coobybook Icevein: Chapter 18
Icevein: Chapter 18
Inside the Rhûl’s Holt Chargrim leaned over a spread of papers, stroking the long fur of the Mine Runner he held in his arms. His assistants sat at the table. The papers covered the polished granite from one end to the other.“I think we will go with the Sennish map for this part,” Chargrim said, pointing. “Besides, it matches the shipping chart.”
“That would mean the Seven Isles extend twice as far into the sea as we had allowed,” one of the assistants said. It was Oathquill, Farhear’s son. The father and son were two of the most learned dwarves in Glint. Chargrim had lured them there all the way from a hold in the Brown Hills. Both spoke Laithan, the human tongue, and could read the Sennish dialect as well.
“What is this word?” Chargrim asked. Farhear leaned over the paper.
“Two words, Rhûl,” Farhear replied. “ and I am no sailor, but I believe they refer to strong currents.”
Chargrim nodded.
Peridot stood in the opening of the inner alcove and the passage back to the stonehold, watching the scene for a moment. Oathquill looked up, saw her, and looked quickly away. She entered, carrying the steaming jug of tea that her mother had commissioned for Chargrim and the assistants. Her father saw her approach and cleared a space on the table for the pitcher.
“Thank you, ,” he said, offhandedly using the affectionate construction often used by parents for their gilna. It meant something akin to “girl of sweetness.” She blushed beneath her veil to be spoken to thus in front of Oathquill and Farhear, but her father had already turned his attention back to the maps. Farhear was more interested in the tea than in her, and Oathquill studiously avoided looking up at her. The dwarves already had mugs on the table, scattered among the papers, and she went about pouring the steaming brew. As she did, she looked with curiosity at the various maps spread out and held down by game ingots. After she had poured, she held the empty pitcher but did not move from the table. Oathquill was re-inking a coastline on the draft of a map while Farhear jotted notes.
“If only we could get a better map of the deep south,” Farhear said.
“Is this not the south?” Peridot asked, pointing at one of the unrolled maps.
“It is,” Chargrim answered.
“But it is a human map,” Farhear added, barely glancing up. Peridot liked Farhear. Unlike Oathquill, who was clearly uncomfortable with her presence, Farhear appeared interested only in his work; he was always preoccupied when she saw him, and he was over two-hundred years old.
“Why does that matter? Peridot asked.
“Humans are terrible map-makers,” Farhear answered. “Their sailors may known the routes by heart, but that doesn’t mean they know how to put it on paper. And worse—” he pointed toward a great misshapen blob on the human map that Peridot took to be some kind of island “—if they do not know what lies in some direction, they invent it. This area is different on every map, except its name. I do not know if they have truly seen something here, or if they merely believe there be something.”
“The farther away from their lands, the worse it gets,” Chargrim said. “It is almost no use comparing between them.”
“How did you get these maps?” she asked.
“How do we get anything?” Chargrim asked back. Peridot knew that meant he had purchased or traded for them. Pack trains of donkeys came and left Glint all summer long. All he had to do was let it be known that Chargrim of Glint wanted a thing, and any number of dwarves would seek to find it and claim the prize of wealth that her father could bestow. Humans did not come to Glint, but there a little trade between the humans and Deep Cut, even with the rumored tensions along the borders, and the dwarves of the Brown Hills were known to trade iron to Laith.
“So what are you doing?” she asked.
“We are attempting to compile a map of the world,” Chargrim answered. He still held the purring Mine Runner under his armpit.
“The world?” she asked.
Her father turned a wide sheet of paper to face her.
“Look,” he said, pointing to the left hand side of the map. “Across the sea, there is a peninsula they call and lands beyond it. And here—” he pointed again “—they call this Elfland.”
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“Do elves live there?”
“No,” Farhear answered. “It is a barren land. But the human stories say it was once a paradise. A deadly paradise.”
Peridot squinted, confused. There were old tales about elves told by the dwarves. The elves were always conniving, treacherous, and lustful.
“I know,” Chargrim said with a smirk. “How can both things be true?”
Farhear grinned.
“Most elves live in the deep south,” Farhead said. “They trade up the coast with the humans.”
“Most?”
Farhear shrugged, but said nothing more. A Mine Runner jumped onto the table next to him, and he pushed it back onto the floor without looking at it.
“Well,” Chargrim said, “with those decisions made, I think you can draft the new map.”
“Ay yes, Rhûl,” Farhear said.
“Very well. You may go and get to work.”
At the dismissal, Oathquill and Farhear hurried to stack the papers and bottle their ink. As they did that, her father added: “I think the shipping records will come next, but translate the weights into in the margin.” Farhear nodded, and the father and son left the chamber. The mugs of tea sat on the table, still warm and half full. Chargrim released the cat from his arms, picked his mug up, and took a sip.
As interesting as the maps were, Peridot had hoped to play her father in a game of Ingots. He must have realized it, because he directed her to set up the stone. Sitting across from each other, they played. For two games, they carried on without conversation, until Chargrim had a stack of three ingots moving toward the center passage. but Peridot moved single ingots up either side. With an attack on the right, she moved a final ingot behind and had the stack enveloped.
She smiled as she scooped the three ingots out of the stone.
“Ah,” he said. “You have defeated my assault.”
“Ay, yes.”
He moved a single wif ingot forward, threatening one of hers by the flank. She tried to reposition, but he advanced across the stone. She had moved toward the center to counter his stack, and now she found she could not realign in time. In the end, he took the throne with five ingots left to spare.
“You focused on one victory at the expense of the greater,” he said.
“But I needed to take the stack.”
“Did you?”
“But—” she stopped, thinking.
“There were many things you could have done. You could have stacked and made a barrier. You could have drawn it in, rather than moving forward to envelope. You could have ignored it and rushed at the sides, hoping to make me move to defend. You could have sacrificed a wif ingot.”
“Which would you have done?”
He shrugged.
“Just be careful and remember this—an unnecessary victory is often a loss. This is true in life as in Ingots.”
Peridot frowned.
“What is an unnecessary victory in life?”
“Do you remember when Warmcoat and Shineboot’s kulhan demanded a portion of the share?”
“When was that?”
Her father paused, leaning back.
“Something like fifteen years ago,” he said. “Probably before you would have heard anything. It was back when they were working the Twisted Stope vein, and they were hauling out ton after ton of crushed gold-rich quartz ore. Spirits were afire, and they labored sometimes two or three shifts at a time. But then they demanded a share.”
“But kulhanare paid a wage, not a share.”
“Ay, yes, but this is Glint, and old rules do not always apply. Thus they argued. They were making us rich beyond imagining, and they wanted a share. By cadre, not by single dwarf.”
“Did you give it them?”
“No. The owners wouldn’t hear of it. I raised the kulhanwage, instead.” He shook his head. “It wasn’t enough.”
“What happened?”
“Many of the best miners left to go strike their own claims. Miners who had apprenticed, who we needed. Valuable kulhan. The rate of the dig plunged, and judging by the difference in output, I suspect many were making up the difference by pocketing ore. I feared to have them searched, because what would I do? Drive away the last of our kulhan?”
“But a Peridot asked. “It’s not their claim! That’s not reasonable.”
“Is it not?” Chargrim asked. “Why did we leave Deep Cut? Why does Deep Cut get poorer every year?”
“Because all they have is salt and coal.”
“And oil and Leech Vapors. And the Brown Hills are rich in iron.”
“You can’t get rich on iron.”
“Oh?” her father asked. “If they could keep peace with the humans, they could grow rich enough just making tools and weapons, to say nothing of the blastedsalt. Some of them rich, but far more aren’t.”
“Not everyone can strike it rich.”
“Perhaps not. But I wonder if we would be richer, now, if we had not lost our best kulhanif we had kept up the rate of our workings, and if we did not lose so much to thievery. It is an issue.”
“Then you should punish the thieves!”
“Listen to what I’m telling you!” her father exclaimed, slapping his palm on the table. He leaned forward. “You can win one fight, and lose a greater. Imagine if we gave the kulhan a share, just so long as they remain with us. They benefit from working harder. They spend their wealth , and that wealth returns to us by way of the Warehall, the crafter rents,tariffs. . .”
“Isn’t it enough that you protect them?”
“Do I?” Chargrim asked.
“Of course you do.”
“Do I stand guard in the eastern outposts? Do I patrol the ridges? Does this leg win battles?” He struck his thigh with a fist.
“They are wardens.”
“I own no one, Peridot. And if the dwarves of Glint so wished, there is nothing that would stop them from taking it all and tossing us in the river. You must learn to look at the world not just by what is, but by what could be. You must think of it before do.”
“Are you saying we should break tradition?”
“Break nothing, unless you know how it was built and why. But if our folk do only what is done in Deep Cut, then all we do is dig Deep Cut anew. The Crippled King ruled not for wealth, but for the folk.”
“If it is such a good idea, why not give the kulhan a share, now?”
“For the same reason as before. The claim is not mine alone. The owners have not agreed, and despite what is whispered, I am no king.”
“Maybe there should a king.”
“Maybe lots of things,” he answered, then spun the Ingots stone around. “I’m bronze.”