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.
“IsaidI’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. Sparksflew, 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’dkissedhim—and I still wasn’t sure what to make of his reaction.
I considered the second Oath. The idea of trekking across the province looking for buried bodies was a daunting one. Knowing that Anders had failed before and hadn’t been cast out or condemned… That was some comfort at least.
After quenching the last horseshoe in the oil vat, Kit set the tongs aside and slipped the leather apron off over his head. He moved slowly and grimaced through each swing of his arm. He must have been hurting, too.
“Kit?” I rose from my stool and approached while he dipped a wooden ladle into our barrel of drinking water.
He poured some on his face, then rubbed his hands through it, combing water through his hair.
Watching the liquid streak down his cheeks and neck and soaking the collar of his thin, linen shirt, I forgot what I’d come to ask. I stared, suddenly quite thirsty myself and grateful when Kit offered a full ladle to me.
I gulped the drink down and dropped the spoon back into the barrel as Kit stood aside, fanning the front of his tunic.
