Klane’s hollow steps along with half the crew, across the gangway and down the wooden pier, signaled the end of the two-day trip. The gangway rocked slightly, under their weight, but was still significantly more comfortable than the two days of bobbing at sea Klane had endured. The captain had ordered all crewmen’s weapons to be left aboard ship, as per the rules of the port authority. Klane disregarded the order. He wasn’t a crewman, he reasoned, and as such wasn’t obliged to follow.

  Or return to the ship.

  The crew of The Reliant was a riotous mob bounding toward the market square, on their way to the tavern Rolnar had pointed out earlier. All Klane could see at his height, below the belt-lines of the other men surrounding him, were the bungalows and shanty homes lining the fringe of the city. He craned his neck to see as much as he could, to little avail.

  “Up ye go.”

  Klane felt his feet leave the ground. Rolnar’s two massive hands wrapped entirely around his gnomish stature. Normally the condescension implied by being hoisted onto someone’s shoulders as if he were a child would have set Klane off, but the view paid off.

  “Marvelous.” Klane shrugged his pack farther over one shoulder and adjusted Pride so it wouldn’t poke anyone behind them. A vicious, salty wind stung his eyes, but the excitement of a big city outweighed the discomfort. A million different scents bombarded him, ranging from salty, cooked meats to large barrels of bitter-smelling, gut-rot alcohol.

  “Load ’im up with some ale, eh?” One of the sailors elbowed Rolnar, grinning wolfishly.

  “What ye say?” Rolnar glanced at Klane, gazing past a set of blondish, bushy tufts that passed for eyebrows.

  “If you’re buying. You said it’s the best tavern this side of the … Great Waters?” Klane inclined.

  The nearest three sailors, Rolnar included, whooped and hollered and split from another group hellbent on cutting for the nearest brothel. Klane didn’t need women. A brief thought of Trici filled his mind. He needed booze, like any respectable gnome.

  “The only tavern.” Rolnar noted.

  Klane squinted at the sailor who had elbowed Rolnar. Strub, one of the sailors who’d coaxed him out of the cabin that morning.

  “The oligarchs here own the tavern, won’t allow any others. As a result, it is the most well-stocked drinkin’ hole I’ve ever seen.” Strub added.

  “That’s true,” Rolnar agreed.

  “How’d you get your weapon past the port authority?” Strub asked Klane. He jerked a meaty thumb toward a few port officials, dressed imperiously. A pair of pike-wielding, iron-plated guards stood post next to them. They all sported the same neatly kept goatees, bleached white in direct contrast to the rest of their black hair, and waxed to a fine point.

  “Thing is more like a needle, Strub,” Rolnar said. “I doubt anyone’d notice but you. Hell, I’m carryin’ the guy and I didn’t even notice.”

  “That’s a good way to end up dead, lackin’ awareness like that Rol.”

  Klane shrugged. They passed a dense warren of narrow streets and alleyways ascending into the bustling hive of the port city. Klane tracked one of the avenues halfway up the mountainside, lighted with a mix of fluctuating torch flames and white electric light. Then it vanished behind a ramshackle, tower-like structure that leaned into the sky like a massive tree waiting to be felled.

  From their angle of approach the tavern, bright and welcoming at a distance, had taken on a much darker appearance. Half as many lights adorned the flat stone wall facing away from the hazy, subtly-shifting void of the open sea. The darkness was foreboding, but the promise of free drinks all too inviting.

  * * *

  “You lot behave, aye?” Captain Aldheim fixed them all with a firm stare before they entered. “How’d you get your weapon past the port authority? I told all you to leave ‘em aboard.”

  “I’m technically not part of the crew, nor do I plan on ever being one. I just needed a way to get here.” Klane cocked an eyebrow.

  “Hm, who am I to judge? A’ right, just don’t get into any scrapes. Your passage didn’t include a rescue from jail.”

  “I’d never expect you to.” Klane smiled. “You fulfilled your end of the bargain, so we’re squared away, Captain Aldheim.”

  “Need to collect anythin’ from the ship?” The captain stepped back in its direction.

  “No, I have all my stuff right here.” Klane hoisted the backpack, his giant, rolled-up leaf bound atop it, a personal symbol of his journeys. The pack itself bulged from the contents within, and he tapped a light finger across all the various pouches, filled with lock-picks, coins, tiny tools, and other knickknacks.

  “That’s fine ‘n’ dandy, then.” Aldheim smiled. Then gave a flourishing bow and wave of his hat to a few scantily clad women on a balcony above.

  “Weapon.” A burly man stationed at the entrance to the tavern held up a hand, snapping and pointing toward Pride.

  Damn. Klane sighed and unlatched the leather baldric, which held Pride in its sheath at his side.

  “What’ll happen to it?” Klane asked.

  “Rules are rules, no weapons in the town.” The doorman frowned and took the weapon before waving them past.

  “You can’t just do that!” Klane watched him carry it into a back room and lock a solid wooden door firmly behind him.

  “Come fetch it later. It’ll either be here or at the port overseer’s office,” the man grunted.

  Klane shook his head but said nothing more. He had been warned, after all.

  The tavern hosted a musky collection of patrons of all shapes, sizes, and races. Elf mixed with dwarf and goblin with kobold beneath the multicolored chandeliers. Speckled, floor-to-ceiling, multi-paned windows faced seaward. Figures in sea-green cowls huddled in booths, tossing dice and trading coin.

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  The cluster of Reliant’s sailors, now four, plus Klane, spread out along the bar. Rolnar and Klane settled for an open spot near the end, where a pyramid of crystal glass steins rose against the wall.

  “What do you drink?” Klane asked Rolnar, watching Captain Aldheim and his first mate find refuge in a shadowed booth. “Hold on.” Klane raised a cautionary hand as a few of the cowled figures who had been indulging in dice took notice of the captain and rose to their feet.

  Rolnar teetered precariously on two of his stool’s feet while he regarded the third before attempting to shimmy a cloth beneath it to negate a persistent wobble. “I’m sure they’re fine. The captain don’t seem like one for kerfuffles of any kind.” Rolnar followed Klane’s gaze.

  “I’m sure with your four weeks of—”

  “Three.”

  “Three? Great. Your three weeks of voyaging with them you’ve built up quite a familiarity.”

  “You sure speak freely for someone so little.” Rolnar eyed him mirthfully.

  “It’s the little guys who are the most dangerous.” Klane crossed his arms, wishing he had Pride at his side right now. With his sword, he wasn’t so small.

  “I believe that.” Rolnar gestured for one of the bartenders.

  Klane angled toward the bar, shuffling around in his bag for Allen’s diary. Perhaps the only tavern in town would have a lead as to where he could find Allen’s son, or widow.

  “Pardon.” Klane stood on his stool to reach over and tug the hemmed sleeve of a young woman, all curves and professional sensuality. “You know where I can find the person who runs this?”

  “Give me a moment, hon.” She gave Klane her full attention, then paused to regard him as a mother would a favored son. “Aren’t you the cutest.”

  Klane sighed, but otherwise brushed aside the comment which she’d soaked with enough condescension to drown in.

  After a minute or so the bartender returned, a glowing expression on her face. Klane, now seated on his stool, his arms folded on the marbled bar, waited patiently for her to speak. She posed for a second, hands clasped at her waist, and tilted her head to one side, then the other, like a curious crow. Klane raised an eyebrow and glanced at Rolnar who was absorbed by his own drink, taking periodic sips of a soot-colored liquid. Where’d he gotten that? Klane wondered as he looked to the bartender. Deciding she was going to continue standing there silently, he spoke. “The big boss, please?”

  “Don Fuskima?”

  “Is that who is in charge here?”

  “Yes, sir. The Don oversees our day-to-day function.” She pronounced function as “funk-shan,” which Klane found rather interesting, and unsettling. It just sounded wrong.

  “May I speak to Fuskima?”

  “Don Fuskima,” she corrected. The idea that someone could just drop the honorific apparently surprised her and caused her perfect smile to crack. “Don.”

  “Apologies. May I speak with the Don?”

  “He normally doesn’t—”

  “It’s very important. Please,” Klane urged.

  The woman seemed to understand. She nodded acceptingly before disappearing behind a wall of fermentation barrels.

  A few minutes later a portly man clad in a very flattering, tailored, shadow-gray uniform ambled out in the wake of the bartender, who shot Klane a glance and got back to work.

  The man’s immense size wasn’t fat so much as slabs of muscle. Don Fuskima struck an officious and imposing form. Neatly hemmed sleeves wreathed in embossed coral branches ended just above his wrists. A tall collar, which would usually completely wrap the neck of the wearer, cupped the base of his head and jowls. Klane wasn’t sure the large man even had a neck. His head went straight to massive shoulders. The collar itself was studded with points of porous, volcanic rock, the same terracotta color as the mountainside Klane had noticed coming in. Golden thread embroidered in intricate, swirling designs rounded out the uniform.

  Unlike the harbor guards who’d only had their goatees bleached, he had bleached all his facial hair from the temples down, in contrast with the puff of black hair that slipped the edges of a rattan, pillbox cap. A medal of a harbor tower sticking up through a red reef glinted at the center of the cap.

  Two slimmer, shorter men accompanied him, wearing slightly less decorated versions of the same uniform and carrying iron-studded wooden clubs. Their scarred faces and death-glare scowls made it apparent they weren’t to be trifled with. They must’ve been guards or, Klane mused, handlers to control the Don and protect any nearby buildings or innocent citizens from the complete ruin or death of which he was probably capable if having a bad day.

  “Can I help you?” Don Fuskima asked. He raised an inquisitive eyebrow and spoke in a terse manner. His upper lip barely seemed to move with the words.

  “Yes.” Klane jammed a hand into his backpack for the journal. “I hope—”

  Don Fuskima’s two guards jerked their clubs off the ground, stepped toward Klane, and reached for the bag.

  Klane jerked the bag away, glaring. “Take it easy, guys, I’m just getting a journal.”

  The guards stayed in an intercepting position between the Don and Klane, eyeing Rolnar with a cautionary hesitation as well. The galley cook raised the two, innocent bear-paws he called hands and moved his stool a couple of feet down the bar near a man slumped down on the bar, face buried in his arms. The guards relaxed slightly.

  “I have this journal. I’m looking for two people and was hoping you might know where I can find them.”

  “Information has a price.” Don Fuskima leaned in as Klane set the tattered journal on the counter and shoved it across the top. In Fuskima’s hands, it seemed more a book for ants rather than normal-sized.

  “I’m sure it does, but you look like a man with a heart,” Klane lied. He probably didn’t have the shills for whatever price the Don had in mind.

  Don Fuskima laughed. He didn’t strike Klane as the kind of man to have a heart in the slightest. If the Don had ever had a heart, it had probably been ripped out and clubbed to a fine mush.

  Don Fuskima flipped the book open and thumbed through the few torn pages within. “What is this I am looking at?”

  “A personal journal of a miner who belonged to the Clockwork Mining Company.”

  “Why do you have it?”

  “I just happened upon it.”

  “What happened to … Allen?”

  Klane cleared his throat and rocked back in his stool. “He’s dead.”

  This got the attention of Don Fuskima, who peered up from the journal suspiciously. “Well, I doubt it was you who killed him. So, who did?”

  “I think it w— Hey!” Klane frowned. “I’m fully capable of killing someone.”

  Don Fuskima burst into bellowing laughter that set the hanging paper lanterns above the bar in a gentle sway.

  Klane stared at his lap. “It was a fellow miner, I think.” It would be odd if I blamed the mine itself, but maybe not too far off.

  “So why bring it here?”

  “Well, according to that,” Klane pointed at the journal, “he was about to head back to his family, and he mentioned planning to move to this fine city of yours. I figured they might have—his widow and son.”

  “So you want to—”

  “Bring it back to the family, so they have some closure,” Klane finished, staring into the black, sunken eyes of the Don. The tavern boss’s expression faltered from a stoic amusement to one that seemed almost caring. Klane found himself surprised.

  The Don studied the first page more intently. “Allen, Andrew. No name of the woman in here?”

  “I think her name is Sarah.” Klane indicated one of the other pages.

  “Allen, Andrew, Sarah.” Don Fuskima repeated the names under his breath a few times.

  “Great Don.” One of the guards startled everyone by speaking quickly, urgently.

  The Don turned and leaned down so the man could whisper in his ear, then nodded understandingly. “Are you sure?” he asked.

  The guard nodded.

  Don Fuskima chuckled, “We’ll need to have a talk as to where you spend so much of your off-time.” He shook his head disbelievingly at the guard, a smirk creasing his cheek as the man answered with an innocent tilt of his head.

  “I know of a young man named Andrew who works at the administrative offices for Clockwork Mining Company Haven’t seen him in here in a fortnight, but you can ask around there. It is up in the commercial district, in the upper east quadrant of the city. As for the woman, check the brothel down by the pier.”

  “Thank you, Don Fuskima.” Klane inclined his head respectfully.

  “It is nothing. You’re the first gnome I’ve seen here in ages. Stay safe my little friend.”

  Klane had judged the Don all wrong, it seemed.

  One of the guards pointed across the tavern. Everyone followed his gaze. Klane watched, tucking the journal in his pack, as the Don and his guards took notice of the booth which Captain Aldheim, his first mate, and the cowled figures had filled.