14. Chapter 14 The Clinic
Sif pushed through the apartment door first, Liv behind her, me bringing up the rear.
The smell of banked coals and the steady warmth of the coal-pot hit us at the threshold.
Bjorna was at the trestle table with a piece of chalk in her hand and a leather pouch open beside her.
Nott sat beside her with a second pouch and a small scale balanced on the wood between them.
They’d been counting.
Bjorna looked up when we came in. She stopped mid-tally. The chalk stayed where it was. She took me in from the robe collar to the belt to the Mildred boots, the full sweep, and didn’t say anything for two full seconds.
“Well,” she said. Her voice had dropped half a register. “That’s new.”
“Sif’s fault,” I said.
“I’m not surprised.” Bjorna set the chalk down and leaned back on the bench. The trestle shifted under her. Her dark eyes held me, steady and warm and making no effort to hide what she thought. “Turn around.”
“I’m not turning around. I’m not some piece of meat you want to buy.”
“Turn around, Daniel.”
I turned around. The robe moved with me, the split sides swinging, the stonethread catching the light from the window. Sif made a satisfied noise behind me.
“Impressive, eh,” Sif said. “Bjorna, be honest.”
“He looks like someone I’d follow into a dungeon,” Bjorna said. There was a softness under the dry delivery that she didn’t bother covering.
“So, he’s sexy then?” Liv asked.
Bjorna raised a brow. “I didn’t say anything about his sex appeal. No offense, Daniel.”
I waved my hand. “None taken. You’ll have to ignore these two girls. Their filters are broken.”
Bjorna laughed. “That’s one way of putting it.”
Sif crossed her arms under her breasts, causing them to almost spill out of the low-cut top. “Bjorna is our fearless leader and she has to be careful with what she says. She can’t call Daniel handsome.”
Nott had glanced up from the scale when I walked in. Her gaze went to the stonethread shirt, the robe, the healer belt, and back down. Her cheeks had the faintest color in them, pink at the edges, visible on her pale skin. She didn’t say a word.
“Nott noticed,” Sif said to no one in particular.
“I was looking at the belt,” Nott said without looking up.
“She was looking at the belt,” Sif repeated, grinning. “The belt that happens to be around Daniel’s waist. Near Daniel’s crotch. Which she was also looking at.”
“Sif.” Nott’s voice was flat as she turned to me. “Her filter isn’t broken. It’s missing altogether.”
“I’m just reporting what I see.”
Liv dropped onto the bench under the east window and pulled her legs beneath her. “Sif predicted this exact reaction, by the way. She said Bjorna would be professional and Nott would pretend she wasn’t looking.”
“I wasn’t pretending,” Nott said. “I looked. Then I stopped looking. That’s not pretending.”
“She’s so cute when she’s lying,” Sif said.
Bjorna waved a hand, cutting the thread. “Sit down. We have coin from our bartering today. Are you interested in that or are you only interested in Daniel’s crotch?”
“Both equally,” Sif replied.
“Sif, you would think you’d bonded with the man for as much as you flirt,” Liv said from the window.
“I’m still weighing my options.”
“Enough. Or you don’t get your share,” Bjorna growled.
The coin talk was the real energy in the room.
Bjorna and Nott had been at the market all morning and the results were spread across the table.
Nott had come alive. She sat up straight, gesturing as she talked, holding invisible crystals, weighing invisible coin.
I’d only seen her this animated when she was identifying loot.
“The ice-blue crystals fetched premium rates,” Nott said. “I put them to three different enchanters and let them bid against each other. The final price per crystal was nearly triple what standard fire crystals bring.”
“That’s good, right?” I leaned forward. “We had forty-six of them.”
“Forty-six at triple the rate is incredible.” Nott allowed herself a small, precise smile.
“The cold-aligned market is underserved in Halver’s Reach.
There are only two enchanters in town who work cold applications, and they both want supply.
I played them against a trader heading to Aldermere and the price went up twice before anyone blinked. ”
Sif leaned forward. “Nott, are you telling me you ran a bidding war?”
“I presented options. The market responded.”
“She means yes,” Bjorna said.
“That’s awesome.” I shook my head. “You’re a barter mage too.”
Nott’s cheeks colored again, but this time she held my gaze. “I know what things are worth. Selling them at full value is a different skill, but it’s not complicated if you’re patient.”
Bjorna chimed in. “The stalker claws went to an alchemist on the south road. Twenty-eight claws, fair price. The yeti furs are with a luxury trader who needed a day to assess them, but his early number was more than I expected. He hasn’t seen yeti-grade pelts from Cold Hollow before.”
“Nobody has,” Nott said. “This particular instance was extremely unique.”
“How much total?” Liv said from the bench. Her ears were forward, locked on the numbers.
Bjorna looked at the slate. “We’re looking at just over forty gold per head. The furs will add more when the trader settles.”
Sif sat back. “Forty gold. Per head? That will do just fine. Gods, we should have done two runs during the full moon.”
“The crystals carried it,” Nott said. “The standard Brood Mother run brought us eight to ten per head. The full moon brought us four times that, and the crystals accounted for most of the difference.”
“I’m definitely getting that huntress skirt then,” Liv said immediately.
“It’s that good, huh?” I asked, enjoying the way her face lit up.
“It’s real short but it covers my goods, and more importantly, it’ll make you stare at my legs.”
“I already stare at your legs. You don’t need a special skirt.”
“Then it’ll make you stare harder.” She wiggled her ears. “I’ve earned it. Forty gold, Daniel. I shot a yeti in the eye.”
“You’re right. Go buy the skirt.”
Sif kicked her boots up on the edge of the bench beside Liv. “So we’re rich.”
“We’re funded,” Bjorna corrected. “The Splits will cost us. Portal scrolls, multi-day provisions, repair materials. A deep dungeon run is expensive before you ever walk inside. But we’re funded for it now, and that’s what matters.”
“What about the dark metal?” I said. “The boss drop Nott couldn’t identify.”
“With Larg,” Bjorna said. “He’s looking at it.
He said the dark metal has properties he hasn’t seen before.
He wants more time with it. However, he said it should upgrade my shield by a wide margin.
Larg says the dark metal might work as a secondary layer, bonded over the blackstone, but he won’t commit until he understands what it does under stress.
He’s testing it.” Bjorna delivered the news with more excitement than usual.
“It’ll be ready before we go into The Splits. He promised me that.”
“Bjorna’s shield getting boss-tier reinforcement,” Sif said. “My new agility ring. Daniel’s stonethread. Liv’s arrows. We’re actually gearing up.”
“We’re gearing up but The Splits dungeon is unforgiving,” Bjorna said. “I’ve not been inside before, but I have talked to many who have.”
“Are you sure we’re ready for that?” Liv asked.
Bjorna nodded. “We have Daniel now, and we performed extremely well in the full-moon-enhanced Cold Hollow.”
Sif plopped down on the bench beside me. “The Splits is a very long dungeon. It will take us two to three days to reach the boss. It’s no joke.”
“You said days, right? Not hours?” I asked.
“Yes, darling, days. We can use portal scrolls to get out when we need to rest, then we go through the same portal and continue from where we left off. We’ll have to set up camp.”
“Can’t we just walk through the main portal back to the Reach and sleep in our beds then go back?”
Sif patted me on the cheek. “Portal scrolls will disappear after we get a certain distance away. We have to camp close by. Don’t worry, we’ll keep you warm.”
“What if another party decides to go through while we’re sleeping?”
Sif chuckled. “They are going to have a bad day. The portal will rip them to shreds. Only the party that initiates the portal can use it.”
“That’s convenient.”
“Girls, I think Daniel is afraid to camp with us,” Sif teased. “We will keep him safe, won’t we? If he gets too cold, we will all strip and wrap our bodies around him. Skin to skin body heat is best.”
Bjorna surprised us with a short laugh. “Hopefully it won’t come to that.”
“I disagree completely,” Sif replied.
Liv raised her hand. “I call the spot on his right. That’s my spot. I’m the bonded one.”
“As long as I can have the spot I want,” Sif replied.
I broke my silence. “And what spot is that?”
“On top of you.”
My cheeks warmed. “I walked right into that one.”
Nott sighed loudly and returned to the scale, making final notes on a piece of parchment.
Bjorna cleaned the slate with the edge of her sleeve.
Sif stretched on the bench with her arms above her head, and the motion pulled her shirt up at the waist, showing her sexy stomach.
Liv counted something on her fingers, probably calculating how many skirts forty gold could buy.
I sat down and let the coal-pot’s warmth work into my shoulders.
We had coin, gear coming together, and we’d be walking into The Splits with everything we needed.
We heard footsteps coming up the stairs.
Bjorna looked at Sif. Sif looked at Liv. Liv’s ears swiveled toward the stairs.
“Someone’s coming up,” Liv said.
“Really? How observant,” Sif said with thick sarcasm.
The footsteps were light and careful. They were the steps of someone who wasn’t sure if they should be here. Three knocks came from the door. Liv moved quickly and opened it. Tova, the cat-kin, appeared in the doorway.