Sterling Forge's Arc

Chapter 4 of 31

Sterling woke before the candle guttered. Linny was already dressed, the good blade wrapped in oilcloth beside her boots. Gray light bled through the shutters. Dawn was maybe an hour off. He sat up on the trunk and felt the crack in his own blade press against his ribs through his coat. "The fae have your scent," he said. "We don't cross the ridge without something to cover it." "I know." "Then what." She pulled on her painted hat. "Not Lena. She'd tie me to the bedpost." She looked at him flat. "She used thread last time. It ran out. I'm not asking her again." He stood. "Then who." "You." She opened the door. They went down the narrow stairs. Her father sat by the low fire in a clean shirt, color back in his cheeks for the first time in months. A cup steamed in his hand. Glen looked up when they hit the last step. His eyes moved over the bundle under Linny's arm and the sword-shape under Sterling's coat. He did not stand. "You're going," Glen said. Not a question. "Yes," Linny said. He looked at Sterling. Sterling met it. He had known this man since he was a boy bringing spoons up the lane. "Bring her back," Glen said. "I will." Glen nodded once and turned his face to the fire. Linny bent and kissed the top of his bald head, quick, like she was afraid to linger. Then she was out the door and Sterling followed. The smithery was cold. He hadn't banked the coals. Linny went straight to the slack tub and past it to the back wall where yesterday's fire lay dead in the hearth. She dropped to her knees and started scooping ash into a clay jar with her bare hands. "What are you doing," he said. "It worked last time." "What worked." "Ash. On my skin, in my hair. I walked past three of them at the tree line and they didn't turn." She kept scooping. Gray smeared up her wrists. He watched her fill the jar. He thought about Lena's thread and how it had dissolved on her in the square. He thought about the dawn coming. He had nothing better. He knelt beside her and used the small shovel and filled a second jar to the lip. She sat back on her heels and looked at him. Her hands were black. There was a streak of gray across her cheek where she had pushed her hair aside. "You believe me," she said. "No." He capped the jar. "But I'm coming." She almost smiled. She stood, tucked one jar into her coat pocket, and gave him the other. He slid it into the pouch at his hip beside the cracked blade. Outside, the sky had turned the color of pewter. They walked toward the ridge.