Silver Blades: Plate Male

Eight

Ivy.

"Listen Shade, ya slippery owl pellet, you can't tell me that on a night like this, no one's lookin' ta make some quick scales in protection money." I stood on my toes so I could get my face right in his. If he wasn't sitting at the bar, I would have had to find a chair to stand on. "Where is everyone?"

Personally, I wouldn't blame any merc for clearing out on a night like this, but the dodgy look in his good eye told me he knew more than he was saying.

" 'S like I said, Climber," he whined into his ale, "the muscle was hired this morning by some rich cutters wearing them scarlet capes. Bein' more of a windows man meself, I slid the muster. Few other gents got out too, but I 'spect they slid town or swam the canal long since."

"No one else come to market then? Quiet all day?" I pressed, snarling. I could smell a skunk at a hundred paces and Shade was tryin' to sell me striped fur at five. "There's no way Pike or that big konata bastard swallowed that line."

Shade gave me a sidelong look that said he was a heartbeat from talking.

"What?" I asked, real sweet like. "You gonna pass or do I have ta heat irons?"

"Truth is, someone with them was askin' about you," Shade said under his breath. "Mean cove. Scary. Your place, I'd slide, sure."

"Oh?" I said, surprised but passing it as weather. "Got news for ya Shade. Sooner or later they all come lookin' for me. Where's this cove now?"

There was genuine fear in Shade's eye as it slid toward the corner.

My heels thumped to the ground as I turned, my eyes sweeping over the mostly empty tavern, looking for someone 'scary.' If this was his big news, the rest of what Shade said was probably true. The Mead Market was as empty as I'd ever seen it. Normally its stale, sweaty air rung with the close-pressed sounds of a dozen different languages telling tales of caravans, river trade, or battles on distant shores. They vacated at dawn to seek work at the boardwalk meat market all day, and returned to drink away hard won coin all night.

Tonight it was empty but for a few scrawny rogues with nowhere better to go; the unhung-but-incompetent pick-pockets and beggars even the Connorton guild thieves overlooked. In a sparse turnout like this, the cloaked dwarf in the corner was impossible to miss.

He was incredibly fat, for one thing. It looked as if the chair he was torturing would scream what it knew any drip now. For another, his gauntlets gleamed of polished steel, and that just wasn't ordinary wear for a lowlife mercenary bar like the Market.

My boots thumped on the thin floorboard planks underfoot as I sauntered toward the corner. By the time I stood across from him at his table, I had his attention. His head raised, and to my surprise his beard was completely white. It framed lifeless black eyes in startling contrast.

"Aren't you a li'l old ta be terrorizing honest gents in a place like this?" I smirked.

"At last," he breathed, the snowy forest of hair on his face cracking open to reveal a craggy cavern of crooked or missing teeth. His breath smelled of age and decay, even two paces away. "I paid dearly for the chance we would meet again, Miss Tyne—or may I call you The Untamed? It always seemed a fitting moniker."

"Should I be flattered?" I asked, screwing my face up and raising an eyebrow by way of nonchalance. There was a familiar timber to his voice, but I couldn't place him. I hadn't seen a dwarf so large in years. Decades, maybe.

"Maybe this will help," he said, shrugging out of his cloak and standing heavily. The table creaked under his right arm as it bore part of his weight, and his chair practically cried out in relief. He was nearly my height and easily four times my width, but his size wasn't his most memorable feature by far.