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Wistala begged a few extra candles from Ragwrist, who sighed about expenses. Lada installed them around and behind the spot where she was “chained” so their shadows played across her face and body in an intimidating manner. Lada did many of her tasks with a happier, more confident air these days, and anything that didn’t involve the routine of cleaning, feeding, or sleeping her baby made Lada break into quiet song. She had an eye for artistry, and costume, and pleasing arrangements of even the most mundane candlestick.
Though she still stuck her tongue out at Wistala when she thought she wasn’t being watched. Hominids underestimated the sweep of a dragon’s gaze.
The first day she had many visitors to her tent, but few of the dwarves asked to have their fortunes read. Wistala wished for Intanta’s crystal . . . perhaps that would invite the dwarves to have a peek and ask a question. Instead they peered from their heavy masks into her eyes, or muttered to each other in the dwarf tongue about she knew not what. They left as soon as she invited them to have their fortunes read.
At last a young dwarf—or one who had lost his beard, for he had but a grassy fringe on his chin—came into the tent and flung himself on his stomach before her, a gesture she wasn’t sure how to interpret.
“Oh great daughter of dragonkind,” he said in rather glottal Parl. “I crave your advice. What do you ask?”
She used the speech she’d long rehearsed, a variation of Intanta’s invocation when she sat in the tent. “Rise and place a coin upon my tongue; the quality of the metal brings quality of insight.” She extended her tongue a short distance.
“I’m poor . . . but I have a ring of my granddame,” the dwarf said, coming up to bended knee. He reached into a pocket in his leather vest and extracted a short chain with a few pierced coins and a ring with a shining green crystal at the end. He placed it on her extended tongue—she took the opportunity to smell his hands—and she brought it to her mouth and pretended to swallow. The ring she tucked into her gumline.
“You are troubled. Desperate,” Wistala said, which was evident enough.
“Yes!” the dwarf bubbled.
What would a short-bearded dwarf be troubled about? Love or his position, she expected. Perhaps both. The other dwarves smelled of goose grease or salted pork and beer, but this one’s hands only had a faint floury smell to them. His eyes looked tired.
“You labor hard. Something to do with wheat.” A miller? In the mountains? No! “A baker.”
“Truly!” the dwarf said, his mouth dropping open.
“You love what you do?”
“Nothing is better than the smell of rising dough, or the steam from a freshly baked bun just opened.”
She shut her eyes. Did his family not want him to be a baker, or was it someone else? “I see a problem. You fear you are not loved and respected by those you wish to keep close to your heart. It is hard to put your images and impressions into words.”
“Oh yes! She jests with me almost every day when she comes for her order, and will speak not with the owner but only with me. But she’s from a house with a chair at the council table! And who am I?”
So that is it. She jests with him.
“But she smiles at you, good dwarf, every day that you meet?”
“Oh yes, but she’s famous for her disposition. She’s kindness itself! She laughs when I juggle buns and always buys extra for the poor.”
Wistala found herself liking this young dwarf. She’d been prepared to make him miserable, as a member of a clan who’d done murder to those dearest to her . . . but this fellow seemed so troubled, her heart pitied him. Then of course, he was a baker, who would probably not be foremost in a charge into a dragon’s cave.
She spat the ring out. “The stars and winds, waters and stones weep for your unrequited love, and will not have your offering. Take it back. Present the ring to her family, as a pledge of your love for her. Ask that you may borrow gold against the value of the ring and open a bakery of your own. If you prove yourself worthy of her hand, you shall have it.”
“How is—?”
Wistala bowed her head. “Do not question the workings of the Great Spirits. Ah, they’ve gone. I can see no more.”
The dwarf sniffled. “Thank you, thank you, great dragon!”
Ragwrist and Intanta were aghast. “You did what?”
They spoke to her in the wheeled cabin of the washerwomen and Intanta’s cronies that night by the light of a single candle.
“I couldn’t take the ring from one so earnest and desperate. Besides, he needed it as a pledge against borrowed money.” The last wasn’t quite true, since she’d suggested that the dwarf borrow.
“ ’Tis the most desperate that needs their fortunes told most,” Intanta said.
“Wistala, I cannot deny that you are a draw,” Ragwrist said. “Mostly to children who spend not a penny. I cannot pay for your upkeep, or take a percentage, on nothing. You see the position this puts me in? Why, Lada is worth more to the circus than you.”
Wistala didn’t give a dropped scale for Lada’s worth, though her hand had improved somewhat in the letters to Rainfall. “I will try again tomorrow.”
