The east quarter smelled like coal smoke and old stone. Salazar moved through it without thinking, the way you moved through streets you'd known your whole life. Zein walked beside him. Ruth on the other side. Hinro slightly behind.
Nobody talked much. They'd been walking and fighting and carrying a cart all day and the city at evening asked nothing of them except to keep moving.
"This one," Salazar said.
He stopped in front of a wide building with a heavy door and a cold forge chimney above it. He didn't knock. Just pushed the door open and stepped in.
"Master," he called. "I'm back."
---
The smell was good. Hot metal and something herbal underneath it, rune ink, and the deeper smell of a space that had been used seriously for a long time. Tools on a long bench. Shelves floor to ceiling. A forge at the back, dark but still warm from the day.
A dwarf was pacing in the middle of the room. Short steps, back and forth, the tight contained pacing of someone who had been at it a while.
The moment Salazar's voice landed the pacing stopped.
Edren crossed the room fast. He took Salazar by both shoulders and looked at him — just looked, for a moment, checking something — and then he saw the arm.
"Two days," he said. Quiet. "I sent you on a half day errand and you were gone two days."
"There was a Waldgreif," Salazar said.
"A Waldgreif."
"My horse bolted. I was stuck in the cart until they came."
Edren looked at the three of them standing just inside the door. He looked at Ruth's shoulder and the blood dried above her eye. He looked at Zein. He looked at Hinro in the disguise cloak and his expression didn't change but something in it shifted slightly.
"Take that off," he said to Hinro. Flat. No preamble. "You're inside."
Hinro looked at him.
Edren waited.
Hinro took the cloak off.
Edren looked at him for a moment — the ears, the eyes, all of it — the same way he had looked at everything else. Then he looked back at Salazar.
"Sit down," he said. "All of you. I'll get the kit."
---
He worked without fuss. Salazar's arm first — unwrapping it, looking at it, cleaning it properly, wrapping it again. He didn't say much while he worked. Just once, under his breath, more to himself than anyone —
"Should have come back sooner."
"I couldn't," Salazar said.
"I know." A pause. "I know that."
He moved to Ruth. Looked at the shoulder without touching it first.
"Lift it," he said.
She raised it partway and stopped. He nodded like that told him what he needed.
"Not broken. Don't use it hard for three days." He handed her a small bottle. "Twice a day. Don't ask what's in it, it works."
Ruth looked at the bottle. Didn't ask.
Hinro he worked through without being told what hurt — the cheek, the ribs, the back. Hinro sat still the whole time and said nothing about any of it.
"Tree or creature," Edren said, pressing carefully along the back.
"Tree," Hinro said.
Edren nodded. Kept going.
Zein last. Edren looked at the shoulder.
"It's fine," Zein said.
Edren pressed two fingers into it without warning and Zein held his face still.
"Mm." He wrapped it anyway. Tight and competent, and immediately better than nothing. "You pulled something heavy."
"A cart," Zein said.
"Through a forest."
"Yes."
Edren looked at him a moment. Then closed the kit and stood up.
He put something on the stove without asking anyone what they wanted. The workshop settled. Outside the city was going into evening. Inside it was warm and smelled like metal and the four of them sat with the particular quiet of people who had spent the day doing too much and were only now letting their bodies admit it.
"Thank you," Edren said. He was at the stove, back to them. "For getting him out."
"We were paid," Hinro said.
"I know," Edren said. "Thank you anyway."
Hinro said nothing. Looked at his hands.
---
Salazar lasted until the tea came out.
"Are you mercenaries," he said. He was looking at Zein and Hinro. "With actual ranks?"
"We registered today," Zein said.
"What rank."
"We just registered."
Salazar turned to Ruth. "What rank are you."
"D," Ruth said.
Salazar sat with that. "Is that good."
"It means I'm alive," Ruth said.
"They don't have rank yet," Edren said from the stove. "New registrations need to be evaluated first. The guild assesses them, gives them a card with their rank."
"How do you know about guild evaluations," Zein said.
"I'm a hundred and five," Edren said. "I know about most things."
Salazar lit up. "An evaluation. You fight something and they watch and rank you." He looked at Zein and Hinro with entirely too much enthusiasm for someone who had spent two days in a cart. "That sounds like it hurts."
"Probably," Zein said.
"Still though," Salazar said.
Edren brought the cups over and sat back on his stool. Nobody talked for a bit. The tea was good and the room was warm and that was enough for a while.
Zein looked at the display cabinet near the door. The blades sitting in it. The rune work on the handles.
"Can you sell us weapons," he said.
Edren looked at him.
"We don't have anything," Zein said. "Going into an evaluation without weapons is a problem."
"Inadvisable," Edren said.
"Yes."
Edren looked at Zein. Then at Hinro. Then at Ruth's sword — the only one visible between all three of them. He stood up and went to the cabinet near the forge. Stood there a moment. Pulled out two blades — short, practical, rune work on both handles — and came back and set them on the bench.
"Three Drel," he said.
Zein looked at the blades. Then at Edren.
"Each," Edren said.
"Combined," Zein said.
Edren looked at him.
"Combined," he said finally. "Because you brought him back. Don't tell anyone I sold rune work for three Drel."
Zein put the coin down. Edren swept it off without looking at it.
---
When the tea was finished they got up to leave. Edren walked them to the door. Ruth went out first. Salazar followed. Zein stepped through.
Edren put a hand out and stopped Hinro.
He held out a bracelet. Dark metal, a single rune on the inside face.
"Hold out your wrist," he said.
Hinro looked at it.
"It doesn't change what you are," Edren said. "It changes what people see. You hold the image you want in your head and the rune reads it. More control than the cloak."
Hinro took it. Put it on.
Nothing happened for a moment.
Then his face changed — not suddenly, just a gradual settling. The ears disappeared. The eyes lightened. The particular features that would stop someone on a street smoothed into something that wouldn't stop anyone anywhere.
Salazar had turned back from the street and was staring.
"What do you look like," he said.
"Nobody," Hinro said.
Zein looked at him. The face Hinro had picked had nothing to it. Completely forgettable. The kind of face that walked through a city and left no memory of itself behind.
"You look boring," Zein said.
"Good," Hinro said.
Ruth made a short sound.
Salazar opened his mouth.
"Don't," Hinro said.
"I just —"
"Don't."
Salazar closed it. Opened it again. "Can Zein —"
"Only the wearer," Edren said from the doorway. Completely unbothered.
"Unfortunate," Zein said.
Hinro looked at him. The borrowed face showed nothing. But Zein knew Hinro well enough by now.
Ruth was watching with something that was entirely amusement.
Edren leaned against the doorframe.
"Don't lose it," he said to Hinro. "That rune took me three days."
"Why give it to me," Hinro said.
Edren looked at him. "Because you shouldn't have to cover yourself every time you walk into a city." He said it like it was the most obvious thing in the world. Then he glanced at Salazar. "And because apparently he has good taste."
Salazar looked at the street. Said nothing.
Edren went back inside. The door closed.
---
The four of them stood on the street for a moment. Evening all the way in now, lamps lit, the workshop dark behind them.
"Tomorrow," Ruth said. Looking at Zein and Hinro. "You need to get evaluated. Get proper cards."
"Tomorrow," Zein said.
They started walking.
Hinro walked beside him. The face he'd chosen sitting over everything he actually was. His ears not showing. Eyes lightened to nothing that would catch anyone's attention.
He hadn't taken it off.