I sighed.
"I don't understand it, absolutely not!" The dwarf waved his hands away again. "Don't ask, I'll never go with you," he turned away, waiting for something to happen, and froze. He must have been expecting me to talk him into it. In that moment, I realized how much my friend trusted me. If I insisted right now, he would go, even in spite of his premonition.
"I understand you, K'Yoevghan. I'm not asking you to, it's my personal thing, you know?" I tried to give him a hint.
"Personal, you say?" He rubbed his beard from top to bottom with his right hand. That gesture meant many things to dwarves. K'Yoevghahn shifted his eyebrows and said, "I have a wife and children in the north, and that's personal, I understand, but what you find 'personal' in the Order, I don't know," I shrugged.
"Friend, I'm not asking you to come with me this time." The words sounded as if they weren't spoken by me. So different from my usual tone. The dwarf stayed still for the first time in our long journey, then shuddered as if startled out of his thoughts. He shook his head again and nodded, "All right, have it your way, old friend," he patted my shoulder. The dwarf could only do that because I was sitting up. "When you're done with your business, come visit us in the Blue Mountains. I'll be waiting for you."
"It's a deal," I gave him my hand, and we shook hands on the verbal agreement.
"Not goodbye," the dwarf said angrily and walked away. Without turning around, K'Yoevghahn went to the door and slammed it so hard that the plaster flew off, covering the entire threshold. My heart skipped a beat. I shook my head, "How childish is that?" And after a little while, I walked out towards the playpen.
The dwarf was gone in the hallway.
There was a half-human-sized porcelain vase in a deep alcove across the hall from my room. A cart of fruits and vegetables passed me in the hallway. The peddler, not letting go of the hand luggage on wheels, nodded at his wares, offering them to me, but I shook my head negatively. Then he walked on down the mosaic laid out here.
As I went lower, I saw a dwarf blacksmith pouring some kind of liquid into a kind of furnace mechanism. The splashes flew in all directions, hitting the fire, which was eagerly embracing them, and the apron, which was already very unattractive and shabby-looking. Looking down, the dwarven smith took a pair of tongs and began to extract the small bronze plates coming out of the machine. "Lamellar armor!" I guessed. "Looks like preparations for the upcoming tournament are well underway here."