They didn’t have any at any of the shops I checked out,” Holly said with a snort.
“Okay. Were you able to get a flex-dome from Ansel’s Armory?” Holly snapped her fingers and picked up the second burlap bag, shaking it for a moment.
“Ansel wanted me to pass along the message that you guys are even now, by the way,” she said with a grin. “What does this thing do, anyway?”
“The flex-dome is kind of like a limited use energy shield,” said Andrei, standing up off of his bunk and holding his arms out in front of him in a stance that mimicked holding something large out in front of and over his head. “They’re basically only designed for use against dragons or other creatures with breath weapons. It absorbs the attack, completely negates it. And transfers some of that energy into whoever’s carrying it.”
“How many assaults can it withstand,” Holly asked.
“Depends on the power of the attack,” said Andrei with a shrug. “If Hevka T’Chall is as potent as all the stories say he is, we’d be lucky to have it hold up against more than one. If we end up running into Effrain the White up in those hills or the mountains, it’ll probably stand against four or five streams. He’s younger, has a lot less force at his disposal.”
“Would he be less of a threat to us in a combat situation?”
“Yes, though no fight with a dragon is exactly ideal, as it were,” said the minotaur freelancer, sitting back down on his bunk. “If we really wanted to stack the odds in our favor, you should head over to one of the guildhalls and hire us on some helping hands, but we don’t have the money for that.”
“We have plenty of money,” Holly pointed out. “You and Norto still have those trunks in the wagon.”
“Yes, but that’s supposed to be our payment for completing this gods-forsaken mission for the monks,” Andrei pointed out. “We’d be eating into our profits. I know you’ve got regular employment with a guild, but I need to make my money last me between jobs. Frankly, I’m thinking it’d be good to take some time off the road for a while.” He rubbed one hand along his forehead, wincing, eyes crunched tightly shut. Holly tilted her head to one side.
“Are you all right?”
“No, I’m sober,” Andrei grumbled through clenched teeth. “And the longer I go without a drink, the louder the spirits get in my head. It’s, unpleasant, to say the least.” He shook his head and looked over at Holly through the bars. “Don’t worry about me, though. For now, I think we’re pretty well set for the day. Get those bags to the wagon at the stables and grab us a storage unit for the trunks we’ll be leaving behind.”
Holly grabbed the bags and hitched them up, ready to head out, but she paused a moment longer. “Do you have any idea where Norto might have gone to put himself up while we’re here?” Andrei let out a little dry chuckle at the question.
“Yeah, I overheard someone in the drunk tank cell this morning talking about the old weasel. I guess he’s holing up over at The Merry Times Tavern, comped room in exchange for his celebrity endorsement or some such nonsense. Guy was saying Norto owes him fifty silvers for a game of pok-chi.”
“Well, I hope he got a written promissory,” Holly said dryly. “Norto has a bad habit of not paying his dues if he thinks he can get away with it.”
**
Tarik sniffed the air for a moment, catching the scent of the constable who’d been tracking him for the last ten minutes, and slunk back under the cart, enjoying the relative freedom or his animus form for the moment. He would look no different right now than any other dark-furred rodent that could be seen occasionally scuttling from place to place throughout the city’s streets, another vermin to have rocks and shoes thrown at and cussed out by the common townsfolk before they went back about their routines. The life of a lycanthrope could be filled with complications, if one pushed themselves beyond reasonable means.
But Tarik had crafted his life in the Freehold cities over thirty years to be one of casual comfort and leisure, thanks to his reliance on wiliness over outright theft. He loaned people money to wager on sporting events, charging astronomical interest, since none of the individual cities had laws proscribed against the practice. He routinely sold people information that was only partially accurate, at best. And now and then, he would pilfer something of limited value, agreeing quickly to pay the fines for theft and serve a day or two in lockup if he were caught.
But for the moment, he wanted to avoid anymore time in a cell. He had a good one on the hook right now, the famed blacksmith Norto Bialik. Tarik had taken advantage of the man’s drunkenness during their game of pok-chi, making several illegal maneuvers when the man wasn’t looking and securing himself an easy win. Sure, it only served to feed the stereotype of his people as liars and cheats, but why buck the system when it had served him so well for so long?
Unfortunately, he’d given in to the impulse to pick a pocket here or there shortly after his discharge from the drunk tank that very morning, and had snagged a claw on a constable’s pocket as he’d lifted the man’s pocket watch. A brief chase had ensued, during which the gotrin had managed to slip his pursuer just long enough to shapechange down into his animus form, taking the guise of a harmless city rat.
It would be a simple matter, now, of simply going and finding the smithy and collecting his wager winnings in the form of an easy alteration. The pockeh watch had been made of pure mythril, easily worth far more than the fifty silvers the smithy owed him. Using his natural charms, Tarik would ask Norto to just alter the watch enough to make it look like a different watch altogether, so that if and when the constable caught up with him, the gotrin could simply show him the watch and say, ‘See? This isn’t yours, I didn’t steal anything of yours’. He’d get off scot free, and make a tidy profit from fencing the valuable trinket.
The constable in question jogged away, having hovered near the cart Tarik hid under for a couple of minutes, questioning people about a gotrin having passed through. Nobody had seen Tarik, so the officer headed away, probably feeling a little irritated at the least. The gotrin held his position a little while longer before darting out into the mostly empty street, sniffing the air for a trace of the smithy.
Once he keyed in on it, Tarik made a bee-line for his target.
**
Norto turned the watch this way and that, squinting to take in the details of the inscripted words on the inside of the hatch lid. “This is very fine work indeed,” he said as he leaned back against the washing machine. “It’d be a hell of a job, though, working it smooth.”
“You’re supposed to be one of the greatest smithies in all the realms,” the gotrin replied eagerly, wringing his hands and darting looks out the wide windows fronting the public laundry. “Surely you can do this for me, and we’ll call the debt even.”
“Even, you say?” Norto pursed his lips, turning the watch over in his hand, considering the wererat’s proposal. “I don’t know, friend. I mean, clearly, this watch isn’t yours.”
“What makes you say that,” Tarik said hotly, hands on his hips.
“Well, for starters, you keep looking around like you’re expecting someone to burst in here and throw cuffs on you,” said Norto with a devil’s grin. “Secondly, I don’t think anybody’d call you ‘My Darling Phillip’. That’s who the inscription’s made out to, after all.”
“Maybe that’s my legal name,” Tarik replied, crossing his arms defensively.
“Bollocks it is. I’ve got a better exchange for you,” said Norto, pulling out one of his coin bags from inside his tunic and holding it up to Tarik. “There’s twenty gold coin in here. It’s yours, for the watch.”
“It’s worth a lot more than twenty gold coin, and you know it,” the gotrin snarled, pushing away from the dryer he’d been leaning against across from the smithy. “Just give it back and we’ll forget we ever met each other. I’ll find someone else to do it.”
“Fat chance of that, sunshine,” Norto said, putting away the coin bag. “You’ve already cheated me once, last night. We’ll just call this karma,” quipped the smithy with a broad smile. Tarik’s snout wrinkled up angrily, and he thrust one clawed finger up against Norto’s own fat, reddened nose threateningly.
“This isn’t over, smithy,” the gotrin snarled, whipping away from the hume and stomping away in a huff. A minute later, when he was certain nobody was observing him, Norto ducked out of the laundry, slipping back across the street to The Merry Times Tavern and up to his comped room. He quickly plucked out some of his finer working tools, and within ten minutes, had completely smoothed out the interior of the watch’s hatch lid, obscuring any sign that it had ever belonged to anybody, Phillip or otherwise.
Under his bed, a tiny black-furred rat lay waiting, biding its time.
**
Dren thanked the publican for directions, and led Holly up the stairs to the tavern’s second floor, coming up to the one marked ‘Suite’ and knocking. “Oy,” he heard from the other side, muffled but unmistakably Norto’s voice.
“Norto, it’s Dren and Holly,” the younger smithy said, stepping back from the door as a catch slide moved scratchily behind the door. It opened a moment later, revealing the older hume in a freshly laundered set of travel tunics, a paperback novel in his free hand.
“Whatcha’ need, lad,” Norto asked, stepping back into the room to wordlessly invite them inside. Dren and Holly followed him in, each taking in the modest accommodations. Unlike the other rooms for lodging in The Merry Times Tavern, this one appeared to have its own washroom (the others all shared communal chambers down the upper hallway of the establishment), a rather sizable dresser for unpacking into for a stay of moderate length, and one of the gnome-designed radio devices that had become quite commonplace in the last four decades. There was also a pair of hotplates and a four-cup coffeemaker situated by a small sink in the dinette area, along with a half-sized fridge for guests to make use of.
All in all, Norto had probably gotten one of the better lodgings available for short-term use in the city, by Dren’s estimation. “Listen, Norto, I actually wanted to talk to you about what we should do when Andrei and Holly head north,” said the younger smithy, taking a seat at a small, finely polished table situated in one corner of the room, the door several yards away to his right against the wall. He wanted to have access to a quick route out if the older man should lose his temper with what he was going, off to one side but ly, Holly remained standing, off to one side but with a direct line of sight to where Norto lounged on his rented bed. “Okay,” said the older man. “I assume you had somefin’ specific in mind, yeah?”
“Well, I was thinking that we should work on drafting up a design for this weapon the monks want you to craft for them,” Dren replied. “Maybe bang out a couple of rough takes?” Norto dog-eared the page he was on in his book and swung his legs over the side of his bed, blinking rapidly at the wall.
“Bloody hell, I hadn’t even been thinking about that part of the job yet,” said the veteran smithy. “I got so caught up in thinking there was no way we’d get hold of a dragon’s fang, I never even stopped to at least draw up some designs.” He pivoted with one leg up on the bed and pointed toward one of his small trunks, situated over by the minifridge. “The contract papers they sent are in the red envelope in there, lad.”
Holly, instead, bopped over and opened the trunk, bringing the envelope in question over to Norto. He pulled out the folded sheets within, and rifled through them until he came to the third page, rattling it. “Did they already send a design,” Dren asked.
“No, just a vague written description,” said Norto with a grunt. “The only thing that’s specified is that it’s a weapon crafted wiv’ a fang of a white dragon.”
“If you think about it, that’s actually better for us,” Dren offered. “It means we’re not too constrained by a previous visual to handicap us.” Norto looked over from the paper with the ghost of a grin on his lips.
“True enough, lad. I always enjoyed monkeying with things back when I was your age.” Norto put the contract papers back in the red envelope, then got up off of the bed himself and rooted through his bags. “Got the old sketchbook here,” he said, tossing a battered book behind him onto the edge of the bed. “Pencils, ruler. Right, young Dren,” he said, turning toward his apprentice.
Dren saw a hint of something in Norto’s eyes then, a familiar gleam that he hadn’t seen much in what felt like ages. That’s the look of a craftsman when they anticipate an enjoyable challenge, Dren thought, a good use of their gods-given talents. How long has it been since he looked forward to his work?
“I’ll work up some sketches here tonight, and you do the same,” said Norto, grabbing the sketchbook and pencils, making his way for the table at which Dren sat. “We’ll compare designs tomorrow, see if there’s any concepts that match up, maybe.” Dren, for the first time in recent memory, felt good about working with the old man in the coming days.
“Sounds like a good idea, boss,” he said. Together, he and Holly headed back toward their hotel, leaving the older smithy to his sketching.