The Disappearance of Winter's Daughter (Riyria Chronicles #4)

The streets were emptying, and windows shuttered as the night erased the day’s earlier promise of coming spring. The cold of winter had returned, reminding everyone it wasn’t yet finished. The driver hoisted his sack and bid a less-than-fond farewell to those around the fire. He headed off into the darkening streets. Royce waved at Hadrian, and together they followed.

The dwarf stopped at a tiny butcher shop. There he haggled in an unfamiliar language over one of three chickens that hung from the porch rafters. A great deal of pointing, scowling, and foot stomping accompanied the conversation. The bird under debate was so small and scrawny that Hadrian questioned whether it was a chicken at all. If not for the white feathers, he might have guessed a crow. In the end, the driver reluctantly handed over coins and took the pair of legs, swinging the chicken as he walked. Then he stopped at a wheelbarrow where what appeared to be an elderly husband and wife sold firewood. The driver picked out three splits as if he were choosing produce in a market. Burdened as he was with an armload of wood, his sack, and a scrawny chicken that he continued to heedlessly whip about with the swing of his arm, the dwarf continued until he came to a tiny shack. The wood siding had been weathered to a dark gray. The upper story jutted out over the lower, creating an overhang that shadowed the door. A light shone from inside, and without a knock, the driver entered.

The shack had two glassless windows. Tattered cloth covered both, but one covering was ripped, and through it Royce and Hadrian spied on their suspect. To Hadrian’s shock, more than a dozen people were within. Children and elders, male and female, they all crowded into the small space of one room. The light came from a cook fire where a surprisingly cute dwarven lady took the bird from the driver. With children pulling on her apron, she held up the chicken, made some comment, and then kissed the driver on his nose. The two laughed.

Instantly feeling guilty for spying, Hadrian left Royce to monitor the dwarf while he found an abandoned crate to sit on near a rubbish pile. After Royce’s commentary, he’d expected that the dwarf was on his way to some nefarious hideout, a creepy tower, or ancient ruin where Genny Winter was chained to a wall or suspended over alligators. Instead, he was snooping on the hard-working provider for a warm and loving family. Their poverty made the act of spying even more distasteful. Hadrian hadn’t been invading merely a gathering but an event as sacred as a funeral. Most of the garbage pile he waited in consisted of wood chips and strips of bark, which made Hadrian think it might not be rubbish at all. In a household so picky about buying firewood, he couldn’t imagine them discarding anything that burned.

Hours went by before Royce approached Hadrian. The thief had something small in his hands. “Not a stoneworker,” he said, holding up an exquisitely carved wooden figurine of a rearing horse, polished and lacquered to a honey finish. Every muscle and the individual strands of hair in its mane and tail were rendered in startling detail.

“It’s beautiful.”

Royce nodded. “There’s a shed around the other side filled with things like this.”

“Why doesn’t he sell them?” Hadrian looked over at the house. “I don’t know what they pay him at the Estate, but I would think such craftsmanship would pay well. This is better than what I’ve seen in the shop windows.”

Royce nodded while still looking at the carving.

“We spending the night?” Hadrian asked.

Royce shrugged, then pivoted abruptly.

Hadrian heard it, too. The front door of the shack clapped. The woodcarver, and alleged driver of duchesses, was on the move again.





With cloak on and hood up, the dwarf appeared significantly more sinister than before as he slipped out of the shack and set out into the night. This time he clutched a bread-loaf-sized box in his arms and presented the image of the quintessential villain of a hundred children’s stories: Gronbach, the little bearded dwarf bent on evil. As the driver scurried through the shadows, Hadrian had no trouble believing the tales of a nefarious dwarf. The scene was fable-perfect, except he had also seen the earlier moments when a tired worker dragged himself back to his impoverished family and provided them a miserable excuse of a chicken. Kisses from a loving wife were never part of the Gronbach myth. He didn’t even have a wife or children. In the fairy tales, he was a monster, and his reputation cast a shadow over all dwarves.

The little guy moved with more speed, darting up the maze of narrow streets. At one point, he broke into a trot, and Hadrian was certain he’d been discovered. But after a few yards, the dwarf slowed to a quick walk. If he had looked back, the driver would have spotted Hadrian, who stalked with his own hood up. The dwarf certainly would wonder about the tall man with three swords strolling late at night in a dwarven enclave, but he wouldn’t see Royce. While the thief was much closer, he was slipping from shadow to shadow and appearing as little more than a flutter, a faint disturbance that could have been the corner of a firewood tarp blown by the wind. But the dwarf didn’t so much as glance over his shoulder as he maintained a generally northeastern course, avoiding windows, doors, and firelight.

Convinced they were finally on their way to the sinister ruined tower and alligator pit, Hadrian was puzzled when the dwarf approached a figure at the entrance to a cemetery. The burial ground was a modest patch of headstones walled in by a tight congestion of stone buildings, one of which might have been a small church. The tombstones, however, were marvelous. Even at a distance, they revealed artistry. Dwarves were known for stonework as much as for kidnapping young women, and the statuary in that yard was more beautiful than any he’d ever seen. Most were depictions of people—the deceased, Hadrian assumed. These weren’t the diminutive, malevolently hooded monsters of a host of cautionary tales, but the exquisite heroes of their own stories. Straight, proud, smiling figures looked up at the sky or down with empathy at those who might come to grieve on their behalf.

This is how they see themselves, he thought. Combining this sight with the scene in the shack, Hadrian began to wonder if there would be an alligator pit at all.

The dwarf walked directly up to the figure at the entrance, no hesitation, no greeting, either. The fellow waiting at the gate to the cemetery was tall, thin, and dark-skinned, with hair that was mostly gray.

Royce looked backward with apprehension, and in his gaze was a wealth of information. He wasn’t so much looking for anything as telling Hadrian to be wary. One slaughterhouse wagon was more than enough. Not that another runaway cart would be the threat again. This tiny street was peppered with windows, doors, and a host of other obstacles: barrels, awnings, porch steps, and piles of garbage. Royce wasn’t saying, Watch out for another killer wagon but rather, I don’t like the feel of this; keep your eyes open for a trap.

The fact that Royce had exchanged so much information with a look disturbed Hadrian. There was no doubt he had heard Royce correctly on all counts, and Hadrian’s utter confidence in that silent discourse only added to the anxiety that he was harmonizing with Royce’s mind. While that was good for work, Hadrian couldn’t shake the sense that it was bad for everything else—like his sanity.

Sticking close to the walls and staying out of the moonlight, Hadrian crept up to where Royce stood at the base of the three-story church—the only stone building in the neighborhood, which obviously predated everything around it.

“ . . . ninety-eight swords, half as many shields.”

“Why so few shields?”

“Shields aren’t as important and are harder to store,” the dwarf said. “We haven’t stopped. Production has slowed, sure, but that’s all. Don’t forget we’re the ones carrying the burden. The rest of you aren’t out a single din.”