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

Chapter 2 of 3

The mason finished the forge in six days. Kelly stood in the back room of the armory and watched him tap the last brick into place. The bellows worked. The chimney drew clean. The anvil sat where she wanted it. She had a fire pit ready to eat steel, and no steel to feed it. She walked the length of the main hall and looked at the empty racks. The sawyer's pine spears still leaned against the wall. She could not shape a promise out of pine. She had told the realtor her first blade would clear the bill. That bill came due the moment the mason walked out. Kelly went to the small hall the town had raised beside the armory to sign new recruits. The porch lamps were dark. She sat on the top step with her ledger and worked through her options. The sawmill had no steel. The bank had no steel. The farm had plow iron, pitted and thin. Rachel and Randall's forge had bar stock, but she had counted it twice on her last visit and it was barely enough for their own work. She walked to their shop before the coals cooled. Rachel was banking the fire for the night. Randall was hanging tongs on the wall. Kelly told them plain: she needed steel, enough for one blade now and enough for plate later, and she had no coin until the council paid out. Rachel wiped her hands on her apron. She said the last shipment of bar stock had come up from the south three weeks ago and the next was two months out. She said Kelly could have four bars off their rack tonight. Four bars was one sword. Nothing more. Kelly asked the price. Rachel said the price was a share of the next shipment when it came, paid in labor at their forge. Randall nodded once. Kelly signed the trade in the ledger on their bench. She carried the four bars back through the dark to the armory and laid them on the anvil. She lit the forge herself. She worked through the night folding the steel the way her training taught her, quench and hammer and quench again. By morning she had a rough blade, straight, heavy, unfinished at the hilt but sound at the edge. She brought it to the realty office at first light and set it on the desk. The head realtor turned it in her hands and tested the edge with her thumb. She said the bill was clear. Kelly walked back to the recruitment hall and stood on the porch. She had made one sword. She had emptied Rachel and Randall's rack to do it. The armor she had promised the council would need forty times what she had just spent, and the next shipment of steel would not arrive for two months. She owed labor she had not yet worked, and she had nothing left to arm the recruits who would climb these steps tomorrow.