32. Penny
Penny
T he sun was barely cresting the cliffs around Ashpoint, and my breath fogged in the morning air as I tailed Kit through the town square. We both moved a bit stiffly, our left arms near dead at our sides to avoid the swishing of our shirts over freshly branded skin.
I’d worn Kit’s button-up again, claiming he was right about the comfort, though I had no need to explain because he hadn’t questioned.
Rosie was opening the bakery stand and laying out piles of cookies and rows of fruit tarts. She waved as we passed, then continued her work one-handed, carefully guarding her own brand.
By the time we arrived at the smithy, people were strolling the streets. The usual sights and smells of what was slowly becoming home felt comforting, a relief after the dread leading up to the first Oath.
The worst was behind us now.
Well, the first of many worsts.
I watched while Kit lit the forge, studying his practiced movements and the sweat that beaded across his brow as he tended the growing flames.
I used to think fire made people look ghoulish, casting strange shadows and an angry red glow, but it turned Kit’s pale cheeks rosy and curled his hair at his temples.
He looked so warm and welcoming that I didn’t mind the heat rolling off the glowing coals.
While a growing stack of orders kept Kit busy, I had time to fill.
I sketched designs along the edges of my notebook, then applied them to leather: tooling, punching, and lacing in a rhythm that occupied me until my stomach grumbled in want of lunch.
Kit was dipping a sawblade in a vat of oil as I turned on my stool to call over to him.
But, when I opened my mouth, it wasn’t my voice that filled the air.
“Mister Koesters!” A hulking mountain of a man I recognized immediately as Anders ducked under the canopy of the blacksmith stall. His shirt was open, exposing his healed brand much like he had the night before.
Ignoring the tongs and hot piece of metal Kit held, Anders barreled toward him and slung an arm around his shoulders.
Kit cringed, and I stood from my stool, meriting Anders’s notice.
“And the recruit!” the big man crowed. “You’re official now. How’s it feel?”
He peeled away from Kit, who took the chance to gingerly set the sawblade aside. He laid the tongs next to it, then tugged off his gloves and tucked them in the waistband of his apron.
“Good,” I said to Anders’s question. “Glad to be… in the fold. ”
Anders chortled a laugh. “Right, right. What was your name again?”
“Penwell,” I replied.
Kit stood behind Anders, mopping his forehead with the back of his arm.
He shot me an uncertain expression as if worried how I would finish the reintroduction.
I hadn’t missed his omission of my family name the last time Anders was here, but I wasn’t ashamed of my heritage or my connection to the Bone Men’s Shroud Warden, even if Merrick wished I was.
“Penwell Oliver,” I said and waited for recognition to flash on Anders’s ruddy face. When his expression remained blank, I added, “But I go by Penny.”
“That’s it.” Anders nodded. “Penny.” He peered past me at the leather belt spread across my worktable. Shouldering by, he seized it and rubbed his thumb over the scrollwork I’d been engraving. “You make this?” He dangled it out.
I nodded.
“Awful fancy thing just for holding up a man’s pants.”
With Anders out from between us, Kit came close to me and stood nearly pressed against my back. His voice rumbled from over my shoulder.
“Did you need something, Anders?”
Anders tossed the belt onto the table where it toppled a bottle of dye that I rushed to right. The dark brown liquid spilled across the work surface, soaking the edges of my sketchbook while I scrambled for rags to mop it up.
I didn’t hear Anders’s reply over the rush of blood in my ears as I lifted my sketchbook from the mess and tried to daub away the color already seeping in.
When I rounded on the big man with the rags clenched in my fist, I spotted Reimond and Thoma wandering into the shade of the smithy.
The two men’s hands were clasped between them, and the sight was enough to cool the heat of my anger.
Anders sauntered over to the new arrivals with a grin spread across his face. “About time you caught up,” he said, presumably to Reimond, right before he swung his open palm and made a cracking connection with the other initiate’s chest.
The blow drove a grunt out of Reimond, and the color drained from his face as he doubled over.
Anders howled with laughter. “Owed you another,” he said between chuckles.
Thoma scowled at the big man while Reimond wheezed pained breaths.
Anders turned toward Kit and I, then jerked a thumb over his shoulder at Reimond. “Got him better than that earlier. Poor man lost his breakfast over it. Had to go home and change.”
Kit made a grumbling sound, then glanced at the soggy sketchbook I held.
“Not ruined, is it?” he asked quietly.
I looked down as well and chewed my lip. “I don’t think so.”
Anders’s boots raised a low cloud of dust as he tromped through the stall, closing the gap to Kit and me.
“Whaddya say, boys? Either one of you want a pat for good luck?” His arm cocked back, angled to swing toward me.
When he brought it forward, I flinched away as Kit caught the bigger man’s wrist in a white-knuckled grip.
Anders looked a bit stunned while Kit’s face went so stony cold it gave me a chill.
After a lingering moment, Anders huffed a laugh. “Take it easy. I didn’t realize it was like that. ”
The way he bounced his caterpillar brows made me frown .
“Like what?” I asked.
Anders shrugged. “You two live together, work together, may as well sleep together, too.” He flapped his hand toward where Reimond and Thoma loitered at the edge of the shop. “Nothing new. We’ve already got a couple of those.”
My stomach squeezed as though it had been gripped in one of Anders’s meaty fists. I didn’t dare look at Kit before I squeaked protest.
“We aren’t?—”
“Not that I mind,” Anders carried on. “Leaves more women for me. Maybe I’ll get myself two wives.”
“Anders, did you need something?” Kit repeated. “Because this is a place of business, and I don’t like to have my time wasted.”
Stomping toward the front of the shop, Anders looped his arm around Reimond and pulled him further into the stall. Thoma hung back, frowning.
“Reimond and I were just talking about the second Oath,” Anders said. “Making plans. You understand.” He propped his free hand on his hip, and his chest swelled with self-importance.
I sniffed, then grunted. “Seems wise since you failed last time.”
Anders pinned me with a glare. “Oh, I won’t fail again,” he replied. “I’ve got a place picked out. Found it months ago.”
Kit tugged his gloves back on and retrieved the tongs, then used them to select a cold piece of iron from the rack beside the forge.
“Glad you’re here, Thoma,” Kit called toward the short man lingering in the shop entry. “Reminds me I need to get started on those horseshoes. ”
My stomach growled. “I thought we were stopping for lunch?”
Kit didn’t respond while he stoked the coals.
“I said I’ve got a place picked out,” Anders restated as he abandoned Reimond and wormed into the space between Kit and me. “You wanna know where?”
“Not particularly,” Kit muttered, then leaned past the hulking man to call to me. “Bellows, Pen.”
I nodded, and the forge fire whooshed and swelled before dying back.
Anders jumped as the heat rushed over him. Reimond similarly dodged aside as soon as he was free of Anders’s grip, then completed a swift journey back to Thoma.
“What about you, recruit? You wanna know?” Anders clapped his hand on my shoulder hard enough to stagger me. It wasn’t the brand slap I’d feared, but my chest throbbed all the same. “Go ahead,” he said. “Ask me where it is.”
My face scrunched. If this was what needed to happen to get Anders out of the smithy and me closer to my next meal, I would indulge him.
“Where is it?” I asked, my voice flat.
“Not telling!” Anders shouted, then burst into laughter. He pounded my shoulder again, and looked ready to do it a third time before I backpedaled out of range.
Behind him, Kit lifted the glowing piece of iron from the fire.
“Hot metal,” he announced as he swung it dangerously close to Anders’s back.
It nearly brushed the tail of the big man’s untucked shirt in a move that was far more careless than I knew Kit to be.
The hint of a smirk turning up the corner of his mouth was all the proof I needed to know that it had been intentional.
Anders moved out of the range of Kit’s anvil and hammer as he started shaping the piece of metal. Sparks flew, and the steady clanging sound swallowed whatever Anders tried to say next.
Reimond and Thoma gestured to catch Kit’s attention, and he paused long enough to call over to them. “I’ll bring the shoes by tomorrow afternoon, Thoma!”
The couple waved in unison, and their departure lured Anders to follow.
Kit resumed banging on the anvil while Anders bellowed, “Maybe I’ll catch you boys on the road!”
“Doubtful,” Kit muttered and struck the iron again.
We didn’t break for lunch.
We didn’t break at all until Kit finished four horseshoes and I was ready to gnaw on a stick if it would ease the growing ache in my gut.
Besides the hunger, the heat from the forge seemed to target the branded patch of skin on my chest. It warmed me through, uncomfortably so, and I’d taken to huddling in the corner of the shop, scribbling in my damp sketchbook while Kit’s hammer clanged in the background.
While drawing, I thought about things. About Reimond and Thoma being a couple and Anders accusing Kit and me of the same. About Kit not correcting that assumption. We weren’t sleeping together, but we had kissed— I’d kissed him —and I still wasn’t sure what to make of his reaction.