Thorns of midnight

Chapter 3- WTB

Ronan drifted to the quench trough, peered at his reflection, and made a face at himself. “News,” he said. “The council wants another meeting. There’s talk of watch rotations. And talk—quiet talk—of the levy being ‘good sense.’” He put the last two words in the kind of quotation marks a man uses when he wants to break something without touching it.

Father’s jaw worked. “Good sense is what people call fear when it’s dressed to dine with company.”

Ronan’s eyes cut to me, apology and warning tangled there. He saw more than I wished he did. “I’ll go with you tonight,” he said. “If you’re going.”

“We always go,” I answered. “To remind them we have spines.”

“You do,” he said softly. “Enough for all of us.”

The bar brightened toward yellow-white. I pulled it free; the heat ghosted my knuckles, a lick of dragon-tongue, the sweet-rot scent of green wood turning to flame. I lined the iron against the fuller and drew it into shape, the hammer’s face kissing it true. Rhythm settled: three light, one heavy; half turn, full turn; breathe on the third stroke. Father matched me with his own work, his blows a phrase I could hum with my eyes closed. The world narrowed to the bell’s deep sigh and the language we spoke without thinking.

And yet—between one strike and the next—the feeling came back. That prickle at the nape, the sense of being observed as you might observe a blade: not for ornament, but for worth. It was as if a gaze had weight and I had stepped beneath it. The iron wavered under my hand. I almost missed.

“Again,” Father said quietly, as if he had seen me falter without looking. “Find your shoulder.”

“I have it,” I said, and found it.

The afternoon lengthened. When the light pulled long fingers across the lane, Father sent Ronan to haul a crate to the square—hinges and nails we owed the cooper, a pair of good knives for the midwife who refused coin if the hands paying it were young and frightened. He went with a promise to return, which he always kept, though he did not always keep it quickly. When he was gone the forge grew clean of his noise. Only the work remained, and Father’s company, which is quieter and truer.

“Take water,” Father said after a while. “You’re stubborn, not immortal.”

“Stubbornness is poor armor if you faint into the trough,” I admitted. I drank until the world sharpened again.

He leaned against the table, arms folded. In that posture he looked less a smith and more a judge. “Do you want to tell me why your eyes keep going to the door?”