“Certainly,” Malden said. He was mostly just glad not to be the object of the guildmaster’s plotting. Outside, he found Slag constructing a boiled leather cuirass, laying long strips of hardened leather across a stiffened shirt and then affixing them in place with paste. When Malden approached him he cursed volubly, but after a moment the dwarf came trooping along after him into Cutbill’s chamber. He had a scowl on his face, as usual, but he had always been an obedient employee.
“This had better be good. My glue’s getting tacky.”
“It will only take a moment, I assure you,” Cutbill said. “Malden here has turned up a very interesting piece of information. It seems there’s a barbarian in town who is forming a crew to go and open the Vincularium. I thought that would be of some small interest to you.”
The scowl went slack on Slag’s face. “Huh,” he said.
Malden rubbed at his chin. He’d never heard the dwarf stymied for a curse before. What was Cutbill up to?
Slag failed to give the game away. He stood there looking pensive but said nothing more. Eventually Cutbill looked up and gave the dwarf a pointed look. “That’s all. You may return to your work.”
Slag nodded and turned to go. He stopped before he reached the door, however, and turned to address Cutbill. “Sir,” he said. Malden had never heard the dwarf use an honorific before. Interesting. “Sir, if it’s alright with you. Well. You know I’m in here every fucking day, and most nights. I work hard, don’t I? And I serve you well. I haven’t even been sick a day for—how long?”
Cutbill tilted his head to one side as if trying to remember. Then he stuck his thumb in the ledger book and opened it to a page quite near its beginning. “Seventeen years,” he said, after consulting a column of numbers.
The dwarf nodded. “Aye. Well. I think, suddenly, I might be coming down with somewhat. Somewhat lingering.”
“That is unfortunate,” Cutbill said. The look on his face was not what Malden would call sympathetic, but then he couldn’t imagine Cutbill showing fellow feeling for anyone. “You’d better go home then, until you feel well again. Take as much time as you need. I don’t care if it takes weeks and weeks.”
“Thank ye, sir,” Slag said, and left the room.
When he was gone Malden stared at the guildmaster of thieves. “What was that about? What’s he after?”
“Like I said, Malden, you might do some asking around about the Vincularium. In this case, it might interest you to know who built it. Of course,” Cutbill said, and flipped back to his current page, “it matters not. Since you have already made up your mind not to go.”
CHAPTER TWELVE
Croy and Mörget set about at once outfitting themselves for the journey. There were so many things to buy—a wagon to carry their gear, supplies to make camp in the wilderness, lanterns and climbing gear for inside the Vincularium. Croy had rarely been as happy or excited as he looked over the growing pile of equipment.
Of course, Mörget had no money, so Croy had to pay for everything, but that did little to dampen his enthusiasm. He’d always considered money to be something you spent, not something you hoarded. He was glad to foot the bill for such an important endeavor.
While he arranged for the pack horses they would require, he was approached by a messenger with a letter from Cythera. He blushed, having almost forgotten the events of the previous day, when he’d come close to marrying her. Her message said she wished to meet with him and discuss a matter of importance—almost certainly about the banns, he decided. He sent the messenger back with instructions on where she should meet him.
He was just trying on a new brigantine when Cythera arrived at the armorer’s shop. He glanced up at her with a smile and turned the doublet inside out, showing her the thin plates of bright case-hardened iron inside the canvas.
“Of course, this will be little use against a demon,” he said, as she came and took his hands in greeting. “Especially this one, which can simply flow through the cracks between the plates. Yet there may be bandits along the way, and other dangers yet unguessed once we get inside the Vincularium.” He everted the doublet again and showed her the elaborate pattern of brazen rivets that held the plates fast. “Rather beautiful in its way, hmm? But of course, one doesn’t choose armor for how it looks.”
“Perhaps you’ll marry me in it,” she told him, then leaned close to whisper, “of course, you must remove it before the wedding night, or I shall be quite sore the next morning.”
He flushed red and stepped away from her. Picking up a round shield, he held it high between them. “Now, this will stop any blow. Yet it’s light as a buckler, made of basswood in overlapping strips, then faced with boiled leather. Truly exquisite craftsmanship. As you would expect from a dwarf of Snurrin’s reputation.”
The proprietor of the shop bowed low, his head dropping nearly to the level of Croy’s ankles. “Your very presence in my shop only serves to enhance my meager fame, sir knight.”
The armorer looked like any other dwarf from Croy’s experience, with corpse-pale skin (dwarves shunned the sun’s rays, being subterranean by natural inclination) and a tangled mass of dark hair sticking up from his scalp. Yet he had never heard a dwarf speak so prettily—or with such couth. Normally they swore oaths and laced their sentences with profanity as much as did sailors. There was a reason Croy patronized Snurrin. Though the dwarf was known to be the most expensive armorer in the Free City, Croy knew he wouldn’t be embarrassed by strong language while picking out his panoply.
“I’ll want to see this brigantine proofed, of course, but I think it will suit,” Croy said. He smiled sheepishly and then let out a little laugh. “Ha, I have made a jest, I think. This suit of armor, you see, will—”
“Fie!” the barbarian shouted, coming out of a fitting room near the back of the shop. He was naked save for a pair of faulds that wouldn’t quite buckle around his waist. For a man as large as Mörget that was a lot of nudity. “Have you nothing big enough for a real man? Or do you make armor only for tiny creatures like yourself, shopkeep?”
Croy saw Cythera staring at the barbarian and took her elbow to lead her toward the back of the shop. There was a yard behind the main building, where a number of Snurrin’s human apprentices were cleaning hauberks and coats of plate. To get the blood and sweat and less identifiable substances out of the metal armor, they loaded each piece in a barrel full of sand wetted down with vinegar, then rolled the barrels endlessly back and forth across the yard.
“A rather tedious method of doing one’s laundry,” Cythera observed.
“Armor must be cleansed after every battle or it rusts. I expect you to have little knowledge of what it’s like to wear a rusty hauberk, but I assure you, it’s unpleasant,” Croy told her. He could remember plenty of times in the field when he’d had no chance to keep his mail clean. The chain mail had chafed his skin until it was red and raw. “But this is what I brought you to see.” He led her to a wooden post mounted near the back of the yard. A crosspiece stood at its top and padding had been wrapped around the two beams of wood, while a hank of straw had been nailed to the top like a wig. It looked to Croy like an emaciated scarecrow. He slipped the brigantine over the wooden form and then took Cythera back to a table near the door where wine and three cups had been provided. There was even an awning to keep the sun off the two of them while they waited. In short order, Mörget emerged from the shop, holding a barbute helmet big enough to make soup in. It looked like it might just fit his massive head. It had a sharply pointed nasal and an elaborate aventail of mail to protect the neck.
“This is all he had,” Mörget said, with a shrug. “I’ve never favored armor anyway. It’s always too heavy and slows a man down.”