Half the World

FIRE

“Reckon I need a new sword.”

Thorn tossed her father’s rattling down on the table.

Rin gave the blade she was working on another grating stroke with the polishing stone and frowned over at her. “This seems familiar.”

“Very. But I’m hoping for a different answer this time around.”

“Because you bedded my brother?”

“Because there’s going to be a battle, and Queen Laithlin wants her Chosen Shield suitably armed.”

Rin set her stone aside and walked over, slapping dust from her hands. “The Queen’s Chosen Shield? You?”

Thorn raised her chin and stared back. “Me.”

They watched at each other for a long moment, then Rin picked up Thorn’s sword, spun it over, rubbed at the cheap pommel with her thumb, laid it back down and planted her hands on her hips. “If Queen Laithlin says it’s so, I guess it’s so.”

“It’s so,” said Thorn.

“We’ll need some bone.”

“What for?”

“To bind with the iron and make steel.” Rin nodded over at the bright blade clamped to the bench, gray steel-dust gathered under it. “I used a hawk’s for that one. But I’ve used a wolf’s. A bear’s. Do it right, you trap the animal’s spirit in the blade. So you pick something strong. Something deadly. Something that means something to you.”

Thorn thought about that for a moment, then the idea came and she started to smile. She pulled the pouch from around her neck and tipped the smooth and yellowed little lumps out across the table. She’d worn them long enough. Time to put them to better use. “How about a hero’s bones?”

Rin raised her brows at them. “Even better.”

THEY STOPPED IN AN ash-scattered clearing by the river, a ring of stones in the center blackened as if it had held one hell of a fire.

Rin swung the big bag of tools down from her shoulder. “We’re here.”

“Did we have to come so far?” Thorn dumped the coal sacks, stretching out her back and wiping her sweating face on her forearm.

“Don’t want my secrets stolen. Talking of which, tell anyone what happens here I’ll have to kill you.” Rin tossed Thorn a shovel. “Now get in the river and dig out some clay.”

Thorn frowned sideways, sucking at the hole in her teeth. “I’m starting to think Skifr was an easier master.”

“Who’s Skifr?”

“Never mind.”

She waded out to her waist in the stream, the water so cold it made her gasp in spite of the summer warmth, and set to cutting clay from the bed and slopping it onto the bank in gray shovelfuls.

Rin put some dull lumps of iron-stone in a jar, along with the black ash of Thorn’s father’s bones, and a sprinkle of sand, and two glass beads, then she started smearing clay around the lid, sealing it shut.

“What’s the glass for?” asked Thorn.

“To trick the dirt out of the iron,” murmured Rin, without looking up. “The hotter we get the furnace the purer the steel and the stronger the blade.”

“How did you learn all this?”

“I was apprentice to a smith called Gaden. I watched some others. I talked to some sword-merchants from down the Divine.” Rin tapped at the side of her head and left a smear of clay there. “The rest I worked out for myself.”

“You’re a clever girl, aren’t you?”

“When it comes to steel.” Rin set the clay jar carefully in the middle of the ring of stones. “Back in the river, then.”

So Thorn sloshed out shivering into the stream again while Rin built the furnace. She heaped coal up inside, stones outside, and mortared them with clay until she’d built a thing looked like a great domed bread-oven, chest high, with an opening at the bottom.

“Help me seal it.” Rin dug up clay with her hands and Thorn did the same, smearing it thick over the outside. “What’s it like? Being a Chosen Shield?”

“Dreamed of it all my life,” said Thorn, puffing herself up. “And I can’t think of anyone I’d rather serve than Queen Laithlin.”

Rin nodded. “They don’t call her the Golden Queen for nothing.”

“It’s a high honor.”

“No doubt. But what’s it like?”

Thorn sagged. “So far, boring. Since I swore the oath I’ve spent most of my time standing in the queen’s counting house, frowning at merchants while they ask her for favors that might as well be in a foreign tongue for all I understand them.”

“Wondering if you made a mistake?” asked Rin, digging up another handful of gray mush.

“No,” snapped Thorn, and then, after a moment spent squashing more clay into the cracks, “Maybe. It’d hardly be my first.”

“You ain’t at all as tough you make out, are you?”

Thorn took a long breath. “Who is?”

Rin blew gently on her shovel, the coals rustling as they glowed bright, then she got on her belly and rammed them deep into the mouth of the furnace, puffing out her cheeks as she blew hard, over and over. Finally she rocked back on her heels, watching the fire taking the coal, flame flickering orange inside the vent.

“What’s happening between you and Brand?” she asked.

Thorn had known it was coming, but that didn’t make it any more comfortable. “I don’t know.”

“Not that complicated a question, is it?”

“You wouldn’t think so.”

“Well, are you done with him?”

“No,” said Thorn, surprised by how firm she sounded.

“Did he say he was done with you?”

“We both know Brand’s not much at saying things. But I wouldn’t be surprised. Not exactly what men dream of, am I?”

Rin frowned at her for a moment. “I reckon different men dream of different things. Just like different women.”

“Couldn’t have taken off running much sooner, though, could he?”

“He’s wanted to be a warrior a long time. That was his chance.”

“Aye.” Thorn took a long breath. “Thought it’d get simpler when … you know.”

“But it didn’t get simpler?”

Thorn scrubbed at her shaved head, feeling the bald scar in the stubble. “No, it bloody didn’t. I don’t know what we’re doing, Rin. I wish I did but I don’t. I’ve never been any good at anything but fighting.”

“You never know. You might find a talent at working bellows too.” And Rin dropped them beside the mouth of the furnace.

“When you’ve a load to lift,” muttered Thorn as she knelt, “you’re better lifting than weeping.” And she gritted her teeth and made those bellows wheeze until her shoulders were aching and her chest was burning and her vest was soaked through with sweat.

“Harder,” said Rin. “Hotter.” And she started singing out prayers, soft and low, to He Who Makes the Flame, and She Who Strikes the Anvil, and Mother War too, the Mother of Crows, who gathers the dead and makes the open hand a fist.

Thorn worked until that vent looked like a gate to hell in the gathering darkness, like a dragon’s maw in the twilight. Worked until, even though she’d helped carry a ship each way over the tall hauls, she wasn’t sure she’d ever worked harder.

Rin snorted. “Out of the way, killer, I’ll show you how it’s done.”

And she set to, as calm and strong and steady at the bellows as her brother at the oar. The coals glowed up hotter yet as the stars came out above, and Thorn muttered out a prayer of her own, a prayer to her father, and reached for the pouch around her neck but his bones were gone into the steel, and that felt right.

She sloshed out into the river and drank, soaked to the skin, and sloshed back out to take another turn, imagining the bellows were Grom-gil-Gorm’s head, on and on until she was dried out by the furnace then soaked with sweat again. Finally they worked together, side by side, the heat like a great hand pressing on Thorn’s face, red-blue flames flickering from the vent and smoke pouring from the baked clay sides of the furnace and sparks showering up into the night where Father Moon sat big and fat and white above the trees.

Just when it seemed Thorn’s chest was going to burst and her arms come right off her shoulders Rin said, “Enough,” and the pair of them flopped back, soot-smeared and gasping.

“What now?”

“Now we wait for it to cool.” Rin dragged a tall bottle out of her pack and pulled out the stopper. “And we get a little drunk.” She took a long swig, soot-smeared neck shifting as she swallowed, then handed the bottle to Thorn, wiping her mouth.

“You know the way to a woman’s heart.” Thorn closed her eyes, and smelled good ale, and soon after tasted it, and soon after swallowed it, and smacked her dry lips. Rin was setting the shovel in the shimmering haze on top of the furnace, tossed bacon hissing onto the metal.

“You’ve got all kinds of skills, don’t you?”

“I’ve done a few jobs in my time.” And Rin cracked eggs onto the shovel that straight away began to bubble. “There’s going to be a battle, then?”

“Looks that way. At Amon’s Tooth.”

Rin sprinkled salt. “Would Brand fight in it?”

“I guess we both would. Father Yarvi’s got other ideas, though. He usually does.”

“I hear he’s a deep-cunning man.”

“No doubt, but he’s not sharing his cleverness.”

“Deep-cunning folk don’t tend to,” said Rin, flipping the bacon with a knife blade.

“Gorm’s offered a challenge to King Uthil to settle it.”

“A duel? There’s never been a finer swordsman than Uthil, has there?”

“Not at his best. But he’s far from his best.”

“I heard a rumor he was ill.” Rin pulled the shovel from the furnace and dropped down on her haunches, laying it between them, the smell of meat and eggs making Thorn’s mouth flood with spit.

“Saw him in the Godshall yesterday,” said Thorn. “Trying to look like he was made of iron but, in spite of Father Yarvi’s plant-lore, I swear, he could hardly stand.”

“Doesn’t sound good, with a battle coming.” Rin pulled a spoon out and offered it to Thorn.

“No. It doesn’t sound good.”

They started stuffing food in and, after all that work, Thorn wasn’t sure she’d ever tasted better. “Gods,” she said around a mouthful, “a woman who can make fine eggs and fine swords and brings fine ale with her? It doesn’t work out with Brand I’ll marry you.”

Rin snorted. “If the boys show as much interest as they’ve been doing I might count that a fine match.”

They laughed together at that, and ate, and got a little drunk, the furnace still hot on their faces.

“YOU SNORE, DO YOU know that?”

Thorn jerked awake, rubbing her eyes, Mother Sun just showing herself in the stony sky. “It has been commented on.”

“Time to break this open, I reckon. See what we’ve got.”

Rin set to knocking the furnace apart with a hammer, Thorn raking the still smoking coals away, hand over her face as a tricking breeze sent ash and embers whirling. Rin delved in with tongs and pulled the jar out of the midst, yellow hot. She swung it onto a flat stone, broke it open, knocking white dust away, pulling something from inside like a nut from its shell.

The steel bound with her father’s bones, glowing sullen red, no bigger than a fist.

“Is it good?” asked Thorn.

Rin tapped it, turned it over, and slowly began to smile. “Aye. It’s good.”