3
Dawn's first light pierced the shadows and sent the denizens of the night scurrying. The streets of Sanctuary were almost quiet. Flocks of seabirds wheeled silently over the town, swooping suddenly as, one after another, the houses opened their doors to jettison nightslops into the street. A cowled, burdened monk slipped out the upper window of a tavern and disappeared down a still-dark alley. The brief moment of calm magic faded; the day had begun.
The establishment ofBalustrus, metal-master, was among the first in the armorer's quarter to come to life. A young woman opened the upper half of the front door and struggled to raise the huge, dingy slops-ewer to her shoulder. She froze, nearly dropping the noisome thing, when a man stepped out of the shadows. He wore a monk's garb, but the cowl had fallen back to his shoulders. A warrior's tore held his straw-blond hair over his brow.
Walegrin had had three days' rest and washed the desert from his face, but he was still an ominous figure. The woman gave a small yelp when he took the ewer from her and carried it some distance before upending it. When he returned to the doorway, the metal-master himself stood there.
"Walegrin, isn't it?"
If the young soldier was ominous, then Balus-trus was positively demonic. His skin was the color of mottled bronze-not brown, nor gold, nor green-nor human at all. It was wrinkled like dried fruit, but shone like metal itself. He was hairless, with features that blended into the convolutions of his skin. When he smiled, as he smiled at Walegrin, the dark eyes all but vanished.
Walegrin swallowed hard. "I've come with business for you."
"So early?" the bronze man chided. "Well, come right in. A soldier in monk's cloth is always welcome for breakfast." He hobbled back from the door.
Walegrin retrieved his sack and followed him into the shop. A single oil lamp set over a counting-table cast flickering shadows on the metal-master's face. He rested a pair of iron crutches against the wall behind the table and seemed to hover there, unsupported. Walegrin's eyes adjusted to the dimmer light. He saw the price sheets nailed to the wall and the samples of bronze, iron, tin and steel; he saw the saddle-like perch in which the metal-master sat. But his first impression of the eerie place did not change and he would have left if he could.
"Tell me what you've got in your sack, and why I should care?" the metal-master demanded.
Forcing himself not to stare, Walegrin hoisted the sack to the table-top. "I've found the secret of the steel of Enlibar-"
The bronze man shook with laughter. "What secret? There's no secret to Enlibar steel, my boy. Any fool can make Enlibar steel-if he's got Enlibar ore and Ilsig alchemy."
Walegrin untied the sack, dumping the blue-green ore onto the table. Balustrus stopped laughing. He snatched up a chunk of ore and subjected it to an analysis that included not merely striking it with a mallet, but tasting it as well.
"Yes," the wizened metal-master crooned. "This is it. Heated and ground and tempered this will be steel! Not since the last alchemist of Ilsig sank into his grave has there been steel like the steel I will make."
Whatever else Balustrus was, he was at least mad. Walegrin had first heard the name in the library at Coombs, where he'd gotten the shard of Enlibrite pottery Illyra had read. Kemren, the Purple Mage, had been supposed to read the inscription and Balustrus would make the steel and both men swell in Sanctuary. Kemren had been dead when Walegrin arrived in the city, but not Balustrus.
It was said the metal-master had been mad when he first came to the city, and Sanctuary had never improved anyone. He claimed he knew everything about any metal but he made his living mending plates and recasting stolen gold.
"I have another ten sacks like this one," Walegrin explained, taking back the ore. "I want swords for my men and myself. I don't have much gold; and fewer friends, but I'll give you a quarter of my ore if you'll make the swords." He continued refilling his sack.
"It will be my priviledge," the cripple agreed, touching the stones one last time before they disappeared. "Perhaps when you have the swords you'll tell me where you found this. At least you'll tell what friends you have that it was the Grey Wolf who forged their weapons."
"You've no need to know where the mine is," Walegrin said firmly, looking directly at Balustrus' legs. "You couldn't go there yourself. You'd have to send others; you'd spread my secret around. Already too many people know." The sack thumped to the floor. "When can I have my swords?"
The metal-master shrugged. "It is not like telling a cloth-cutter to make a tunic, boy. The formula is old; the ore is new. It will take time. I must melt and grind carefully; tempering is an art to itself. It could take years."
Walegrin's blue eyes came alive with anger. "It will not take years! There's war in the north. Already the Emperor has called for men to fill the legions. I will have my swords by summer's end or I'll have your life."
"I have," the metal-master said with bitter irony, "been threatened by experts. You'll have your swords, my boy, as soon as I'm ready to give them to you."
The blond soldier had a ready reply, but withheld it as commotion rose in the street and someone hammered loudly on the bolted doors.
"Open up! Open up in the Prince's name! Open your doors, merchant!"
Walegrin snatched up the sack. He glanced around the room, aware for the first time that it offered no hiding places.
"You look as if you'd seen a ghost, boy. If you don't want to see the Prince's man, just step behind the curtain. Take your ore with you. I'll be but a moment with these fools."
Unable to force coherent words through his tight throat, Walegrin simply nodded and, still clutching the sack, eased behind a curtain and into a dark passageway. He could see narrowly into the room he had left without, he prayed, being seen in return.
Balustrus struggled with the heavy bolts. He got the door open just before the Prince's man threatened to break it down. Three men immediately surged past: two huge brutes in dirty rags and a third man in common dress.
"Balustrus? Metal-master?" the third man demanded.
The man might be dressed commonly, but he wasn't common. Once Walegrin's suspicions were aroused, other incongruities became obvious: clean, fresh-curled hair; sturdy boots with gold buckles; hands that had never been truly dirty.
Unreasoning fear gripped him. He did not pause to wonder why a Rankan lord, for such the visitor must be, would enter the metal-master's shop in such a disguise; he knew. The S'danzo curse and his false friends in Ranke had merged. By sundown he'd be just so much meat on the torturer's rack. They'd have his secrets, his steel and, if he got lucky, his life.
"...It has cooled without a crack," Balustrus said when Walegrin had regained enough control over his fear to listen again.
"My men will come for it this afternoon," the lord said, resting his forearms on the table where Walegrin had spilled his sack of ore.
"As you wish, Hierarch Torchholder. I'll tell my lads to hoist it up. You'll need a strong cart, my Lord. She's as heavy as the god."
Both men laughed heartily. Then, looking mildly annoyed, the High Priest of Vashanka in Sanctuary stood up and rubbed his arm. A tiny object dropped to the floor. Walegrin felt bitter bile surge up his throat as the Rankan retrieved the bit and examined both it and his arm.
"It broke my skin," he said.
"Scraps," the metal-master replied, taking the small flake from the priest's hand.
"Sharp scraps. We should put them on the edges of our swords," Torchholder laughed, and took back the offending object. "Not glass either . . . Some new project of yours?"