Gran’s home was behind the forge, the innermost of a row of stone houses carved into the mountainside. The door was very low, and the cat merchant had to bend down to enter. His two tails nearly got caught in the doorframe.
The house was dim, with only a single ore lamp glowing in the corner, casting a murky yellow light. The air had a stuffy smell, like stone dust and rust mixed together, pressing down inside the lungs without ever quite leaving them.
A dwarf girl lay on the bed. She looked younger than ten. Her face was gray and pale, her lips purplish, and her chest rose and fell only shallowly. Every breath came with a faint hiss, like wind squeezing through a crack in the stone.
The cat merchant crouched beside the bed, his ears turning slightly as if listening to a sound no human could hear. He reached out and gently pressed his fingertips against the girl’s chest, then closed his eyes.
After a long while, he opened them.
“Ore crystals have formed in her lungs.” His voice was quiet, but every word was clear. “This isn’t ordinary dust buildup. Ore vapor has crystallized inside her alveoli. You dug too deep and hit a living ore vein, didn’t you?”
Gran said nothing, but his silence was answer enough.
“The scent of a living ore vein is different from dead ore.” The cat merchant withdrew his hand and stood. “Dead-ore dust slowly blocks the airways, but living-ore scent keeps growing inside the lungs. The ore crystals in her lungs are still getting bigger. Ordinary expectorants can’t touch them.”
“Can you cure her?”
The cat merchant did not answer right away. He looked at the girl on the bed. Even in sleep, her brow was furrowed, as if she were enduring something with every breath.
“Yes,” he said.
Gran’s shoulders relaxed slightly, but the cat merchant’s next words made him tense again.
“But not by normal means.”
The house fell silent for a while. The ore lamp cast wavering shadows across the walls.
“Go on.” Gran’s voice was steady.
The cat merchant turned around, putting his back to the bed and facing Gran. His expression was calm, but something moved in his amber eyes—not hesitation, but something more like excitement held tightly in check.
“There’s only one thing that can dissolve living ore crystals: stone-eating bug gastric fluid,” he said. “You know what stone-eating bugs are, right?”
“I do. Vermin from the depths of the mine. They gnaw straight through ore veins.”
“Exactly. Their gastric fluid can break down any mineral structure, including ore crystals growing inside a living person’s lungs. But if you use it directly, it’ll dissolve the lungs too.”
Gran’s expression changed.
“So we need something to neutralize it.” The cat merchant began speaking faster, and his two tails started swaying unconsciously, as if his thoughts were accelerating. “We need a guiding agent to make the gastric fluid recognize only the ore crystals and leave living flesh alone. As far as I know, there’s only one guiding agent that can do that.”
He paused.
“Ghostspring Moss.”
Gran frowned. “Never heard of it.”
“You wouldn’t have.” The cat merchant lowered his voice, a strange gleam in his tone, as if he were discussing something fascinating. “Ghostspring Moss only grows at the source of an underground river, and only in places where something has died in the water. It survives by absorbing the aura of death, so it can naturally tell what’s alive and what’s dead. If we use it to guide the stone-eating bug gastric fluid, the fluid will dissolve only the dead matter in her lungs—in other words, the ore crystals.”
When he finished, he watched Gran’s expression.
Gran understood. “Something that survives on death… That’s forbidden ingredients.”
“Strictly speaking, Ghostspring Moss itself isn’t forbidden.” The cat merchant tilted his head. “What’s forbidden is the way it has to be harvested. To find it, you have to go to an underground water source where something has died. And places like that usually aren’t pleasant.”
He paused, then added, “As it happens, I know of one. It’s at the deepest part of your mine, farther down.”
Gran stared at him for a long time. The sound of hammers from the forge came through the stone wall, one strike at a time.
“How do you know there’s an underground river beneath our mine?”
The cat merchant smiled, showing the tips of his sharp teeth. “Because your mine reached a living ore vein. There has to be water beneath a living ore vein. Where there’s water, there has to be an underground river. And where there’s an underground river…” His eyes brightened. “There are bound to be plenty of interesting things.”
He said interesting things far too cheerfully. Cheerfully enough that Gran heard the meaning beneath it.
“You want to go down there,” Gran said. It wasn’t a question.
“I do.” The cat merchant admitted it without hesitation. “Ghostspring Moss is one reason. But honestly, an underground river beneath a living ore vein… A place like that might have things I’ve never seen in my life.”
As he said this, something trembled faintly beneath his cloak. He quickly pressed it down.
Gran lowered his gaze to his granddaughter on the bed. Her breathing was still thin and faint, like a thread that might snap at any moment.
“What do you need?” Gran asked.
“A guide. Preferably a miner familiar with the deep tunnels.” The cat merchant counted on his fingers. “Three iron-core torches. Ordinary torches will go out at that depth. A two-hundred-foot rope. And…” He looked at Gran. “Your trust.”
Gran snorted. “You take a little of that every time you come around.”
“But I always give it back.”
Gran was silent for a while. Then he stood and walked to the door. He glanced back at the cat merchant, then at his granddaughter on the bed.
“First thing tomorrow morning,” he said. “I’ll take you down myself.”
The cat merchant nodded. He took one last look at the girl on the bed, then followed Gran out of the stone house.
It was completely dark outside. The ore-lamp posts of the dwarf town glowed in a warm line, stretching from the forge all the way to the town entrance. In the distance, Lolo was lying beside the wagon, his three transparent heads resting on his forepaws. One of them lifted slightly and glanced in the cat merchant’s direction before lowering again.
The cat merchant walked back to the wagon and sat down beside Lolo. One of Lolo’s heads rubbed against his knee. Its fur was cool, as if moonlight had brushed against it.
He stroked that head without saying a word.
After a while, he pulled his little notebook from beneath his cloak, flipped to a page, and began writing by the light of the ore-lamp posts. The writing was tiny and crooked. It was a formula: the dilution ratio for stone-eating bug gastric fluid, the method for processing Ghostspring Moss, and the order and dosage for administering the medicine.
As he wrote, his pen stopped.
He stared at the words in the notebook for a while, then added a line at the very bottom:
“If there isn’t enough Ghostspring Moss, use Duskmark Glowstone powder as a substitute for its guiding function. The effect will be weaker, but it should work.”
He closed the notebook and looked up at the sky. The sky above the dwarf town was narrow, squeezed into a slit by the mountainsides on either side. Stars spilled through that slit in sparse, scattered clusters.
All three of Lolo’s heads were asleep, their breathing so soft it was almost nonexistent.
The cat merchant tucked the notebook back into his cloak and brushed against the chest jewel. His fingers paused on it.
“Master,” he whispered, so softly that even Lolo didn’t hear. “I’m about to do something you wouldn’t like again.”
The jewel did not respond. It hung there, dull and gray, like an ordinary stone that knew nothing at all.
But he felt that it was a little heavier than usual.