Chương 158: Chapter 155. Idiots

Thum! Thum! Thum! The loud sound of hammering carried down Craftsman's Row before Adom even rounded the corner. Three hammers working, each on its own rhythm. It had gotten louder since his last visit six months back. Thum-thum! Thum! Thum-thum! He stopped in front of the new storefront. The sign overhead read Kern & Filli's Forge in carved letters filled with gold leaf — a long way up from the cramped shop they used to work out of.

This building was twice the size, with wide windows showing everything from horseshoes to ceremonial daggers, and several chimneys feeding smoke into the afternoon sky. When he pushed the heavy door open, a bell chimed once, somehow audible over the metalwork from the back. Inside was a proper showroom now. High ceilings, weapon displays, rows of polished blades along one wall. Tools down another — hammers, tongs, files, measuring instruments, all laid out with care.

The air held the old familiar mix of hot metal, coal smoke, quenching oil, and the leather of all the wrappings and sheaths. A young man behind the counter looked up from wrapping a sword hilt in leather cord, his hands black with soot.

"Oh, hey Adom."

"Erik!" A second voice, sharp, from across the room. A broader man, maybe thirty, stopped sorting a rack of hammers to shoot the younger smith a look.

"He's a magus now. Not just Adom." The hammering from the forge carried on without pause. Adom chuckled.

"It's fine. You can use my name. No titles in here." Erik scratched his head, leaving a fresh smear of soot in his brown hair. He looked from Adom to the older smith.

"What's the difference, anyway?" The man set down a hammer with the air of someone explaining things to a slow apprentice.

"A magus is a high-ranked member of the Magisterium. Works under the Archmage himself. It's a big deal."

"Oh." Erik's eyes went wide. He set the cord down and stared at Adom with new interest.

"And you're, what, seventeen?"

"Nineteen, actually."

"But every high-ranked mage I've ever seen was..." Erik waved a sooty hand.

"Forty. Grey beard. The whole thing." Adom laughed.

"I got lucky with my timing." The hammering in the back stopped. Boots crossed stone, and a voice boomed from the doorway.

"You lot better not be slacking out there, or it's extra bellows duty for everyone tonight!" Heavy footsteps, and then a head leaned out of the forge doorway — sweat and ash on his face, curly red hair tied back with a cord. When the green eyes found Adom, the whole expression changed.

"Adom!" Erik pointed in triumph.

"See? Master Filli calls him by his name too." The older smith's jaw set.

"Master Filli's his friend." Filli came fully into the showroom, wiping his hands on a battered apron. He was stocky, the build of his mixed blood — broader in the shoulder than most humans, taller than a full dwarf. Soot streaked his face.

"What are you all on about?" Erik bounced on his feet.

"We were just telling him how Adom's a magus now, and the difference between that and a regular mage, and—""And how you're the first and only smith to graduate as Master Kern's disciple," the older smith cut in, with a meaningful glance at Erik.

"Youngest master smith there's ever been. Nineteen. Same as him." Adom caught the redirection at once — Gren steering Filli off whatever he'd been about to scold them for. It worked. Filli's whole face lit. He squared his shoulders.

"Well — I mean, Master Kern did say I had a rare natural feel for the metal. The way I can sense a piece's properties just by handling it, apparently that's unusual even among smiths who've been at it for decades. There was that enchanted steel I read by touch alone — exact composition, first try, took her years to learn that—" He started laughing. Gren immediately laughed too. Erik looked lost.

"Gren, why are we laughing?" Gren's elbow found his ribs." Ow — why did you—" Filli laughed on, happily oblivious, and after a second Erik joined in, late and stiff. When the boss laughs, you laugh. It was one of those rules of working life that never stopped amusing Adom. Filli was helplessly easy to flatter. There ought to be a word, Adom thought, for people like him and Kim — barely able to hold a thread of small talk, then capable of total focus the second a craft was in front of them. Not Valiant, though.

That mouse had never focused on anything in his life. Different category entirely.

"Filli," Adom said gently. Filli broke off and blinked at him, then drew his brows together in mock offence.

"You know what? I shouldn't even be speaking to you."

"Oh?"

"You got back from your mission more than a month ago." He crossed his arms, though, there was no real heat in it.

"All that time, and what did I get? One crystal call.

'Hey, I'm back, talk soon.' That was the whole of it."

"I mean, for what it's worth, it was a very nice message," Adom offered.

"We were in the same city. Instead of coming round to see me and Master Kern like a normal person." He shook his head in vast disappointment. Adom sighed.

"You're right. I should have come sooner. I'm sorry." He ran a hand through his hair.

"It's been a strange few months. The Magisterium's had me buried in work, and there's a whole situation I can't really talk about." Filli's stern act cracked at once.

"Oh. Well — when you put it like that." He uncrossed his arms and grinned.

"I'll forgive you, this once. Come in, come in. I wanted to show you something anyway."

"That's actually why I'm here." Filli's face fell.

"Wait. You didn't come to see me?" Adom couldn't help smiling.

"That too." He was here, in truth, to do his shopping before he left. Whatever the trail on Morgana turned into, it was going to take him a long way from Arkhos for a few days at best, and a man didn't go wandering the edges of the maps with gear that wasn't quite right. Most of his was fine. His gauntlets were the problem. Wam and Bam had been at Filli's for months now for repairs and improvements, and the spare pair Adom had been wearing in the meantime were serviceable and nothing more.

He'd felt the difference every day. It was time to get his own back. Unauthorized content usage: if you discover this narrative on Amazon, report the violation.

"Hmm." Filli tipped his head, studying him.

"Well. Business and pleasure can overlap, I suppose."

"Speaking of business — show me the place. Looks like a lot's changed."

"Right! Come on." The wounded friend vanished, replaced by the proud craftsman, and Filli waved him toward the back.

"Wait till you see what we've got going now." They went deeper into the building, past the displays and into the working floor. The heat hit first, rolling off three separate forge stations, each with its own bellows and anvil. Workbenches ran the walls, covered in projects at every stage.

"Tomás!" Filli called to a lanky young man filing the edge of a dagger.

"Come meet my friend!" The apprentice looked up through the heat-haze. Sixteen, maybe, and lanky in the way of a boy who'd grown half a foot in a year and hadn't worked out the new arms yet.

"This is Adom," Filli said.

"The magus I told you about. The Ghost." Tomás's eyes widened. He set the file down, wiped his hands, and put one out.

"An honour, sir."

"Just Adom." He shook it, noting the calluses already coming in across the palm.

"How long have you been here?"

"Four months. Master Filli's been teaching me hammer technique."

"And he's got a feel for it," Filli said, beaming.

"Show him that bracket you finished yesterday." As Tomás hurried off, Filli walked Adom on. Two more apprentices worked the other stations — a stocky girl about Tomás's age bringing a bar of iron up to cherry red, and an older boy, maybe nineteen, fitting a sword guard.

"Marina and Doran," Filli said, nodding to each.

"Marina's been three months. Doran started last month, but he's got good instincts for fine work." Adom nodded to them both. The growth was something. Six months ago Filli had two apprentices and Kern still took most of the hard commissions herself. Now he ran his own floor with five, and the space had doubled. All from a single interview. Five years back, a journalist had asked where he'd had his gauntlets forged. Adom had named Kern's shop, hoping to send her a few customers.

He hadn't expected it to remake the whole operation.

"Congratulations, by the way," he said as they paused by the main forge.

"On making master. Should've said it sooner." Filli's chest puffed.

"Master Kern said I was ready. Still drops in to make sure I haven't burned the place down."

"How's she finding retirement?"

"Oh, she didn't retire." Filli took up tongs and shifted a billet in the coals.

"Postponed it another twenty years." Adom laughed.

"Of course she did. Though doesn't that make her—" He stopped, glancing around, having been about to say too old to work and not sure she wasn't within earshot. Filli caught it and turned from the fire.

"Oh, you didn't know? Master's part elf. She's well over a hundred."

"Really?" Adom blinked.

"I had no idea."

"Most people don't. She doesn't make anything of it." Filli shrugged.

"Says age is just a number when your technique's good and your hands are steady." Which explained a great deal about Kern; the endless energy, the perfectionism. It also meant Filli, with dwarven blood, was apprenticed to someone with elven. The two peoples had a long, prickly history; not hostile, exactly, but they rarely worked side by side. Dwarves built for strength and endurance, elves for elegance and precision.

"So you've got elven method and dwarven instinct," Adom said.

"That's a rare mix."

"Master Kern says it makes me unpredictable in the best way." Filli grinned.

"Also says I rush the finishing. We're working on my patience." Steel scraped steel somewhere toward the front, then a sharp clang. Nothing strange for a forge. Then Marina's voice cut across it.

"Master Filli! There's—" The rest vanished under a crash — something heavy going over — and voices, several of them, climbing into what was plainly an argument. Filli and Adom traded a look. Another crash, and then the unmistakable ring of steel leaving sheaths.

"What now," Filli muttered, dropping his tongs, already moving. They came through into the showroom to find five men in the dark blue of Magisterium officials crowded against the front counter, silver badges catching the forge-light, and Tomás on the other side of it, chin up, hands flat on the wood, not giving an inch.

"For the third time," the lead official was saying. A neatly bearded man in his thirties who plainly spent more hours behind a desk than over an anvil.

"We are here on Magisterium business, and you will fetch Master Kern. Now."

"And for the third time," Tomás said, "Master Kern doesn't do walk-ins. You want her, you book her, same as anyone. Earliest's six weeks."

"Six weeks?"

"I can write it down, if that helps." It was the wrong thing to say to a man already out of patience, and Tomás was young enough not to know it yet. The official's face went tight.

"You insolent little—" His hand came up and cracked across the boy's face, hard enough to whip his head sideways and send him stumbling into the display behind. The bracket he'd been so proud of clattered down and broke. The room went quiet. Filli started forward with a sound low in his throat. Adom put a hand on his arm, light, and stepped past him.

He'd come in plain clothes today — brown tunic, dark trousers — and a plain hat pulled low, partly against the sun and partly because the white in his hair drew more notice than he ever wanted on a day off. He crossed the floor without hurrying and crouched by Tomás, who had a hand to his cheek, dazed but upright.

"Easy. You're all right. Up you come." He got the boy on his feet.

"And who are you?" the lead official snapped.

"Another smith? Stay out of what doesn't concern you." Adom simply straightened, reached up, and took off his hat. The white streak fell loose against the black, plain as a brand. For a second none of them placed it. Then one of the younger ones did: Adom watched it land, watched the man's eyes go to the hair, then to his face, then wide. He leaned and said something fast and low to the man beside him, who looked, and lost his colour, and the understanding ran down the line of them one at a time.

"My name is Adom Sylla," he said into the spreading silence.

"Magus of the Imperial Magisterium. Tenth seat, under Archmage Gaius Emrys." He turned the hat over in his hands.

"You may have heard of me. People usually lead with the hair." …That last part felt a bit edgy, to be honest. He winced slightly at it. But it seemed to work, because no one said a word for a moment, and they all looked properly intimidated. Mission success.

"Oh," Filli said, with deep and genuine satisfaction.

"You lot are so fucked." He looked over.

"They're fucked, right, Adom?" Adom considered the five of them.

"I mean. They did strike a civilian in his own workplace, without cause, in front of witnesses." He tipped a hand.

"... Yeah. Bit fucked, I'm afraid." Whatever had been holding the officials upright went out of them all at once. The lead one opened and shut his mouth without sound. Two of the others had gone the grey of cold ash. And one, a younger guard near the back, had quietly started to cry. Adom sighed as the anger he'd crossed the room with drained off the way it always did once the men on the end of it stopped being a threat and went back to being people. He looked at the crying one.

"... Hey. Are you crying?"

"No," the guard said, wetly, very obviously crying.

"Okay." Then it all came out at once, climbing over itself — it got out of hand, they never meant it to go this way, please, sir, they'd only been sent to bring back the master smith and the pressure from above had been tight, yadda, yadda.

"I just started two weeks ago," one of them got out.

"I've nothing else lined up. If I lose this…" Adom made a face. This had gotten more dramatic than the situation required.

"He's not lying." The crying guard scrubbed at his face, hating himself for it.

"And I've got my mother and my sister both living on what I bring home. Only got the posting last month. I didn't touch the boy, I swear it, I just stood there — which I know isn't better, I know that, but—" Adom held up a hand, and they went quiet. He could have left it there, honestly. The boy was barely hurt, and he had no real appetite for making five frightened men's lives worse. But there was more riding on this than the bruise.

Mages were feared everywhere, and feared people are never far from being hated ones; which was why so much of what the Magisterium did, it did to be seen being fair: helpful, restrained, on the side of ordinary people. Arkhos felt it less than most cities, used to its mages as it was, though even here you still met someone now and then who'd spit at the word. A Magisterium official striking a smith's apprentice and walking away was exactly the kind of small story that grew teeth in the retelling.

So however he settled this, he had to settle it in the open, and settle it cleanly, or it stopped being about Tomás at all, the perpetrators were idiots for getting in that situation in the first place. So he turned to the young apprentice, who was working his jaw to check it still moved.

"How's the face?"

"... Had worse off Master Filli's drills," Tomás said, and got a crooked grin out, which told Adom most of what he needed to know about the boy.

"Do you want to file against them?" he asked plainly.

"It's your right. He hit you in front of witnesses, and I'm one of them. Say the word and it's done properly; names, charges, all of it." He glanced at the officials, then back.

"Or we settle it here quietly, and these gentlemen spend a good long while being extremely grateful and well-behaved. Your call. You took the hit." Tomás looked at the officials for a moment, turning it over in his mind, then…

"I don't really want anyone losing their—""What is going on here?" A voice came from the doorway to the forge. It was quiet and even, carrying enough weight that the whole room stilled in an instant. Adom turned to see who it was, and for the first time since he'd walked in, he felt something close to pity for the five men in front of him.