Patrons milled past as I lingered at a distance, looking under the wooden canopy that shadowed the glowing forge. Kit bent over it, using long tongs to turn a piece of metal in the coals. Even at range, I saw the sweat beadingon his brow. It plastered his black hair to his forehead and soaked the neck and sleeves of his shirt beneath his leather apron.
In Eastcliff, our smith worked most often in his apron and trousers. He was a portly, older fellow going bald on top, hardly a sight worth braving the heat and threat of fire to observe. But Kit was younger—perhaps thirty?—and dashing. It had been hard not to notice his physique when I stood on his porch the day before, but watching those muscles in action was another sight entirely.
He didn’t notice me, consumed with his task as he alternated the glowing orange piece of metal between the coals and the anvil. Heating, shaping, tamping down, then heating again. It was slow, methodical work, and I wished I’d brought my sketchbook to give my hands something to do.
After some time, my need to talk to Kit outweighed my trepidation, and I approached the stall.
When I breached the perimeter of the shop, Kit paused with his hammer raised above the anvil and looked at me. His neutral expression went rapidly sour, and he huffed a breath. “Oh, for pity’s sake.”
I flashed the smile my mother always told me was winsome and crept a single step closer. “Good morning, Mister Mosel. I wondered if you’d had time to think about our talk yesterday.”
He brought the hammer down, speaking between strikes on the piece of heated metal. “I did.” Sparks flew and fizzled out before they could land on the packed dirt floor. “Haveyouhad time to think about it?”
“I’m not sure what you mean, sir.”
All I’d done was think about it. Since the moment Sayla and I found my father’s grave ransacked, his body missing with no trace left behind, I’d been consideringwhat to do. We knew he’d been taken by the Bone Men, those depraved cultists who haunted graveyards and picked corpses from burial plots like vultures stripping the meat off rotting carcasses. Where they took their prizes and how to win one back from them were the questions I had brought to Kit. Questions he proved reluctant to answer.
Gripping the tongs in his gloved hand, Kit turned and thrust the cooling steel into the coals. “Waiting for your common sense to kick in is all,” he called over his shoulder. “And don’t call me sir. Or Mister Mosel, for that matter. I’m not an old man.”
I walked along the edge of the canopy until I could see Kit’s face in profile. His sharp features glowed in the light of the forge.
“I know what I’m asking,” I told him. “I know it sounds like madness?—”
He held up a hand to cut me off. “If you want to be heard, you’ll need to come closer.”
Cringing, I ventured farther in. The air grew thicker and more stifling, and sweat formed a sheen across my skin. I wrung my hands together. “I have nine days to retrieve my father’s body and take it home, or I fear my family will be cursed.”
Kit’s incredulous laugh shocked me to silence.
Didn’t he know? My mother spoke often throughout my youth of the fate that befell those who paid homage to Eeus. Bodies given as tribute were tainted, and the scourge passed through them to their loved ones. For generations. If my father was sacrificed to that dark god before I could stop it, my family, my farm, and everything I cared about could be doomed.
As I stood in the ensuing silence, I squinted into the bed of embers, trying to discern the shape of the object Kit held. “What are you working on?” I asked.
He moved it from coals to anvil so quickly that I reeled back.
“A more menacing knife.” He held the glowing blade aloft. “For the next time you show up at my door.” A wolfish smile tipped his lips, predatory but posturing. He didn’t mean it.
“I should apologize for that,” I said. “It was impolite to arrive unannounced.”
Kit sniffed and set the knife on the anvil. He took up the hammer again, striking the steel and making me flinch.
It wasn’t the noise that made me want to retreat, or even the scowl that seemed permanently affixed to Kit’s handsome face; it was the smothering heat. I couldn’t breathe. Sweat trickled down my neck, and my cheeks felt aflame even at this distance.
I shifted around, trying to find a place within the stall where I could be seen and heard while keeping space between myself and the oppressive temperature radiating from the coals. A rack of forged items lined one wall, and I moved to stand near them. A brief survey found several farm tools I admired while mulling over my next words.
Perhaps I needed to explain why this was so important. Kit must have known about the curse, but should I tell him that I couldn’t return home empty-handed and admit to my mother that my father’s remains had been given to a malevolent god? My father was a good man. An honest man. He deserved better than to have his soul committed to a god who spread plague and famine. That was bad enough without the added knowing that our family was cursed along with him—as if they weren’t already burdened enough with the curse of me.
When I settled on a statement at last, I turned around in time to see Kit pump the bellows. The coals flared and flames swelled with a great whoosh.
Blistering heat washed across my chest and face, and I yelped, staggering back into the rack. The stand went down and so did I, taking shovels, horseshoes, hammers, and a few pieces of armor with me.
I hit the dirt and sat there, flushed from my neck all the way to the tips of my ears as Kit spun and scowled.
“What’s the matter with you?” he snapped.
I tried to swallow my embarrassment. “It’s… hot.”
Kit fixed me with a withering stare. Setting down his tongs and the knife blade, he walked forward and stooped beside me to right the wooden rack. “Move.” He flapped his gloved hands. “I need to clean this up.”
