17. Chapter 17 The Boots
Bjorna had the list on the table before anyone had finished their coffee.
“Scrolls from Mildred. Six. Provisions into the ring. More broadheads for Liv. Larg needs to confirm the dark metal work on the shield and I’m picking up my new breastplate while I’m down there.
” She ticked each item with her chalk stub.
“We leave after midday. I don’t want to arrive at the staging area after dark.
Getting camp set up at night would be a pain. ”
Nott sat beside her with a cup of something dark and herbal, her book closed on the table. “I’ll go with you to Larg’s. I want to see how the dark metal bonded to the blackstone.”
“Fine. Liv, you mentioned you were headed to the fletcher.”
“Yeah, I’m going to head there in a few minutes.
” Liv was cross-legged on the bench under the east window, lacing her boots.
Her ears were up, forward, locked on the day’s tasks.
“I need thirty broadheads minimum. I’ll get forty if he has them.
The Cold Hollow shafts held up, but the tips need to be heavier for whatever we’re fighting down there.
I’m going to get some poison laced too. Oh, and my new cute huntress skirt! ”
I leaned forward. “You’re going to wear the skirt in The Splits? Is that a good idea?”
“Yeah, it’s always a good idea to look your best. You’re going to like it. I promise. It offers more protection than you think. It’s enchanted so my legs will be covered by arcane energy. That is costing me extra but I can afford it after my final cut from the full moon run.”
“I just want to make sure you’re protected,” I replied.
She grinned. “It’s because you love me so!”
“Daniel.” Bjorna looked at me. “What do you need from town?”
“I’m good. Stonethread’s clean, belt’s equipped, ring has room.” I took a drink of my coffee. “I’ll go with Sif and keep her company.”
Sif was leaning against the east window frame, her silver hair loose around her shoulders, a piece of bread in one hand. She’d been quiet this morning, which was unusual for her. She looked at me and one eyebrow went up.
“What makes you think I need company?”
“You said you needed boots. I don’t have anything else to do and I like walking around town with a pretty wolf-kin.”
She bit into the bread and chewed, her blue eyes on me. The eyebrow stayed up.
“I said my boots were fine last night.”
“No, you said your daggers were sharp and your leathers were clean. You didn’t say anything about your boots being right for a multi-day dungeon.”
The corner of her mouth turned up. She swallowed the bread. “There’s a leatherworker on the east side of town who does enchanted footwear. I’ve been meaning to see what he has for speed work.”
“Then I’ll come along.”
“You don’t know anything about boots.”
“I know they go on feet. That’s a start. How complicated can they be?”
Sif laughed. It was a short, easy sound, nothing performed about it. “Fine. You can cast [Smite] on the shopkeeper if I don’t get a good price.”
I inclined my head at her. “I live to serve.”
Liv finished her laces and looked up. Her eyes went from me to Sif and back to me. Her ears did something I hadn’t seen before, a slow rotation forward that looked like awareness. She knew what she was looking at. She’d told me to do exactly this and now she was watching me do it.
“Have fun, you two,” Liv said. She said it lightly, but the look she held on me for a half-second longer than necessary carried everything she’d said on the walk home from the docks. She wanted this for Sif. She wanted me to be the man who showed up for her when she needed me.
Bjorna stood and the bench scraped on the floor behind her. “Meet at the south gate at midday. We’ll have a group stop at Mildred’s on the way out for the scrolls. Anyone who isn’t at the gate gets left behind.”
“Has anyone ever actually been left behind?” I said.
“Not yet,” Bjorna said. “I’d prefer to keep it that way.”
“Bjorna is all business today,” Sif added.
“Of course I am. The Splits will be the greatest challenge we have faced thus far. The fun and games are for after we’re done.”
Sif’s bottom lip protruded. “No parties at night in the tent? Shame.”
Bjorna rolled her eyes. “Go and get the damn boots.”
“Yes, ma’am.” Sif saluted.
The party split at the stairs. Bjorna and Nott went down first, Bjorna ducking the ceiling beam at the landing.
Liv went next, bouncing down the steps two at a time, the bounce fully restored after a night of recovery from whatever I’d done to her at the clinic.
She waved over her shoulder without looking back. “Toodles.”
Sif and I went last.
***
The morning was cool and clear. The air had a bite to it but the sun was already working on the chill. The avenue was busy. Market traffic moved in both directions, carts and foot traffic and the steady sound of a frontier town that had been awake since before dawn.
Sif walked beside me with her hands loose at her sides.
Her daggers sat at her hips, low and forward as always, and she moved through the crowd without appearing to think about it.
People shifted out of her way without being asked.
She was small, five-six and compact, but she carried herself like she owned twice the space.
“You volunteered,” she said after a block of quiet.
“To follow you around town. I sure did.”
“You’ve never volunteered to go shopping with me before.”
“That’s not true. How do you think I got this snazzy outfit?”
“That was different. I took you shopping. You’re following me while I go shopping.”
“Maybe I need something leather.”
She glanced up at me. The blue eyes were steady, reading me the same way she’d read a room full of strangers. “That’s not why you volunteered.”
I could have deflected. Made a joke, said something about needing fresh air.
“No,” I said. “That’s not why.”
She didn’t push it. She knew I just wanted to spend time with her. The corner of her mouth pulled up and she looked ahead and we kept walking.
We turned off the main avenue onto a narrower street that ran toward the east side of town.
The foot traffic thinned. The buildings were closer together, older stone with timber-framed upper floors.
A tanner’s sign hung over a doorway. A saddler’s workshop had its doors open, the smell of oil and leather carrying into the street.
“Tell me about this leatherworker,” I said.
“Halsten. Fox-kin. He makes boots for people who need to move fast and not die while doing it. Rogues, scouts, couriers. He’s been enchanting footwear since before I was born.
” She stepped around a boy carrying a basket of eggs.
“I used a pair of his boots when I first left the capital. They lasted three years of hard use before the enchantment wore through. I’ve been meaning to get back to him. ”
“Speed enchantment? How does that work?”
“You’re about to find out.”
Halsten’s shop was a narrow building wedged between the saddler and a chandler’s storefront. The sign over the door showed a running fox in profile, carved into weathered wood and painted in faded red. The door was open.
Inside smelled like leather and something else, something metallic and clean underneath it all.
The shop was small. A counter ran along the left wall, covered in hides and cutting tools and strips of leather in various stages of becoming something.
Shelves behind the counter held finished boots, sandals, and what looked like greaves with lacing that ran to the knee.
The fox-kin behind the counter looked up from the piece he was working.
He was older, sixties at least, with the russet fur on his hands that had gone gray at the tips and a pair of spectacles perched at the end of a long, pointed nose.
His ears were large, triangular, and one of them was bent at the tip like it had been broken years ago and set wrong.
“I know you,” he said to Sif. He set down the tool in his hand, an awl with a bone handle, and took off the spectacles. “You came in years ago with your mother. Capital girl. Your mother had strong opinions about lining.”
“Good memory! My mother has strong opinions about everything. Hello, Halsten.”
“She was right about the lining.” He looked at me. The fox-kin assessment was quick. “This one beside you isn’t a rogue.”
Sif sighed. “He’s a lowly healer.”
“A healer doesn’t need my kinda boots.”
“He doesn’t. I do.” Sif moved to the counter and leaned on it with both hands.
“I need something for a deep run. A couple days underground, hard fights, tight spaces. My current boots are fine for Cold Hollow but I’m going somewhere worse tomorrow.
I’m going to need speed especially and a lot of it. ”
Halsten studied her for a moment, then turned and pulled two pairs from the shelf behind him. He set them on the counter with care.
“This pair is calfskin over a cured-hide inner sole. Standard speed work. You’d get ten, maybe twelve percent improvement in burst movement.
” He pushed the second pair forward. “This pair is stalker-hide. Thinner, harder to work, twice the enchantment capacity. You’d feel the difference in the first step.
They're fast, but you trade quickness for protection.”
Sif picked up the stalker-hide pair and turned it over in her hands. The leather was dark, almost black, and when the light hit it right there was a faint pattern in the hide that looked like scales.
“Try them,” Halsten said. “I think you’ll like them.”
Sif sat on the stool beside the counter and pulled off her old boots. Her feet were narrow, the arch high, built for the balls-of-the-feet stance she held naturally. The ash-gray fur on the tops of her feet thinned at the ankle where the boot would sit.
She pulled on the stalker-hide pair and laced them tight. She stood.