“Beneath my chair there is a chest. Would you be so good as to retrieve it?”
The dwarves turned toward each other again; then the younger stepped forward and lifted the small iron box. He passed it to Rainfall, who opened it.
When the accounting was settled, both dwarves bowed low, with more grace than Wistala would have credited them, and Rainfall bowed in return. After his head came back up, the dwarves raised theirs.
“A good journey,” Rainfall said.
“If we are not back by the Winter Solstice, write the Chartered Company and claim your bond. Thank you again.”
With that they left, escorted by Yeo Lessup.
“Wistala, come back. I think there’s one more bit of business, and I want you for this.”
She nosed open the passageway. “Gracious dwarves.”
Rainfall locked his chest with a tiny key, which he returned to a small bag he kept about his neck. “You can’t always trust appearances with dwarves. They mask more than their faces. But the Chartered Company will keep its bargain. Now all there is to do is hope there’s still friendship, or at least honor, at the Imperial Library.”
“What do you wish me to do?”
“Sit and be amused, dragon-daughter. Yeo Lessup, send in your uncle.”
This time the youth bowed properly. Jessup came in, apologizing for the muddiness of his boots and carrying an oilskin-wrapped object the size of one of Mossbell’s larger windows.
“How goes the inn, Jessup?” Rainfall said as he set down his burden in front of him.
“Well enough, sir, but I’ll beg you to help me with my figures again. I thought running an inn meant tapping kegs and keeping the bedding aired, but I never dreamt of all the counting!” Jessup was looking at Wistala again in that funny way of his.
Rainfall said: “I admire a full-grown man who is so attentive to lessons. Is it done?”
“Just about,” Jessup said. “You were right about the paints at Sack Harbor. Such colors! Who knew there were so many.”
“Then let us see.”
He untied a string around the oilskins and removed them.
Wistala blinked and looked at the wooden panel again. There were eyebolts in the top and fretwork to let the air pass through. Was it some kind of miniature door? Wait, it had a design on it, a painted figure. She recognized a long figure, depicted in profile, mostly upright, green and black-clawed.
“It’s you, Wistala,” Rainfall said as the meaning dawned on her.
“I’m calling the inn The Green Dragon,” Jessup said. “And a good inn needs a good sign that travelers remember.”
“If you’ve got no objection,” Rainfall said. “He does this as a form of compliment.”
Wistala understood, but understanding didn’t bring a surcease of confusion. “But the troll, my plan, your brother died . . .”
“All the land round Mossbell and the twin hills honors his bravery and is happier for it,” Jessup said. “I can’t blame you for the troll’s doing.”
“So, do we have your agreement?” Rainfall asked.
“Why do you need it? The man may name his inn as he wishes.”
“I’d be happier to have you touch the sign,” Jessup said.
Wistala didn’t answer, but stepped up to the sign. She extended her sharpest sii claw and dug a chunk of wood out at the eye. “You made the eyeblack round, like a hominid’s eye or a tailvent. Dragons have eyes like a cat.”
“Another story,” Jessup said. “The dragon herself marked the south-side eye, to look in the direction of the fight with the troll. A good story to tell over honey-mead.”
“When do you open?”
Jessup swiped his nose with a sii—fingertip, Wistala corrected herself. “All is in place. I’ve been brewing all summer since I bought out Old Golpramp’s entire supply of clover-honey. You have advised me on wine. My wife is ready to do the baking, and my son the butchery. There is still much sewing needing to be done, but I can make do. I was going to hang the sign tomorrow.”
“Delay another week or two. My old friend Ragwrist leads his troupe south even now, and this is his year to go the north roads. He should stop any day. The presence of his circus would make for a grand door-opening.”
“As my landlord wishes,” Jessup said.
Lada kept to her room. The only time Wistala saw her speak to her grandfather was when a messenger arrived. Forstrel took the letter to his master despite the outcry from Lada.
So great was the fracas that Wistala couldn’t help but attend her host. She found two of the Lessup girls listening outside his library door, whispering to each other.
“What has happened?” Wistala asked.
Both jumped, for Wistala’s steps were light on the rag rugs Widow Lessup had made to save the hall floors from dragonclaw and tailscale.
“The moony girl’s got a thane-letter,” the older of the girls said. “The master insists on reading it before giving it to her.”
Lada exploded out of the library like Auron leaping up onto the egg shelf, and all three listeners instinctively flattened themselves against the wall to get out of her way.
“Beast!” she said to Wistala, clutching the open letter to her breast as she fled to her room.
Wistala went into the library, found Forstrel standing behind Rainfall in his chair.
“I think that last was intended for me, my dear,” Rainfall said.
Wistala had once seen Jessup turn his younger son over on his lap and strike him for starting a fire out of some scrap wood where the inn was being constructed, and couldn’t help but think Lada would benefit from a similar treatment, for she had no snout to tail-snap in Mother’s fashion.
Widow Lessup’s voice intruded through the door as she sent her girls off to work. Forstrel made himself look busy at the bookshelves.
“Can I get you anything, sir?” Widow Lessup asked, her dark eyes hard and angry.
“A little wine, thank you, ye’en,” Rainfall said.
“Perhaps the letter held an offer for her to return to Galahall, that we might have some peace?” Wistala said.
“A brief mention that she was often in his thoughts and that he yearned to see her again,” Rainfall said.
“He’s well consoled by his other wards,” Forstrel said.
“Rumormongering improves nothing, Yeo Lessup,” Rainfall said. “He’s still the thane, and I won’t have that kind of talk. Go save your mother a trip back upstairs, if you please.”
“Why doesn’t the thane just marry her?” Wistala asked after Forstrel left. “Wouldn’t that make his path to ownership that much shorter?”
“Ahh, but Hypatian tradition allows only one wife, so he must choose carefully. Poor Lada is small fry from our river. Hammar has cast his net far at sea looking for a greater catch.”
Wistala digested this. “Have these circumstances been explained to Lada?”
“She will not listen. She’s like a sleepwalker who will not awaken till she falls off a cliff. Let us survey the road and bridge. I won’t have Ragwrist hurling jests as he once did daggers about the state of the roads under my care.”
The dwarven couriers returned before Ragwrist arrived, and rather than another formal session in the reception hall, Rainfall invited them to a quiet dinner at the Green Dragon Inn.
While the dwarves saw to their mounts and packhorse in the barn, Rainfall and Jessup together hatched a plan to give the dwarves a fine tale to carry back to their delvings.
Rainfall and Jessup took her in the great common room of the inn, showed her the wide river-stone chimney dividing the kitchen and storerooms from the common room and two of the sleeping rooms upstairs. Rainfall told her what to do when he snapped his fingers once, and then the second time.
She smelled that one of Yari-Tab’s kittens had already installed itself as the inn feline. Ah, there it was, sleeping on the mantel of the smaller fireplace on the outer wall of the common room.
Wistala found the inn rough-hewn and bare compared with the careful workmanship of the interiors of Mossbell, but something about the thickness of the logs and stone-and-masonry walls Jessup had used suggested safety and comfort as much as the carven door-frames and window seats of Mossbell. She recognized a mug, a favorite of Rainfall’s, on a special shelf all its own behind the counter of the common room.
“The landlord’s mug, may it be refilled many times,” said Jessup, taking it down and pouring a sweet-smelling liquid from a tapped keg resting on one side of the bar.
“I see you’ve copied the old style,” Rainfall said, reclining on a lounge next to the big fireplace. A blanket covered his legs. “The first Hypatian posthouses were built much like this, when there were barbarians of doubtful behavior to consider.” He sampled the mead. “Delicious. My compliments to the innkeeper and Old Golpramp for his clover-honey.”
Jessup smiled at being called an innkeeper. He poured himself a pewter mug. “To better days between the Apple and the Whitewater, thanks to troll-killings and dragon hoards.”
Wistala felt she should point out that the coin from Tumbledown would be more appropriately called a “rat hoard,” but she let the hominids talk. Jessup’s family watched her from the doorway to the kitchen. They’d seen Wistala only at a distance until now and stood as still as the painted dragon on the wood panel leaning next to the door.
