Raven Meadows's Arc

Chapter 22 of 25

The barn held every board Raven owned, and any thief with one quiet night could empty it. She had a door but no lock, a store but no guard. Tauron watched the gate, but the gate was not the barn. She stood in the doorway at dawn and stared at the loaded shelves. A rope loop and a wooden peg held the door shut. A child could open it. She asked at the lower market who made locks. One name came back three times, spoken with a smirk. A metalworker who dressed in homemade armor and lost the Citadel job. Raven found him at a soot-black forge, the hearth glowing behind him. He wore a suit of dark iron plates, fitted like a shell over a thin frame. He did not look up from the pin he was filing. "I need a lock," Raven said. "For a barn full of lumber. Tonight." Garrick Ironweave set down the pin. He looked at her hands, then her boots. "Barn door. Timber frame?" "Timber frame. Stone walls." "A lock on that door stops nothing." He tapped the anvil. "Frame gives. They pry the hinge side. Or the window." "Then what stops it?" "Iron strap across the whole door. Bolt into the stone, not the wood. Bars on the round windows." He named it flat, like he'd already seen her barn. "One lock is a promise. I make the door mean it." "How long?" "A day. If you carry." Raven carried. She hauled iron bar and coal while Garrick worked at the forge, hammering flat straps and a bolt as thick as her thumb. He barely spoke. He read a scrap of paper twice before he cut the first strap. When she asked why, he said, "Wrong measure wastes iron," and that was the end of it. They worked at the barn past dark. Garrick bolted two iron straps across the door and sank the bolts into the stone wall, not the frame. He fitted bars over both round windows. Last he set a lock into the strap, a squat black box with a keyhole she couldn't see the shape of. "Seven pins," he said. He handed her one heavy key. "One key. Don't lose it." Raven fit the key and turned it. The bolt slid home with a deep clack. She pushed the door. It didn't shift a hair. She pulled the strap. Solid into stone. For the first time the season's wood was shut behind something a man couldn't pry loose in a night. Garrick wiped his hands and looked at the barred windows. "That holds," he said. Then, quieter, "But now there's one key. Lose it, or let the wrong hand hold it, and you've locked yourself out of everything you own." Raven closed her fist around the key. The wood was safe. Now everything hung on one small piece of iron, and on who she trusted to carry it.