Arrow on the String: Solomon Sorrows Book 1 Dan Fish (best book club books .TXT) 📖

road was reasonably busy. Dwarves in fur-lined cloaks walked quickly from one shop to another. The occasional goblin appeared, typically female, typically holding the arm of an older dwarf. The young might hope to marry a daughter, but the old were more pragmatic. They wanted a warm bed and soft company. Not bad things to want if you were an old dwarf. Or an old human.

Jace put a hand on his shoulder, leaned close. “How much further?”

“Probably an hour slow-footing it,” he said. “Don’t think Mig is going to help. Don’t like Ga’Shel enough to ask. Don’t think you want me asking Bex.”

She stared at him for a moment, then nodded. Her brow knit for a breath, then relaxed. Her hand fell away, but she lingered next to him. Her shoulder brushed against his. She watched a dwarf and goblin plod through the snow toward them.

“Do you love her?” she asked.

“Mig? Of course.”

“Could you have children?”

“Gods, Jace,” Sorrows said. “Mind your own splitting business.”

Jace said nothing. The dwarf and goblin walked by. Silver streaked his beard and her hair. He’d see her buried within half a century. Just a hole in the ground somewhere. Not a cradle carved into stone like the one that held Mishma. Like the one that waited for him. Maybe that would upset him. Maybe he loved her. Maybe he’d return to the Stone Mother after she passed. Maybe not. Maybe he’d find another goblin to spend another century with; father some half-born children. Maybe see the Quarry grow from his need for a warm bed and soft company.

“How well do you know Davrosh?” Sorrows asked.

“What do you mean?”

“Does she seem happy?”

Jace shook her head. “I’m afraid I don’t know her well enough to say either way.”

“Does she seem angry all the time? Or just around me?”

“I couldn’t say.”

“You couldn’t, or you won’t?”

She shrugged. “You choose. Either is fine with me.”

“There it is.”

“What?”

“The elf arrogance I’ve been missing,” Sorrows said.

Jace frowned. “I don’t know the answer to your question. That makes me arrogant?”

Sorrows shook his head. “No. The not-knowing doesn’t make you anything. Your smug dismissal does.”

“You’re smug all the time.”

“That so?”

Jace nodded. “Yes, but it doesn’t make you an elf. It makes you Solomon Sorrows. I meant my dismissal as playful. Not because I’m an elf, but because I am who I am. I wish you’d see past the pointed ears.”

Sorrows slowed. “Without prejudice.”

“Precisely.”

Sorrows stopped, looked at Jace. “Like Davrosh.”

“I’m like Davrosh?”

Sorrows shook his head. “You’re the exact opposite of Davrosh. Pleasant, graceful, easy to be around. Beautiful.”

She smiled. “You’re not so bad to look at yourself, Solomon.”

He shook his head. “Follow me on this. You’ll never know what it’s like to be Davrosh. To be judged and cast aside with a glance, without so much as a conversation. Some dwarves make up their mind about Davrosh from fifty paces away. Not all dwarves. Maybe not even most, but enough. They don’t even hear her speak. Yet she endures their scrutiny every day. Every half-born does. And it’s like a wound. After a while, it starts to itch. A bit longer and it becomes raw. After a lifetime, it’s oozing, infected. The pain starts to make a person crazy. That’s why the Quarry is filled with half-born. They fall through the cracks of a society that doesn’t see them.”

“I don’t understand. There are plenty of happy, successful half-born.”

“Of course there are,” Sorrows said. “But to get there, they overcome more than any dwarf daughter. The scales are tipped against them from the start. Doesn’t make it impossible to succeed. Makes it easier to fail. Davrosh thought I killed those daughters because of some trauma I suffered. When it wasn’t me, she thought it might be some dwarf who’d been scarred by his fights against the Cursed.”

“Dwarves don’t kill dwarves,” Jace said, nodding. “But a half-dwarf might.”

“Sometimes life itself is trauma,” Sorrows said.

They resumed their walk. The snow had calmed. It fell in soft flakes that landed on Jace’s cloak and melted into beads of water that were dispersed by magic. The smell of wildflowers and honey drifted around her. They crossed a bridge over a stream alive with sound and swirling water. Hallovel Manor was somewhere in the distance. They’d be there within thirty minutes, if the snow remained light.

“You’re doing the same thing you accused the dwarves of,” Jace said. “You’re assuming the killer is half-born and assuming that killing is the sort of thing half-borns do.”

Sorrows shook his head. “The killer is a half-born. That’s just numbers. Dwarves don’t kill dwarves, and the only elves in Hammerfell are the Mage Guard. I’m not suggesting half-born are killers by birth. I’m siding with Davrosh’s idea of trauma as motive.”

“It’s a fine line,” Jace said.

“If you have a better idea, I’m all ears. But make it quick, because in twenty minutes we stop talking killers and we start talking Maiden Dance.”

Jace shrugged. “I don’t have any ideas. Will you tell Oray?”

“I’m sure he already knows, but I’ll mention it next time I see him.”

Sorrows slowed a step, lowered his hood, turned to Jace. “What do you know about Oray?”

Jace shrugged. “Not much.”

“Why doesn’t the Archmage trust him?”

“The Archmage doesn’t trust her Overseer?”

“You tell me. I don’t need a guard, but if I did, Davrosh or Ga’Shel could have shown me around. Oray brought me in. Why did the Archmage assign a guard instead of him?”

“I couldn’t say.”

Sorrows sighed. “Couldn’t or won’t?”

Jace smiled. “You choose.”

Chapter 21

SORROWS AND JACE left the road and walked through an open gate. Stacked stone and mortar, wrought iron bent into curls and points. Snow dusted the flats and curves of sculpted leaves. Hallovel Manor stood at the end of a five-minute walk along a wobbling path of white pine and cedar. Snow blanketed the ground beneath the woods, but the stone pavers had been swept clear. The air smelled of smoke, resin, and winter. Grass grew in the gaps between slabs.

Sorrows thought of Davrosh walking the path the day