Kaz stepped out into the den, letting the door close gently behind him, then gave Raff a welcoming little yip. Raff chuckled and barked back, though the sound was nothing like the friendly greeting Kaz used.
Shaking his head, Kaz said, “You’re still not doing it right.”
For some reason, Raff had started this after spending a few days with the kobolds in the city. After the first day or two, during which the big man had done little but eat and sleep in the rooms that were assigned to him, he’d gotten bored and gone wandering. He’d pitched in here and there, helping with the repairs in the city, then gone exploring in a way even Kaz hadn’t.
He had ended up in the yumi fields, where Kaz once found him with two puppies on his shoulders, each howling out their glee at being so high up. Raff had howled right along with them, his grin wider than Kaz had ever seen it, and since then, the human had been trying to figure out what the different howls meant, and if his throat could reproduce them. So far, the answer was a resounding, ‘No’.
Raff sighed, running his fingers through the thick, curly red fur on top of his head. It stood up like the ruff of an angry kobold, but Kaz knew by now that the humans couldn’t control their fur the way kobolds did.
Reaching up, Kaz smoothed down the much-shorter fur on his own head, while looking at the human meaningfully. Now that Raff’s armor had been damaged and he couldn’t wear his helmet, his habit of ruffling his own hair had caused confusion among the kobold warriors more than once.
Giving an even deeper sigh, Raff copied Kaz, brushing down his hair. It just popped back up again, but not in quite the aggressive way it had before, so it would have to be good enough. “Is it a little higher, then?” Raff asked, trying the little yip again. This time he sounded like a puppy, and Kaz’s ears twitched in amusement.
“Most kobolds have deeper voices,” Kaz said, trying to explain without giving offense. “It’s more about the end of the yip. You go down, but it needs to go up a bit before that.”
They started walking, Kaz slightly behind Raff out of politeness. He could smell which way the humans had gone, but Raff had come to get him, so he would let the tall male lead.
Raff coughed, then tried again, but his yip broke off in the middle, turning into a squeak that sounded very funny coming from someone so large. On Kaz’s shoulder, Li convulsed, quivering as her laughter threatened to make her fall off.
Hearing the choked little whistles she was making, Raff looked back, brows lifting. “Is your rat laughing at me?”
Kaz looked away. “I think she has an itch.” He scratched gently behind one of the half-lifted wings, and Li’s spasms relaxed as she leaned into the caress, her draconic giggles shifting to a purr.
Raff stopped abruptly, nearly causing a passing kobold to run into him. The poor male had been so busy staring at the huge human wandering through his den that he wasn’t watching where he was going. This made Raff realize what he’d done, and he muttered an unnecessary apology before he started walking again.
Glancing around, Raff lowered his voice, then murmured, “That rat has a,” he pressed his hand against his abdomen where a core would be, “doesn’t she?”
It was Kaz’s turn to pause. Once or twice, it had seemed like Raff was about to say something like this, and Kaz had always managed to change the subject before he could. Now, he wished he’d let it happen sometime when they weren’t surrounded by a den full of curious kobolds with very sharp ears.
“What makes you say that?” he asked neutrally as they began to walk again. He gave a pointed glance at a few of the kobolds as they passed by, but it seemed that once Raff started, the human was not to be deterred.
Raff snorted softly. “Not hard to tell there’s something strange about it. I’ve killed a few of the normal ones, and they’re sly, but not smart. They certainly don’t laugh like they understand what people around them are saying. Add that to the way Lianhua seems fascinated by it, and I figure her whatever-it-is is telling her there’s more to the beastie than is obvious. Plus, you were both all but desperate to keep it from breathing the fulan.”
Kaz felt like the idiot Li so enjoyed calling him. Of course anyone who knew about Lianhua’s ability to sense ki and cores would have put one claw together with another and come to some part of the correct conclusion. Fortunately, knowing that Li had a core hadn’t led Raff to start thinking about dragons, because that would be ridiculous, wouldn’t it?
Reluctantly, he nodded. “She does. It doesn’t really matter, though, does it? Fuergar are small, weak creatures, so they probably have small, weak-” He didn’t want to say the word any more than Raff had, so he mimicked Raff’s gesture, internally amused by the fact that his hand was pressed just above his own secret core.
Raff waved a hand as he led Kaz around a low, round hut with two doors. It was huge, large enough to hold ten or more kobolds, and Kaz hadn’t seen one like it in years. It would serve as a meeting place for the most important females, so they could speak in relative privacy about troubles and what was happening in the tribe. It was also usually at the very center of the den, which in this case was actually at one end of the largest cavern, where a broad natural arch led into the next cavern.
“I’m not going to kill your little friend for somethin’ like that,” the human said, sounding somewhat offended. “She’s cute enough, in a ratty kinda way. My little sister would have made a pet out of her, too. She was forever bringing home wild critters who weren’t particularly grateful for being ‘rescued’.”
They reached a wide circle of low stones, placed around an open area containing four firepits, two of which were currently heating pots like the one in the healer’s hut, except far larger. An orange-furred female kobold with unusually muscular arms stood over one of the pots, stirring it. Her core churned as busily as her ladle, producing red ki that split and trailed away toward each of the two fires. If she was able to control both at once, without either letting one go out or burning the food, she was skilled as well as powerful.
The humans and the other kobolds were sitting on some of the rocks, already eating from steaming plates of food. The plates were metal, not stone, which was yet another indicator of the wealth of this tribe.
Everyone looked up as Raff and Kaz approached, and Kaz was relieved to see that the kobolds looked more relaxed and happier than they had since they started their journey. They had eaten once, while they walked, but it had mostly consisted of dried mushrooms, which was neither particularly tasty nor filling. They hadn’t dared stop to eat or rest properly, no matter how tired they got, except during the questionable safety of the stairs.
Lianhua smiled brightly, but even as she tried to catch Raff’s eyes, the male looked down, expression going flat and unreadable. It was as if he became someone else in the time it took to breathe once, and he just gave Lianhua a small nod before crossing to another one of the rocks and sitting down. He immediately pulled out one of the pieces of his chest armor, and set to work replacing yet another of the leather straps that were meant to hold it together.
Kaz and Lianhua both watched this strange behavior with confused looks, and Lianhua frowned before turning a heated gaze on Chi Yincang. The dark male, for his part, was standing between Lianhua and the busiest part of the den, and acted as if he didn’t see the look at all. Kaz was getting better at reading the tiny changes in his expression, however, and thought that the minute creases at the corners of his eyes indicated that he was, once again, amused.
Turning back to Kaz, Lianhua smiled, though there was still a thoughtful crease between her eyes. “Are they settled in, Kaz? Do you think they’ll be all right?”
Kaz sat on the empty rock beside her. “Ratre will be. I’m not sure about the other, but the healer seems competent, and his hut is well stocked.”
The orange female crossed over to him, holding out a plate filled with a stew that looked to be more meat than vegetables. It was a far cry from the thin, fungus-filled gruel the mosui fed their prisoners, and Kaz’s belly growled at the sight, as did Li’s.
As Kaz accepted the plate, the orange female gave him a sly smile. “That healer is my brother, and he’s more than competent.”
Kaz’s stomach dropped. Had he already managed to anger one of this tribe’s females?
The smile widened to a little grin as the female continued, “He’s almost more trouble than he’s worth, and Tezne keeps threatening to trade him away so she doesn’t have to listen to him bark, but she never will. For one thing, her mate wouldn’t forgive her for trading his birth-brother.”
Kaz’s eyes widened. “But he’s-” Old, he didn’t say, but he could tell the orange-furred female could read it on his face. Old males didn’t get traded. They either trained the younger males, or they died in battle.
Letting out a sharp bark of laughter, the female turned away. “The Goldblade tribe has offered for him a dozen times or more, and not all when he was young. They wish they had a healer half as good. Every time he gets an assistant trained up, they trade for him, which leaves Jul to start all over again. Keeps him busy, though.”
Lianhua looked interested, her eating tools falling still as she looked at the kobold. “I’ve heard of that tribe several times now. The Goldblades. My texts say the Deep is run by five tribes, all with ‘blade’ in their names, but no one knows why those particular tribes are the leaders.”
She made a face. “Well, I don’t think anyone bothered to ask. Even Xie Wen, who wrote a whole treatise on kobolds in the Deep, only mentions that those five are the largest and most powerful, as if that’s all the explanation necessary.”
To Kaz, it was, but the orange female shrugged without surprise. “I remember when you humans used to come trade with us, and you never cared much about anything except getting whatever you wanted and leaving.”
“What happened?” Lianhua asked, leaning forward intently. “Why did you close the entrance to the mountain?”
Behind the female kobold, the fires flared briefly, as the power cycling through her body surged. She opened her mouth to reply, but a voice came from behind Kaz, cutting her off.
“I’ll answer that, Aunt Jia. From the look of that smoke, I think the pots need stirring,” Berin said flippantly. She stepped around Chi Yincang, her sudden appearance startling everyone except that unflappable male.
Berin walked over to another nearby stone, and the male on the one beside it promptly got up and moved to a different one. That was partially due to the way Dat, Berin’s mate, had been glaring at him, but in general, males and females didn’t sit together unless they were mates or siblings.
Berin motioned to Jia, who got another plate of stew and handed it to her niece with a muttered, “Smoke indeed.” She was right, of course, because the flames made by female kobolds were entirely smokeless, so any such would have to be produced by food that had been burned far past edibility.
Berin just grinned at the older female before taking hold of her own tail and moving it out of the way as she sat. Kaz looked more closely, and realized for the first time that it was far shorter than it should be, and hung almost limp behind her. A wide scar was visible through the fur of her lower back, as well, vanishing beneath her niu-fur loincloth, and Kaz wondered what could possibly have happened to her to cause such an injury. Being unable to use one’s tail would be a terrible thing, but Berin barely seemed to notice, so it must have happened a long time ago.
“Now,” Berin said when she finished swallowing her first bite of stew. “Let me tell you how the Deep came to be closed, and the story of a tribe who sought to rise too far.”
