Half the World (Shattered Sea #2)(82)

“You’re back!” And she flung her arms around him almost hard enough to knock him over, and squeezed him almost hard enough to make him sick. “You just going to stand on the step and stare?” And she bundled him through the doorway. “Give my love to your children!” she shouted after Hale.

“Be glad to!”

Then she kicked the door shut and dragged Brand’s sea-chest from his shoulder. As she set it on the tiled floor a chain hung down, a silver chain with a silver key gleaming on it.

“Whose key’s that?” he muttered.

“Did you think I’d get married while you were gone? It’s my own key to my own locks. You hungry? You thirsty? I’ve got—”

“Whose house is this, Rin?”

She grinned at him. “It’s yours. It’s mine. It’s ours.”

“This?” Brand stared at her. “But … how did—”

“I told you I’d make a sword.”

Brand’s eyes went wide. “Must’ve been a blade for the songs.”

“King Uthil thought so.”

Brand’s eyes went wider still. “King Uthil?”

“I found a new way to smelt the steel. A hotter way. The first blade cracked when we quenched it, but the second held. Gaden said we had to give it to the king. And the king stood up in the Godshall and said steel was the answer, and this was the best steel he ever saw. He’s carrying it now, I hear.” She shrugged, as if King Uthil’s patronage was no great honor. “After that, everyone wanted me to make them a sword. Gaden said she couldn’t keep me. She said I should be the master and she the apprentice.” Rin shrugged. “Blessed by She who Strikes the Anvil, like we used to say.”

“Gods,” whispered Brand. “I was going to change your life. You did it by yourself.”

“You gave me the chance.” Rin took his wrist, frowning down at the scars there. “What happened?”

“Nothing. Rope slipped going over the tall hauls.”

“Reckon there’s more to that story.”

“I’ve got better ones.”

Rin’s lip wrinkled. “Long as they haven’t got Thorn Bathu in ’em.”

“She saved the Empress of the South from her uncle, Rin! The Empress! Of the South.”

“That one I’ve heard already. They’re singing it all over town. Something about her beating a dozen men alone. Then it was fifteen. Might’ve even been twenty last time I heard it. And she threw some duke off a roof and routed a horde of Horse People and won an elf-relic and lifted a ship besides, I hear. Lifted a ship!” And she snorted again.

Brand raised his brows. “I reckon songs have a habit of outrunning the truth.”

“You can tell me the truth of it later.” Rin took down the lamp and drew him through another doorway, stairs going up into the shadows. “Come and see your room.”

“I’ve got a room?” muttered Brand, eyes going wider than ever. How often had he dreamed of that? When they hadn’t a roof over their heads, or food to eat, or a friend in the world besides each other?

She put her arm around his shoulders and it felt like home. “You’ve got a room.”





WRONG IDEAS


“Reckon I need a new sword.”

Thorn sighed as she laid her father’s blade gently on the table, the light of the forge catching the many scratches, glinting on the deep nicks. It was worn almost crooked from years of polishing, the binding scuffed to greasy shreds, the cheap iron pommel rattling loose.

The apprentice gave Thorn’s sword one quick glance and Thorn herself not even that many. “Reckon you’re right.” She wore a leather vest scattered with burns, gloves to her elbow, arms and shoulders bare and beaded with sweat from the heat, hard muscles twitching as she turned a length of metal in the glowing coals.

“It’s a good sword.” Thorn ran her fingers down the scarred steel. “It was my father’s. Seen a lot of work. In his day and in mine.”

The apprentice didn’t so much as nod. Somewhat of a gritty manner she had, but Thorn had one of those herself, so she tried not to hold it too much against her.

“Your master about?” she asked.

“No.”

Thorn waited for more, but there wasn’t any. “When will he be back?”

The girl just snorted, slid the metal from the coals, looked it over, and rammed it hissing back in a shower of sparks.

Thorn decided to try starting over. “I’m looking for the blade-maker on Sixth Street.”

“And here I am,” said the girl, still frowning down at her work.

“You?”

“I’m the one making blades on Sixth Street, aren’t I?”

“Thought you’d be … older.”

“Seems thinking ain’t your strength.”

Thorn spent a moment wondering whether to be annoyed by that, but decided to let it go. She was trying to let things go more often. “You’re not the first to say so. Just not common, a girl making swords.”

The girl looked up then. Fierce eyes, gleaming with the forge-light through the hair stuck across her strong-boned face, and something damned familiar about her but Thorn couldn’t think what. “Almost as uncommon as one swinging ’em.”