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“No, Intanta will do the fortune-telling tomorrow. You may sit like a stone statue and keep silent.”
“Let her try again,” Intanta said. “I’m glad of the chance to mingle. She hurts none.”
“And helps none,” Ragwrist said. “But this is not the first time I’ve carried dead weight. Curse my soft heart! Sit in the fortune-telling tent again tomorrow, Wistala, and try not to give away my wagons.”
Her supper that night was a poor thin jelly of cooked-down horse hooves—remains such as these were sometimes used as waterproofing or to grease the wagon axles. Short of giving her dirt, she could not see how her rations could get worse.
After nightfall she gathered every particle of information from Brok and the other dwarves about the Wheel of Fire and their habits, then prowled the rocky slopes and managed to get a sick carrion bird. Then she sat and stared at the distant lights glimmering in the tall rocks that faced each other, mirrored in the surface of the Ba-drink. There were towers at the tops of the cliffs. No wonder Father had broken himself against them. Where was the Dragonblade now? In those rocks, or did he hunt her?
The next morning Ragwrist himself woke her, not through noise or touch but by the smell of a thick joint still sizzling on the platter he bore.
“Wistala, up and get to your tent and prepare yourself! There’s already a line outside the fortune-tent!”
She rushed her breakfast—meaning it took her three eyeblinks to eat—and hurried through the show preparations for the back flap of the fortune-telling tent. Lada was already inside arranging the candles; Brok stood ready with her chains and collar.
Brok spoke in her ear as he helped fix her in the false collar. “The dwarves all say an ambitious young dwarf named Stava demanded entrance to House Steelforge last night. He was so insistent, so fair-spoken, and so complimentary about their eldest daughter and plans for his betterment that Dwar Steelforge himself put their hands together, and the engagement party will last a week. There’s some talk of Stava being an unchaired member of the Wheel of Fire Council. A few say Dwara Steelforge just wanted her overripe eldest out of the way so the younger ones could marry, but there’s a sour belly at every feast. But all say it was our dragon’s doing, and that you bring fortune.”
Much of the morning passed in a blur.
Ragwrist himself helped usher dwarves in and out of the tent. Most offered her silver or gold coin in return for advice with their problems and plans, though a few grumbled when the “Spirits” failed to return the coin as she had the ring. If Wistala seemed stuck, Ragwrist announced that the reading was over. They had to take two breaks to extract the coins from her gums.
“I’m hardly able to speak without rattling or shooting silver into their faces,” she said as Lada put new candles in the holders and fresh incense in the brazier Ragwrist had confiscated from the luxury trade-tent.
The afternoon went much like the morning, only more so.
As the sun fell, there was some murmur outside, and the sound of dwarf bodies dropping to the ground.
Ragwrist bowed as he opened the tent flap and a dwarf strode in, a thin red cape of silk hanging down from a light ornamental helm that reminded Wistala of a spiderweb or the loose-knit caps of the librarians in Thallia, for it was more holes than plate save for a line of what looked like dragon teeth at the top, descending in size from large at the front to small at the base of the skull, rather like her own fringe. His faceplate was golden, and had flames at the edge like those used on some sun signs of the astrologers in Hypat. He carried a staff fully as tall as he was in his left hand, and atop it was a reddish crystal the size of his fist.
“Hmpf,” the dwarf said. “You’re not four years out of the egg.”
“Her egg drifted down the Holy River of Mherr,” Ragwrist said, still in his odd balancing bow, “and was plucked from the bullrushes by a daughter of—”
The dwarf tapped his staff on the ground. “Spare me the biography. A fortune-telling drakka?”
“I hide nothing from your greatness,” Wistala said. Ragwrist bobbed a bit, and Wistala bowed.
“How much am I to give you?” the dwarf said.
Ragwrist raised his thumb three times.
“I can ask nothing from one who has a chair at the Council Table of the Wheel of Fire,” Wistala said, and Ragwrist turned his thumb into a fist and shook it at her. “But if you care for my oracle, you may reward me as you wish.”
The fist stopped shaking.
The dwarf gave a nod that bent his waist just far enough that a charitably inclined person might take it for a bow. Wistala concentrated every iota of her attention on him; were her perceptions claws, they would be dug into his eyes. “My name is Fangbreaker. That’s all I’ll tell you, drakka.”
“No, it’s not,” Wistala said, having heard his heart miss a beat as he spoke the name. Ragwrist toppled out of his bow but came to his feet again quietly.
The staff came down hard enough for Wistala to feel it through the packed mountain dirt. “Gnaw! It is!”
“Were you born with that name?”
She saw eyewhites inside the mask. “I am titled Fangbreaker, but you speak the truth. I was born to a common name. Gobold was I on the day of my birth.”
“Let us call the score even.” She studied his hands. There was a white scar across one set of fingers, those of his right hand. He was wide, even for a dwarf, and still puffed from his walk into the tent. Perhaps wheezed a little.
“I’m not the first dragon you’ve matched yourself against,” Wistala said, feeling her foua pulse. “You’re a warrior at heart, now relegated to the table and dusty papers that make you sneeze.”
