Jeff's Arc

Chapter 9 of 8

Jeff set the silent blade on the anvil. He had done everything right. Forged, cooled, edged, tempered. Still no name rose in him. He stared at the steel until a sound broke the quiet. Someone was climbing the cavern wall, down through a seam he had thought too narrow for a body. A woman dropped to the stone floor. She wore a dark jacket and moved like she already knew the room. She scanned the pit, the pool, the anvil. Her eyes stopped on the blade. Jeff gripped his hammer. No one reached this place. The passage flooded shut behind anyone who tried. "You're the smith," she said. Not a question. "Angelia Gatto. I hunt things that get out of where they belong." Garrick stepped close to Jeff. "Nobody gets down here." "I noticed the seam," Angelia said. "The water pattern was wrong near it. So I came through." She pointed at the blade. "That took metal from the serpent's pool. I've been tracking what came out of a vault with no record. A binding seal." "I don't have a seal," Jeff said. "A seal locks a person still," she said, flat. "Can't move. Can't speak. Can't die. No one knows how to undo it." She looked at the pool. "Someone broke it open. The thing inside got loose. It's been near you." Jeff thought of the stranger who came and went without sound. "Marcus," he said. "He knew the pool. He knew the scales. He wanted the blade finished." Angelia went still. "Describe him." "A man. Quiet. Helped me, then vanished." "That's him," she said. "The one the seal held. He can't tell you what he is. The seal took his words." She crouched by the anvil. "But he can act. He pushed you to finish this blade." Jeff looked at the silent steel. "Why?" "A sealed thing can't name itself," Angelia said. "It can't name anything. He worked through you. The blade carries his silence." She touched the flat of the steel. "It won't speak a name while he's bound to it." The truth landed hard. The blade was not failed. It was gagged. The same silence that held Marcus held the steel. Jeff had forged a legendary blade and chained its name to a prisoner. From her jacket Angelia drew a flower, black and white, crisp petals pressed flat. "Found this in the empty vault," she said. "It marks what the seal was tied to. It's cold. That means the seal is still whole. Still working. On him." Jeff set his hand on the blade beside hers. The steel stayed quiet under his palm. "Then I free him," Jeff said. "Break the seal. The blade gets its name." "No one knows how," Angelia said. "I'll learn," Jeff said. The blade had no name because a bound man held it hostage. To make it legendary, Jeff first had to undo a seal no living person could undo.