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.

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.

Kelly woke on the armory floor with the cold anvil at her back. The forge had gone gray. One sword hung on the wall. The council wanted a full set of plate armor by month's end, and she had emptied the only steel rack in town to make that single blade. Two months of waiting would cost her the post. She crossed the yard to the training hall. The recruits were already inside, six of them, waiting in a loose line by the door. She had told them to come at dawn. She had nothing to hand them but pine shafts and rope. The hall smelled of new-cut cedar. Along the back wall stood the practice rack the carpenters had bolted down the week before. Painted bars ran across its frame. Canvas bags hung on chains beneath. Kelly stopped in front of it and stared at the iron pins holding the crossbars. She put her hand on the yellow bar and pulled. It turned in its sleeve. She tested the red one. Solid iron. She rapped it with her knuckle and heard the note she wanted. She counted the bars. Seven, all iron, all thicker than her thumb. She counted the chains. She counted the pins and the plate feet bolted to the floor. She did the math against a breastplate, a helm, greaves. It was not enough for forty times a sword. It was enough for a start. She turned to the recruits. She told them to strip the rack. They stared. One asked if she meant the whole frame. She said the bars first, then the chains, then the pins, then the plates on the floor. She said to leave the wood standing. The recruits went at it with wrenches and a pry bar. The bags came down in a heap of canvas and sand. The bars came out one by one and stacked at Kelly's feet. By noon the rack was a wooden skeleton and the iron lay in a pile that reached her knees. She walked to the courthouse and found the judge inside. She told Ed Edwards plain what she had done and what she intended. She said the practice rack was town property and she had stripped it for armor stock. She asked him to write it into the record before anyone called it theft. Ed looked at her a long moment. He asked if the recruits would train on bare wood. She said they would train on bare wood for two months. He wrote the note and signed it and pressed his seal. Kelly carried the first bar back to the forge and set it on the anvil. She had bought herself the start of a breastplate. She had also stripped the training hall of every tool her recruits needed to learn to fight. The council would get their armor. The men on the porch would drill with sticks until the shipment came.