Half the Price of Trash

Half the Price of Trash 17 MINUTE READ

It had been an incredibly rainy day even for the generally overcast and dreary city of Baldur’s Gate. Tova remembered taking a moment early in the morning to walk out onto the surface of the Blood Round and feel the mucky slide of the soil beneath her feet, how the rain hammered against her head and back, and she remembered thinking this was where she would die.

She was sixteen years old.

Patriar Falk Winimar was a kind owner, she was told, but the very words next to each other had come to make her blood boil. “Kind owner.” He was kind, Tova was told, because he had given her a chance to win her freedom, and because he was risking the injury of one of his menagerie’s gems for the sport and entertainment of all in the doing. He was her owner because he had an appreciation for oddities. He had less appreciation for them, as it turns out, when they went from amusing children who couldn’t protect themselves to gladiators. But he had given her a chance.

In nine hours she would face a dire lion on this spongy, slippery earth, with no claws in her own toes to root her. She had resigned herself to die in nine hours. The years had led her to find it preferable to the alternative.

There was much to do before then, though. Tova turned and headed back to the barracks.

At seven in the morning, six hours until her death, Tova’s sparring partner caught his axe in a chip on her left-hand shortsword and shattered it to shards. Tova screamed as if he’d taken her arm.

“Tymora above, Toves, it’s just a sword,” her fellow gladiator said, though he had grown as shaken and pale as she at seeing her reaction to having the blade broken. He gestured to a rack of weapons to the side of the Blood Round’s indoor sparring arena, in front of which were several would be fighters pacing for their use of the arena. “Just grab another and get back in here. We still have sand in the hourglass left to us before we cede the ring to the next group.”

“You don’t understand, axe-wielding ass, I knew that one!” Tova lamented. “None of the swords left on the rack are well-balanced. I’ll die today from a bad swing quicker than I’ll die from mucky footing!”

“Well if you’re determined to die anyway, send in someone else to spar with me,” her partner said. “I’m using the rest of my practice time before my bouts. Not all of us got our schedules cleared for a big event.”

Tova let herself out of the ring with the hilt of her broken sword still in hand, her partner kicking the shards out with some sand as she went. She slapped the shoulder of another gladiator who immediately seized the chance at extra time to warm up. Just before she left the practice room, she heard her partner’s voice ring out again.

“If you’re not determined to die, hit Smith’s Row,” he called. “Somebody will be desperate enough to sell to a tiefling again. You just have to try.”

Smith’s Row didn’t seem to want to produce, however. Every smith whose stand she approached took one look at her horns or her tail, curled tightly around her left calve as if to balance the missing weight of the sword that should’ve hung on that side, and made it clear her coin was no good. It didn’t help she had little coin to spend. She’d saved her meager cut from the patriar’s winnings off her this month, but she had only thirteen gold to her name, and no position to bargain from. Being a gladiator should have been worth something. Half the reason anyone raised a weapon after victory in a bout was to show off its make and win glory also for their smith. But though some of the smiths seemed to recognize her, none would put their work in her hands.

Tova was on her way out of the Row when one of the last stalls caught her eye. She hadn’t had cause to visit in years, so much was new and strange, but nothing stranger than the woman she saw working the forge. All around men and dwarves and even one gnome beat away at metal or stitched leather, their muscles bulging, defined by the grime of the forge. The woman who worked this stall was muscled, clearly, flexing every time she raised her hammer before swinging it down onto her anvil, but almost too lithe to be believed. Hair of gold was knotted in a bun at the top of her skull. Eyes of silver stared grimly down at her work.

Most curiously, the long, fine eartips of a full-blooded elf stretched almost to the height of her bun.

A high elf, a sun high elf at a guess, manning a forge in the unmarked Smith’s Row next to a lesser-known arena and a tangle of brothels and tenements. Three of her weapons hung on hooks in the open window of her stall. Two were priced under twenty gold—too good to be believed, if they were as finely made as they appeared. Tova dared a step closer.

“Morning, milady,” she called. The elf paused in her hammering and glanced over, expression unchanged except for a slight downwards turn at the corners of the thin line of her mouth. Not the worst expression Tova’s presence had ever inspired. She boldly moved to the doorway of the stall. “Are you selling today?”

“No, I’ve just broken into a smithy to get my exercise,” the elf snapped. She returned to her hammering with steady precision.

“Is that a ‘no’ or…”

“Of course I’m selling,” the elf said. “Fool. Are you buying?”

That was good enough for Tova. She quickly turned her eyes from the elf to her wares, before it was decided she wouldn’t be allowed to buy after all. There was much to see. It appeared that an entire catalogue of maces, warhammers, swords, flails, and axes hung on every wall. It was an incredible stock for a stall on Smith’s Row, whose blacksmiths usually only kept a small sample of their work and basic arms, and made more elaborate items on demand, to cut costs.

“Seems like you make everything,” Tova said, before remembering she should probably just keep her mouth shut, pick something, and get out of the elf’s fine hair as soon as possible. The elf only grunted in reply—a very un-elf-like sound, to Tova’s way of thinking—before she added:

“If I don’t have an example, it’s assumed I can’t make it.”

Tova’s eyes roamed weapons she longed to pull off of their pegs and hold, but she eyed price tags to restrain herself. It was more difficult than it should’ve been. Everything was criminally cheap. Tova spied a morningstar for eight gold and goggled, both at the price, and at the fact there was dust on it. There was another uniting attribute to the weapons as well: beauty.

None were ornamental. None bore embellishments, engravings, inlays, or especially fine leatherwork. But they all had a certain… flow to them. Curves and organic shapes Tova rarely saw in weapons. They were all like this, save an open crate half-covered by canvas at the back of the shop, full of brutal-looking weapons which looked like the smith had consciously tried to fight her own style in their making and ended up producing a subpar product. When Tova lifted one she found it heavy to the point of straining her wrist and poorly-balanced. They were incredibly familiar.

“Wait, do you make the rack weapons for the Blood Round?” Tova found herself asking.

“For fifty years,” the elf said, looking at Tova over her shoulder suddenly. “The Round pays little and expects much, so that is what they get, and no trace of it being my work. If you say a word I’ll turn this hammer on you. Leave it.”

Tova obeyed and stepped away from the crate of flawed and ugly weapons. It was interesting to note, but if she could get something from among the nicer stock she would be very glad for it.

Cheapest among the weapons for sale to the public were the crossguard-less swords and daggers. Their wooden and leather-wrapped hilts flowed right on to the blade, with only the change of material to interrupt the perfect, curving line of the piece. Not what Tova was looking for, as she depended on a crossguard in nearly every fight to catch and hold a strike, playing the role of a warrior struggling valiantly to the delight of her audience before she redirected the sword she had caught and spun to re-engage her opponent.

But one of the swords was only seven gold. Tova nearly choked.

“Milady, about your pricing…” she started, only to be interrupted by the elf immediately dousing her current project and rounding on her with tongs outstretched and steaming.

“I won’t go lower, I don’t care what anyone has to say about who knows weapons better, a dwarf or an elf— if you insist dwarf, there’s an embarrassment of them right outside!” she snapped, shaking her tongs about two inches from Tova’s crossed eyes. “And you’ll stop taunting me with that ‘milady’ business, I’m a smith as you can plainly see!”

“And I’m a slave,” Tova said, using one of the hands she hand thrown up in peace to gesture to her neck, where a leather and iron band encircled it. The elf’s eyes seemed to fall on it for the first time. The tongs lowered. “You are above me, so you are ‘milady,’ but I’m sorry if I upset you. I only meant to ask— why are the prices so low?”

The tongs dropped completely as the elf reappraised her. “No one will buy at fair price. I must undercut if I cannot fairly compete.”

“Because people don’t like the weapons of an elf?” Tova asked.

“Not when there are dwarves singing of eons of forging and battles won two stalls over,” the elf spat. “Now, I ask again— are you buying? And do you buy for yourself, or your master? Because your master will likely beat you for buying from me on the same assumption of poor quality as hamstrings my business now.”

“I buy for myself,” Tova said. “I fight at the Blood Round. One of my swords broke this morning, and as you said, the rack weapons… aren’t really anything.”

The elf hung her tongs up near her forge and raised her eyebrows. “One of your swords? You’re ambidextrous?”

Tova blinked at her.

“You have equal skill of fighting in both hands?” the elf reworded. At this, Tova nodded.

“Yes. Only the mate to this—” Tova drew her remaining shortsword. “—shattered this morning. I need to buy a new one.”

“What an ugly piece of shite,” the elf observed, taking it from her hands and weighing it, and Tova nearly choked again at hearing such a blunt statement fall from the lips of a woman who looked like she had walked out of a painting of divine beauties. “Gets the job done, I suppose, but the balance is only tolerable and it weighs far more than it should for dual-wielding. Where did you get this? It’s bad, but it’s not one of my bulk-ordered nasties.”

“The trash,” Tova said. It was the elf’s turn to stare at her blankly. Tova explained, “A human smith four years ago charged me twenty-five gold to go through his discards. They’ve been pretty good to me.”

“The trash,” the elf repeated. She held Tova’s remaining shortsword in her hands as if it was, in fact, freshly fished from a garbage heap.

“I like this one,” Tova said, pointing to one of the swords at deep discount she’d spied, to change the subject. “Only, I need a crossguard. Could you—”

“So you would like me to take my cheapest sword and add a crossguard for free, rather than laying down the gold for another which already has one, but costs more?” the elf accused. Tova looked where she was pointing and spotted said swords with a feeling of burning embarrassment.

“No, I just… like this one,” she finished, lamely. In truth Tova hadn’t finished looking around, and was about to ask “Could you recommend one to me?” out of courtesy. She would never be so callus as to insist on having a smith make additions or changes for free, no matter how short she was on coin. The elf, however, looked ready to answer any slight, real or imagined, and Tova found she had no time to correct her mistake.

“Crossguards, crossguards. Why is it everyone but elves so desperately need crossguards?” she muttered to herself. Then she raised her voice again. “I won’t pretend I couldn’t use having my real work in a gladiator’s hand, but I won’t be robbed. How many bouts are you in today?”

“Just one,” Tova said. Once more she felt the sinking in her gut of her impending death. The elf groaned and rubbed at her temples.

“Rapturous, a poor gladiator, at that,” she muttered. Tova shook off the embarrassment and reserve that had hung over her until then as her ability was questioned and her own temper flared.

“A fine gladiator!” she insisted, drawing herself up to her full height and flexing slightly, to emphasize her build. “Only… today I don’t fight for show. I’m fighting for my freedom. If I don’t die. But I will probably die.”

Tova’s black mood gripped her once more and she began to feel foolish. Why bother finding a second sword? Two toothpicks for the lion to use after it made a meal of her, rather than one. Her tail left off its irritated lashing and coiled around her calf again, a defensive gesture from her childhood she’d never been able to grow out of.

“That… is a big prize,” the smith observed. Tova came out of her gloom to find the elf studying her intently with those piercing silver eyes. “Your master will attend, I assume?”

“Yes.”

“And others of his rank, and their hirelings and slaves?”

Tova didn’t follow this line of questioning. “Yes?”

“Then I risk one of two things happening,” the elf said, snatching the sword Tova had pointed to and another identical to it from the barrel of marked-down weapons. “One, you die as you predict, and I have to go out onto the Round and retrieve my swords from your offal. Or two, you win your freedom, and raise my work in the eyes of a clutch of nobles and all their followers besides. Yes. Fine.”

“I’m only shopping for one sword,” Tova said, alarmed, as the elf bent to snatch two roughly similar blanks of steel from a shelf near her forge. “I don’t have gold enough for two. Or the need!”

“The two swords in your hands should be virtually indistinguishable, as your hands are to you, so as not to get in the way of your style,” the elf said. “And how much gold do you have?”

“Thirteen pieces,” Tova said.

“Hold back one for your goddess of luck, as I know is the tradition, and I will take the rest,” the elf replied. She held a blank of steel up to where a crossguard should sit on one of the swords and muttered to herself again, “Half the price of trash. Well done you, Lyquis Meliamne.”

“Is that your name?” Tova ventured.

“Go away and come back in an hour,” Lyquis commanded. “Then these will have crossguards. In lieu of a tip, do whatever you must to increase your odds of surviving to hold them aloft.”

“Alright,” Tova agreed. At a loss as to what that might be without weapons to practice with, she set out down the Row again to walk and stretch.

She walked uphill a long, long way, and, before she knew it, found herself standing outside the gates of a building she knew all too well. Patriar Winimar’s menagerie. From within she could hear the squawking and hooting of a host of strange beasts the patriar had assembled from throughout the Realms. She had numbered among them, once. A little tiefling child who served snack cakes to the patriar’s amused guests.

Tova nodded to the guard, who knew her from the days she had worked the menagerie, before her time at the Blood Round. He didn’t seem to care that she entered. If she was the kind of person to rig her chances with a slow-acting poison or a knife to a tendon, that might have been a fatal mistake. But Tova just wasn’t that kind of person.

The dire lion was asleep when she found him. His great mane was limp and long tail beat listlessly against the tiled floor of his cold enclosure. Tova sat at its edge to watch him.

“You’re going to kill me today,” she said, as she swung her legs through the bars of the cage to get comfortable. The dire lion did not seem moved by words or the tantalizing prospect of the meat in Tova’s legs. He had positioned himself to catch the slant of late morning sun that shone in through the bars and glass of the patriar’s menagerie and seemed determined to enjoy it.

And here was another thought, no more welcome: if he didn’t kill her, she would have to kill him.

Tova shouldn’t have come. It had been easier to face a less concrete threat, the vague suggestion of a beast she hadn’t seen for years since its shipment to the patriar. But here she was with the thing now and helpless to do much but watch how he settled his head down onto his great clawed paws and huffed a heavy, forlorn sigh into his shaft of light.

“I’ll make it quick, if it goes my way,” Tova promised the caged beast. “If you’ll do the same. Tear my body up after all you want, I’m sure the patriars will find it very funny, but kill me quick.”

The dire lion made no reply. It seemed to have gone to sleep.

Tova sat there, watching its big inhales and gusty exhales, the way the muscle rippled under the fur, the way the claws twitched with its dreams, until the shaft of sun it had captured moved quite far away. A little over two hours gone. She was late for her swords.

Lyquis, if that was her name, was fitting them to scabbards when she returned, which also hadn’t been part of the agreed upon deal.

“You’re late,” was all the elf had to say. She yanked a bit of leather lacing on the frog of one sword taut before tossing both swords to Tova. The tiefling caught them and tested the weight. Even sheathed, they were lighter than her old swords. She yanked her belt free and hung them from it. Then she drew them.

Tova began to feel a little hope.

“They’re beautiful,” she murmured, because they were. They weren’t swords but scimitars in truth, the elven curve of them sweeping to a broad tip, like a ribbon snapped in the air. The new crossguards were similarly styled, one side longer than the other and sweeping down towards the blade again. The wood of the grips felt warm in her hands.

“Win,” the elf commanded. “And throw me that garbage.”

Tova stepped up to hand off her old sword and empty scabbard. The scabbard Lyquis kept, but the mate of her broken blade went into the crate with the new rack weapons bound for the Blood Round.

“Saves me one terrible blade’s worth of frustration,” Lyquis muttered.

Tova stood there a long moment, totally at the high elf’s command, though the woman did not seem to know it. Tova almost couldn’t feel the blades at her hips, they were so light. The new confidence they inspired was enough for Tova to be brimming with gratitude that would make her do almost anything.

Then Lyquis turned back in the process of moving with a fresh blade to her grindstone and snapped, “Well? Are you going, or making it clear that you’re robbing me by throwing the match altogether?”

“I’m going!” Tova insisted. “And I will win, for you!”

Lyquis snorted and returned to her work. Tova was left standing there in the doorway of the elf’s shop halfway between joy and despair. She was happy of her new swords, and did want to win to prove their worth for the smith, but she had the sickening thought she had just made a promise she couldn’t keep, which is something she had resolved not to do about this day.

It was done, though. She had to go.

ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED 2/20/2018 | REHOSTED 2/27/2024