“Where’ve you been hoarding the rest of the coins?”
A sudden chill grips my spine, but his voice is casual, so I keep swinging my hammer. “What coins?”
“Don’t be daft. You know what coins. I see how much businessyou’ve been doing.” He gestures at the table, where I’ve got a scrawled list of projects to complete by week’s end. “Where’s the money?”
I turn a flat piece of metal against my anvil, creating a twist in the steel for an augur. “Those coins are for the tax collector.”
“Then you’d best give them to me so I can pay her.”
I make a derisive sound. “That went so well the last time.”
He grabs hold of my arm, and the metal I’ve been working with slides off the anvil to hit the floor. “Tell me.”
I glare at him, my tongs tight in my grip. “Let me go.”
To my surprise, he does. “This is my forge,” he snaps. “Those aremycoins.”
I seize the steel from the ground and roughly shove it back in the forge. “I already paid her what I had,” I lie.
He studies me. I ignore him and wait for the metal to heat.
After a moment, he shifts like he’s going to return to his own work, and a bit of tension falls away from my shoulders. I reach to pull the steel back out of the forge.
And while I’m unsteady, he grabs my arm again, so roughly that it throws me off balance and I drop the tongs. I lose track of the stool and I flail, hopping on one foot so I don’t fall right into the forge.
He grabs my wrist and pulls me closer to the heat, and he’s strong enough that it jerks me to my knees. “Don’t play games with me, boy.”
“I’m not playing,” I snap. I fight his hold, but he’s got more leverage. “We owe two hundred silvers! Do you want to lose the forge?”
“Tell me where they are.”
I grit my teeth. My arm is slick with sweat, so he’s having a hard time holding on—but it also feels like I’m going to pull my arm right out of its socket. “Go ask the tax collector for them back,” I grind out.
He holds my hand so close to the fire that I can feel the promised burn, and my breathing shakes. My father’s dark eyes hold mine, but Igrit my teeth. I can’t tell him. I can’t. I know what he’d do with those coins. We’ll lose everything. I’ve been working too hard.
He pulls me closer, and my free hand scrabbles for the tongs I dropped. “Let me go,” I say, and my voice is full of rage and fear.
“Tell me.”
“They’re gone.” My fingers close on the tongs, and I swing for his arm.
He’s faster than I am, or maybe my life really is just cursed by misfortune. Either way, he catches the iron tool, and he wrenches it out of my grip. When he swings forme, I’ve got nowhere to go. The tongs are heavy, and they crack into my upper arm hard enough that I’m going to have a welt—or possibly a broken arm. But it throws me sideways, and my opposite hand automatically reaches to stop my fall.
I grab onto the hot steel edge of the forge.
The pain doesn’t hit me at first—and then it’s all at once. Blinding and searing and impossibly overwhelming. My head hits the dirt floor of our workshop, and I’m distantly aware of my father shoving me away. I can’t hear what he’s saying because my heartbeat is a roar in my ears, and the sound coming out of my throat is a terrible keening sound I wasn’t aware I could make.
“You foolish boy,” he growls, but there’s a lick of fear under his words now, too. Then he’s got his arms under my arms, and he’s lifting me, half dragging me. For a wild, panicked moment I think he’s going to throw me into the forge, but instead, he tows me to the edge of the house, where there’s a small pile of melting snow. He lets me collapse beside it, then thrusts my hand right into the snow.
That’s worse. I’m panting and crying and I think I want to cut my hand off. I might actually be begging my father to do it.
But time passes, and I’m not sure how much, but my heart begins to slow. My breathing is still shuddering, and mud and snow have soaked through my pants to chill the lower half of my body.
My father is standing over me, and the expression on his face is almost identical to the moment when that wagon fell on my leg.
“You’ll be fine,” he’s saying, as if he’s trying to convince himself. “It’ll heal. Good as new.”
Nothing is ever good as new. I know that better than anyone.
