“This is important, Jarre,” Haplo said quietly. “It could mean peace. An end to the fighting.”
She glanced at him over one shoulder, through a mass of hair and side whiskers. Then, tight-lipped, she said, “I’ll be back,” and walked out, slamming the door shut behind her.
“I’m sorry for that, Haplo,” said Limbeck, cheeks flushed in anger. “I don’t understand her anymore. In the early days of the revolution, she was the most militant among us.” He took off his spectacles, rubbed his eyes. His voice softened. “She was the one who attacked the Kicksey-winsey! Got me arrested and nearly killed.” He smiled wistfully, gazing back into the past with his fuzzy vision. “She was the one who wanted change. Now, when change is here, she… she throws soup pans!”
The concerns of the dwarves are not mine, Haplo reminded himself. Stay out of it. I need them to take me to the machine, that’s all.
“I don’t think she likes the killing,” he said, hoping to mollify Limbeck, end the disruption.
“I don’t like the killing,” Limbeck snapped. He put his spectacles back on. “But it’s them or us. We didn’t start it. They did.”
True enough, Haplo thought, and put the matter aside. After all, what did he care? When Xar came, the chaos, the killing would end. Peace would come to Arianus. Limbeck continued planning the diversion. The dog, after making certain Jarre was gone, came out from under the bed.
Haplo snatched a few hours’ sleep himself, woke to find a contingent of dwarves milling about in the hallway outside the BOILER ROOM. Each dwarf was armed with his or her own flinger and metal chunks, carried in strong canvas bags. Haplo washed his hands and face (which reeked of glampern oil), watched, and listened. Most of the dwarves had become quite adept at using the flingers, to judge from what he saw of their crude target practice taking place in the corridor.
Of course, it was one thing to shoot at a drawing of an elf scrawled on the wall, quite another to shoot at a live elf who is shooting back at you.
“We don’t want anyone to get hurt,” Jarre told the dwarves. She had returned and had, with her characteristic briskness, taken control. “So keep under cover, stay near the doors and entrances to the Liftalofts, and be ready to run if the elves come after you. Our objective is to distract them, keep them busy.”
“Shooting holes in their dragonship should do that!” Lof said, grinning.
“Shooting holes in them would do it better,” added Limbeck, and there was a general cheer.
“Yes, and then they’ll shoot holes in you and where will you be?” Jarre said crossly, casting Limbeck a bitter glance.
The dwarf, not at all perturbed, nodded and smiled, his smile seeming grim and cold, topped by the glittering spectacles.
“Remember this, Fellow Warriors,” he said, “if we manage to bring the ship down, we will have scored a major victory. The elves will no longer be able to moor their dragonships on Drevlin, they will be reluctant to even fly near it. Which means that they may think twice about keeping troops stationed down here. This could be our first step toward driving them off.”
The dwarves cheered again.
Haplo left to ascertain that his own ship was safe.
He returned, satisfied. The runes he’d activated not only protected his ship, but also created a certain amount of camouflage, causing it to blend in with objects and shadows around it. Haplo could not make his ship invisible—that was not within the spectrum of probable possibilities and, as such, could not be contrived by his magic. But he could make it extremely difficult to see, and it was. An elf would have to literally walk into it to know it was there, and that in itself was not possible, since the sigla created an energy field around the ship that would repel all attempts to get near it.
He returned to find the dwarves marching off to attack the Liftalofts and the elven ship that was moored there, floating in the air, attached to the arms by cables. Haplo, Bane, Limbeck, Jarre, and the dog headed off in the opposite direction, to the tunnels that ran beneath the Factree.