Kelly clear come and done of the of Donnell‘s military's Arc

Chapter 1 of 3

Kelly stood in front of the new stone building and read the crooked sign above the door. It said her name. It said armory. It did not say forge. Her commission as head of Donnell's military was three days old, and she had nothing to arm anyone with. The town had built her walls before it built her a fire. Inside, the main hall smelled of fresh mortar. Racks lined one wall, empty. A long table held six practice spears the sawyer had shaved down from pine. Pine would not hold an edge. Pine would not hold a soldier alive through winter. Kelly set her hand on the cold stones and thought about the armor she had promised the town council she would make: full plate, enchanted, a set the raiders in red arm bands would see and turn from. She could not forge a belt buckle in this room, let alone a suit of plate. The judge had signed her appointment. The head lawyer had witnessed it. Neither of them knew that Rachel and Randall's shared forge was too small for anything larger than a sword, and that the coals there ran cool by nightfall. Kelly had walked past that forge twice this week, hoping to see it empty. It never was. She went to the back of the armory. A door she had not opened stood at the rear wall. She pulled it. Behind it was a room the builders had left unfinished — dirt floor, a hole cut high in the wall for a chimney, and a squat brick base already laid at the center. Someone had started a forge here and stopped. Kelly crouched by the brick base. The mortar was set. The flue was framed. It needed a bellows, a hood, an anvil, and fuel. It needed a week of work and coin she did not have. She walked to the realty office. The head realtor was at her desk with a ledger open. Kelly said she needed the unfinished room in the armory finished as a forge, and she needed it billed against her commission. The realtor asked what she would trade if the council refused the cost. Kelly said, "My first blade off that forge. Their choice of edge." The realtor wrote it down and signed it. She said the mason could start in the morning, and the coal would come from the sawmill's scrap yard until Kelly found better. Kelly walked back to the armory before dark. She stood in the unfinished room and measured the brick base with her hands, span by span. It was wide enough for plate work. Barely. She would make it enough. The forge was hers. Now she owed the town a sword she had not yet drawn steel for.