“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?”