Sallina, Baat, and Otis climbed the last flight of steps up to the entrance of the dwarf city. At the top of the steps was an open space paved with gray stone that sparkled in the sunlight. On the other side of the space was the cliff that Sallina and Garibaldi had examined through Sharpy's telescope that morning. The cliff went straight up in front of them and curved around the sides of the valley behind them. Sallina had to look straight up to see the blue sky above.
At the base of the cliff was the entrance to the dwarf city. The entrance was closed by two large doors. In front of the doors was the man with the leather bag who had set off along the road in front of them. He was tall and thin, wearing a black coat and a white collar. When he saw Sallina and her companions, he moved away from the door, and stood beside a sign.
Sallina stopped in front of the doors. Each door was twice as tall as she was and three paces wide. On the left door was a carving of a pick-axe and a shovel. On the right door was a carving of a cart being pulled by a dwarf with a long beard. Around the pick-axe and the cart were many shapes with straight edges and sharp corners. Most of the shapes were six-sided, but others were more complicated.
Sallina stepped forward and touched the door. It was warm from the sun. She looked up at the carvings. The door was solid metal. There were spots of red rust hiding in some of the corners of the carvings. The metal was probably iron.
Baat walked to the sign. The man with the leather bag took several steps backwards. Sallina thought he looked nervous. Why was he nervous? Baat had put his sword away, and he was not large. He was no taller than Sallina. The man with the bag must have seen Baat draw his sword and cut the sailor, or he saw the sailor bleeding.
Sallina walked to the sign. It was made of shiny silver metal. A notice was carved upon it in three languages. The top notice was in Latin, with the largest letters. Beneath that was Weilandic, which was Sallina's own language. At the bottom was writing made of pictures and lines. The pictures and lines were hieroglyphs from Sax. She read the Weilandic writing out loud.
"No Loitering, Cloghlogan City Law, Chapter 7, Section 12." She turned to Otis. "It says no loitering. But I don't see what else we can do. How are we supposed to get in? Are we supposed to knock on the door?"
Otis pointed to the man with the leather bag. "Ask him."
Sallina looked at the man with the leather bag. He stared at the ground.
"Excuse me," she said, "How do we get into the city?"
The man leaned forward slightly and rubbed his chin with one hand. He pointed towards the doors. Sallina turned around and the doors were moving. They moved slowly into the mountain. They made no sound.
The space beyond the doors was dark at first, but when the doors were half-open, the sun shone upon the floor and walls of a short passage. Beyond the passage was a cavern twice as high as the doors and twenty paces deep. Sallina could not tell how wide the cavern was, because the short passage hid the width of the cavern from sight.
The doors opened until they were pressed against the walls inside. Sallina could not see anyone moving the doors. Nobody came out from behind the doors when they stopped moving. A dwarf in chain armor walked out of the cavern and into the sunlight.
He raised his hand and said in a loud, deep voice. "Stand clear!"
He spoke in Latin. Sallina moved to one side, towards the man with the leather bag. Otis and Baat followed her.
The dwarf stood just inside the the doors. He held his hand above his eyes to shield them from the sun shining straight up the valley into his face. He took a deep breath. Sallina stared at him. He was shorter than she was. A sapien man as short as the dwarf would be a man she would say was "very short", or even "too short". But the dwarf was wide across the shoulders and from front to back. He looked solid and strong, like a bear.
The dwarf's chain mail shirt hung down from his chest to his knees. The chain links shone in the sun. The sleeves came down to his elbows. His hands and lower arms were covered with gauntlets made of solid metal plates. When he flexed his fingers, the metal plates moved over one another silently. Upon his lower legs he wore plate armor also. His boots were black leather, polished until they shone in the sunlight. Upon his head was a helmet with a bright red plume sticking straight up. On his back was a round shield. Hanging from his belt was a broad-bladed sword in a sheath painted bright blue and yellow.
He lowered his hand and smiled at Sallina. His beard was bright red. It was twisted into two points at the bottom, and these points were so bushy that they were tied with gold rings. So far as Sallina could tell, the dwarf's face was the same size as a sapien's, but every feature in the face seemed larger. His nose was wide and long. His mouth went almost from one side of his face to the other. His rosy cheeks stuck out like those of a character in a children's picture book. To Sallina, the most extraordinary thing about the dwarf's face were his eyes. They were huge. Sallina guessed they must be half again as wide and as high as a sapien's eyes. Even from three paces away, with the bright sunlight on one side of the dwarf's face and the shadow of his nose falling across the other half, Sallina could see that the dwarf's eyes were green.
"Good morning!" the dwarf said.
"Good morning," Sallina said.
Five dwarves walked out of the cavern into the sunlight. They laughed and talked to one another in Latin. They wore dark glasses and wide-brimmed hats. Instead of armor and weapons, they wore brightly-colored clothes. Two of them were women. Sallina could tell they were women because they had no beards, they were half a head shorter than the men, and they had breasts as big as Natasha's. Sallina could not see their eyes, because of the dark glasses, but their skin was clear and pale in the shade of their hats. Their lips were red and full.
One woman wore blue trousers down to her calves and sandals on her feet. Her feet were broad but not long. Her toenails were painted green. Her shirt was shiny green, and came down to her thighs. The second woman wore black trousers and red leather shoes. The trousers hung low on her hips. Her shirt was made of stretchy yellow fabric that was tight on her body. It clung to her arms, tucked in below her chest, and ended just above her waist, so that a strip of white skin showed between her shirt and trousers.
The men wore short-sleeved shirts. Two of them wore short trousers. Their legs and arms were broad, muscular, and hairy. The man at the back of the group pulled a cart with two wheels. He was the one wearing long trousers. The cart had two poles for handles. He stood between the poles and pulled the cart with both hands. The outside of the cart was carved and painted with lines and shapes. The inside was bare metal, and scratched in many places. In the cart were a dozen bamboo poles with iron pieces on the ends. The poles were too long for the cart, so they stuck out of the back. Some of the poles had small wheels at one end. The wheels had shiny thread wrapped around them, and metal levers sticking out. Also in the cart were a metal box, three wicker baskets, two stools, a frying pan, a bottle of wine, and three round watermelons.
Sallina watched the woman in the stretchy yellow shirt as she walked down the road. The dwarf woman was no taller than Sallina's shoulder, but her hips were wider, and her waist curved sharply. She walked with one hand upon her hip, and her bottom swung from side to side.
Otis and Baat stared at the dwarves. Otis leaned towards Baat and said something. Baat nodded and laughed. Sallina did not hear what they were saying. Were they making fun of the dwarf women, or did they think the women were pretty? Dan married a dwarf, so he must think they are pretty.
Farther down the road was another cart, pulled by one dwarf on his own, coming up towards the city. He saw the open doors and started to run. Sallina turned to the dwarf in chain armor.
"We'll wait for him," he said. He pointed into the passage. "Come inside."
Otis and Baat where still whispering to one another.
"Come on sailors," Sallina said, "We're going in."
She walked towards the dwarf. Baat and Otis laughed once more and followed her.
"Do you have papers already?" the dwarf said. This time he spoke Weilandic with a strong accent, but she could understand him.
"Papers?" Sallina said. "Yes, I do. I have a letter to deliver."
The dwarf walked into the passage. She walked beside him. The sun cast long shadows before them and into the cavern beyond. Sallina looked down at the floor. She stopped. There was a hole, half an arm's length across. All around the hole, and into the cavern beyond, the floor was polished, sparkling gray stone. The stone was so smooth it looked like glass or still water in the sunlight. But there was a hole in the stone, and at the bottom of the hole were triangular white crystals, long green, sharp-edged rods, and purple stones with flat, sparkling sides.
The dwarf laughed. "Don't worry," he said. He stepped on the hole, and to Sallina's surprise, he did not fall in. "There's a window over it." He stepped away from the hole. "It's your first time here, isn't it?"
"Yes," Sallina said.
"Well, don't mind the windows. I'd have them covered over if it were up to me."
The dwarf kept walking. Sallina followed him. There were more windows in the floor. They walked into the shadow of the cavern. To her right, next to the cavern wall, was a high stone desk. The dwarf walked to the other side of it. There were metal trays on the desk with papers in them.
Sallina looked around at the cavern. It was wider than it was deep, and there was another set of metal doors on the wall opposite the passage. The windows in the floor made a path across the cavern to these inner doors. Standing in the center of the cavern was another dwarf wearing the same plumed helmet and armor as the one behind the desk.
The cavern roof was bare, jagged rock. Luminous stones hung from chains. Their light was dim compared to the sun shining through the doors. The cavern walls were straight and flat and square. They were covered with rectangular metal plates. The plates were engraved with Latin writing.
"Those are the Laws of the City," the dwarf behind the desk said. "We expect you to obey them."
"I'm just here to deliver a letter."
The dwarf took out a piece of paper with lines, words and boxes printed upon it in blue ink. "To get into the city, you have to have a visitor pass and you have to agree to abide by our laws." He took a pen from a cup. He started to write upon the paper. He did not dip the pen in ink before he wrote. It just started writing on its own. The ink was red.
Baat and Otis joined her in front of the desk.
"What's your name?" the dwarf said.
"Sallina Franks," Sallina said, because that was her full name.
"Where are you staying?"
"On the good ship Reliant."
The man with the leather bag walked into the cavern and went to the dwarf in the cavern center. Sallina watched him over her shoulder. He showed the dwarf a piece of paper. The dwarf took the paper, read it, and gave it back to him.
A cart rattled into the cavern, pulled by the dwarf who had been jogging up the road. He leaned against his cart and breathed deeply. The cart was brightly painted and made of metal.
The dwarf behind the desk looked at a clock hanging on the wall. The clock had a white face and black hands. He wrote on his paper and pushed it towards Sallina. He pointed to a line at the bottom.
"Sign here."
He had written Sallina's name, the name of her ship, the time, the date, and his own name on the blue lines. His name was Joseph MacIntyre. He had ticked a box marked "sapien", a box marked "female" and another box marked with a Latin word that Sallina did not know.
Joseph watched Sallina. "It says, 'While in Cloghlogan City, I agree to abide by the Laws of the City'."
Sallina signed her name on the line.
Joseph took out two more printed papers and filled them out for Otis and Baat. Otis gave his name as Otis of the Reliant. Baat was Baatarsaikhan son of Sukh. The dwarf handed then each heir papers and they both signed on the blue lines.
"Keep the papers with you at all times while you are in the city. Visitors always have to carry their visitor papers with them."
"We will," Sallina said.
"Young man," Joseph said to Baat, "You carry a sword. Don't start any fights."
"No fights," Baat said.
The dwarf who had been talking to the man with the leather bag walked up. "The gentlemen in the coat over there says you had a sword fight down by the fountains."
"We were attacked," Sallina said.
The two dwarves looked at her and her companions.
"Aye," the second dwarf said, "That may be."
Joseph opened a drawer in the desk and took out a printed pamphlet. "Here," he said. He unfolded the pamphlet. There was a map inside. "Take this. The map shows Cloghlogan Avenue and the main caverns. On the back are some of our most important laws."
Sallina took the pamphlet. The writing was in Weilandic. They had a special pamphlet printed for visitors who did not speak Latin. She turned it over and read the first law. "No fire without a permit, save one lamp or candle per person, Chapter One, Section Seventeen." The second law was, "No smoking in the streets or caverns, Chapter One, Section Three."
She nodded. "Okay, thank you." She looked at Joseph. "We don't want to start any trouble."
Joseph smiled. There were wrinkles around his eyes. "I trust you."
Sallina stared at him for a few seconds. She wondered how old he was. Why did he trust her? Why didn't he arrest Baat for cutting a man's arm?
"Can you tell us how to get to Cinnabar Street?" she said.
"I certainly can. Follow the avenue through the first and second caverns and it's the second turning on the right."
"Thank you."
"If you lose your way, ask someone," Joseph said, "You'll find we are quite friendly, so long as you don't get into any mischief."
Sallina nodded. She looked down the passage to the doorway. She wondered if Lawrence and his sailors were going to follow them into the city and make trouble for them. She wondered if she should explain their fight by the fountain to Joseph. She ran her fingers through her hair.
"We'll deliver our letter and leave," she said.
"As you wish, madam," Joseph said. "Now, if you please, wait over there." He pointed to the inner doors.
Sallina and her companions walked across the cavern floor to the inner doors. The man with the leather bag held his bag to his chest and watched them go by. They stood in front of the inner doors and waited.
Joseph and the other dwarf with a plumed helmet walked to the outer doors and came back. Joseph talked at the wall behind the desk. There must have been a hole in the wall, or a pipe. The outer doors began to move. They swung slowly together until they closed. They shut out the sunlight.
At first the cavern was dark to Sallina's eyes, but after a few seconds she could see by the dim light of the luminous stones hanging from the roof. The jagged rock of the roof was white and black with sparkling crystals. The dwarves must be wealthy, she thought, to be able to afford so many luminous stones. There were ten of them hanging from the cavern roof.
She heard a rushing of air. The inner doors were opening. They opened away from her, into another passage. Air rushed from the cavern and into the passage beyond. After a few seconds, the rushing stopped. The light in the passage was dim, but she could see three dwarves with carts. As soon as the doors opened, the dwarves pulled their carts into the cavern. All three carts were loaded with rocks.
As soon as the carts entered the cavern, the man with the leather bag went through the doors, followed by the dwarf who had come up the road with his cart. In the cart were a few metal boxes, a shovel, a pick-axe, and a sledge-hammer, but no rocks.
"Shall we go, Miss?" Otis said.
Sallina nodded. She walked through the doors. The floor of the passage was the same polished stone as the cavern, with windows along the center. The passage was six paces wide. Its walls were solid rock, and joined in a smooth arch as tall as the doors. This must be Cloghlogan Avenue, she thought.
After ten paces, a smaller passage led off to their left. A sign above it said, MacIntyre Street. Was this where Joseph lived? The street was dark. She felt cool air upon her neck. She looked up. There was a hole in the roof. The cool air was coming out of the hole.
"I can hardly see," Otis said.
There were no lights in the avenue. The only light came from the cavern behind them, and from something around the bend ahead of them.
Sallina walked around the bend. On the right was a cavern. The windows in the floor continued into the cavern. Two luminous stones hung from the roof, and in their dim light six or seven dwarves with plumed helmets sat at tables, talking and playing chess.
"This must be the first cavern," Otis said.
Sallina nodded. She pointed along the larger passage. "This way."
They followed the avenue. The floor was no longer polished, but it was flat and smooth. As they left the lights behind them, it grew dark. Air rushed from another hole in the roof. They passed another street leading off the the right. There was a bend ahead of them. Sallina was sure it would be absolutely dark on the other side.
She stopped. Otis and Baat stopped beside her. Otis had his hand on Baat's shoulder. How could they go on like this? They needed light. Why hadn't she brought a candle? Should she go back and ask Joseph for one, or perhaps one of the guards playing chess? How had the man with the leather bag come this way without a light? Were the dwarves able to see in the dark?
As she stood there in the darkness, she heard voices. The voices were not loud, because they were coming down the avenue from far away. But there were many voices. There were people calling out to one another, and laughing and talking. She felt as if she were standing outside a ballroom in which a large party was being held. She heard metal clanging against stone, and a splash, as if someone had jumped into a pool of water. Beneath her feet she heard another noise. It was a quiet hissing. What was beneath the floor? She held her breath and listened. She heard another sound, unlike anything she had heard before in her life. She could hardly hear it among the other noises, but it was there. It was a deep humming, too deep for human voices or any musical instrument she had ever seen.
She breathed out. She must deliver the message. Dan was wounded. Lawrence might be waiting outside the dwarf city with the police. Surely she could move along the avenue by touching one of the walls?
Something brushed against her leg. She jumped. "Something touched my leg!"
Otis laughed.
"What was it?" Sallina said.
"A cave rat," Otis said, "I hear they get to be as large as dogs."
Sallina took another deep breath. Otis must be teasing her.
A light shone in the avenue ahead of them. Two tiny dwarves came running around the corner. Each wore a round, hard hat with a luminous stone attached to it, shining ahead of them. They saw the sapiens standing in the avenue. They stopped and looked up. They were barely higher than Sallina's knees. Their mouths were open and their big eyes were wide and staring.
Sallina laughed. "Hello," she said.
The two tiny dwarves turned and ran back the way they had come, taking their light with them.
"Those were children," Otis said.
"Come on," Sallina said. She ran after them.
The dwarf children were not fast runners. Sallina caught up with them quickly. But she did not want to catch them, she just wanted to share their light. The dwarf children looked back, squealed, and turned into an opening on the right. Sallina stopped beside the opening and looked in. A spiral staircase went up and down. The children had gone up. She could see their lights shining on the walls above her.
"I think you scared them off, Miss," Otis said.
A dwarf walked around the bend in front of them and stopped. He had his own helmet with a luminous stone. The stone was not bright, but it was bright enough for Sallina to see the floor. His face was in the shadow of his helmet.
"Hello," he said in Latin.
"Hello," Sallina said. "We cannot see. It is dark."
"Oh, never mind," the dwarf said. "Come with me." He turned around and walked back the way he came.
Sallina, Otis and Baat followed the dwarf. There was a street leading off to the left. The dwarf stopped beside the street and stood beside his cart. Sallina recognized the cart from the entrance cavern. This was the dwarf who had been coming up the road in the valley, hurrying to get to the doors before they closed. Was he going back to the entrance cavern already?
"I see you in cavern," she said, which was the best she could say in Latin.
"Yes," the dwarf said. He opened a box in his cart and took out a candle. "Here." He held the candle out to Sallina.
"Thank you," Sallina said. She took the candle.
The dwarf took a box of matches from his pocket, struck one, and lit the candle.
"There you go," he said.
"You are very kind," Sallina said.
The dwarf picked up his cart and walked off along the side street. Sallina held up the candle. The sign above the street said MacIntyre Street. She frowned. They had already passed MacIntyre street. Had they turned around in the darkness and gone back? No, that could not be, because the street would be on their right if they had turned around, and it was on their left. This must be the other end of MacIntyre street, where it came back to the avenue.
Sallina was glad to have the candle, but it turned out that she did not need it. Beyond the next bend they passed several dwarves. Others came out of side streets. The dwarves carried luminous stones, candles, and little oil lamps.
The sound of voices and clattering and splashing grew louder. Sallina heard birds singing. Light shone ahead of them. They walked around a bend and came to the edge of a huge cavern. They stopped and stared. The cavern was sixty paces long and almost as wide. The roof was so high Sallina thought the main mast of the Reliant would be able to stand up in the middle of it. The avenue ran across the cavern floor, past a stone fountain, and out the other side.
Light came from dozens of luminous stones hanging at various heights from the roof by chains. The walls sparkled. Hanging from the center of the roof was a clock. Sallina could see the hands of the clock clearly. The clock read twenty minutes past ten.
Beside the main floor of the cavern were higher floors, and above these there were balconies running around the walls. On the main floor, around the fountain, was a market. Half the stalls were run by sapiens. Sallina put her hand in her pocket and touched her piece of mink fur. Perhaps she could bring her fur here and sell it to the dwarves. No, what use would they have for fur? Surely it was never cold here in their city.
Stairs led up to the higher floors, and even to the balconies. There were tables and chairs, and many dwarves sitting and talking and drinking from cups. There must have been several hundred dwarves in the cavern, and twenty sapiens among the market stalls.
Baat pointed up to their right. A metal cage hung from the wall. In the cage was a small yellow bird. It was singing.
"My aunt have bird like that," he said.
There were many bird cages around the cavern, most with yellow birds, but some with larger, multi-colored birds. The sound of the birds singing and squawking joined with that of the dwarves talking at their tables and the sapiens calling out the price of their goods, and echoed off the cavern walls.
Sallina looked back the way they had come. She leaned against the cavern wall. It was so loud here that she could hardly think. This was the second cavern, wasn't it? Cinnabar street should be on the other side.
"Come on," she said, and walked out into the cavern.
Baat pointed to a ledge in the cavern wall to their right.
"Look."
Upon the ledge sat a ginger cat licking its paws. Sallina stopped and looked around. She saw a black cat sitting under a market stall, and a small tortoise-shell cat walking along the stone rail of a balcony. The thing that brushed her leg in the passage earlier must have been a cat. She frowned and turned to Otis.
"Cave rats as big as dogs?" she said.
Otis smiled. "Why have cats if you don't have rats?"
"Humph," Sallina said. She kept walking. Otis and Baat followed her.
Two market stalls were selling cloth. Others sold fruit, meat, vegetables, spices, and coffee. None were selling furs. She looked down at her candle and saw that it had gone out. They came to the fountain. Sallina dipped her fingers in the pool. Coins sparkled in the water. Some were gold. Were they really gold? Sallina almost stopped to look at them. But she kept walking. First she must deliver the letters, then she could look in the pool. She squeezed the candle wick with her wet fingers and put the candle in her pocket.
At the far side of the cavern, the air carried the smell of spices, metal, and coffee.
They stepped out of the cavern. There was a narrow channel of water running down the middle of Cloghlogan Avenue towards them. Every ten paces there was a luminous stone hanging from the roof. The light from the stones was not bright, but it was enough for her to see the walls and the floor.
They passed two streets on their left, then a door on their right. The door was made of iron. She wondered if it was locked. They passed Quartz street on their right, and another street on their left. They walked around a bend and entered another cavern.
This cavern was not nearly as large as the one they had just come from, but it was more brightly lit. Its roof was a smooth dome. The dome was painted sky-blue. The cavern floor was covered with metal tables, chairs, and large stone pots full of flowers, bushes, and small trees. In the center was a fountain. A dwarf woman was bent over, drinking from a water spout beside the fountain. When she stood up straight, she let go of a metal button and the water spout turned off.
There was a gurgling and hissing sound coming from somewhere in the cavern, but Sallina could not tell where. The sound echoed in a way that confused her ears. The air smelled strongly of coffee.
Cloghlogan Avenue continued out the other side of the cavern, but there was another passage leading out, on the left side. Sallina turned and looked back the way they had come. Had they missed the turning? They should have passed Cinnabar Street before they reached the third cavern.
"Are we lost?" Baat said.
Sallina scratched her head.
"Do you have lice?" Otis said.
Sallina stopped scratching her head. "No." She looked at the cavern. "I mean yes, I'm lost."
She took the pamphlet Joseph had given her out of her pocket. She was about to open it and look at the map when a dwarf walked past them. It was a male dwarf, but he was clean-shaven.
"Excuse me," Sallina said, "Is it cavern number three?"
The dwarf stopped. He looked at Sallina, Baat, and Otis. He frowned. "No," he said, "Number Two." He continued on his way.
"The ones that shave are unhappy," Otis said.
"Okay," Sallina said, "It's on the other side of this cavern." She put the pamphlet back in her pocket and crossed the cavern to the avenue on the other side. Two dwarves pulling carts full of rock went by the other way. They passed a wide passage on the right, wider than the streets they had passed earlier. A sign above it read Turmaline Road.
Around the next bend, six dwarf men and women were talking outside the entrance to another street. They had a cart with them filled with iron boxes, pipes, and tools. A luminous stone hung from the roof outside the street, and by its light, Sallina read the street sign. It said Cinnabar Street.
"This is it," Sallina said. "It's number six."
Sallina walked up to the dwarves. They looked at the three sapiens and smiled.
"Good morning," they said.
"Good morning," Sallina said. Baat and Otis nodded. Neither of them could understand Latin, but they understood that the dwarves were saying hello.
The dwarves looked down at the floor. They had lifted several rectangular paving stones and put them to one side. This was the first time Sallina realized the floor of the avenue was made of paving stones and not solid rock. Under the places where the paving stones had been was a channel that ran beneath the avenue. In the channel were five or six pipes made of a reddish metal Sallina thought must be copper. The pipes were about a hand's width across. One of them was spraying water into the channel. The water was steaming as it came out. One man pointed to the steaming water and said something in Latin. Another man nodded, but a woman shook her head.
"No, that won't work," she said.
"Excuse me," Sallina said. "May we pass by?" She pointed to the entrance of Cinnabar Street.
"Sure," the woman said. The dwarves moved aside. Sallina, Otis, and Baat entered Cinnabar Street. The street was narrow at first, only just wide enough for the three of them to walk side by side. But it opened up after twenty paces and curved gently to the left. Every ten paces along the right side of the street were doors made of vertical iron bars. The doors did not face the street like the doors in sapien towns. The doors faced down the street, towards Sallina and her companions. The wall of the street bulged out behind each door, making an entrance hall. Sallina guessed that each door led to a dwarf home.
Opposite some of the doors, on the left side of the street, two-wheeled carts were parked against the wall. Every twenty paces along the street, a luminous stone hung from the roof by a chain. By the light of the luminous stones, Sallina could see the entrance halls through the doors, but she could not see into the homes.
Above each door was a metal sign with a number on it. The first door was number one, the second was number two. Sallina and her companions walked to door number six.
"This is it," she said.
They stopped in front of the iron bars of door number six. Sallina felt a breeze on the back of her neck. Air was moving from the street through the door. In the entrance hall was a small wooden table. Upon the table were a few envelopes and a wood carving of an animal with four legs. Thick, cloth tapestries covered the walls and ceiling. The tapestry upon the ceiling was stretched tight between four hooks at its corners. On the floor was a carpet. The light entering the hallway from the street was dim, but Sallina guessed that the tapestries and carpet were all brightly-colored. Some showed animals and plants, but most were covered with patterns made of shapes and curves.
Just outside the door, where Sallina stood, was a chain with a handle on the end. The chain passed over a wheel above them, and disappeared into the wall.
Sallina pulled the chain. Chimes sounded somewhere out of sight beyond the door. The chimes sounded for a little while and stopped.
Sallina waited. Any moment now, she might see Margaret MacLockanlock the Watchmaker, Dan's wife, and tell her the bad news. Dan was wounded and thought he was going to die. She could say that Sally Benton thought Dan was going to be fine, and just needed to cheer up. What if Margaret had forgotten all about Dan while he was away? That would be sad. Sallina did not know how long it had been since Dan last saw his wife. Had it been a month, a year, ten years?
Nobody came to the door.
"She's not home," Sallina said.
"Her cart's not here," Otis said.
Sallina looked at the other side of the street. There was no cart parked there. But what use would a watchmaker have for a cart? The carts were for carrying rocks.
"Maybe she doesn't have a cart," Sallina said.
"They all have carts," Otis said.
Sallina frowned. "Well, Otis, what do you think we should do? Should we slide the letters through the door and leave, or should we wait for her?"
Otis shook his head. "I don't make the decisions on this trip, Miss. My job is to look handsome."
Sallina was about to tell him not to be difficult, but changed her mind. "You're doing that very well."
"Thank you," Otis said.
Sallina looked through the door. She pulled on the chain again. The chimes rang just as they had before. She did not want to leave the letters here. What if Margaret had moved since Dan had last visited her? It might be days before the letters reached her in her new home.
"I do have a suggestion," Otis said.
"What's that?" Sallina said.
"I suggest we go and have a cup of coffee."
Sallina raised one eyebrow. "Coffee?"
"Yes," Otis said, "Coffee."
If they went and had some coffee, Sallina thought, they could ask if anyone knew Margaret, and where they might find her. When they were done with their coffee, they could come back and ring her doorbell again.
"Okay," she said. "Let's have coffee."