"Twin-hearth stacks on a shared flue," he said. "How are you holding temper on the far hearths?"
Silence.
A different flavor of it this time: three hundred craftsmen simultaneously failing to process a sentence.
A dwarf came forward through it. She was built like the anvils she ruled, forearms as thick as the tongs racked behind her, iron-grey hair twisted back in a smith's knot and singed at the temples where a smith's hair always singed.
The masters made way for her without needing to look, which said everything about who she was, and she planted herself a spear's length from the most dangerous being on the continent with her chin out.
"Brokk," she said. "First Hammer of the royal smithy. If you've come with terms, Villain, say them plain and say them to me."
"I haven't come with terms. My elven lover is interested in your smithy, and frankly, so am I."
