Chapter Text
i.
On first-days, Una forged horseshoes and hammers, and only rarely did anyone come into her shop. She stayed in the back and she fed the brick forge and curved hot iron around the anvil horn. She lowered it gingerly with long tongs into warm oil, and once it sank to the bottom, she began the whole process all over, uninterrupted by the jangle of the bell over the door.
By first-day, Una’s stocks always ran low, because on tenth-days she went into Asbravn for the market and sold tools and blades to the traders who came down the Dusk Road. First-days, unlike second-days, were always slow. On the night of the market, all of the farmers were flush with coin. That meant that they spent first-days lying in bed, groaning, which gave them plenty of time to take stock and realize they needed horseshoes.
And hammers. Her personal theory was that hangovers drove demand for hammers. Bashing your own skull in started to seem appealing; at least then, your brain would have room to swell and might stop pulsing horribly.
That was why on second-days, everyone came rushing in, and by then the iron had finished cooling slowly in the oil. The farmers left with what they’d come for, and Una was left alone, generally, until tenth-day. Which was how she liked it, and why her forge was not at the center of town with the cooper and cratemaker, but far enough east to almost back onto the Reaching Woods.
All that was to say that she knew her clientele and they knew her, and each tenday passed in much the same way as the tenday before. On first-days she fed the forge, and no one came in – not farmers, not traveling merchants, not strange women in bulky armor. Strange, tattooed women in bulky armor and leather wrist gauntlets did not come striding in, throwing the door open so violently that the bell flew, jangling, through the air.
Una, who had been chewing on the end of one dark braid, felt it fall from her mouth. The stranger unsheathed a long, filthy greataxe.
There was no preamble; she just swung it straight into Una’s workbench. The blade embedded itself in the wood with a hard thunk.
Una straightened up slowly, feeling spilled oil drip from her apron. The air suddenly smelled strongly of something other than rust. It was strange and metallic, smoke-tinged, resiny, almost putting her in mind of-
“Dragon blood,” the stranger said.
Conversationally.
ii.
“I tried to scrub it down, I tried linseed oil, but I couldn’t get any of it off, ‘cause it’s-“
“Dragon blood,” said Una, touching the thick crust around the eye with one finger. It had that lingering warmth. She did still remember. Her nose had known; the stranger, whose name she still hadn’t learned, was not just from some far-off land where they introduced themselves by saying, dragon blood.
“Yeah,” said Leather Wrist Gauntlets. “Can you deal with it or not?” Her fingers opened and closed impatiently around its haft.
Una had forged greataxes. “Yes,” she said shortly, and took it by the lug, just in case Gauntlets was thinking of wrenching it away.
Holding the axe meant she had to fill out the log with her left hand, printing awkwardly. Out of habit, Una still bothered with the log. Gauntlets, she could have written, or even just biceps, or she could have written nothing and still remembered, but she looked up questioningly.
“Holga,” Leather Wrist Gauntlets said. “Holga Kilgore.”
Una paused with her hand just above the parchment. She set down the charcoal.
“Griffon tribe?”
Something complicated happened on Holga’s face. One half seemed surprised. What the other half showed, Una couldn’t have said. The two halves wrestled for a little while until she got them under control.
“Nah,” she said. “Never was.” She looked at her curiously. “Why? You got something against them?”
“No,” said Una, which was the truth, even though lots of people did. She looked down, away from Holga’s raised eyebrow, and wrote her name.
Leather Wrist Gauntlets was Holga Kilgore, and Una was Una, and the axe would be ready in three days; it would need to soak. She could tell that Holga was a little miffed by that, her jaw clenched tight, but in the end, Holga didn’t argue.
If she had, Una would have laid out the whole process in excruciating detail: the lodestone, lifting the blood, a lengthy scrub with sand, the oxhair brush. Rinse in cool water, oil again, leave to cure. But Holga just gave her a long, narrow-eyed once-over, taking in Una’s thick apron and the tools on the workbench, and then let go of the handle.
“Fine,” she said. “Just – take care of it.” It took something out of her. She glanced back over her shoulder, standing in the doorway, as if Una could have somehow already snapped the blade in two.
She was surprisingly careful leaving, closing the heavy door behind her.
iii.
The lodestone worked well enough; Una anchored the axe, and in the morning, its end was black with iron. In spots, the crust had lifted. She could peel it away with her fingernail.
In other spots, it was still firmly adhered, so she would still have to pry it off with the chisel. That would scar the metal, but it was already scarred; it had seen fire. Una could guess. She would get it clean and polish it after.
The blade was darksteel, vibrating softly and making her fingers tingle. Underneath the crud, where it hadn’t melted, it was carved with intricate patterns. By the time she reached the haft, she had a suspicion. If it had been a sword, she would have thought something else entirely.
If it had been a sword, she would have known as soon as she’d lifted it, as soon as she’d felt the hilt in the palm of her hand. But this was an axe, not a blade that she might have seen forged, and she had to scrape the haft clean to see the old crest inlaid, to be sure.
It was Foehammer. In all the years that had passed since she’d left Triboar, only one other weapon of his had made its way to her.
That had been another axe, shorter, made by some apprentice. It had belonged to a trader who’d come from the north. This one might actually have passed through the old dwarf’s hands, and she traced the inlay down to the base, the carved knob there.
If it had been a sword, if it had come from another forge, she might have refused payment and left it blood-spattered. But this was a greataxe, and the best-made weapon she had touched in years. She lifted it just to feel its weight, the balance of the blade.
When Holga returned, Una would still have to ask where it had come from, just to make sure there was no reason why Holga had brought it to her.
iv.
She was working at the blade, sitting cross-legged behind the counter, when a second stranger pushed open the door.
That made two in two days, and neither of them a market day. It was a man, tall, and he didn’t swing an axe at her. “Hello,” he said, smiling winningly. Then he spent an inordinate amount of time lingering by the far wall, inspecting one of the shortswords Una had mounted there.
She couldn’t imagine him wielding it. He had a lute strapped to his back, and besides, he wasn’t testing its weight or running the pad of his thumb along its sharp edge. He was just staring at the plain blade like it was much more interesting than it was, and periodically sneaking obvious glances at her.
Una had never lost this particular game. She turned her attention back to the axe. He turned to her.
“You would probably know me as Ed,” he said, which wasn’t true. Una wouldn’t have known him from Annam. “Are you Una?”
She nodded warily.
“Una,” Ed said, like he was testing out its feel in his mouth. “Una, can I walk you through a hypothetical scenario?”
This was not the kind of thing that people ordinarily asked Una for help with. Most of the time, they asked her if she could make them some horseshoes.
“Let’s say,” Ed said, without waiting for her response, “that you had a friend. A very close friend, Una. And this friend had absolutely no interest in art. We’re talking about a woman – I mean, a person – who couldn’t tell a painting from a frying pan. But then one day your friend came home and told you that they’d seen a painting, and they called that painting pretty. Are you following me?”
Una was not following at all, and in fact had gotten lost about halfway through the original question. She said, “I don’t know anything about paintings.”
“It’s an analogy,” Ed said. “Una, don’t you think you would be curious about that painting? Wouldn’t you want to see that painting for yourself?”
“I might,” Una said doubtfully. She was still waiting for the moment when this would all somehow come back around to smithing.
That wasn’t coming any time soon, apparently.
“I think you would,” Ed said, as though it settled something. “I think you would be very curious, actually, especially if you’d been trying to get your friend to look at paintings, and she kept telling you that it wasn’t going to happen, and, I quote, to cram it, and that she was only interested in…whatever the opposite of a painting is.”
Something three-dimensional, Una thought – the little carved-wood figurines that she still whittled sometimes on slow days and showed to no one. But saying anything could have encouraged him to talk more, and she decided that it was probably better to keep her mouth closed.
“I think you would go to great lengths to look at that painting,” Ed said, “even if your friend told you that if you tried, she would knock you down and sit on you.”
He was looking at a shield now or just watching her still, using its smooth, polished surface as a warped mirror. She doubted he would be leaving with it. She would have waited again, but in the interest of getting him out of her shop, she asked, “Do you want that?”
“Oh, no,” Ed said brightly. He turned back to the blades. “I just like to keep up on all the latest trends. I consider myself a connoisseur.” He squinted at the shortsword, pressed his thumb to the tip, and then winced. “Yes, I can see that…steel…is still in this year. All right, I think I’ll be on my way. All of my questions have been answered, Una. It was just wonderful to meet you.” He had been walking backwards the whole time. He held her gaze as he groped blindly for the handle.
“It sticks,” Una said, even though she wouldn’t have minded watching him fumble at it for a little while. “You have to twist it harder.”
“The thing that surprises me,” Ed said, gaze still fixed on her, still struggling with the door, “is that-” but then Una took pity on him and slid off of her stool. She came out from behind the counter and nudged his hands away. It wasn’t so difficult, really, when you knew the right angle.
“Ah,” he said, looking down at her. “Never mind, actually.”
The door swung closed behind him. Una blinked at its wooden slats. He’d left fingerprints on the blade, and she would have to wipe those off later.
It was the strangest conversation she’d had in months that hadn’t involved dragon blood. She could hear him whistling all the way down the path.
v.
Una kept her promises, and the axe was ready on the third day. It was clean and gleaming and oiled, and she thought about the lay of the shop and then propped it conspicuously against the counter. It would catch the sunlight there.
Show-off, she heard her eldest brother say, but what did he know? He’d worked with swords strapped to his back and almost keeled over at the forge. It was possible that after all these years, he still hadn’t given that up.
Holga opened the door with as much force as she’d opened it the first time. The walls shook, and Una had to throw herself across the counter to catch the axe before it could come crashing down. That undercut the effect a little; when Holga saw her, she was lying on her stomach, the edge digging painfully into her hipbones, looking up at her.
Holga said nothing. She just took the axe from Una’s hand. She looked it over, the heft and blade, while Una climbed back down onto her stool.
“Not bad, girl,” she said begrudgingly.
“It wasn’t hard,” Una said. She regretted it immediately, because it had been hard, and she wanted to be paid accordingly. She’d said it only because Holga had called her girl. She could never decide what was the better way to be taken seriously: acknowledging the effort or acting as if it came easily.
“Nah?” Holga didn’t seem put off. Something had changed subtly in the way she was looking at her.
If the axe had been a test, then Una had passed, possibly. Una said, “Dragon blood is ferrous. More than ours.” It came out sounding stiff, but when she picked the lodestone up off of her workbench and held it out, Holga took it from her. She squinted down at it, interested. It was still covered in flaking blood and flecks of pure iron, stuck and standing on end like fine metallic fur.
“What do you know,” Holga said, setting the stone down. She paused. “How the hell did you know?”
She only sounded curious, not accusatory, but Una still asked, “How did you end up with an axe from Foehammer’s forge?”
Holga looked at her, head tilted. Una held her gaze evenly. Holga’s eyes were so dark that they were almost black, but in the end, she shook her head and grinned, just a little.
“Borrowed it from a guard,” she said, so for all Una knew, she had never been to Triboar, and she didn’t seem to think that Una owed her an answer for an answer. She hefted the axe. “It was in pretty bad shape when I borrowed it from him.”
Now it was half-melted and still lustrous, polished to a bright sheen. “I scrubbed it down with sand,” Una said. “Then the oxhair brush. Then boiled-”
“Linseed oil,” Holga said. “I got that.” She looked thoughtful, tucking it back into its sheath. “Oxhair brush. Huh.”
“Ox or auroch.” They’d used auroch in Triboar, but the hair was expensive. Aurochs were bastards, with thick hides. You could raise an ox from a calf; it could have a good long life of carting and plowing before you used its pelt.
“Aurochs are bastards,” Holga said absently. She leaned against the counter. “Listen, can I ask you something?”
This was a pattern, Una was noticing. She nodded, hoping it wouldn’t be a long, rambling question about art. The night before, when she’d been trying to fall asleep, she had found herself trying to work out what the opposite of a painting would be.
“You have a guy come in yesterday? About yea high, dark hair, big talker? I mean, never shuts up. Just-”
“Yes,” Una said, and would have said much earlier, but the way Holga placed her hand suggested she thought he was only about two inches taller than her. “I think he said his name was Ed.”
A dark shadow passed over Holga’s face. Una leaned back, just barely. Holga was carrying a very big axe.
“I knew it,” she said ominously. “There’s no such thing as striped paint.”
“No,” Una agreed, because she wasn’t sure what else to say. When she was forging hammers for farmers, she almost never felt that way.
Holga’s brow was still furrowed. “What did he say to you?”
“Something about paintings,” Una said, and guessed she could be honest. “That I didn’t understand.”
“Paintings?” Holga said, blinking. It surprised her; she relaxed a little. She started to dig through one of the pouches attached to her belt. “All right, tell me what I owe you.”
vi.
Two tendays went by with no strange visitors and no dragon blood. The most interesting thing Una did was forge a broadsword.
She hadn’t done that in months. The urge struck her out of nowhere, but it came out beautifully, heavy and razor-sharp and evenly beveled.
It used more of her stock of steel than she could really afford to lose. If it didn’t sell at the next two markets, she would have to offer it up in the village, and it would probably end up being used to cut grass or butcher cattle. For the moment, though, it was hanging on her wall, Freshly forged swords always looked hungry to Una, waiting to see battle.
“Hey, look at that,” Holga said, reaching up to touch the pommel, while Una picked up all the pairs of tongs her entrance had sent clattering across the floor. When Una straightened up, she tugged her axe free. “I got some bad news for you.”
It was unbelievably rusted, coated in a thick, flaking orange crust. It looked as if it had been languishing for a hundred years in some bricked-up tomb. Una could barely make out the general shape of the blade. It had corroded. Its sharp edge was ragged – eaten away at, notched.
“You’ll need a new blade,” she said blankly. She could have snapped it with her bare hands. Just touching it stained her fingers the color of hammered copper. “What did this?”
“This huge fucking cockroach thing,” Holga said, as if that made sense, but then Una remembered how rust blades were made. Holga sighed, patting the haft. “Me and this axe have been through a lot.”
“I could forge a blade,” Una said. She was already making calculations in her head – how much steel she would need, and whether she could save any of the original. The heft was untouched; it could even keep the insignia. Underneath all the rust, there might still have been something, something she could melt down and mix with the rest and shape. She would just have to be careful.
“Wouldn’t be the same,” Holga said, sounding resigned, and sheathed the axe again. Every time she moved, scabby flakes of rust went drifting down to the floor.
Una understood. An axe was its blade, just like a sword, and a blade was only worth what it had done. You could mold the same steel in the same shape, but it wouldn’t have soaked up the same blood.
She wondered, though, why Holga had even brought it to her. Holga couldn’t have actually expected her to be able to get it clean. That would have required much, much more than oxhair.
“A mending spell might help,” she said. “But you would have to find a sorcerer, and-”
“Tried it,” Holga said. “If you can believe it, it was better before.”
She was chewing the inside of her lip. She looked back over her shoulder to the far wall.
If the broadsword had had arms, Una thought, it would have just reached up and unmounted itself, and probably bounced across the floor on its pommel to her. As it was, it just did its level best to gleam fetchingly. It was as if it could sense the chance to see more than fields.
vii.
In the village, gossip was circulating, but Una only caught snatches. She could only eavesdrop on the men who talked to each other in her shop, waiting while she wrapped up their freshly forged tools.
This was what she learned: there were four or five or possibly six of them, living in a big run-down house at the village's edge. One of them was a child. One was a man who had won a lot of money off of Ander Roughridge playing liars’ dice, which Una privately thought had been a long time coming. One was a blunt, short-tempered woman with a pet fox, or possibly a pet dire wolf, or possibly a pet deer.
Holga came back to have a couple of dull knives sharpened. Holga came back to ask her where she bought boiled linseed oil. Una was punching the eye through a bar of iron that had aspirations towards being a carpenter’s axe. It wasn’t that interesting, but Holga stayed for a while, watching her.
viii.
Holga really did have a distinctive way of opening that door. She was always gentle closing it, but when she came in, she flung it open and sent it crashing into the wall. Una heard it from outside, returning from the woodshed, and when she came out into the shop, she knew who would be there.
Soaked to the skin. Wearing, for some reason, a very bedraggled fox-fur stole.
“Hey, girl,” Holga said. She shook herself like a dog, sending droplets flying in all directions. “Can I borrow a pair of tongs?” She dislodged the stole – which, Una realized, was not a stole. It twisted in the air and landed on its feet, yipping angrily.
“Tongs?” Una felt around blindly for any scrap of cloth, until her fingers found softness and she tossed it to her. Whatever Holga was covered in, it was clear and not water. It was thicker than that, plastering Holga’s hair to her scalp, running down her bare arms, and her fox’s fur had congealed into spiky tufts. “What is that?”
“Long story,” Holga said, mopping herself dry with what had up to that point been Una’s nicest cloak. Oh, well. When she bent down, the fox opened its mouth and hissed at her, but she said, “Come on. You aren’t gonna do it yourself.”
The fox cocked its head, as if it were actually listening to her. Then it lifted its chin and delicately extended one paw.
“This is Doric,” Holga said, toweling the fox down and in doing so, industriously covering Una’s nicest cloak in gelatinous pawprints. “If she could talk, she’d say hi.”
It was a fox after all, Una guessed, and not a wolf, no matter that Anders Roughridge had sworn on his mother. Doric looked at her balefully, then slunk away to groom herself under the counter.
“And you need a pair of tongs?” Una had plenty of those; she tugged the basket closer.
“Yeah, she’s got this ring stuck on her,” Holga said. “Come on, show her.” She reached down and scooped the fox up with one hand – it snapped viciously at her fingers – then set it on the counter.
Doric did. It was a thick silver ring inlaid with a green stone; a strange, murky shade of green that made Una’s stomach churn. The longer she looked at it, the cloudier it seemed, as if there were mist swirling inside. It was swimming in her vision, blurring her thoughts. She wanted to caress the engraved band.
“Don’t look too hard at it,” Holga said, waving a hand in front of her face, and Una snapped out of it with a sick lurch and leapt back. She rubbed at her eyes, and Holga cupped her hand around the ring. “It’s cursed or something. She can’t get it off, and we can’t get it off of her.”
It was tight around the fox’s foreleg when Una tugged at it, too tight for her to slide it down over her paw.
“How did she get it on?”
“Her leg wasn’t this big,” Holga said, which created more questions than it answered. Una tried very hard not to look at the ring, reaching for the tongs.
“Thanks,” Holga said, and then, to the fox, “You aren’t gonna like this.” She gathered her up into her arms and held her tightly to her chest, one paw extended. “All right, tug.”
Una clamped the tongs around the ring. It really was incredibly hard not to look at it. There was a soft voice in her head whispering that she did want to look at it, that it was in fact a very good idea to look at it, and not to do anything hasty that could cause harm to come to it. She felt suddenly drowsy. Really, what she wanted to do was kiss the ring, and possibly devote the rest of her life to protecting the ring, and hit this woman who was threatening the ring over the head hard with her heavy steel tongs.
“I told you not to look at it,” Holga said impatiently, batting the tongs aside just before Una could raise them. The haze fell away again, like waking up from a confused dream. Una could have been licking black ash, her mouth felt so dry.
Holga reached out and tilted Una’s chin up, still holding the fox. “Here, look at me.”
Una swallowed and met her gaze, and Holga was right – that did make it a little easier. The voice quieted; it was barely even a murmur. She looked into Holga’s dark eyes, and Holga held the yelping fox, and Una yanked on the ring as hard as she possibly could, until it came loose with a suctioned pop. At which point she fell over.
It knocked the wind out of her, and she sat up, panting. Holga’s feet were still planted firmly on the floor, even though what she was holding was not a fox, but a furious, equally bedraggled girl.
“We rode past eight villages!” Doric said. She twisted free. “We could have asked for help anywhere, but you-”
Holga clamped a hand over her mouth. She broke off, making angry spluttering noises.
“You were fine,” Holga said. “You love being a fox. Come on, say thank you.”
The angry spluttering noises went on for a little while, then quieted. Holga lifted her hand experimentally, poised to clamp down again.
“Thank you,” Doric said stiffly. She shot a scathing look Holga’s way, then stomped out. Una was still sort of reeling from the transformation.
“She’s not a fox,” she said. She was putting it together – the fox, the wolf. A druid, a Wild Shape, to go along with the sorcerer Holga apparently knew.
“Yeah, not always.” Holga said it as if it were old news. “Sometimes she’s like this.” A vaguely self-satisfied expression flitted across her face. “Sometimes she’s a deer.”
At that moment, Una noticed that when the ring had slipped out of her tongs, it had rolled into the far corner. Now it was just lying there, looking very harmless, but also very beautiful. The thing to do, Una decided, would be to distract Holga. If she could just get Holga out of here, she and the wonderful, wonderful ring could begin their new life together.
The ring was gone. She went reeling back, alone in her head again. Holga had pocketed it – and not, Una could tell, because it had told her to.
“Do you not hear the voice?” Una asked. She didn’t understand it.
“Yeah, I do,” Holga said. She shrugged. “I tell it to shut up, though.”
ix.
Just after the first snow, Holga came in with another girl. This one was a girl from the start and – this was a relief – stayed that way.
“Hey,” Holga said, once Una had set down her chisel. "This is my kid,” and the girl grinned at Una with one missing canine and told her that her name was Kira. “She’s twelve years old. I think it’s time she got her first real blade.” She clapped Kira on the back, then steadied her before she could fall over.
If Kira had really never had one, that meant Holga had been exercising incredible restraint. in Triboar, they’d sometimes forged blades for the remnants of the Griffon tribe. Daggers had been for two-and three-year-olds to play with. By twelve, you might have had a broadsword.
“Holga’s going to teach me to use it,” Kira said confidingly, planting both elbows on the counter. It was strange that she called her by her first name. “But I’m only allowed to if I’m in real danger, or for-” She trailed off, trying to remember.
“Valiant acts of heroism,” Holga said, and glanced at Una out of the corner of her eye.
“Valiant acts of heroism,” Kira echoed, puffing out her chest a little. “And I have to ask Holga first. And I have to promise I won’t chop off any of my fingers.”
“Yeah, that’s right,” Holga said. “What else?”
“If Dad finds out, it’s for whittling,”
“Atta girl, bug,” Holga said, and tousled her hair.
Dad, Una thought, not that she was surprised, not that she had assumed anything. Not that there had been any reason for her to have assumed anything, and thankfully, at that exact moment, there was a tremendous crash outside.
It sounded as if a hundred jars had slid off a shelf, then shattered all at once against the cobblestones. They all froze, listening. Una could make out a muffled argument – someone shouting, someone else trying frantically to explain himself.
“I leave Simon by himself for one second,” Holga said wearily. “Hold on.” She rushed out, already reaching for the hilt of the broadsword, leaving Kira there.
“I wanted a sword like Holga’s,” Kira said. She looked up at Una earnestly; for an instant, Una thought of her youngest sister. “But she said I could only have a dagger.”
“Hers is heavy,” Una said. She would have paid any price for any blade at twelve, but she didn’t say that to her. “You can do plenty with a dagger.” Holga would teach her, she supposed, even though she could barely imagine Holga wielding a shortsword, let alone a dagger. It would have looked like a pocketknife in her hand.
The argument outside seemed to be escalating. Una couldn’t tell whose side Holga had joined.
Una had, as a matter of fact, just forged a dagger. She’d made a longsword for one of the red-cloaked riders, and there had been just enough good steel left over. It wasn’t much to look at, plain blade and plain leather-sheathed hilt, but it was finely honed.
She had always had a certain fondness for daggers. Just because they were short, they were always underestimated.
Kira’s face fell a little, seeing it, and Una understood. She had probably been hoping for something pretty. Una knew that kind of blade: delicate etching, leaves and flowers. Intricately carved metal that snapped as soon you drove it in.
No blade of that kind that would come from her forge, but no one ever complained about Una’s swords once they’d lifted one. She curled Kira’s fingers around the grip and watched her disappointment fade. She gave her a nod, go on, and Kira laughed and thrust it at empty air.
“Tighten your grip,” Una said. She was quoting her own father, remembering what he’d said to her eldest brother all those years ago. “Don’t ever try to steady the blade with your finger. You don’t want your hand to slide down, so tuck in your thumb unless you really are whittling.”
Kira tucked in her thumb.
“I don’t know how to whittle,” she said, shrugging. “Do you? Did you carve that?” She was pointing to the little carved fox that Una had left sitting on the counter.
Its brothers and sisters were tucked away in a box, and Una kept that box hidden under the foot of her bedroll. But it was a first-day, and she had finished making horseshoes an hour before they’d come in. She hadn’t expected them. She had picked up the piece of wood idly, just to pass the time.
It wasn’t finished. When the door had opened, she’d still been working on it, peeling pale curls of wood from the sides of its muzzle. The thought of anyone laying eyes on it made her face feel hot; it didn’t even have eyes yet, just facets carved out for them.
“I did,” she said, and nudged it into the shadow of the basket of tongs. She should have pocketed it; Kira reached for it before she could tell her not to.
“She looks like Doric,” she said, giggling. Una wondered how she could possibly tell.
Outside, there was a series of loud thumps. The shouting stopped. Holga came back in, panting and mopping her brow.
Kira showed her the dagger, her good fingers-curled grip on it, and then, to Una’s embarrassment, the fox. “Hey, that’s pretty good,” Holga said, and then, squinting at it, “Is that Doric?”
“It’s just a fox,” Una said, wishing that the fire would have spit, which would have given her an excuse to go and prod at the embers. “You can keep it, if you want.” She regretted making the offer as soon as she heard herself say it, which made no sense. It was just a carving, and not a particularly good one.
“Thank you,” Kira said, and then, “And thank you for the dagger,” once Holga had elbowed her. She turned to her. “Do you think Doric will like it?”
Holga shook her head. “It’s dead wood.” Thank Illmater, Una thought, patron saint of the long-suffering, and druids. Kira grimaced. “Don’t tell her it’s for whittling. Just tell her you’re gonna stab somebody.”
x.
When they were almost through the door, something seemed to occur to Holga. She turned back to Una. She asked, “You know how to fix a lute?”
“No,” Una said, “not unless it’s made out of steel.”
Holga shook her head. “I wish.” She didn’t seem disappointed, just sort of resigned. “All right. See you, girl.”
xi.
Una’s shop always seemed very quiet right after someone had left. Through the closed door, over the ever-present crackle of the forge, she could still hear their voices.
“You should let Simon try to fix it,” Una heard Kira say. “He’s been practicing.” She heard but couldn’t make out the words to Holga’s muffled reply.
“I have been,” said one of the voices Una had heard earlier – Simon, she guessed. “I did a lyre yesterday, Holga, on the first try.”
“Why don’t you practice watching where you’re going,” said the other voice Una had heard, and that started the whole scuffle over again.
There was a noise like someone being lifted off their feet, protesting vehemently, and then plopped down very hard onto the ground. The door eased open quietly just a couple of inches, just enough for Kira to poke her head back through.
"Bye, Una,” she said. “Thank you again for the fox and dagger. Holga used to be married, but not anymore."