As if the small shop weren't crowded enough, Miral chose that moment to appear on the path to the dwarf's dwelling. But the four involved in the drama on the doorstep didn't see the heavily hooded mage immediately. He drew to one side of the tiled path and waited.

"Now, leave, Lord Tyresian," Flint ordered. "And don't forget: Although I've never told the Speaker my own theory of who is really responsible for Xenoth's death, there's nothing stopping me from enlightening him. I've always suspected that you glossed over that part in your 'report' to him after Tanis killed the tylor."

With an effort, Tyresian shoved Tanis aside and then brushed past Miral, leaving the trio staring after the blond elf lord. Finally, as a group, the three friends became aware of Miral and ushered him inside the dwelling.

Knowing how weak Miral's eyes were, Flint closed the door behind the mage and set about fastening the shutters in the window at the front of the shop. Meanwhile, Eld Ailea built a fire and set a cauldron of water over it while Tanis stripped husks and silk from the corn. Although none of the three felt particularly hungry anymore, they went through the motions of preparing a meal, obviously hoping to recapture their previous happiness.

Miral took little time explaining his errand: One of the plates on a metal box that held some of his spellcasting ingredients had worked loose, scattering powder throughout the corridor before his palace chambers. "I know you are busy, Master Fireforge, but I'd hoped you could fix it," Miral said, holding the fist-size box in an outstretched hand.

Flint took the silver box. It appeared to be an easy repair; a rivet punched through one plate into the corner piece would hold the piece easily. The box was decorative enough-etched with dragons, minotaurs, and jewel shapes-to hide the tiny rivet. Flint set about the task, temporarily putting aside the Speaker's medallion, while Tanis and Ailea prepared the sweet corn.

The mage said little throughout the process, a fact that Flint laid down to weariness from lack of sleep. Everyone at the palace was busy from the hour before dawn until late in the night, preparing for the Kentommen.

"Do the hill dwarves have Kentommens?" Tanis asked Flint, who nodded.

"We call them Fullbeard Days, but they're nowhere near as elaborate as this," the dwarf said. "What are your duties in Porthios's ceremony, Miral?" Flint bore down on a slender punch as he worked it through the soft metal.

Miral blinked and looked up from his seat on Flint's clothes chest. "In the actual ceremony, none. But I've been put in charge of coordinating the staff that's preparing for the Kentommen and arranging for entertainment on all three days of the event."

"What does that include?" Tanis asked from his position next to the boiling corn.

Miral looked over and smiled wanly. The whites of his eyes were bloodshot, in odd contrast with the near-colorless hue of his irises. "Five dozen seamstresses are sewing banners"-which, indeed, had begun to appear on poles along Qualinost's main thoroughfares-"and three dozen swordsmen are preparing a demonstration of weaponry skills that frightens me to watch. I am amazed none of them has been sliced in half, and I will be stunned if the Kith-Kanan mosaic at the Grand Market amphitheater is bloodless when they are through."

Flint cast the mage a sympathetic look as Miral continued his recitation. 'Ten jugglers and twenty jesters have overrun the palace," he complained. "Can you imagine the noise? There are also fourteen acrobats, one of which wanted to hold her high-wire act four hundred feet up in the Tower of the Sun!"

"You're allowing that, of course," Ailea said as she dipped a perfectly cooked ear from the boiling water.

"Of course not," Miral rejoined, then did a double take as he realized that the midwife had been joking. "But it's never sufficient just to say no. Each elf has two hundred reasons why his case is different, why I should allow him to do what no one else can." The mage slumped against the wall. "I haven't slept more than three hours in a row in two weeks."

"Care to join us for lunch, and then nap here?" Flint asked, gesturing toward his cot with the spell-box. "We can be a pretty quiet lot, if we have to be."

Miral shook his head. "I have to meet with a troupe of singers. They want to know why they can't sing bawdy ballads in the rotunda of the Tower right before the Kentommen-to 'warm up the audience,' as they put it." He rose to his feet. "I can pick up the box later."

"It's repaired now-on the house," Flint said, and passed the silver container to the mage. The dwarf opened the shutters and then yanked open the door for Miral, who pulled his hood far forward over his face, gave his thanks to Flint, nodded to Tanis and Ailea, and trudged down the path toward the Tower, which shone over the tops of Flint's fruit trees.

"Get some sleep!" Flint shouted. The mage waved without turning back. Then he moved on as the dwarf shut the door.

Miral's visit, however brief, helped lift the pall that had descended on the trio when Tyresian had left. The dwarf moved his medallion-making tools off the table, and instead of moping, Flint, Tanis, and Eld Ailea found themselves waxing almost gay as they nibbled ears of buttered corn. Finally, they passed around a kitchen rag to clean themselves up, and leaned back, satisfied.

"Ah," Flint said, "as my mother would say, 'The way to a dwarf's soul is through his dinner plate.' "

"Oh?" Tanis asked, elbowing the dwarf. "And what else does your mother say?"

Flint laughed. "She has an adage for every occasion. 'Too many cooks make light work,' she'd say, and order my thirteen brothers and sisters and me to clean up the barn. It took me years to find out what the saying really was. It sounded like a dwarven law to me."

Ailea laughed and wiped her long fingers, one by one, on the rag. "What else does she say?"

Flint settled back in his chair. "I remember once I complained because one of the children in the town school was bullying me. She patted me on the head and said, 'Don't worry, Flintie. One rotten apple won't spoil the whole kettle of fish.' "

Flint raised his voice into a falsetto as he quoted his mother, and Tanis smiled. But the half-elf's look was wistful. "What does she look like?" he asked. "Is she pretty?" Eld Ailea cast a wise glance at the half-elf, then at the dwarf, who didn't seem to notice.

"Oh," Flint said, "I suppose she wouldn't seem pretty to your tall, slender elven friends, but we fourteen frawls and harms think she's just fine. Sure, she carries some extra weight…"

"Try bearing fourteen children and see what it does to your figure," Ailea interjected.

"… but she has a sweet face, and she cooks like one of the gods. Nice big portions, too." Flint patted his protruding gut, then blushed, straightened, and attempted to pull in his belly. Ailea's smile grew wider.

"What's your father like?" Tanis asked.

"Ah, lad, my father died when I was just a youth. Bad heart. Runs in the Fireforge line, among the men, at least."

"Your poor mother," Ailea said softly.

Flint nodded. "She held the family together in those years after Papa died. Set my elder brother Aylmar to work at Papa's forge-and occasionally took a turn herself, on lighter tasks."

Ailea rose quietly and dropped the lunch dishes in the boiling water that had cooked the corn. When Tanis raised his eyebrows, she smiled and said, "No point wasting water. This will clean those plates just fine." Then she resumed her seat and motioned for Flint to go on.

"I was the second-born," the dwarf said dreamily. "After Papa was gone, Mama put me in charge of the barn. I remember one early spring morning in Hillhome. I came out of the barn, trying to get away from the damnable smell of cheesemaking, and I gazed around me at the hills and the conifers." He sighed. "Qualinost is beautiful, lad, but so is Hillhome. Still, it was a small, small village and ultimately I had to leave it to see the world."