Age of Swords (The Legends of the First Empire #2)

Crack!

Another bolt of lightning split the air, and for an instant, a dazzling array of translucent shades of green illuminated the leaves, a light brighter than the sun.

Crack!

A nearby cottonwood caught fire. Sheared in half, the tree fell in a rain of sparks and flame. The wind fanned the fires started by the strikes, spreading an inferno—ice and fire, wind and debris. Persephone stared, lost somewhere between horror and awe.

Suri slapped the keystone, and the door closed.

Outside, the lightning cracks and hammering hail continued, but from a safe, muffled distance. Panting from the run and realizing they’d escaped without significant injury, the three exchanged the stunned looks of survivors. Relief washed over Persephone…until she noticed they weren’t alone.

—

Gifford would never win a footrace. Although he came to this realization late in life, everyone else knew it the day he was born. His left leg lacked feeling, couldn’t support his weight, and dragged. His back wasn’t much better. Severely twisted, it forced his hips in one direction and his shoulders in another. Most people pitied Gifford and a few even despised him. He never understood either.

Roan was the exception. What everyone else saw as hopeless, she took as a challenge.

The two were out in front of Gifford’s roundhouse, and Roan was lashing the wood-and-tin contraption to his left leg, tightening its leather straps. She knelt in the grass before him, wearing her work apron, a smudge of charcoal on the side of her nose. Her dark-brown hair was pulled back in a short ponytail so high on her head that it looked like a rooster’s crest.

Dozens of cuts from working with sharp metal marred her clever little hands. Gifford wanted to hold them, kiss the wounds, and take the pain away. He’d tried taking her hand once, and it hadn’t gone well. She’d pulled away, her eyes widened with fear, and a look of horror crossed her face. Roan had an aversion to being touched—Gifford had known that—he’d simply forgotten himself. Her reaction wasn’t limited to him. She couldn’t suffer anyone’s touch.

Yanking hard on the ankle strap, Roan nodded with a firm, determined expression. “That should do it.” She rose and dusted her clean hands symbolically. Her voice was eager but serious. “Ready?”

Gifford answered by pulling himself up with the aid of his crafting table. The device on his leg, constructed from wooden sticks and metal hinges, squeaked as he rose, a sound like the opening of a tiny door.

“Do you have your weight on it? Try. See if it holds.”

For Gifford, any attempt to support himself with his left leg was akin to leaning on water. But he’d gladly fall on his face for her. Perhaps he could manage a roll and make her grin. If he’d been born with two stout legs, strong and agile, he’d dance and twirl like a fool to amuse her. He might even make her laugh, something she rarely did. In her mind, she was still a slave, something less than nothing. Gifford longed for Roan to see herself the way he did, but damaged as he was, he made a poor mirror casting back a broken image.

Gifford tilted his hips, shifting some weight to his lame leg. He didn’t fall. A strain tugged on the straps wrapped around his thigh and calf, but his leg held. His mouth dropped open, his eyes widened, and Roan actually did smile.

By Mari, what an amazing sight.

He couldn’t help grinning back. He was standing straight—or as straight as his gnarled back allowed. Using magic armor fashioned by Roan, Gifford was winning an impossible battle.

“Take a step,” she coaxed, hands clenched in fists of excitement.

Gifford shifted weight back to his right side and lifted his left leg, swinging it forward. The hinges squeaked once more. He took a step the way normal people did a million times, and that’s when the brace collapsed.

“Oh, no!” Roan gasped as Gifford fell, barely missing the newly glazed cups drying in the morning sun.

His cheek and ear slammed into the hardened dirt, jarring his head. But his elbow, hand, and hip took the bulk of the punishment. To Roan, it must have looked painful, but Gifford knew how to fall. He’d been doing it his entire life.

“I’m so, so, so sorry.” Roan was back on her knees, bent over him as he rolled to his side. Her grin was gone, the world less bright.

“I’m okay, no pwoblem. I missed the cups.”

“The metal failed.” She struggled to hold back tears as her injured hands ran over the brace.

“The tin just isn’t strong enough. I’m so sorry.”

“It held fo’ a while,” he said to cheer her up. “Keep at it. You’ll make it wuk. I know you will.”

“There’s an added force when walking. I should have accounted for the additional weight when your other leg is raised.” She slapped the side of her head several times, flinching with each strike. “I should have realized that. I should have. How could I not—”

He instinctively grabbed her wrist to prevent additional blows. “Don’t do—”

Roan screamed and jerked away, drawing back in terror. When she recovered, they exchanged embarrassed looks, mirroring each other. The moment dragged unpleasantly until Gifford forced a smile. Not one of his best, but it was all he could manage.

To ease past the uncomfortable pause, he picked up the conversation where they’d left off, pretending nothing had happened. “Woan, you can’t know ev-we-thing when doing something new. It’ll be betta next time.”

She blinked at him twice, then shifted her focus. She wasn’t looking at anything in particular; she was thinking. Sometimes Roan thought so intently that he could almost hear it. She blinked again and emerged from the stupor. Walking over to Gifford’s crafting table, she picked up one of his cups. The awkward moment vanished as if it had never happened.

“This design is new, isn’t it?” she asked. “Do you think it could hold its shape at a much larger size? If we could find a way to—”

Gifford’s smile turned genuine. “Yew a genius, Woan. Has anyone told you that?”

She nodded, her little rooster crest whipping. “You have.”

“Because it’s twue,” he said.

She looked embarrassed again, the way she always did when he complimented her, the way she looked when anyone said something nice, a familiar unease. Her eyes shifted back to the brace, and she sighed. “I need something stronger. Can’t make it out of stone; can’t make it out of wood.”

“I wouldn’t suggest clay,” he said, pushing his luck at trying to be funny. “Though I would have made you a beautiful hinge.”

“I know you would,” she said in complete seriousness.

Roan wasn’t one for jokes. Much of humor arose from the unexpected or preposterous—like making a hinge out of clay. But her mind didn’t work that way. To Roan, nothing was too absurd and no idea too crazy.