Dattur’s tale made it clear that his crime—his Lawlessness—came from challenging the prince and that alone. “Prince said messengers went for help. No help came. Prince said messengers failed. But would not say who was sent. I found body in the rock, dead, broken.”

Chills ran down Arcolin’s back. “So you asked him about that?”

“Yes. He said, ‘Kteknik: silence him,’ and they bound me and put me in wagon that went a long distance. I could not see; I could not talk. Then blow to head. Then day, another day, tracks on ground beside me, no one.”

The rest of the story covered Dattur’s journey to the center of Tsaia and his meeting a dwarf—the one Arvid had killed—in Vérella. Arcolin listened attentively, though some of it he still did not understand—why, for instance, Dattur’s blade, even wielded by another while he was unconscious, could create an obligation for him.

Girdish law, with its emphasis on generosity as well as fairness, laid no formal obligation on the recipient of a gift, even of life. Certainly Dattur’s actions—helping Arvid out of the cellar and saving them both from the thief-enforcers with his rock magery—would more than balance the other, to any human.

But Dattur wasn’t human. And when he finished his story, he stood perfectly still, looking at Arcolin’s face, awaiting his fate.

“Dattur is no longer kteknik,” Arcolin said. “But until return to the clan, Dattur is not obliged to wear the clan’s pattern.”

“May wear?”

“May wear, but may choose not to, if proper cloth not available.” Arcolin shook his head; he was beginning to sound gnomish. “However: Dattur owes Arvid life-debt. Dattur will serve Arvid until Midsummer, when life-debt will be paid in full. After that, Dattur may choose to take wages or return to the north alone.” He hoped that was close to something a real gnome prince might have said.

“I stay with my prince,” Dattur said.

“You can’t,” Arcolin said, appalled at the thought. “I am a soldier. I will be in the field, with troops. It is not the place for a rockbrother.”

Dattur made a sound in his throat that Arcolin knew he himself could never make. “Gnomes know war,” he said then in Common. “Gnomes train Gird.”

That story was well known. “Yes, but—that’s different.” Dattur in the Company would cause comment. Questions. Bad enough that he would have to tell King Mikeli by letter, not in person, that the gnomes in the north now considered Arcolin their prince. What would his employers think, when word got out that the man they’d hired as a minor peer and mercenary captain was also prince of a tribe of gnomes?