: Chapter 2

My ears ring with the sound of iron against steel, but I don’t mind. I was raised alongside the forge, so I can sleep through it if I have to.

Right now, the rhythmic clanging is all that’s keeping me grounded. I haven’t seen my father since midnight. When he disappears like this, frustration usually sets up camp in my gut, because without his help, I’ll never catch up on the work we have due.

Today, I’m happy to leave him facedown in a puddle of spirits. Maybe he’ll drown.

The forge is always busy this time of year. Farmers need new pitchforks and spades to prepare for the early planting season, and I can never make them fast enough. A man from the next town over requested new blades for his thresher, and I told him it’ll take a week, but I should’ve told him two. Once the snows began to taper off, carpenters started buying so many nails that I’ve taken to forging them at night, just so I have a supply at daybreak. With the slush and mud, travelers are forever needing repairs to wagon wheels and axles. There’s a blacksmith on the other side of Briarlock, too, but she’s in her seventies, so she sends us anything big—and I try to return the favor by sending expensive detailed metalwork her way. She gets the fancy buckles and etched daggers, I get the sickles and horseshoes.

I think of that note from the tax collector and wonder if I should be taking any commissions I can get.

I swear under my breath and slam the hammer against the red-hot steel on my anvil. Two hundred silvers. All pissed away on ale or dice.

Wherever Da is, he’s lucky. If he were here right now, I’d knock him into the forge.

The thought feels hollow. I can’t knock him anywhere. That’s why I’ve got a bruise on my jaw and an ache in my belly from where he kicked me. I might be a lot of things, but fast doesn’t make the list. It’s too easy to get me off my feet.

Off my foot.

The worst part is that I had put aside a little bit of silver for Callyn. She’s too proud to ask for it, but I know how much she’s struggled since she discovered her father was giving away their silver to help fund the attack on the king. I knew the tax collectors would be around eventually. It’s only ten silvers that I stashed beneath my mattress, but it would have helped her a little. Cal would’ve taken it if it meant keeping Nora safe.

Now the tiny pouch of coins is going to have to help me save the forge—and it’s nowhere near enough.

She always brings me bread and sweetcakes when the bakery has them left over—which is often. Surely I can spare five.

I don’t know why I think that’ll make a difference for either of us. We’re both going to be on the streets in a matter of weeks.

My chest tightens, and then my throat. I’m used to my eyes burning from the heat of the forge, but this is different. I slam the hammer and shake off the emotion.

When I was a boy, Da used to talk about how I’d be able to turn around our misfortune when I became a soldier in the Queen’s Army.

He was teaching me to hammer shields and swords as soon as I was old enough to pull steel from the fire. “An armory always needs a talented metalsmith,” he’d say, beaming with pride at my evolving skill. “Mounted soldiers always need a farrier.”

Then a wagon fell on my leg, crushing my ankle and foot. My entire future, burned out of existence. The village physician said I was lucky to survive.

Ah, yes. I feel so very lucky.

“Boy!” A woman clears her throat from behind me, her tone impatient. “I’m looking for Ellis the blacksmith.”

My father. I grit my teeth and hope this isn’t someone else we owe money to. “He’s not here.”

“And when will he return?”

The spade I’m fashioning has cooled, so I pull it off the anvil and thrust it back into the forge, then drag a sleeve across my forehead and turn. The middle-aged woman standing under the archway is unfamiliar, most notably because she’s wearing belted silk robes in red and purple, and the hem is wet from the slush—meaning she’s not from Briarlock. Anyone here would have the sense to wear trousers and boots, or to tie up their skirts.

But judging by the jeweled rings on her fingers and the wide chain of gold hanging from her neck, she’s also clearly wealthy. I bite back the sour tone in my voice. “I don’t know. But I can make you anything you need from the forge.” I pause. “My lady.”

She gives me a disdainful up-and-down glance, and I realize she has two different-colored eyes: one blue and one brown. I see the moment her gaze stops at the bottom of my leg. I have a small padded stool that I use to keep my balance when I need to stand, and it serves my purposes well—until people stare at it.

We need silver, so I can’t let my temper get the best of me. I tightly add, “Does your carriage need mending? Or did your horse slip a—”

“I don’t need any metalwork. I’m looking for Ellis. The blacksmith.”

“Oh.” I jerk the glowing steel back out of the fire with my tongs and hold it against the anvil. “Then you’re welcome to wait.” I swing my hammer hard, and I have the privilege of seeing her flinch.

“Boy. Boy!” She’s shouting now.

I don’t stop swinging. “What?” I yell over the clanging.

“I need to know when he will return!”

Hopefully never. “You can ask at the tavern.” I glance past her without missing a swing. The morning sun shines through the trees, but I feel as though I’ve been awake for a week.

“I asked at the tavern,” she says. “He hasn’t been seen.”

If anything would make my hammer go still, that does it. I turn and look at her. “Then I truly have no idea where he could be. You could try the gaming tables. Or the brothel.”

“So you don’t know when he’s expected back?”

“No.” I thrust the spade back into the forge. “I’m not my father’s keeper.” Her lips purse, so again I add, “My lady.”

She studies me for a moment. “Do you know who I am?”

Something in the way she asks makes me hesitate. I look at her more carefully. She’s not much older than Da, likely in her forties, with gray-threaded braids piled in an intricate pattern on top of her head. She’s easily as tall as I am, and willowy, with intense eyes and a stern mouth that looks like it’s never smiled.

But I’ve never seen her before. At least I don’t think I have. “No.”

“It’s rare that I have an occasion to visit Briarlock. Your father has done some business for me in the past. I was hoping to hire him again, but time is of the essence.”

My eyebrows go up. “I can do any forge work you need—”

“I already said I don’t need metalwork.” She glances down at my leg again. “But you do seem to have the advantage of staying right where I need you.”

That makes me scowl. I jerk the steel back out of the forge and slam it against the anvil. “If you don’t need metalwork, then I don’t think I can help you.”

She comes closer. “Are you as hungry for silver as your father?”

I snort and swing my hammer. “I don’t think anyone is that hungry.”

“Can you be trusted to hold a message?”

“Couriers run out of—”

She grabs my arm, stopping my swing. “I don’t want a courier, boy.”

She’s a lot stronger than I gave her credit for. Her fingers dig into the muscles of my forearm, and I don’t have the leverage to break her hold.

She doesn’t let go. “You may call me Lady Karyl.” The way she says it makes me think it’s not her real name. With her free hand, she pulls a folded parchment from under her robes. A wide wax seal holds the paper closed. “A man will come to Briarlock this evening seeking the forge, because I intended to leave this with your father.” She pauses, her eyes boring into mine. “He will expect it to still be sealed. Am I understood?”

I frown. “I—yes?”

She leans in, and her voice lowers, turning vicious. “If it is not, you’d best hide yourself well. The Truthbringers do not take kindly to deceit and fourberie.”

Clouds above. My father is mixed up with the Truthbringers?

He couldn’t be. He can’t. He knows what happened to Callyn’s father. I want to jerk my arm out of this woman’s grasp.

When the queen of Syhl Shallow was first married to the magic-wielding king of Emberfall to bring peace to both countries, rumor said there were a few minor assassination attempts in the Crystal Palace. It was four years ago, so I was younger then, still trying to figure out how to manage on one foot. But I remember travelers would whisper about how the king had fooled the queen into marriage, how his magic was closely guarded, used only for his own gain. Our queen was new. Young. Untested. There were many people who wondered if the king was just biding his time until he saw fit to kill her, too.

Cal heard stories in the bakery, too. After what magic did to her mother, Cal’s father was openly critical of the king, so Cal usually had better gossip than I did: like the night she told me about how the king wouldn’t bother sending people to the stone prison because he could fracture all their bones at once—and then turn their skin inside out. Her little sister was only nine when Cal told me that story, and she later said Nora didn’t sleep for a week.

Not long after the royal marriage, our queen had a baby, and the border between our countries was opened to all for travel and trade. It seemed like a tenuous peace had been achieved—but only on the surface. Whispers about the dangerous king continued, and Da and I would occasionally hear of calls for revolution. But Briarlock is a poor town that’s a four-hour ride from the palace in the best weather, so most rumors were sparse with detail and lacking any real motivation. Da used to scoff and say most were just women and men filling the time while they needed a horse shod or a wagon repaired. They would arrive with whispers about soldiers who were burned to ash for speaking out of line, or tales of a magical creature who could be summoned at the king’s whim to eviscerate his enemies. I’d heard enough to know some had to be true—but many seemed too grand. Too awful.

After that cursed beast tore apart her mother, Callyn’s father believed every single one.

Late last summer, we heard of an opportunity to take a stand against the king, to protest against magic being present in Syhl Shallow. Those whispers about an uprising were suddenly backed by a plan. The Truthbringers had started as a close network of wealthy people who quietly opposed the king and his magic, but their thoughts had begun to spread among the people.

At the time, Da wanted no part in it. “We’ve got enough work for three men, boy,” I remember him saying. “I’ve got to make do with one and a half. We’ll leave magic well enough alone.”

Cal’s father, however, was one of the first to join up.

The protest turned into a revolt. Hundreds were killed, in a battle of swords and magic. That tenuous peace was rattled, and it’s never calmed since. The Truthbringers see it as evidence of the dangers of magic, and they’ve been emboldened by what happened.

I may be desperate for silver, but I want no part of a plot against the royal family.

I swallow. “I need to put this back in the forge.”

She lets go of my arm, and I take a deep breath. My head is spinning. This is worse than spending the coins meant for taxes. What has my father done? What has he involved us with? Didn’t he learn anything from what happened with Cal’s father?

I was worried about losing the forge. Now I’m worried about losing my head.

Callyn coming after me with the ax suddenly feels like a premonition.

But then Lady Karyl says, “He will give you ten silvers once the message is delivered.”

I freeze. Ten silvers! Ten!

I hate that the promise of silver is making me consider this.

But if my father has already embroiled us in … whatever this is … the damage is already done. And if she’s willing to pay me instead of him, there’s a chance I can earn enough to pay off the tax collector. At least I can make sure the silver doesn’t go right into the pocket of the local brewer.

My heart is pounding, but I take the folded parchment. “How often has my father done this for you?”

“Often enough.”

“And you trust him?”

She laughs softly. “Of course not. I don’t trust you either. But there is nothing in that message that can be traced back to me. And who would believe a crippled blacksmith over a well-respected governess from one of the Royal Houses?”

I bristle, but she’s already turned away.

I think of Callyn and little Nora, who are probably thinking of splitting a boiled egg for their supper, just so they don’t waste something they could use for the bakery. I consider the way Callyn stormed into the barn this morning, her ax swinging, her eyes full of torment and desperation.

She’d pass this message without hesitation if it meant a chance to save her farm. Cal wouldn’t stoop to treason, but she has as much reason to hate magic as anybody.

The Crystal Palace is a long way off anyway. No one there cares about us, or about Briarlock—not any more than we care about their political intrigues. What’s one little note?

I slide my fingers along the parchment, feeling the grooves in the wax seal.

Ten silvers. Whatever is inside this parchment must be very important. I look at the mud clinging to the hem of the lady’s richly embroidered skirts, at the jeweled rings encircling her fingers. I consider the way she curled her lip at the state of my leg.

“Lady Karyl,” I say. “I am not my father.”

She turns back, and her eyes seem to darken. “So you will not do as I have asked?”

“Oh no, I will.” I hold up the note between two fingers. “But my father is a lazy drunk. If you want this crippled blacksmith to help you out, it’s going to cost you twice as much.”