Gravis Berling watched the bubbles rise in his glass of ale. Being a Berling, he was born and bred for genius and knew that gas was created during the fermentation process. Humans didn’t understand the process, but then humans didn’t comprehend much. They left the brewing of ale to their wives. These women—these alewives—who had the audacity to add hops to their family recipes then call the it bier, or beer as if they invented the idea, still had no idea what turned wort into the effervescent amber drink. For them that brewed it, the magic was in the family ale stick that their mother and grandmother handed down. Daughters were told to only use the magic stick to stir the wort. What they didn’t know—what they still didn’t know—is that the stick was caked with yeast from all the other previous worts, and that was the magic that got the fermentation process rolling. Since yeast comes in an infinite variety and since it influences taste, this, and the family recipe for gruit, was the secret to making the family drink whether it be ale or beer. Fermentation was an old word, a Dromeian word—Gravis was certain of that, too—and that term described how yeast consumed sugar. The process produced alcohol and gas. The gas appeared in any fermentation and it was what formed the holes in spongy bread and put the bubbles in Gravis’s ale.

When first brewed, there would have been lots of bubbles and the ale would have been fizzy. A lot of people liked it that way, but the gas always escaped. There was no way to keep it in. Sealing ale in barrels never worked. The gas escaped. In a few days, all the bubbles were gone and the drink went as flat as stale water.

“Master Berling.”

Gravis’s study of his drink was interrupted by Baric Brock. Gravis hadn’t seen him approach, but he knew the voice. He was one of the in-betweens, a dwarf whose beard was listing toward gray but not yet committed to the cause. He was a middle-aged, middling, meddler, who at that moment was surely intending, what else but…mischief.

Gravis didn’t reply, or so much as look up.

Baric persisted to speak to him. “Terrible age we live in, isn’t it?”

Gravis didn’t care for Baric, but then he didn’t care for people. Not that Baric classified as people. He was a Brock. The whole family was a bunch of silversmiths who always made a sumptuous living while the rest starved. Worse yet, the Brocks were one of the northern families—those that left the peninsula then came back. In Gravis’s book, that made him one toe short of a traitor—a wealthy, insensitive toe-short of a traitor.

Baric leaned in resting a meaty hand decorated with a silver ring on the counter of the bar inches from Gravis’s ale—the ale with so few bubbles. “Heard Ena died. I’m sorry for your loss. I truly am.”

“Leave me be, Baric.” Gravis growled the words thinking Baric ought to at least understand what any dog would.

“I’m just offering me condolences, Berling. Just trying to be decent.”

“And I’m just letting you know to sod off. Now awa’ n bile yer heid.”

“You don’t need to be that way. There’s no call for it.”

“No call for it? No call for it, you say?” Berling’s head came up, his eyes torn from the too few bubbles to lock on Baric and his too few brains, who was also freakishly tall for a Dromeian. Not just a traitor, the Brocks must have human blood in their past. “They’ve banished me from her!” Gravis shouted and slammed his hand on the bar, turning every head in the alehouse.

“No one banished you, Berling. Ena died. It happens.”

“Not from Ena you hampot! From Drumindor!”

“Drumindor?” Baric looked dim as a dying candle. Then those eyes narrowed. “Are you listening to yourself, Berling? Your wife just passed away, and you’re still on about the blasted towers?”

Everyone was listening to them now. Scram the Scallie wasn’t a big place and their raised voices echoed off the walls killing any other talk. Gravis didn’t like all the attention. Aside from Sloan behind the bar, only four patrons filled the room, but for Gravis, who lived a small life, it was a multitude. And while he’d like nothing more than to take the twists out of Baric’s crooked thinking and set him straight for once, Gravis wasn’t a public speaker. He didn’t do well in arguments with audiences. Maybe it was prejudice against the family name, which Baric was using like a stick to beat him with, or maybe Gravis wasn’t just a little smarter than everyone else but a lot, and people couldn’t begin to comprehend his thinking. Either way—and he felt likely it was both—he knew he wasn’t about to win minds and hearts by debating Baric. Feeling eyes on him, Gravis made a tactical retreat. “You’re a Dorith, Baric. You don’t understand and ya never will.”

“Bah!” Baric waved a dismissive hand at him that was a signal the encounter was over. Then he turned around to walk away.

While Gravis had been cognizant of the attention they had drawn, it was no surprise that Baric was slow in the awareness department. How it was he didn’t realize that everyone would be watching only sharpened the point of the argument that Gravis wasn’t bothering to make. Instead he watched it happen—knew it would. When Baric turned and saw all the faces the miserable sod couldn’t let it go—not with so many watching, not in that scared place.

Scram the Scallie wasn’t merely a dwarven bar—it was a historic sight, and every Dromeian knew it. A literal crack in the wall, nothing but a mouse hole in the side of the grand Turian Cliffs, the little alehouse was invisible to the rest of the city, but to Belgriclungreians Scram the Scallie was famous. The little shelter predated Drumindor. Legend held that Andvari Berling himself carved it out as a base while surveying the bay. Trapped inside by a storm that raged for days, he had used glow stones for light, and invented the quintessential invisible rolling door. When the war with the elves turned dire, and the Orinfar was discovered, Scram the Scallie became the model for all the rols built as safe houses throughout the north. Now several thousands of years later, it served as a place where Dromeians could go to get away from the big people—hence the name.

Not wanting to look weak on even that tiny stage, Baric pivoted, whirling around with theatrical drama. “Aye, your right! I’m a Dorith, and proud to be the decedent of the eldest son of Drome, of the first thanes that founded Neith and ruled our people for more than eight thousand years. Eight thousand, Berling. How long were the Brundenlins in charge? How long before your clan, and their kings, nearly wiped all of us off the face of Elan? Was it even an entire century, Berling? Was it?”

Feeling vindicated and victorious, Baric once more made an effort to walk away—once again he failed. Baric turned back and with a newly drawn breath added. “Until Linden of the Brundenlins declared himself king, that word was an unspeakable profanity. His wonderful grandson, Mideon, demonstrated exactly why that is. You want to bandy about linage, Gravis? Keep in mind you Berlings were right there by Mideon’s side supporting his war, his greed, his bloated ego. And finally that insanity with the golem! Who did that, Berling? Mideon had lost, but refused to accept it so he had Andvari use the forbidden arts to summon the thing that destroyed Linden Lott!”

“That’s a lie!” Gravis erupted.

“It is an unproved truth—there’s a difference. But I wouldn’t expect a Brundenlin to understand that…and ya never will.” Baric whirled around and began to swagger his way out.

This time it was Gravis who couldn’t let it go. “There’s too few bubbles in the ale, Baric!”

Baric didn’t stop—not immediately—he was on a triumphal march, but he slowed. Being possibly the smallest alehouse in the world, Baric nearly reached the door when curiosity finally tackled him. Scram the Scallie was silent, and every face expectant as Baric asked the question they all hoped he would.

“What are you babbling about, you old fool? What do you mean too few bubbles?”

Gravis lifted his drink. “When first fermented, there’s a fizz to ale. It bubbles and froths with power, energy, and life. Drink it fresh and it sizzles on the tongue. But let it sit in a barrel and the bubbles disappear leaving the ale flat—leaving it dead, a mere ghost of its former self. You can still drink it, ‘a course, but the life is out of the mix.”

Baric waited as Gravis indulged in a bit of his own theatrics and took a swallow from his bubble deficient glass. He made a revolted sour-face as he glared at the ale. Then he pointed at the drink. “We Dromeians… we were once a great people, but we have sat too long in the barrel. We’re out of bubbles, Baric. We aren’t alive anymore. We just exist. Not that long ago, Dromeians were great when the humans were small. Now we look up to them like a pet to its master and wag our tail when they throw scraps. We stand and watch as they defile our temples and great buildings turning them into alehouses and brothels. We’ve forgotten who we are, Baric. We need to ferment again. We need our bubbles to rise once more.”

“You’re talking mince. Our days of glory are gone. We aren’t a great people anymore. And who are you to criticize? You worked for them like everyone else.”

“I worked for my forefathers! I labored maintaining a legacy!”

“And look where it got you.” Baric grinned and searched the room for the agreement he knew would be waiting.

Gravis pointed a finger at him as if casting a curse. “You’re why we will never be great again. It’s people like you who accept mediocrity, who see nothing wrong with good enough. You’re why the ale has no bubbles.”

“Oh, I see,” Baric nodded. “You have all the answers, don’t you? Of course you do, you’re a Berling. So tell us Gravis, what would the celebrated Berling have us do?”

“Teach them a lesson they won’t ever forget,” Gravis said. “Give them a reminder of who we were and, Drome willing, may be again.”

“And how do you expect to do that?”

“They don’t deserve Drumindor,” Gravis replied. “I’ll take it back.”

“Take it back?” Baric snickered. “You going to trot up there and ask them to hand it over, are you? Tell them it’s your name on the deed? Or will you battle them for it?” Baric put up his fists like a prize fighter. “Gonna smite ‘em all, and kick ‘em out. I don’t see how else you can do it, Berling. The towers are a bit too big to steal, don’t ya think?”

“I have my ways.”

“You’re full of yourself, is what you mean.”

From behind the bar Sloan clapped a pair of mugs on the counter loud enough to catch the room’s attention. “Leave him be, Baric.”

Scram the Scallie was her place—at least as much as it could belong to any one person. Sloan was a Bel. Her clan originally hailing from West Echo, but her family had come to Tur in the Silver Age of King Rain, back when the Bels were so important their name came first. Some of them left when the Belgric Kingdom was accepted into the Novronian Empire and citizenship was granted to all. But she and hers stayed to run the tiny heritage site out of commitment to a tradition older than any of them. Then when her father died, she took over. Now, some forty years later, it was just her. She wasn’t all that old, but Sloan was as respected as an elder and one of the few Gravis could stomach.

While Baric was a idiot, he wasn’t stupid, and the dwarf wisely refused to lock antlers with Sloan the Bel—not in her own place. He resigned the field with a cowed look.

Sloan proceeded to serve Kiln the miner his ale, sliding the drink to him and leaving a trail of wet that she used her towel to wipe away. In all the years he’d known her, Gravis never once saw Sloan without the towel, either in her hand or over a shoulder. He often wondered if she slept with it. She certainly wasn’t sleeping with anyone else. Many had tried to woe The Lady Bel of Tur, but to his knowledge that was one peak that had yet to be conquered.

“The big folk aren’t all bad, Gravis,” she said in a soft, calming voice. “They invited us to Delgos, didn’t they? No ghettos, no pogroms, no restrictions on where we can go, or what businesses we can open. They welcomed us as equals.”

“And why did they do that? Not out of the goodness of their hearts, I don’t think.”

“You’re so smart you can plum the depths of human hearts, can you?”

“They needed water.” This bit of genius came from Trig the Younger, who because Scram the Scallie was too small for tables or chairs, stood elbow to elbow with Kiln at the bar. The words were less proclaimed to the room than pronounced into his drink. Being son of the water system administrator for the city, however, no one was likely to doubt him no matter how he said it. “They have no idea how to so much as turn a crank. Couldn’t even if we drew them a picture. They’re too big to fit in the access tunnels.”

This made a few people chuckle, Baric being the loudest, but then children and the simpleminded were easy to amuse. The laughter quickly faded, killed by the lingering tension.

“They also needed the roads repaired,” Kiln spoke up. “But none of them know how to lay the stone properly. And they don’t know how to work our mines to get the required rock.”

Covered with powered stone dust from a hard day’s work, Heigal and Loc who stood at the other end of the little polished counter, raised their drinks toward him and nodded.

“They’ve been replacing dwarves in good paying positions for years,” Kiln went on. “Now, they did it to Berling and the rest of them at the towers.” He shook his head over his mug. “Never thought they would. Since it was created. There has never been a time when a Berling wasn’t in Drumindor. Isn’t that right?”

Gravis was pleased to see no one disputed this fact.

“Those towers are everything to this place,” Kiln went on. “They have to know that, don’t they, Sloan? They have to know that if something goes wrong, it’s over—for them, for us, for everyone here. So, if they think they can get by without a Berling in Drumindor—a maze of a million levers—no one is safe, are they?”

“It will all happen here like it has every place else,” Trig said. He spoke like a loved one delivering a eulogy. “The ghettos and the pogroms, the laws and restrictions—if we don’t fight back now all of it will follow.”

“Fighting isn’t that answer,” Sloan was quick to say. “If you don’t believe me come in here on Dorith Day. Auberon always visits for a drink around sunset. Ask him what he thinks of fighting for our rights. Listen to him for five minutes and I guarantee you’ll change your minds.”

“What choice do we have? We’re up against the sea here. Are you saying…do you think we ought to just give up?”

“It won’t happen here,” she said.

“You’re being naive,” Trig threw a hand at her. “Why would here be any different?”

“Because this is Tur Del Fur, the Jewel of the Belgric Peninsula.”

“Not anymore,” Gravis said. “This is Delgos now, Land of Trade and home to the Unholy Trio.”

She shook her head. “This is Belgric, home of the old kingdom. That’s in stone and can’t be changed, and that’s why here is different. I know what’s happening. I’m not blind. This is our last stand, this is. If we lose Tur…there’s nothing left for us—not here, not anywhere. I don’t understand the curse that’s been laid on our people, but don’t think for a moment that I don’t know about it.”

Sloan wrung out her towel, twisting it hard. She hesitated and bowed her head so that her nose nearly touched the bar top. After taking a deep breath, she straightened and addressed those in the room, “Look, I don’t talk about it, but a few of you already know that not long ago, my sister and her husband were killed up in Vernes. Lovely couple. Kind generous, and the sort to always see the best in everyone. They were walking home from the market when they were beaten to death in the street. The murderers called them gronbachs and when it was done, bystanders applauded.” Sloan shook her head slow, pinching her lips. “People actually stood by and clapped while my sister’s blood pooled before them. It’s hard to keep breathing after something like that, hard not to hate, and just about impossible to hope.”

“So why—” Gravis started, but Sloan put up a palm.

“Because when I walk outside.” She gestured at the invisible Andvari Berling door. “When I walk to the end of the tier, to the turnout—you all know the one I mean—and I look down at the bay. Guess what I see? Those two beautiful towers still standing in the bay. But I don’t just see Drumindor, I see how all of it once was. Drumindor, the rolkins, the domes, the tiers and the bay, they are all reminders etched in stone that we aren’t cockroaches to be stepped on, we aren’t vermin to be driven out for the greater good. Here we stand drowning in evidence that we deserve respect. And that’s why here is different.”

“I get that, Sloan,” Kiln said. “I do, but still we see it happening, and if we do nothing, nothing will change.”

“So we’ll do something, but fighting has never worked for us. Fighting destroys, and we aren’t good at breaking things—but we are good at building. The proof is all around us. Our greatest legacy has always been what we create. So that’s what we need to do. We need to build, but not fortresses or weapons. We need to bridges and respect.”

“And how do we do that?” Baric asked. “Complain to the Unholy Trio?”

Several laughed at this, but there was no mirth in it, just a sad desperate sound.

“We could remind them why they welcomed us here in the first place.” Sloan looked at the towel in her hand. “They let go the whole lot from Drumindor, didn’t they? And you’re right, they have been replacing all the supervisors in every position of importance all over the city. And it hasn’t gone well, has it? They’re trying to figure out how to survive without us. So, what if we give them what they want—only all at once with no time to prepare. Why don’t we let them see what it would mean, and in the process announce loud and clear that its all or nothing. Either we are full citizens with equal rights and equally deserving of respect and appreciation… ” She held her hand holding the towel out over the edge if the bar and dropped it to the floor. “Or we all quit.”

This was the problem, Gravis thought. In the days of Mideon, the world quaked at the sound of dwarven boots. Now, they had leaders like Sloan, females, telling everyone that being good little dwarfs was the best way.

“Doing that won’t work,” Gravis said. “That sort of thing has been tried over and over.”

“But this isn’t Vernes, or Rochelle, or the Dithmar,” she replied. “This is Tur Del Fur. This is our ancestrally home.” She walked over to the wall and laid a hand on it. “Our people built this place, and they built it for Dromeians. These are our tunnels, halls, and mines. Here, unlike everywhere else, we have the advantage.”

Gravis didn’t agree, but he said nothing more on the subject. They could do as they liked. He had his own plan, and he didn’t need anyone’s help.

Gravis Berling had lived in a wooden shack down by the docks. Four weathered walls with a single slope roof. He had made it himself years ago. It wasn’t the first. He’d made dozens—all in the same place, more or less. He constructed the first one when he was a mere child of twenty-two. Still an apprentice working the cog room in Drumindor always under his father’s critical eye, he longed to be free. The shack was his answer.

He’d built the first one from what he found along the coast, driftwood mostly, and scrap from the shipyards: planks, mast poles, and canvas. He’d even scored a discarded cabin door that served as his entrance and made the whole thing look grand. The shack listed to the north and leaked when it rained, but it was his, and he was proud of it.

Then the first big storm came.

Gravis was working at the time and, in the bowels of Drumindor, he hadn’t the slightest clue that outside the gods of wind, rain, and ocean were all having a fine tussle. When he went home, his home wasn’t there. The whole thing, door and all, had been wiped clean off the face of Elan.

He remembered standing on the depression left behind. A light rain continued to fall from an indifferent sky as he looked at the dark and angry sea. He didn’t ask why. He was a Dromeian. His people stopped asking why hundreds of years ago. Instead, he went looking for his missing door. Gravis never found it, but he found a host of other treasures. The storm, it seemed, hadn’t targeted just him. The gods had attacked everyone. Strewn along the coast were the shattered remains of dozens of poorly sheltered ships. He found four new doors—two in near perfect condition. He snagged a full size window frame out of the sandy surf. Two of the four glass panes were cracked, but one was perfect. With these and more, he set to work rebuilding his seaside castle. This time he chose a more sheltered spot—a place where the storm seemed to have had difficulty reaching. Oddly, it was farther out on the arm of the headland, a stone’s throw from the north tower. That one lasted nearly a decade before the ocean took it.

By then he had made it out of the cog room and was courting a lass named Ena Schist. Ena always wanted him to buy a rolkin, nothing big or grand, just a little hole in the wall with turquoise shutters and a flower bed. Gravis could have gotten one farther up the tiers, but he wanted to be close to Drumindor and real estate near the water was priced out of reach. Years later, after his father had passed and he was appointed chief supervisor, Gravis still stayed in the shack. By then it was home for both of them.

He spent his honeymoon within those walls. Nearly died of fever there, too. He and Ena had wept rivers of tears and laughed themselves sick on that little square of rock and shoal that shook with even a light breeze. And it was only the day before yesterday that Ena, laying on their bed, had taken her last breath beneath that slanted roof. Gravis had spent most of his life inside Drumindor, but the best times—few as they were—had been lived inside that shack.

Standing in the dark looking at the old place, Gravis couldn’t even go inside. He wasn’t allowed. Claiming they owned all the land from the North Tower to the docks, the Port Authority had banished him for not paying rent. In two hundred and forty-six years, Gravis had never needed to pay rent. They told him that was because he had been an employee, and it was one of the privileges they chose to grant him. He never told Ena, but he was sure if he had, she would have laughed herself even sicker to hear someone thought their shack on a rock was a privilege.

Gravis stood in a light rain staring at his home. The place was empty. He knew it would be—it would always be. No one else would ever want to live there. The Port Authority had driven him out for no reason other than spite.

Gravis couldn’t stay. Lord Byron would have someone watching the place. Eyes were likely already on him. If he lingered too long men with blades would come and say he was on PA land and had to move off. If he put up a fuss, they would drag him away. If he put up too much of a fuss, they would drag him to the ocean.

Gravis wiped his eyes and looked up at Drumindor.

Unlike Sloan, he didn’t see hope in those two towers. All he saw was pain. And if he could figure a way to get back inside, he would whistle a merry tune as he waited on the full-moon and the end of everything.