Most of his kind lived in tribes and laired in caves, setting traps for the unwary and venturing out only to raid. Soneste had never heard of a kobold artificer.
Tallis pointed at her. “Verdax, this Soneste. She’s clean.” He indicated the kobold in turn. “Soneste, this is Verdax.”
“Master Verdax,” she said with a half-bow, holding back a smile.
“Shhrk! Where she is from?” the artificer demanded with a hiss.
Tallis opened his mouth to reply, but Soneste cut him off. “Listen,” she said, producing her identification papers and holding them out for the kobold’s inspection. “I work for Thuranne d’Velderan’s Investigative Services, a freelancing inquisitive agency with ties to House Tharashk. I am here on behalf of the King’s Citadel of Breland and the Justice Ministry.”
Verdax’s eyes bulged. The lips of his canine snout peeled back to reveal a collection of tiny sharp teeth. One clawed hand reached for a wand sticking out of his largest pocket.
“I am not here for you, Verdax.” She pointed at the papers tacked to the wall. “I have no interest in seizing the Kapoacinth, for which I’m assuming you possess legal ownership, nor of investigating your business here. We’re only interested your help.”
The kobold turned his baleful gaze upon Tallis. He had yet to address her directly. “She is law! Cannot be trust!” he screeched.
“Look, she’s with me. Me. I’m the one wanted by the law, right?” Tallis added, “And Verdax … she’s from Sharn.”
The kobold’s glare faltered, quickly supplanted by a sinister, dragonlike smile. He looked back at Soneste. “Tell with me about City of Towers, warmblood.”
“Another time,” Tallis said. “There’s something I really need you to look at right now.”
Soneste placed the cloth bundle on the central worktable. Verdax lingered a moment as if lost in a dream, his toothy grin only slowly fading. He mounted a metal step ladder that had been fused to one side of the table and peeled back the cloth. Soneste imagined him constructing various other devices right there, standing on the tabletop like an artificer’s homunculus, yet the more she looked around at the wands, potions, and sundry magic items, the more seriously she took the peculiar kobold.
Verdax prodded the empty gauntlet with interest, turning it over and hefting it in nimble claws. At last he looked up at Tallis. “Settle first! Then we gold-talk.”
“Fine.” Tallis nodded at Soneste. “This will only take a few minutes.”
The Karrn and kobold moved to the other side of the shop. Tallis produced the fire wand he’d used just last night, handing it to Verdax. “This was discharged only once in my possession,” he began. “I promise you. You can check it yourself.”
Soneste watched as Tallis pulled a surprising number of items from his coat and pockets, including a handful of small potion vials. She spied the two metal rods he carried at his belt, but he didn’t remove them. From the bargaining session that followed-hushed tones punctuated by the kobold’s shrill exclamations-Soneste deduced that Tallis borrowed most of the tools for his peculiar trade but that he did, in fact, own a few of them himself. The gravity-defying rods and the gnomish hooked hammer were probably his. The rest, it seemed, he rented in exchange for gold or temporal magic findings.
Soneste busied herself with her own inventory but quietly studied the space around her. She knew only a little about magic but knew enough to know that Verdax owned a veritable arsenal of arcane equipment and weaponry. Between the basement of Aureon’s shrine and this unassuming little watercraft, Soneste knew she’d found Tallis’s primary haunts. She already knew a lot about this man. Once this investigation was over, what would happen next? He seemed too careful to just let her go, truce or no truce.
Her eyes kept returning to the storage bin across the way and its tarp-covered protrusion. Was that a limb?
“Good,” Tallis said when their business had concluded. “Now take a look at that thing!”
Verdaxensoranec didn’t appreciate threats. His time was valuable, his skills underappreciated, his hard work underpaid and forced into unlawful measures. But this female warmblood had been gentle enough with her implied threat. She was diplomatic, for a human, yet had she come in the company of anyone other than Tallis, Verdax wouldn’t have risked treating with her at all.
The offer of payment allayed his concerns, but talk of Sharn spurred his efforts. The sooner he identified the metal hand, the sooner Tallis and the female would leave and come back again. Hence, the sooner he would learn more of the City of Towers. He’d certainly had enough of the City of Danger. Karrnath was a cold, unpleasant land, and it had made his scales ache for years. The warm caves of his homeland in the Ironroot Mountains were more comfortable, but he’d quit them in favor of more enlightened company.
Alas, Sharn! The famous City of Towers offered an acceptable climate and endless arcane resources. Someday he would get the Kapoacinth there! The warmblood claimed to be an agent of the king of Breland. That might prove useful toward that end.
Thus inspired, Verdax set upon the strange metal hand. He settled the goggles over his eyes, and the fine filigree of the gauntlet sharpened to perfect clarity. This was a curious metal, to be certain. For a device such as this he knew he would need to call upon the skills bestowed upon him by the mighty dragon Eberron. He prefaced his scrutiny with the purifying words of a Draconic incantation, summoning the first infusion he would require.
Verdax fell into his work. Time faded away, along with the feckless prattle of the warmbloods nearby.
When he’d learned all that he could, he dropped his goggles on the tabletop and stretched. His stomach snarled at him, reminding him how long he’d been ignoring it. Tallis and his female sat wearily nearby, but their eyes came alert when they saw he was finished. A sheen of mammalian sweat slicked their too-smooth skin-especially the Karrn. Oh yes, as if it had been so hard sitting there doing nothing!
“What’s the answer?” Tallis asked, uncharacteristically impatient. The half-breed elf was normally a respectable customer.
“Steel is not steel,” Verdax answered. When Tallis prompted more of an explanation-what was so hard to understand? — he continued. “Shrrk! Steel is mixed, not steel only. Different alloy. Unsure of ore. Not from real mountain.”
“Yes, and …?”
“Not mithral. Not adamant.”
“Adamantine, right,” Tallis corrected, rudely.
“Yes. Hand is pulled from construct. Living metal.”
“Verdax,” the female interjected. He thought he’d been talking to Tallis. But no matter, this female would assist his career with her knowledge of Sharn and its societies. “This hand came from a creature composed entirely of armor. Could this armor have been animated with necromantic magic? With undead spirits?”
“Shhrk! No. Hand is pulled from construct body.” Hadn’t he just said this? This was very simple to understand. Verdax began to question this kingly agent’s intelligence. “Construct not real alive. Construct not dead or undead.”
“Of course,” she answered. “Could this hand have come from some sort of unusual warforged?”
Verdax laughed, and the female made a surprised face. It was funny. “No. Not is … ordinary.” He waved a claw at the junk bin on the other side of the room, the thought having reminding him that he really ought to inspect his latest yield.
In all his years on the salvage crew, Verdax had never once seen a warforged with five digits upon its hand, nor seen a material simultaneously hard and flexible like this. The swirling arcana etched into the grooves of the gauntlet was not suggestive of Cannith work. They were runes of a different sort, nothing like the schemas he’d once pried off the shell of a warforged titan.