Unseen Academicals

Glenda was surprised, therefore, to find Shatta right at the surface in the Maul, alongside the really posh dress shops that were for human ladies. That made sense, however; if you were going to make a scandalous profit selling clothes, it made sense to camouflage yourself amongst other shops doing the same thing. She wasn’t sure about the name, but apparently shatta meant ‘a wonderful surprise’ in Dwarfish, and if you started to laugh about that sort of thing then you would never have time to pause for breath.

She approached the door with the apprehension of one who is certain that the moment she sets foot inside she will be charged five dollars a minute for breathing and then be held upside down and have all her wealth removed with a hook.

And it was, indeed, classy. But it was dwarf classy. That meant an awful lot of chain mail, and enough weaponry to take over a city-but if you paid attention, you realized it was female chain mail and weaponry. That was how things were happening, apparently. Dwarf women had got fed up with looking like dwarf men all the time and were metaphorically melting down their breastplates in order to make something a little lighter and with adjustable straps.

Juliet had explained this on the way down, although, of course, Juliet did not use the word ‘metaphorically’, it being several syllables beyond her range. There were battle-axes and war hammers, but all with that certain feminine touch: one war axe, apparently capable of cleaving a backbone lengthwise, was beautifully engraved with flowers. It was another world, and as she stood just inside the doorway looking around, Glenda felt relieved that there were other humans in the place. In fact, there were quite a few, and that was surprising. One of them, a young human woman with steel boots six inches high, gravitated towards them as if drawn by a magnet-and given the amount of ferrous metal on her body, a magnet was something she would never pass in a hurry. She was holding a tray of drinks.

‘There’s black mead, red mead and white mead,’ she said, and then lowered her voice by a few decibels and three social classes. ‘Actually, the red mead is really sherry and all the dwarf ladies are drinking it. They like not having to quaff.’

‘Do we have to pay for this?’ said Glenda nervously.

‘It’s free,’ said the girl. She indicated a bowl of small black things on the tray, each one pierced with a cocktail stick, and said slightly hopelessly, ‘And do try the rat fruit.’

Before Glenda could stop her, Juliet had taken one and was chewing enthusiastically.

‘What part of a rat is its fruit?’ asked Glenda. The girl with the tray did not look directly at her.

‘Well, you know shepherd’s pie?’ she said.

‘I know twelve different recipes,’ said Glenda in a moment of rare smugness. This was actually a lie. She probably knew about four recipes because there was only so much you could do with meat and potatoes, but the glittering metallic grandeur of the place was getting on her nerves and she felt the need to stick up for herself. And then realization dawned. ‘Oh, you mean like traditional shepherd’s pie,’ she said, ‘made with the—’

‘I’m afraid so,’ said the girl, ‘but they’re very popular with the ladies.’

‘Don’t have any more, Jools,’ said Glenda quickly.

‘It’s quite nice,’ said Juliet. ‘Can’t I have one more?’

‘Just one, then,’ said Glenda. ‘That should even up the rat.’ She helped herself to a sherry and the girl, balancing carefully as she managed three different things with two different hands, handed her a glossy brochure.

Glenda glanced through it and knew her original impression had been right. This place was so expensive they didn’t tell you the price of anything. You could always be sure things were going to be expensive when they didn’t tell you the price. No point in looking through it, it’d suck your wages out through your eyeballs. Free drinks? Oh, yes.

With nothing else to do, she scanned the rest of the crowd. Everyone, except the growing and, in fact, quite large number of humans, had a beard. All dwarfs had beards. It was part of being a dwarf. Here, though, the beards were a little finer than you usually saw around the city and there had been some experimentation with perms and ponytails. There were mining pickaxes on view, it was true, but carried in expensively tooled bags as if the owner might spot a likely-looking coal seam on the way to the shops and wouldn’t be able to help herself.

She shared this thought with Juliet, who pointed down at the feet of another well-heeled customer and said, ‘Wot? And spoil those gorgeous boots? They’re Snaky Cleavehelms, they are! Four hundred dollars a pop, an’ you’ve to wait for six months!’

Glenda couldn’t see the face of the boots’ owner, but she did see the change in her body language. The hint of preening, even from the rear. Well, she thought, I suppose if you’re going to spend all of a working family’s yearly income on a pair of boots it’s nice that someone notices.