Emma pt. 5

Want to start at the beginning? - Emma, Part 1

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Rilen led the way as the girls crossed the Velshin field back to Emma’s home. On each side of them ancient dwarves loomed above. Some had their hands on their hips, resolute, others worked tools and trades, their large, dexterous hands carved in such detail that one could imagine they would return to fluid movements at any moment.

“So are you going to do it?” Rilen finally asked when they’d walked almost half the way back without a word.

Emma’s mind had been on the Juniper’s warm, brown coat, and on Lison’s playful eyes. She thought for a moment about what it would really mean to leave her home in a matter of days.

“My mother –” She was cut off before she could say more.

“Could say nothing if you were a Patron.” Rilen looked back toward Emma and slowed her pace.

“She would still be furious.”

“She’d be furious if she knew you went out at night, or if she knew you gave me the money to buy you some real boots.” Emma looked down to her feet while Rilen spoke, “When has her temper ever stopped you from doing what you really want?”

“And you’d go with me?” She looked up into her friend’s red eyes.

“My brother has been pestering me for three years to join him. He wants to train me to be an overseer so I can manage a crew for him. He says he needs someone he can trust.”

“But you’d be with us for the first run?”

“Yes, I’d need to learn how to do the job before he’d let me do it on my own.”

Emma smiled and nodded, walking closer to Rilen as they talked. She wanted to ask about Lison and what Rilen knew about him, but it made her blush to think about him and she realized there was another human she was equally curious about.

“Parien seemed different than you described her.”

Rilen huffed, “Trust me, she was just playing nice. She is just as hard and callous as I’ve told you.”

“She can’t be that bad, or Deem wouldn’t work with her.”

Rilen rolled her eyes, “Deem isn’t much better these days.” She drew up right next to Emma and joined arms with her, her voice slightly hushed, “Last year they were working for a dye merchant out of Rendell’s Marsh. One of their carriers was slipping a few vials away and selling them for his own profit. When Parien found out she cut his hand off.”

“His hand!” Shock mixed with disgust in Emma’s voice, “And Deem let her do it?”

“Yes, and it’s not the first time. Apparently it’s a fairly common human punishment for theft.”

Emma leaned back, processing what’s she’d heard. Beside her she saw the elegant stone fingers of a female dwarf gripping a plow.

Dwarves taught that a being’s soul was in their hands. More than that, dwarves were themselves hands, hands of The Ardent, the Unyielding God who used dwarves to leave his mark on the world. Hands were the best fashioned tool, the one a man is born with, and that stays with him until his grave. They can heal themselves when broken, and be taught to preform nearly any task.

When a dwin criminal is imprisoned, their hands are still put to the good of all, to labor and build and work. To remove a hand, a healthy, working hand, would be a senseless and brutal act for any dwin.

She looked at her own hands, so much like the dwarves all around her. Her fingers were long but also stout, each one strong and deft. Compared to a human hand they would seem over large, out of proportion to the rest of her body, but they were more graceful and capable than most human hands.  

“But to take away his hand, what good could that do?”

Rilen shrugged, “It’s supposed to be about punishing him, and Deem says about marking him. This way anyone who sees him will know him as a thief.”

“Well that’s almost worse isn’t it? It would make it even harder for him to use the hand he has left in any respectable trade.”

Emma could see the round door of her home now, growing larger as they approached. She stopped walking, wanting to talk more with Rilen before she had to return to the confining estate.

Rilen stopped and they unlinked their arms and stood face to face. 

“Deem’s says that human laws are just as subjective as dwarven laws,” she didn’t sound like she wholly agreed with him, “that it’s all just a matter of tradition.”

Emma thought about that, not speaking for a while, just looking at her friend. 

“I guess there are a lot of human laws that wouldn’t make sense to us,” she finally said.

“Probably.” Rilen said, “But I don’t want you to think that Parien is going to be bad to work with.  It’s just that, well, Deem has changed so much since he partnered up with her, and sometimes I think she doesn’t like me very much.”

“If everything works out you might never have to see her. You’d be overseeing your own crew.” Emma’s voice filled with hope as she imagined their lives. “Maybe I could travel with you all the time, or I could even find somewhere to live in Blue Cost.”

Rilen smiled widely, “That would be great, I can’t wait to see the city.”

They resumed walking, Emma pulled off her leather boot and traded them for her silk shoes.  They stood together for a while at the gate, saying goodbye.

“When will you decide?”

“I don’t know,” the late hour was affecting her, making it hard to keep her thoughts in a straight line, all she could do was keep recalling the feeling of the horse under her and Lison next to her, “I think I need to sleep and consider it more in the morning.”

“I can come get you before the Assembly meets, we can walk there together. Surely you’ll have made up your mind by then.”

“I’d like that.”

They embraced, gripping tightly at each other’s forearms and touching their cheeks together, then Rilen turned and started back down the road toward the city and the cluster of small stone houses on its outskirt where her family lived.  

Emma pulled open the round stone door and closed it behind her.  It clicked gracefully into place and she secured the lock.

Shouts and calls echoed off the walls inside. Apparently her parents had not decided to reprimand Nelum for having so many guests so late at night. She hurried through the kitchen and down the hallways, casting glances all around to be sure no one saw her.

Through the silk shoes she could feel the hard, cold stone. The chill seemed to run up her leg, making her shiver.  The walls too, seemed to suck the heat and vibrancy out of the air around her. She sighed deeply, wishing she had stayed longer around the fire, maybe meeting more of Deem’s crew.

Just outside her bedroom door there was a large mural of Ardent’s Peak.  That was the latest in a succession of names that had marked the mountain. It stood against a stormy grey sky and a path wound round its base.  The path led off into the dense forest on the mountain’s far side.

There was a small mark on that road, an imperfection in the stone that dented slightly in, making the paint seem darker over the mark. Emma had always imagined it a traveler on the road, a pack slung over their shoulder, heading to the wide world beyond the peak, but now it seemed to her to be a horse, galloping at full speed with a rider on its back. 

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Continue to Part 6