Edria
Itell myself I'm not thinking about him.
I'm thinking about the wheel fitting I need to finish before Thursday, about the grain supply, about whether Finn remembered to bank the forge fire before bed.
I'm thinking about Velis's demand for fifteen blades and how many extra nights that will cost me.
I'm thinking about Malrec's grey eyes moving over my forge like he was pricing everything in it.
I am not thinking about Nyrius.
Sorella doesn't believe me, which is the problem with having a friend who notices things for a living.
The tavern is warm and loud on a Thursday night, smelling of wood smoke, spilled ale, and the mutton stew Sorella keeps simmering from midday onward.
I'm halfway through my first cup before she leans across the bar with her amber eyes bright and her coiled hair wrapped up in a deep red scarf, wearing the expression she reserves for information she's been sitting on all day.
"So," she says. “You’ve spoken to him twice?”
“Who are you talking about?"
"The dark elf lord." She refills my cup before I've asked. "He came back to the forge twice. People are talking."
"People in Oxwood talk about everything. Last month they spent a week on Aldric's fence post."
"Aldric's fence post didn't come back a second time." She plants her elbows on the bar. "He delayed his entire hunting party to come sharpen daggers that didn't need sharpening."
"How do you know they didn't need sharpening?"
"Because Perrin's grandson was watching from the alley and said the blades looked fine." She grins. "So why is a dark elf border lord finding excuses to stand in your forge?"
"Because he finds it entertaining to annoy me."
"And do you find it entertaining?"
I drink instead of answering, which she correctly reads as yes.
"Edria." She drops her voice, but the grin stays. "I've seen how you get when something bores you. You don't get that color in your face."
"It's the forge heat."
"You walked here from home."
I set my cup down. "Sorella."
"I'm just saying he's not terrible to look at, for a dark elf." She tilts her head. "Very tall. Good jaw. The white hair is striking."
"Please stop."
"I heard he paid double for the horseshoes."
"He overpaid to make a point."
"What point?"
"That he could." I trace a scratch in the bar top with my thumbnail. "Rich men do that. It's not interesting."
"Coming back twice is interesting."
"He's bored. His hunting party is stuck. I'm a novelty because I don't bow and scrape." I pick my cup back up. "Once the novelty wears off, he'll move on to the next border village and forget Oxwood exists."
Sorella considers this. She hears excuses all day long, and mine are no different. "Maybe," she says. "Or maybe the way you described watching him walk back from the village yesterday means something different than novelty."
I open my mouth. I close it.
She laughs, full and warm, and pushes a bowl of stew toward me. "Eat. You look tired."
I eat, and we talk about other things—her supplier raising prices on spirits, the miller's ongoing feud with the Henley family over water rights, Finn's recent attempt to haggle with a passing merchant and how badly it went.
By the second cup I've stopped monitoring my own expressions, which is probably what she was waiting for, because she circles back without warning.
"The tension is real," she says simply. "Between you two. I'm not teasing you anymore—I'm telling you. I've watched enough people come through this tavern to know when something is there."
I look at my cup. "It doesn't matter if it is."
"Why not?"
"Because he's an elf lord and I'm a blacksmith who forges illegal blades to keep my family alive." I say it quietly. "That's not a tension that goes anywhere good."
Sorella is quiet for a moment. Then she nods, once, and refills my cup a third time. She doesn't push further, and I don't let myself think about whether she's right.
We leave the tavern close to the ninth hour, stepping out into cold air that bites after the warmth inside. The lane is mostly quiet—a few people moving between buildings, a dog barking somewhere toward the mill.
Then I hear it. Raised voices, unsteady with drink, coming from around the tavern's outer wall.
Three men—Malrec's overseers, I recognize two of them—have cornered a small group near the alley entrance. A woman and two older men, none of them with anywhere to go. One of the overseers is waving a folded paper, his words slurred but loud.
"—three weeks past due, and the magistrate's patience is done—"
"It's past the ninth hour," I say, walking toward them before Sorella can finish grabbing my sleeve.
"Edria—"
"Go inside." I shake her off gently. "I mean it."
The overseers turn. The one with the paper has a red face and the loose posture. He was at the tavern all night and his cup was almost never empty.
"Stay out of this." He points at me. "Official business."
"Official business doesn't happen in an alley at night." I stop a few feet away. "Come back tomorrow, sober, during collection hours."
"You don't set collection hours."
"No, but the magistrate does, and I'm fairly sure they're not posted as drunk, after dark, against a wall." I give a sharp snort. "Go home."
The second overseer steps forward. He's bigger than the first—broad across the shoulders, steadier on his feet. He looks me over once and then reaches out and grabs the young woman by the upper arm, fingers digging in.
"You're going to want to—"
He stops talking.
I've got my hand on the knife at my hip, not drawn but not hidden. The first overseer sees it and goes still. The woman is staring at me with wide eyes.
"Let her go." My voice comes out flat. "Now."
"You're threatening an official—"
"I haven't done anything yet."
A new voice, from behind me and to the left. Quiet, unhurried, with an edge underneath it that cuts through the drunk overseers' bluster like a draft through an open door.
"I'd listen to her."
Nyrius steps into the lamplight from the lane, still dressed for travel, his pale violet eyes moving from overseer to overseer with detached attention as if the situation is a minor inconvenience. Another elf in his party is two steps behind him.
The overseers look at each other.
"My lord, we're collecting on behalf of—"
"I know who you collect for." He moves to stand beside me without looking at me, his focus entirely on the men across the alley. "And I know what hour it is. Release her."
The broad-shouldered one drops the woman's arm. She backs toward the older men immediately, and the three of them move quickly away down the lane.
The overseers look at Nyrius for a long moment. Then the one with the paper folds it, poorly, and shoves it inside his coat. They leave without another word.
I let go of the knife handle.
Sorella took my advice to go inside. I can't even blame her.
"Are you injured?" Nyrius asks.
"No." I roll my shoulders back. "I had it."
"You had a knife and three large men." He glances at me sideways. "You had part of it."
I don't argue, mostly because he's not wrong. He falls into step beside me when I start toward home.
“Where are you going?” I ask.
“I’m escorting you home.”
“How do you know I’m going home?” I arch an eyebrow and glanced in his direction.
Nyrius laughs. “Lucky guess.”
“I do know my way around Oxwood. There’s no need for an escort.”
“Those men are too drunk to see reason and might try to follow you, get retribution,” he says.
I couldn’t argue with that, so I stop trying to make good arguments.
We walk in quiet for half a block before he speaks.
"Men who use authority to frighten people with nothing left to lose." He says it to the road ahead. "I have little patience for it."
I look at him from the corner of my eye. "You're a dark elf lord."
"Yes."
"Your kind built the system that makes those men possible."
He doesn't answer immediately. His jaw moves slightly, like he's turning something over, choosing what to set down and what to keep.
"That's not untrue," he finally says.
"It's not a partial truth, either."
We reach my door. He stops when I do, standing in the narrow lamplight from the window above.
"Get some sleep," he says. "You look like you haven't had enough of it."
I study him for a moment—the exhaustion around his eyes that mirrors what I see in my own reflection, the way he said what he said about the overseers like it cost him something to admit it.
I go inside without answering.
I don't hear him leave right away, and I don't look out the window to check. But I stand in the dark hallway for longer than I should before I take off my boots, and I'm still turning his non-answer over when I finally fall asleep.