I try to move my arm to unlace the cuirass and the pain burns into the side of my chest like a red-hot blade just pulled from the forge fire. I swallow a second groan. I can't do it. I look up at him and shake my head.

"A little help here?" I ask.

He nods and kneels, stubby fingers expertly unlacing my cuirass, which he then lifts to his worktable. Together, we get my tunic off and I lie on the floor while he runs his fingers over my bruised side and back.

"That was some hit," he remarks. "Looks like you broke a couple ribs." That's just great.

"Well, I could mend the bones. It'll take a bit of time and energy, but I don't think I'll be using the forge right now, anyway. Wouldn't want to get some eldritch blood taint into the metal. So I can fix you up." He looks up from my battered torso to catch my eye. "I'm charging Jet for the healing though, as well as the lost productivity. This little destruction assignment could have turned out a lot worse. Next time, he can find some other way to get rid of dark magic runes like that."

"I don't think there will be a next time," I spit out through teeth gritted against the pain. "There can't be any more blood runes floating around Elftown."

"I hope you're right," he mutters, his attention on my broken ribs. "Let's get you healed."

He touches my skin and I wince, but the pain is soothed almost immediately.

"That was fast," I say.

Bolin chuckles. "We're not done yet. That was just a little magical anesthetic, to keep you from swearing and crying while I work on repairing the bones. Now stay still." 

I try. But after a few minutes of lying still as he hums, with nothing happening beyond a faint tingling sensation gradually penetrating my flank, I get restless. Might as well put this time to good use. Maybe I can gull some information out of the beard while he's distracted.

"Bolin?"

"Hmmm?"

"Why are you here?"

"My shift is over. I come to my workroom to relax and get some projects done."

"No." Beards are a bit dense, apparently. "I mean, why are you in Elftown? Why, of all the goddess forsaken places you could be, did you choose to come here?"

"Hmmmmmm," the dwarf considers. "The work is good, the pay is good. I get a fair amount of autonomy. Elves aren't as good of workers as dwarves, of course, especially scrawny underfed ones like we have here, but they don't cause trouble."

I feel my anger at the humans rising. "Of course we don't cause trouble. Most elves here barely get enough to eat. Elftown is a dungeon!"

"Don't tense up; it makes this harder," Bolin instructs. "Anyway, you're wrong. Dungeons are underground."

"A prison, then." I take a breath and try to relax. I want his healing efforts to be successful. An enforcer with broken ribs is worthless. "We may not be in cells. But we can't leave."

A thought occurs to me.

"Bolin, you can leave, right? As often as you want to?"

The dwarf speaks almost absentmindedly as he works. "I can leave, yes. Whenever I want, when I am not working. I am not stuck in here. I am free to come and go between Elftown and the rest of the city. But not too often. Getting through the gates is arduous, what with the double portcullis, the searches, the questioning by the priest on duty. The guards are thorough and testy. If I went through too often, they would get irritated, perhaps even suspicious. They aren't real happy about letting in the slumming patricians, let alone a foreigner like me. Still, if I feel like getting a better meal and ale, or need to replace a tool, I can do it."

"All right, you're done. Sit up and let's see how we did." He helps me rise up to my knees. I'm not feeling the sharp pain anymore. Only a dull ache, like the morning after spending a long night shift on the docks carrying barrels. He taps on my skin and prods me. "I wouldn't let it get to you Arq. You're not missing too much out there. Human cities are chaotic and dirty and the bigger they are, the more uncivilized they get. It's not that much better on the other side of the wall."

I am pretty sure he's trying to offer some kind of comfort, but from someone like him to someone like me, it comes across as smug condescension. I feel an urge to lash out at him, but damn it, annoying as he is, he's useful, so I suppress the desire with some difficulty.

Good thing he can't see my face, though.

"Listen, friend," I growl. "Maybe you like living in a stinking, vile slum with a bunch of slaves because you're a goddess-hated dwarf who is perfectly happy in rotten conditions as long as everyone is crushed under the force of law and gets the pleasure of working all the time except when they're sleeping or filling a chamber pot. But those aren't the things that make life worth living for elves. This so-called life is poison to us. Can't you see that? See how we are being twisted into some debased mockery year after year, our joy and spirit ground out of us like magic dust squeezed from dried pixie wings? We're not elves anymore. We're either slightly less hideous orcs, violent and vicious, or weak and mindless golems - work, eat. Piss, sleep. Work. I don't know what we are. But we're not elves."

"Hammer and anvil," mutters Bolin. "You're wound tighter than a gnomish contraption. Go home and get some rest, Arq. You're a mess. Drink some ale to take the edge off."

I don't know why, but the anger and bitterness runs out of me like water down a sewer hole. I am tired.

"Yeah, yeah," I say, reaching for my tunic. "I might as well. What else is there to do? I appreciate your help with the rune. And with my cuirass. I'll be by day after tomorrow, if that's okay?"

"Should be done. Might as well get started on it now." Bolin rummages around his worktable in silence, laying out tools, and does not look up when I turn to go. He's done being chatty tonight, apparently. I stop at the door.

"Hey," I say. He looks up.

"Thanks."