DASH #2
Not casually. Violently. Bodies slamming into walls, vendors yanking merchandise off tables, a troll physically throwing a goblin into an overhead rope net. The stampede pattern is unmistakable. I've seen it in battlefield retreats and monster runs.
Hellhounds.
A pack of six bursts through the south tunnel entrance. Black-furred, shoulder height of four feet, flames licking between their teeth and dripping onto the stone like liquid amber. Their handler, a massive hobgoblin with a broken chain in each fist, screams commands they ignore entirely.
They barrel straight up the main corridor.
Straight toward us.
I grab Magnolia.
Both hands around her waist. I lift her clean off the ground and pull her flush against me, spinning us into a stone alcove between two stalls.
My back hits the wall. Her body presses against mine, feet dangling six inches above the floor.
I curl around her. Shield position. My shoulders block the alcove entrance.
The pack thunders past. Heat rolls off them in waves that singe the hair on my forearms. Magnolia's face buries against my collarbone.
Her breath comes fast and hot through the fabric of my vest. One hand grips my shirt.
The other grips a throwing knife she pulled from my chest harness at some point during the lift.
The hellhounds pass. The screaming fades. Commerce resumes with unsettling speed.
I look down.
She looks up.
Her brown eyes are wide. Pupils dilated. Pulse visible in her throat, hammering. The flour crescent has transferred from her cheek to my vest, a small white smudge against black leather.
She's still holding my knife.
"You can put me down now."
"You're holding my knife."
"You can still put me down."
"Return the knife first. You're gripping it backward. You'll sever your own thumb."
She glances at her hand. Flips the knife around with a quick, clumsy rotation that nearly opens my vest lacing. Slaps the handle against me.
I set her down. Her boots hit stone. She smooths her dress with both hands, a gesture that accomplishes nothing practical but serves as a reset behavior. Reclaiming composure through physical routine. Common in civilians after adrenaline events.
The flour is gone from her cheek now.
It's on my vest.
"Grimshaw. Third sub-level, past the mushrooms."
She walks forward into the crowd without waiting for me.
I follow. I check the knife she returned. The blade is warm from her grip.
Grimshaw's shop occupies a carved-out pocket in the cavern wall, marked by a sign that reads GRIMSHAW & SONS, BESPOKE FITTINGS FOR THE DISCERNING MONSTROSITY in gold leaf that flakes onto the stone floor like metallic dandruff.
No sons visible. Just Grimshaw himself, a wiry kobold standing on a platform behind a cutting table, surrounded by bolts of fabric stacked floor to ceiling.
He's four feet tall, blue-scaled, with reading spectacles perched on a snout that's too narrow for them. They slide down every three seconds. He pushes them back up every four.
"Tessie sent us," Magnolia says from behind me. She's caught up. Slightly breathless. "She mentioned a corset dispute."
Grimshaw's yellow eyes narrow. "That woman owes me for the corset dispute. I provided whalebone. She wanted steel. I said steel warps under enchantment. She said I was a lizard who didn't understand human undergarments. She was correct on the first count and catastrophically wrong on the second."
He pushes his spectacles up. They slide back down.
"What do you need?"
"Tuxedo," I say. "Standard formal. Black. Accommodations for concealed weapons."
Magnolia steps around me. "No concealed weapons."
"Two concealed weapons."
"Zero concealed weapons. It's my sister's wedding, not an assassination."
"One concealed weapon. Final offer."
She opens her mouth. Closes it. Runs a calculation behind those brown eyes that involves weighing my compliance for the next three days against this single concession.
"One. And I get to choose which one."
"Acceptable."
Grimshaw watches this exchange with the patient expression of someone who has measured a thousand monsters for formal wear and heard a thousand worse arguments. He hops down from his platform, circles me twice, and produces a knotted measuring rope from his apron.
"Arms out."
I extend both arms. He measures my wingspan, chest, neck, each bicep individually, the circumference of both thighs, and the distance from my shoulder to the floor. He writes nothing down. Kobolds have eidetic memory. The measuring is theater. Clients expect it.
"Sixty-eight inch chest. Forty-two inch neck.
You're wider than my doorframe." He pushes his spectacles up.
"Standard fabrics won't hold. Cotton will split at the shoulders when you reach for a bread roll.
Wool will shred if you flex. Linen is a joke.
Silk--" He pauses. Looks at Magnolia. Looks at me.
Looks at the ceiling as if consulting a higher power. "You need armor-silk."
"What's armor-silk?" Magnolia asks.
"Enchanted. Woven from silkworms bred in wild magic zones. The thread is self-reinforcing. Stronger than chainmail, lighter than cotton, takes a perfect press." He disappears behind a curtain and returns dragging a bolt of fabric the deep black of a moonless sky. "Also alive."
"Alive," Magnolia repeats.
"Semi-sentient. The weave resists cutting because it interprets scissors as a threat.
You have to convince it to accept a shape.
" He drops the bolt on the cutting table.
The fabric shudders. Ripples. One corner lifts and curls inward like a fist. "I haven't worked with armor-silk in six years.
Last time, it broke my apprentice's wrist."
Magnolia takes a step back.
"How much?" I ask.
"Two hundred gold for materials. One hundred and fifty for labor. Fifty for hazard."
"Four hundred gold for a tuxedo?"
"Four hundred gold for a tuxedo that won't explode off your body when you dance." He pushes his spectacles up.
"You are dancing?"
I look at Magnolia. Her expression cycles through surprise, suspicion, and a reluctant curiosity that lands somewhere around her eyebrows.
"Can you dance?" she asks.
"Waltz, foxtrot, and three regional variations of the Orcish war-step, which is similar to a tango but with more stomping."