Kaine Ashford's Arc

Chapter 4 of 7

The inspector stepped inside the boarding house, and Kaine followed close behind. Jane lay against the far wall, her breathing shallow, blood soaking through the makeshift bandage on her shoulder. The inspector set the satchel down beside her and opened it, pulling out clean cloth and a sealed vial. Kaine moved toward Jane, but the inspector raised one hand without looking up. "You claimed this building as a licensed healing facility." He pressed the cloth against Jane's wound with practiced efficiency. "Show me your license." Kaine's jaw tightened. "I'm a blacksmith. I have a smith's certification, not a healer's license." The inspector's hands didn't stop working, but his voice went flat. "Then you lied to an elven authority conducting an official investigation. That's falsification of credentials." He glanced toward the door, where the second inspector stood watching. "She'll be arrested the moment I finish treating her. Unless you provide collateral worth the claim you made." Kaine looked at Jane's pale face, then at the certification hanging in his forge across the clearing—the ornate seal that proved his right to work metal, the only official credential he'd ever earned. Outside, the scabbard he'd been engraving for a client sat half-finished on his workbench, gold filigree only partly inlaid. That commission would have bought supplies for two months. He met the inspector's eyes. "My blacksmith certification. It's yours until the investigation closes. But she stays here, and you let me finish treating her." The inspector wiped Jane's blood from his hands and stood. "Bring it. If you don't return within the hour, she goes to the watchtower in chains." Kaine crossed the clearing at a dead run, his boots kicking up dust. He grabbed the certification from the wall, the parchment still warm from where morning sun had struck it. The seal caught the light—proof of three years spent learning the craft after he'd walked away from everything before. He carried it back to the boarding house and handed it to the inspector, who folded it into his document case without ceremony. Jane's eyes were open now, watching him. The inspector left without another word, and Kaine knelt beside her with the satchel she'd lost when they shut down her clinic. He'd bought them time, but he'd just surrendered the only thing that let him earn the coin he needed to finish what he'd started. The clinic was closer than it had ever been, and further away than ever.