Free Steel and Stone by Ellen Porath

moved to intervene. “Kit?”
    Kitiara looked up and winked at the half-elf. Thenshe spoke again to Drizzleneff. “In fact, I think you should leave Haven—right now. Understand?”
    “Kit!” Tanis interrupted. “She can barely breathe!”
    Kitiara loosened her hold slightly and moved the dagger away a bit. “Understand?” she repeated.
    Drizzleneff Gatehop nodded. “Tomorrow morning,” she croaked. “Right after breakf—”
    “Today! This very afternoon.”
    “But …”
    Kitiara waved the dagger. The kender nodded. “Well, okay. I was planning on heading out anyway because …”
    The swordswoman released the kender, and Drizzleneff Gatehop, topknot bouncing, vanished into the crowd. The throng dissipated as soon as people realized the entertainment was over.
    “Don’t you think you were a little rough?” Tanis asked.
    “She’ll think twice before she steals again.”
    “No, she won’t,” the half-elf commented. “Kender don’t steal, not from their point of view. They have no fear and no real sense of private property—just the curiosity of a five-year-old.”
    The swordswoman didn’t reply. She was polishing her new dagger with the edge of her shirt.
    *   *   *   *   *
    “How did you meet this Flint Fireforge fellow?” Kitiara asked that evening.
    They’d dined at the Seven Centaurs and were sitting in rows of near-empty benches that marked the circumference of the courtyard of the Masked Dragon, one of Haven’s largest inns. Before them, minstrels were setting up a low stage. Ignoring the cloudsgathering overhead, servants of the innkeeper lighted torches set into brackets at intervals on the walls. People were just beginning to wander in.
    “Flint came to Qualinost when I was a child,” Tanis said. “We became friends, and when he left, I did, too. We’ve been in Solace for years.”
    It wasn’t the whole story, of course. The dwarf, an outsider in the elven kingdom, had befriended the lonely half-elf, had eased him through one scrape after another, and in fact had often seemed to be Tanis’s only friend in Qualinost. Later, when Flint decided to leave the Qualinesti city for good, Tanis, nearly full-grown, went with him with few regrets. Unlike the dwarf, however, the half-elf had continued to visit the elven city now and then.
    Kitiara seemed disinclined to inquire into details, however. Her attention had turned to a pair of minstrels. The woman, a wispy creature with shoulder-length blonde hair and large blue eyes, positioned herself in the center front of the stage while her companion; an equally slender man with dark hair and a ready smile, set torches in freestanding holders at the right and left front corners of the platform.
    The man stepped back and looked critically at the woman. “Light’s too dim,” he said to her. He moved the torches closer, stepped back again, and approached the stage.
    “Better?” she asked.
    He nodded and replied, “Perfect. The lighting, and the singer, too.” Then he hopped up on the platform and kissed her. The couple’s three children, an older girl and her young sister and brother, sat cross-legged on the back of the stage. They groaned as their parents embraced. The couple broke apart and grinned unabashedly at the youngsters.
    Kitiara rolled her eyes. “How sweet,” she commented acidly.
    Tanis realized that this was the same couple that had been rehearsing in the Haven market earlier in the day. Trailed by the children, they disappeared under a wooden arch that must have led to a back room. The next moments saw the five come and go, bearing instruments of every type and laying them gently on the stage. Tanis recognized one as a dulcimer, a stringed instrument played on the lap, popular among ladies of the Qualinesti court. The man came out holding two triangular guitars. There was a clavichord, an oblong box with a keyboard, which the man set up on a stand in front of a bench. The woman placed a cylinder drum at the