DASH
The small woman has a grip like a barnacle.
She hauls me toward the tavern door with both hands wrapped around my wrist, weaving between overturned chairs and groaning bodies like she's done this before.
She hasn't. Her pulse hammers against my skin, rabbit-fast, and her breathing comes in short bursts that signal elevated cortisol and inadequate cardiovascular preparation for a combat zone.
But she doesn't stop.
Noted.
"Wait." I plant my boots. She lurches backward, almost bouncing off me. "I need my equipment."
"Your equipment." She says this like the words taste sour.
"My weapons."
"You're going to a wedding, not a siege."
"Every wedding is a siege. Some just have better floral arrangements."
I return to my corner booth. Beneath the table, bolted to the underside with iron clasps I installed myself three months ago when I claimed this booth as a permanent tactical position, hangs my primary loadout bag. Black leather, reinforced stitching, forty-seven pounds without ammunition.
I unbolt it. Drop it on the table. The wood cracks down the center.
Magnolia stares at the bag. Then at the crack. Then at me.
I open the bag and begin inventory. Two short swords, blacksteel, freshly oiled. One hand axe, single bit, hickory handle wrapped in boar leather. Six throwing knives in a chest harness. One garrote, braided wire, mother-of-pearl handles because a professional has standards.
"Is that a garrote?"
"Decorative."
"It has handles."
"Decorative handles."
I strap the short swords across my back in their X-harness.
The throwing knives go under the vest. Hand axe clips to my belt.
Garrote slides into the inner pocket. Finally, I tap my right boot to confirm the weight of the tiny derringer tucked against my ankle—a last-resort piece I’ve carried for eleven years, completely hidden and strictly for emergencies.
Magnolia's mouth opens and closes three times without producing sound. Progress. Most clients take longer to reach the speechless phase.
I crouch down and pull the second item from under the booth. My round shield, twenty-inch diameter, dwarven steel with a leather-wrapped grip. Took it off a dead captain in the Kelmoor campaign. Good balance. Decent heft. Eighteen pounds.
I hold it out to Magnolia.
"Carry this."
She looks at the shield. Looks at me. Looks at the shield again.
"Why?"
"Field assessment."
"Field assessment of what?"
"You."
Her brown eyes narrow. Flour still clings to her left cheekbone. A small crescent of it, white against warm skin, like someone pressed a thumbnail into fresh dough. She hasn't noticed it. She probably never notices it.
"I'm not carrying your shield through the streets at ten o'clock at night."
"Fifteen minutes to Hawthorn Street at standard pace. Eighteen pounds distributed across one arm. If you can't manage that, you lack the physical fortitude for a three-day sustained social engagement with hostile targets, and I'll need to adjust my protection parameters."
"It's a wedding."
"You described your mother as primarily hostile with weaponized disappointment. That's psychological warfare, Magnolia. Three days of psychological warfare requires endurance." I push the shield closer. "Carry it."
She snatches it from my hand.
The weight hits her arm and she drops six inches, knees buckling. Her shoulder wrenches left. A sound escapes her, somewhere between a grunt and a word she swallows before it forms.
She doesn't drop the shield.
Both hands grip the leather handle. Her arms shake. Her jaw locks into a hard line that reshapes her entire face, transforms it from soft and anxious to something with edges.
"Fine," she says through her teeth. "Let's go."
She walks to the door. The shield bumps her thigh with every step, throwing her gait off-center. Her left foot compensates instinctively, widening her stance. Untrained adaptation. Good instincts.
I follow.
Outside, the street smells like coal smoke and horse dung and the yeast-sweet undertone of a bakery nearby. Her bakery, maybe. She turns left on Copper Lane without hesitation, shield banging against a lamppost as she rounds the corner. She doesn't acknowledge the impact. Doesn't adjust her grip.
Two blocks in, her breathing changes. Ragged. Sweat gathers at her temples despite the cool night air. The shield arm trembles in a continuous vibration now, forearm muscles firing and failing and firing again.
"You can set it down," I say.
"No."
"Your rotator cuff will inflame."
"I said no."
Three blocks. Four. A man in a bowler hat crosses to the other side of the street when he sees me. Standard response. Magnolia doesn't cross. Magnolia keeps walking, teeth clenched, shield dragging lower with each step until the bottom rim scrapes cobblestone with a metallic shriek.
She still doesn't drop it.
Five blocks. Hawthorn Street appears ahead, gas lamps throwing orange circles on the pavement. A small shop with a crooked sign reads MADAME TESSIER, BESPOKE TAILORING, BY APPOINTMENT ONLY.
Magnolia stops at the door. Turns to face me. Holds the shield out with both shaking arms.
"Assessment complete?"
I take the shield back. Eighteen pounds lifts from her grip and she sways, catching herself on the door frame. Her arms hang limp. Red welts mark both palms where the leather bit into skin.
She carried it the entire way. Didn't complain past the initial protest. Didn't quit.
"Assessment complete," I confirm. "You'll survive the wedding."
"Damn right I will." She pounds on the tailor's door. "Now take off your vest so Tessie can measure you, and for the love of all gods, hide the garrote."
The tailor's door stays shut.
Magnolia pounds again. Three sharp raps, then a flat-palm slap that makes her wince. The red welts from the shield haven't faded yet. She hits the door with her other hand.
"Tessie! It's Magnolia! I need a favor!"
Silence. Then a window opens on the second floor and a woman with silver hair and a cigarette leans out.
"Closed, darling."
"I can see that. I need a tuxedo."
The woman's gaze tracks down to me. Travels from my broken tusk to my scarred arms to the bloodstain on my left boot that I haven't had time to address. Her cigarette droops.
"Magnolia, sweetheart, I hem curtains and let out waistcoats. I don't build architecture."
"He just needs a tux. Standard formal wear."
"His neck is thicker than my dress form. Both my dress forms. Stacked on top of each other." The cigarette tip flares orange. "You need Grimshaw."
The name lands between us like a dropped blade.
Magnolia goes still. "Grimshaw works out of the Hollows."
"Grimshaw works out of wherever Grimshaw pleases, but yes.
The Hollows market, third sub-level, past the mushroom vendor and the cursed jewelry stall.
He's the only tailor in the city who keeps Orc measurements on file.
" Tessie takes a long drag. "Tell him I sent you. He owes me for a corset dispute."
The window closes.
Magnolia stares at the dark glass for four seconds. Then she turns to me with an expression I catalog as controlled panic overlaid with aggressive determination.
"The Hollows," she says.
"I know the Hollows."
"Of course you do."
"You don't."
"I've been."
"When?"
"Once. To buy saffron."
"The surface market. Not the sub-levels."
Her jaw works sideways. The flour crescent on her cheek catches lamplight. "How bad is the third sub-level?"
"On a scale of your mother's psychological warfare to actual warfare?"
"Sure."
"Actual warfare. But with better shopping."
She squares her shoulders. The same locked-jaw expression from the shield carry. Edges where softness lives.
"We have ninety minutes before the underground market closes." She starts walking south. Wrong direction. "If your mercenary reputation is as good as that napkin contract suggests, you can keep us both alive in an underground market for thirty minutes."
"Correct direction is north."
She pivots without breaking stride. "I knew that."
She didn't.
The Hollows entrance sits behind a condemned tannery on Bleeker Row. A rusted iron door, no handle on the outside. I knock twice, pause, knock three times. The door swings inward on greased hinges and a goblin with one eye and exceptional dental work peers up at us from a stool.
"Dash." He grins. All forty teeth. "Bringing a snack?"
"Client."
"Ah." The grin doesn't change. "Ten silver entry. Five for the lady. Three more if she screams."
Magnolia fishes coins from her purse with steady hands. Drops them into his palm without flinching.
"I don't scream," she says.
The goblin pockets the coins. "They all say that."
The staircase descends. First sub-level: potions, powders, stolen goods arranged on velvet cloth under floating witch-lights. Magnolia keeps pace. Second sub-level: weapons dealers, a fighting pit, something that smells like burning hair and tastes like copper when I breathe through my mouth.
Magnolia's hand finds my belt. Two fingers hooked through a loop at my hip. She doesn't ask permission. Doesn't acknowledge the gesture. Her face stays forward, scanning, cataloging threats the way a civilian does, which is to say, too slowly and with too much eye contact.
"Stop looking directly at the vendors."
"Why?"
"Eye contact is a purchase agreement on the second level."
Her gaze drops to my back. Stays there.
Third sub-level.
The noise hits first. A roar of commerce and conflict compressed into a city block-sized cavern.
Stalls carved into stone walls, three tiers high, connected by rope bridges and wooden ladders.
Torch smoke hangs in a yellow haze. The crowd is dense.
Orcs, trolls, goblins, a cluster of dark elves haggling over what appears to be a human skeleton wearing a party hat.
Magnolia's fingers tighten on my belt.
"Mushroom vendor," I say. "Eleven o'clock. Cursed jewelry at two o'clock. Grimshaw should be directly past--"
A horn blast. Low and guttural, vibrating through the stone floor.
The crowd splits.