She burst into the overbuilt door of the [harbormaster]'s hall. Its hush poured out and around her to settle her frantic feet and eyes if not her heaving heart. The hall ran long and tall with windows too high and narrow to show anything of outside. Their light shafted through dust raised by cramped rows of men and women sitting at wooden desks scribbling tiny figures on flattened ledgers, figures cramped like their makers, little sticks stacked carefully together into letters and numbers that filled each page until it too was cramped. They worked without speaking though their pencils whispered furiously. They and their hall felt like a temple to their god before they replaced god with commerce and called it godly.

"Close the door," said someone.

She stepped into the hall and the heavy door swung shut behind her. She stood in place as her eyes adjusted to the dim and she felt theirs on her.

She heard a man's voice float out of an archway at the hall's far end. The sign of the [magister] was fixed to its keystone. She hefted her pack and started toward it. After a few paces she could make out his words.

"It's said you spent time among them," he said.

"By people who know less than you," said a woman.

"So what do you know of them?"

"Less than nothing."

"But your family held the seat."

"When there was still a seat to hold," said a different man.

"And I was a child," said the woman.

"So what do you remember?"

"Some things aren't worth remembering," said the woman as Mym stepped into the archway's threshold.

Mym saw two men sat in wooden chairs dragged in from the adjoining hall. One tilted back on two legs and the other hunched forward with his elbows on his knees. She saw the [magister] standing behind a high desk and leaning on its lectern with both forearms pressed into its surface. She was beautiful. Their eyes met.

The [magister] said, "But isn't it funny how circumstance calls things back all at once?"

"Like what?" said a man.

"Like the way their mountain pushes all warmth and breath right out of the air. The way its ground freezes even during summer's doggest of days. The prodigious meltwater dropped off its brow every spring."

The [magister] held forth a slender finger bearing the hint of a scar on its tip. "It runs here you know. You drink it from your cups there. But up in their valley it's too restless to irrigate and too silted to drink."

"Seems a harsh place for a girl."

"Better than this godforsaken rock. Sure the air's thin and the warmth and food are too, but the folk live low to the ground." She smiled mischievously at Mym. "And thus living low to the ground they're naturally humble."

"Humble folk are godly folk."

"Grubby, more like." Her big brown eyes twinkled in the dim light. "They clothe themselves in stone. Shaping it. Worshiping it. Doing all they can to become it. Talking of nothing else, to no one else. They say every cut shapes eternity. More precisely, they believe eternity is already shaped. Like a sculpture preexisting in stone, and only through their cutting is it revealed. But the shape cannot be known until it's cut, and the shape might change from one eternity to the next."

"What's that supposed to mean?"

"Nothing. It's all nak shit, as they'd say. You can imagine how bored a girl might be in such company. Unless she fell over one in the wrong way. I knew a dwarf once with gemstones for eyes and a heart of gold who could snipe the wings off a dragonfly and carry you two up to the span, one under each arm, faster than you could fall off of it. And she knew so. And she'd say so as often as she liked. And if you didn't agree she'd throw you over her shoulder and carry you to the tip top of her terrible mountain, which makes the climb out of here look like a mole hill."

"The white mountain," said a man. "I read about it."

"You don't read shit," said the other. "Y'know ma'am, for not remembering much about em you're remembering quite a lot."

"Certainly more than I ever will of you." She came around her desk and stepped past the men to kneel and open her arms as wide as the room. "Mym."

"Daraway," she said as she walked into her embrace. Long arms wrapped her tight. "I can't believe it."

The men watched with tea saucer eyes until Daraway snapped her finger and thumb at them fast enough to [throw] a spark. They fled through the archway and their chairs toppled over and neither stopped to right them.

Daraway said, "I looked for you on the span and for your ma and da. I made myself sick from looking, but I needed to know."

"Ye saw what happened then?"

She nodded. "I brought up the local fools who call themselves a militia after the orcs had sailed. I thought more might be coming."

"If ye'd come a bit quicker ye might've caught us."

"You were there?"

"Til dawn, aye. Took me a bit te get away."

"I'm relieved you did."

"I take it no more came."

Daraway shook her head. "No. King's men arrived out of the north and said everything behind them was secure. Their captain wanted us to follow him up to the white mountain. I told him the orcs hadn't gone that way. I told him to come down to seaway's end and see for himself, but he would do only what the armiger had commanded and he said that was to go up the dwarfroad. I didn't stay after that."

"Well I can tell ye no company of men came upvalley."

"I know."

"Yer keepin eyes on em."

"They are king's men," she said as if no further explanation was warranted. "Wish I could do it myself, but I've duties here." She gestured to the humans at their desks beyond the archway and smiled the exact same way she had done the last time they were together, all those years ago.

"They aren’t up there anymore," said Mym.

"No. Yesterday they came down to my little city and embarked on a fleet of the armiger’s. They sailed on the last ebb claiming to be going after the orcs. We'll see about that."

"Where are me dead?”

Daraway’s brow knotted in sympathy. "I had them brought down. The folk here gave each a mariner's burial.” She shrugged a little as if excusing some child’s misdemeanor. “Their skulls may be emptier than the delving but red blood flows in their veins."

Mym shook her head. "Should've sent em up te the mountain."

"I know. I intended to. I haven't forgotten. But if I'd sent anyone up to the delving that captain would've insisted on going along. I've never met a king's man with a straight mouth. I see you know what I mean."

Taken from Royal Road, this narrative should be reported if found on Amazon.

"Still should've sent em."

Daraway nodded. "Truly I believed the entire delving was lying there amid the orcs. Your da used to say when the mountain fought it fought together. I feared you were there. I looked at every face to be sure."

She saw Daraway's hands twist up before her stomach. She brushed her fingers across them. "I'm here now," she said.

They looked at each other and after a moment she said, "Ye stopped writin," as the woman said, "You stopped writing."

Daraway said, "I never did."

"It doesn't matter. Lettercarriers stopped comin up anyway."

"That explains some things."

Mym looked at her dead in the eye. "Da's dyin, Dara."

Daraway drew a folding screen across the archway and sat cross legged on the floor. She took both Mym's hands in hers. "I'm here. Tell me."

Mym told her of that night on the span and her da's malady and the granite slab and the shard of the sky and the [armiger]'s expedition and her arriving too late to tag along. The more she said the more there was to say, and the longer she didn't say anything about her and Khaz the easier it was to not say anything about it, so she never did.

"I'm worried I made a mistake leavin da."

"You didn't. I'll make sure you didn't."

They sat together for a while like they used to. Knees to knees, silent, Daraway's slender hands around hers. As if the world beyond the screen was suspended in time for however long they needed.

Finally Daraway smiled and said, "Well what do you think of my city?"

"It's fine."

"Certainly not. It's horrid. You'll need to learn to lie better than that if you're hoping to spend any time with the armiger."

"I'd have come te see ye if ye had ever said ye were so close te the mountain."

"I never was. I only arrived this summer. Donnas sent me down from the north after he took Mill Gap."

"Who's Donnas?"

"King Donnas. Third of his name, regent of this and that and the rest."

"Same king as before?"

"His son."

She shrugged. "We don't have much use for kings."

"To be a dwarf. What about ladies? Got any use for them?"

"Ye gone and made yerself a lady?"

Daraway nodded and smiled a little.

"Aye, I'll find a use for ye."

"I'm sure you will."

Mym laughed. "So who had te die for that te happen?"

"My late husband."

"Yer what now?"

Now Daraway laughed a song to make nightingales miss spring. "Twenty years is a long time, love. You remember what the old king did to my parents after the he found out about what had happened."

"Aye I still have the letter."

"Well after that I had nothing. No title, no mobility, no money. Just a tarnished name."

"Ye could've come back te us."

"And the keeper would've let me in? Your da would've?"

"Well. I mean. They wouldn't have turned ye out. Not without turnin me out too."

Daraway drummed her fingers on Mym's knee and each one sent a little pulse of heat through her gut. "They'd never have let their precious lastborn out of their sight."

"Aye that’s what I’m gettin at. It doesn’t matter. Tell me about ye. How are yer folks? Ye still allowed te visit?"

"They're dead love."

"Hell. Step out of one pile straight into another."

"It's alright. It was a long time ago."

Mym thought of her da. She looked away.

Daraway touched her arm. She knew. She always knew. "You did right by him."

She looked at the hand on her arm and the ring it bore. "So ye got married?"

"I did. He was too young an earl. He was looking for a name so I lent him mine. Then I told him he could make his own name on the rising front. He went up to Mill Gap and never came back."

"Damn lifetime of tragedies in two decades."

"Think nothing of it."

"Any heirs?"

"Are you joking? I can never tell."

"Ye keep sayin it's been a long time."

"Not that long."

Mym smiled. She felt the same way, as if no time had passed since their last day together. "So yer a lady. Do I salute ye now or what?"

"You better not.”

“What’s it entail?”

“Running this shithole for one.”

“It’s not that bad.”

Daraway gawked at her. “Have you been down to the harbor?"

"Aye and I had a pint at a pub and everythin."

"Which pub?"

"I never learned its name. It has a porthole beside the door and a frightful woman keepin bar with a face like a whole team of naks went trottin over it."

Daraway laughed with a brightness that cast shade on the sun. "Glam's. Down by the docks."

"Suppose that's it."

"Did you eat?"

"I left my brekkie on the bar."

“That bad?”

“Not te my knowin. I never had a bite. The barkeep said yer name and I was out the door te come lookin.”

"Well, we better see you to it. Then we will see about booking passage."

"Don't need te book no passage, and no human mule would have me besides. Easy enough te walk back as it was te walk here, just more up than down."

"Is water walking some secret power of the dwarves? Or do you no longer wish to castrate the armiger and slay the orc and recover your da's alpenstock?"

"What? Ye mean te send me across the sea?"

Daraway nodded.

Mym squeezed her hand. "I don't think I can go back te missin ye."

"My little fool. You know I'm coming with you."

She smiled. "Suppose I did. Can ye stand waitin til after brekkie?"

Daraway laughed with joy as pure as crystal waters tinkling off a glacier. "Woe to she who stands between this dwarf and her brekkie."

"Come on. I'll share it."

"I very much doubt that."

They talked all the way back to the pub and talked still as they stepped over the sleeping [drunkard] she'd bounced, and as Mym swung open the door she turned away from Daraway for the first time since she'd seen her at the [harbormaster]’s. Inside the pub she saw bright red blood pooled on the floor beneath the nearest table. Two of its chairs were kicked over. A third was empty. From the fourth Khaz's grizzled, falling avalanche of a face rose to meet them over a tankard and a plate full of fishbones attached to two broiled heads.

He nodded. "Mym. Daraway."

"What're ye doin here?"

"I might ask ye the same but we both know the answer. I heard ye had come through and I figure I can do what's needed for both of us so ye don't have te. Ye can get on back te yer da and work on yer girl."

With neither expression nor inflection Daraway said, "Coming to rescue whoever you think needs it?"

"Aye and proud te do."

"Next you'll save the sun from setting."

"Aye, I can do that too."

She shook her head. "You haven't changed an ounce or an inch."

"Ye have. Yer gettin old."

"We are not all dwarves, thank god."

Mym said, "Thanks for thinkin of me Khaz, but I'm still goin."

"Fine as goathair," he said with an eye on Daraway. "I'm not here te tell ye what ye ought te do. Hell, I'm in a fix just figurin what I ought te do. But I wanted ye te know what I'm aimin te do so ye can decide yer decisions, what with yer da and all."

"And I just said I'm goin."

"Fine, fine. But ye need te give me that." He pointed to her pack where the barrel of [Thayne's longarm] stuck out of it. He swung his pack up from the floor and unrolled its lid and drew her [longarm] in a long and even motion so the porthole's light caught its metals and shone their silver in a wave across his face.

He said, "Reckon ye'll be wantin this one instead. Found it in the tower where ye left it, mended it up just this mornin."

She took the rifle, but she would not weep again. Not in front of them both.

He said, "Careful she don't jump out of yer hands." He could've been talking to either of them. "She's hungrier than a skunk in spring for vengin."

"Thanks Khaz," said Mym.

They all three stood by the table causing a stare among the patrons yet they plainly didn't care.

"So here we all are," said Daraway. "Together again."

"I wouldn't say tegether," said Khaz. "With all the deep water round here I'm surprised yer folk haven't filled yer pockets with stone and sent ye swimmin."

"You no more than I."

"Don't start," said Mym.

Daraway smiled at her. "One cannot start what was never finished, love."

Khaz drew [Thayne's longarm] from Mym's pack and rolled it into his. "Ye done hearin it from me," he said.

"Already?" said Daraway. "You better show more spirit with the orcs."

"Ye just wait and see."

Mym shook her head and smiled at them both. It was like no time had passed at all.

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> +2 [Belongong]: ...plenty have said you don't know what you've got til it's gone, and it ain't a wonder but that don't make it untrue. It's just a lotta times you gots to get gone to find out who you are and who you wanna be... (2/10)

> Gained Item: [Mym's Longarm]

> Lost Item: [Thayne's Longarm]