“Alan doesn’t have a reputation to ruin. That’s the problem.”
The words sounded wrong coming from Sam. The Wrison credo focused on fairness and knowing all the facts before forming an opinion. And if Sam often failed in waiting to form an opinion—though he only shared those early opinions with family—he never forgot to check the facts. He loved listing his reasons, even when no one asked to hear them. He always, always, supported his claims with evidence.
If Sam wouldn’t volunteer facts, I’d have to get them myself. “When did Powell come to Skorsa? How old was Alan?”
“About seven years ago. Alan would have been seventeen.”
Old enough to have mastered most of the craft at his father’s side. Old enough to have demonstrated that mastery—or lack thereof—to the village. Changing the villagers’ opinions at that point would have been nigh impossible. Especially for an outsider.
Maybe Sam had solid reasons supporting his opinion. Reasons the natives of Skorsa didn’t need explained. Reasons that might embarrass the village as a whole if mentioned, so even Sam avoided listing them. He had known me for only a week, after all. Even if it already felt like we had always been family.
Well, if Alan destroyed the necklace I had given him and didn’t produce a suitable replacement, I’d just have to ask Master Kiels to procure what I needed.
Two
Alan
???
I watched MinaDevale leave the smithy in a daze. No wonder everyone in the village had been talking about her since her arrival in Skorsa. Not that the villagers spoke to me if they could help it. But I still heard things. Especially today, with Gerald Powell gone. If anyone needed anything from the forge, they had to interact with me for the next few days.
So, I had heard about the merchant’s daughter from the city. I knew she had fair hair and skin that burned under the bright summer sun. But the bits and pieces I had heard hadn’t prepared me for the full force of her attention. And Phillip Brynson was wrong; Mina was more beautiful than Kayla Hervor, and her silvery-blond hair was every bit as alluring as Gemma’s golden curls.
Not that Phillip had been telling me about the newest arrival in Skorsa. I had overheard his comments before opening the door between the forge and shop. The conversation between him and Cole, who had once been my closest friend, had stopped once they saw me. I wasn’t a person worthy of conversation. People didn’t talk with me, they talked at me—and only when they had no other choice.
I was used to people dismissing my skills. I could have made the copper chain in front of Widow Penniwell and she’d have asked mewhere I had found it. She’d probably accuse me of stealing the damn thing, too. Powell had poisoned the entire village against me, and I hadn’t noticed what he was up to until it was too late. Even Cole looked at me with contempt these days.
Visitors in the village acted the same. But not Mina. She was different. Earnest. Kind. And terrifyingly trusting.
As the front door shut, I looked down at the necklace she had given me. It was more gold than changed hands in the village in a year. With this necklace, I could disappear. Start a new life where no one had heard my name or the lies Powell had spread about me. Open my own forge and make what I wanted to make. Fulfill the dreams I had hidden even before my father died and my mother remarried.
Three things stopped me from shoving the necklace in my pocket and packing a bag. The first two were the same ones that had stopped me from leaving Skorsa after the first wave of grief from my mother’s death passed and I discovered the villagers’ change in opinion about me. First, Powell had done something. Something more than spreading stories. There was no guarantee that leaving Skorsa would save me from whatever magic—it had to be magic, right?—made the villagers deny the evidence of their own eyes about my skills.
Second, leaving Skorsa felt like I was denouncing my father and all he had taught me. Our family had been the smiths in this village for hundreds of years. Everything I knew about smithing I had learned from him. Perhaps I could leave our family legacy behind, but not if it meant entrusting it to Gerald Powell. For my father’s sake, I wouldn’t abandon the forge to anyone like Powell.
Mostly, I admitted to myself, I didn’t run because I wanted to see Mina’s reaction when I showed her the necklace I envisioned creating. Her genuine admiration for the copper chain I had made had caused a strange swirl of sensation in me. Hope, I realized. It was a feeling that had grown so unfamiliar I almost didn’t recognize it.
I wanted to feel it again. I wanted to see myself through her eyes.
Closing my fingers around the necklace, I went through the shop’s side door to the forge. The heat washed over me and my shoulders relaxed. Despite my misgivings about working as the unacknowledged and unappreciated blacksmith of Skorsa, the forge was still my haven. It might not be actual magic, but transforming metal from raw material into the form I pictured in my head felt like it all the same. Even when all I did was create a bucketful of nails, it was still satisfying.
But creating jewelry, working with soft gold and coaxing it into delicate pieces, that was what truly called to me.
The Brynsons needed hinges and latches for the new barn they were building, but I ignored that order. I hadn’t worked with gold in years. The necklace warmed under my fingers. I wanted to take my time, attuning myself to the metal, but I couldn’t risk Powell seeing Mina’s necklace. I had to finish it before he returned.
With I sigh, I got started. First, I pried apart the different materials in the necklace, careful not to lose the tiny sapphires. Once I had the golds separated, I estimated how much of each I needed for the wires. There would be plenty of material left over.
I lost myself in the familiar tasks: heating metal, hammering, drawing the wire, and checking my progress against the vision in my mind. It was well past dusk by the time I had drawn enough gold down to delicate strands that I could use to create the chains. I paused, and hunger brought me back to reality, knocking aside the ideas I had for how to make these gold chains even better than the copper one I had shown Mina.
Reluctantly, I tidied the forge for the night and closed the large barn-style door on the back that allowed for the illusion of cooler air on hot summer days. I crossed the bit of grass between the forge and my house.
My meeting with Mina had stirred thoughts I had suppressed long ago, and I found myself wondering if the house technically was mine. Everyone in Skorsa acted like it—and the smithy—belonged to Powell. Practically speaking, it didn’t matter. Whether the manhad magicked my mother into leaving him everything or not, I still didn’t have the respect needed to take over the smithy in my own name.
Telika's hell, I didn’t even know if my father had left the forge to my mother or if she had only had control while I was a minor. It hadn’t been a topic we needed to discuss, because neither my mother nor I would have ever willingly abandoned the other. But she had died, and it hadn’t occurred to me to worry about legalities until it was already too late.
The euphoria of turning a lump of gold into a piece of jewelry faded, and I wondered if I had made the right choice not to run. Not today. Despite my earlier thoughts, I doubted I’d be comfortable living with the guilt of knowing my life was built off of theft. But years ago. When I first realized nothing I said or did would change the villagers’ opinions. What did it matter that a Smythson remained in Skorsa if the family name was reduced to a synonym for disappointment?
Three
