40
First, Arin made the molds. One, the size and shape of a child’s marble. The other, long and thin and cylindrical. He made two of each kind from fired clay and set the twinned halves aside. He heated lead in the forge’s fire until the metal oozed red.
Arin had been a blacksmith, but blacksmiths rarely work with molds. His clay molds cracked. Hot lead spilled. There was nothing to do but let everything cool into a misbegotten heap and shove it to the side.
It was maddening. And surprising, how Arin realized that he needed those hours in the forge, how work he was once forced to do was now his. He loved that feeling of making something. He smoothed fresh clay, curving it, hollowing it out with a measured tool. He watched new molds bake in the forge’s fire.
When they broke again, he almost didn’t mind. He would make more. One day, they would be right.
*
Arin had told the queen and her brother not to enter the forge. Roshar did anyway, his arm still heavily bandaged, the little tiger padding behind him.
“I think”—Roshar surveyed the disarray—“that you should have taken that dagger and been happy with it.”
Arin handed him a list. “Supplies.”
“My, how the lowly have risen. I’m not your messenger boy.” He read the list. “What do you want that for? What are you making?”
“Your queen’s something more.”
Roshar laughed. “She asked you for ‘something more’? I doubt that this”—he flourished the list at Arin’s latest disaster—“was what she had in mind.”
The tiger nipped Arin’s ankle. He gently nudged its face away. “Roshar, why are you here?”
“I’ve named the cub. I named him after you.”
“Roshar.”
“When Arin grows up, you’ll be sentenced to death by tiger in the Dacran arena. Arin will eat you alive.”
Arin looked at Roshar’s feral grin, and at the soft, mazed face of the tiger. The fire caught its eyes.
Roshar said, “I came to tell you that we burned the plains yesterday.”
Arin glanced up. The green paint that lined Roshar’s eyes made them look narrower, bright. Roshar’s smile changed. It dug in deep. “Casualties?” Arin asked.
“Many.”
“Good.”
“Not quite good enough for you, I’m afraid. You gave sound advice, I admit, but that won’t buy your alliance. I don’t see how this will either.” Roshar looked contemptuously at the items littering the forge’s worktable.
Arin was tempted to explain his idea. “Do you remember the weapons in Risha’s dollhouse?”
Roshar’s expression closed. “Do you remember that seal on your pretty dagger? That knife is a lady’s weapon. Don’t think we don’t know whose.” He shoved at a broken mold. Ceramic dust scraped across the table. Yet Roshar saved the real damage for what he said before leaving, the tiger at his heels. “Don’t wonder, Arin, why we won’t ally with you.”
*
Another article of clothing arrived for Arin. A pair of trimmed gloves. Tensen’s woven code told him that the Moth had uncovered a connection between the water engineer and the emperor’s physician. Sarsine reported that conditions in Herran had worsened. Had Arin secured an eastern alliance? the knots asked. He should return home.
Tensen, despite Arin’s insistence that Kestrel have no colored thread, managed to work her in anyway. Firstsummer had almost arrived, Tensen said. She was a glowing bride. Be happy for her, Arin, said a knotted line as bumpy as a badly healed scar.
But Tensen didn’t know what Arin knew. Tensen didn’t know how cynically Kestrel had sold herself to the person with the most power. He hadn’t seen her face above the sticky tavern table when she admitted her role in the murder of so many people.
Arin threw the gloves in the forge’s fire. They smelled like burning flesh.
Kestrel would never have his happiness.