“Rin, I’m—”
He found himself staring at a clutch of strangers. A man, a woman, and how many children? Five? Six? All crushed tight about the firepit where he used to warm his aching feet and no sign of Rin among them.
“Who the hell are you?” Fear clutched at him, and he put his hand on his dagger.
“It’s all right!” The man held up his palms. “You’re Brand?”
“Damn right I am. Where’s my sister?”
“You don’t know?”
“If I knew would I be asking? Where’s Rin?”
IT WAS A FINE HOUSE in the shadow of the citadel.
A rich woman’s house of good cut stone with a full second floor and a dragon’s head carved into its roof beam. A homely house with welcoming firelight spilling around its shutters and into the evening. A handsome house with a stream gurgling through a steep channel beside it and under a narrow bridge. A well-kept house with a door new-painted green, and hanging over the door a shingle in the shape of a sword, swinging gently with the breeze.
“Here?” Brand had labored up the steep lanes with crates and barrels to the homes of the wealthy often enough, and he knew the street. But he’d never been to this house, had no notion why his sister might be inside.
“Here,” answered the man, and gave the door a beating with his knuckles.
Brand stood there wondering what sort of pose to strike, and was caught by surprise halfway between two when the door jerked open.
Rin was changed. Even more than he was, maybe. A woman grown, she seemed now, taller, and her face leaner, dark hair cut short. She wore a fine tunic, clever stitching about the collar, like a wealthy merchant might.
“You all right, Hale?” she asked.
“Better,” said the man. “We had a visitor.” And he stepped out of the way so the light fell across Brand’s face.
“Rin …” he croaked, hardly knowing what to say, “I’m—”
“You’re back!” And she flung her arms around him almost hard enough to knock him over, and squeezed him almost hard enough to make him sick. “You just going to stand on the step and stare?” And she bundled him through the doorway. “Give my love to your children!” she shouted after Hale.
“Be glad to!”
Then she kicked the door shut and dragged Brand’s sea-chest from his shoulder. As she set it on the tiled floor a chain hung down, a silver chain with a silver key gleaming on it.
“Whose key’s that?” he muttered.
“Did you think I’d get married while you were gone? It’s my own key to my own locks. You hungry? You thirsty? I’ve got—”
“Whose house is this, Rin?”
She grinned at him. “It’s yours. It’s mine. It’s ours.”
“This?” Brand stared at her. “But … how did—”
“I told you I’d make a sword.”
Brand’s eyes went wide. “Must’ve been a blade for the songs.”
“King Uthil thought so.”
Brand’s eyes went wider still. “King Uthil?”
“I found a new way to smelt the steel. A hotter way. The first blade cracked when we quenched it, but the second held. Gaden said we had to give it to the king. And the king stood up in the Godshall and said steel was the answer, and this was the best steel he ever saw. He’s carrying it now, I hear.” She shrugged, as if King Uthil’s patronage was no great honor. “After that, everyone wanted me to make them a sword. Gaden said she couldn’t keep me. She said I should be the master and she the apprentice.” Rin shrugged. “Blessed by She who Strikes the Anvil, like we used to say.”
“Gods,” whispered Brand. “I was going to change your life. You did it by yourself.”
“You gave me the chance.” Rin took his wrist, frowning down at the scars there. “What happened?”
“Nothing. Rope slipped going over the tall hauls.”
“Reckon there’s more to that story.”
“I’ve got better ones.”
Rin’s lip wrinkled. “Long as they haven’t got Thorn Bathu in ’em.”
“She saved the Empress of the South from her uncle, Rin! The Empress! Of the South.”
“That one I’ve heard already. They’re singing it all over town. Something about her beating a dozen men alone. Then it was fifteen. Might’ve even been twenty last time I heard it. And she threw some duke off a roof and routed a horde of Horse People and won an elf-relic and lifted a ship besides, I hear. Lifted a ship!” And she snorted again.
Brand raised his brows. “I reckon songs have a habit of outrunning the truth.”
“You can tell me the truth of it later.” Rin took down the lamp and drew him through another doorway, stairs going up into the shadows. “Come and see your room.”
“I’ve got a room?” muttered Brand, eyes going wider than ever. How often had he dreamed of that? When they hadn’t a roof over their heads, or food to eat, or a friend in the world besides each other?
She put her arm around his shoulders and it felt like home. “You’ve got a room.”
WRONG IDEAS
“Reckon I need a new sword.”
Thorn sighed as she laid her father’s blade gently on the table, the light of the forge catching the many scratches, glinting on the deep nicks. It was worn almost crooked from years of polishing, the binding scuffed to greasy shreds, the cheap iron pommel rattling loose.
The apprentice gave Thorn’s sword one quick glance and Thorn herself not even that many. “Reckon you’re right.” She wore a leather vest scattered with burns, gloves to her elbow, arms and shoulders bare and beaded with sweat from the heat, hard muscles twitching as she turned a length of metal in the glowing coals.
“It’s a good sword.” Thorn ran her fingers down the scarred steel. “It was my father’s. Seen a lot of work. In his day and in mine.”
The apprentice didn’t so much as nod. Somewhat of a gritty manner she had, but Thorn had one of those herself, so she tried not to hold it too much against her.
“Your master about?” she asked.
“No.”
Thorn waited for more, but there wasn’t any. “When will he be back?”
The girl just snorted, slid the metal from the coals, looked it over, and rammed it hissing back in a shower of sparks.
Thorn decided to try starting over. “I’m looking for the blade-maker on Sixth Street.”
“And here I am,” said the girl, still frowning down at her work.
“You?”
“I’m the one making blades on Sixth Street, aren’t I?”
“Thought you’d be … older.”
“Seems thinking ain’t your strength.”
Thorn spent a moment wondering whether to be annoyed by that, but decided to let it go. She was trying to let things go more often. “You’re not the first to say so. Just not common, a girl making swords.”
The girl looked up then. Fierce eyes, gleaming with the forge-light through the hair stuck across her strong-boned face, and something damned familiar about her but Thorn couldn’t think what. “Almost as uncommon as one swinging ’em.”
“Fair point,” said Thorn, holding out her hand. “I’m—”
The sword-maker slid the half-made blade from the forge, glowing metal passing so close Thorn had to snatch her hand back. “I know who y’are, Thorn Bathu.”
“Oh. Course.” Thorn guessed her fame was running off ahead of her. She was only now starting to see that wasn’t always a good thing.
The girl took up a hammer and Thorn watched her knock a fuller into the blade, watched her strike the anvil-music, as the smiths say, and quite a lesson it was. Short, quick blows, no wasted effort, all authority, all control, each one perfect as a master’s sword thrust, glowing dust scattering from the die. Thorn knew a lot more about using swords than making them, but an idiot could’ve seen this girl knew her business.
“They say you make the best swords in Thorlby,” said Thorn.
“I make the best swords in the Shattered Sea,?
?? said the girl, holding up the steel so the glow from it fell across her sweat-shining face.
“My father always told me never get proud.”
“Ain’t a question of pride. It’s just a fact.”
“Would you make me one?”
“No. Don’t think I will.”
Folk who are the best at what they do sometimes forego the niceties, but this was getting strange. “I’ve got money.”
“I don’t want your money.”
“Why?”
“I don’t like you.”
Thorn wasn’t usually slow to rise to an insult but this was so unexpected she was caught off-guard. “Well … I guess there are other swords to be found.”
“No doubt there are.”
“I’ll go and find one, then.”
“I hope you find a long one.” The swordmaker on Sixth Street leaned down to blow ash from the metal with a gentle puff from her pursed lips. “Then you can stick it up your arse.”
Thorn snatched her old sword up, gave serious thought to clubbing the girl across the head with the flat, decided against and turned for the door. Before she quite made it to the handle, though, the girl spoke again.
“Why’d you treat my brother that way?”
She was mad. Had to be. “Who’s your damn brother?”
The girl frowned over at her. “Brand.”
The name rocked Thorn surely as a kick in the head. “Not Brand who was with me on—”
“What other Brand?” She jabbed at her chest with her thumb. “I’m Rin.”
Thorn surely saw the resemblance, now, and it rocked her even more, so it came out a guilty squeak when she spoke. “Didn’t know Brand had a sister …”
Rin gave a scornful chuckle. “Why would you? Only spent a year on the same boat as him.”
“He never told me!”
“Did you ask?”
“Of course! Sort of.” Thorn swallowed. “No.”
“A year away.” Rin rammed the blade angrily back into the coals. “And the moment he sees me, do you know what he sets to talking about?”
“Er …”
She started pounding at the bellows like Thorn used to pound Brand’s head in the training square. “Thorn Bathu ran the oars in the middle of an elf-ruin. Thorn Bathu saved his life in the shield wall. Thorn Bathu made an alliance that’ll put the world to rights. And when I could’ve bitten his face if I heard your name one more time, what do you think he told me next?”
“Er …”
“Thorn Bathu scarcely spoke a word to him the whole way back. Thorn Bathu cut him off like you’d trim a blister. I tell you what, Thorn Bathu sounds something of a bloody bitch to me, after all he’s done for her and, no, I don’t much fancy making a sword for—”
“Hold it there,” snapped Thorn. “You don’t have the first clue what happened between me and your brother.”
Rin let the bellows be and glared over. “Enlighten me.”
“Well …” Last thing Thorn needed was to rip that scab off again just when there was a chance of letting it heal. She wasn’t about to admit that she made a fool’s mistake, and burned herself bad, and had to make herself not look at Brand or talk to Brand or have anything to do with Brand every moment of every day in case she burned herself again. “You got it back to front is all!”
“Strange how people are always getting the wrong idea about you. How often does that have to happen, ’fore you start thinking maybe they got the right idea?” And Rin dragged the iron from the forge and set it back on the anvil.
“You don’t know me,” growled Thorn, working up the bellows on some anger of her own. “You don’t know what I’ve been through.”
“No doubt we’ve all had our struggles,” said Rin, lifting her hammer. “But some of us get to weep over ’em in a big house our daddy paid for.”
Thorn threw up her hands at the fine new forge behind the fine home near the citadel. “Oh, I see you and Brand have barely been scraping by!”
Rin froze, then, muscles bunching across her shoulders, and her eyes flicked over, and she looked angry. So angry Thorn took a little step back, a cautious eye on that hovering hammer.
Then Rin tossed it rattling down, pulled her gloves off and flung them on the table. “Come with me.”
“MY MOTHER DIED WHEN I was little.”
Rin had led them outside the walls. Downwind, where the stink of Thorlby’s rubbish wouldn’t bother the good folk of the city.
“Brand remembers her a little. I don’t.”
Some of the midden heaps were years covered over and turned to grassy mounds. Some were open and stinking, spilling bones and shells, rags and the dung of men and beasts.
“He always says she told him to do good.”
A mangy dog gave Thorn a suspicious eye, as though it considered her competition, and went back to sniffing through the rot.
“My father died fighting Grom-gil-Gorm,” muttered Thorn, trying to match ill-luck for ill-luck. Honestly, she felt a little queasy. From the look of this place, and the stink of it, and the fact she had scarcely even known it was here because her mother’s slaves had always carted their rubbish. “They laid him out in the Godshall.”
“And you got his sword.”
“Less the pommel,” grunted Thorn, trying not to breathe through her nose. “Gorm kept that.”
“You’re lucky to have something from your father.” Rin didn’t seem bothered by the stench at all. “We didn’t get much from ours. He liked a drink. Well. I say a drink. He liked ’em all. He left when Brand was nine. Gone one morning, and maybe we were better off without him.”
“Who took you in?” asked Thorn in a small voice, getting the sense she was far outclassed in the ill-luck contest.
“No one did.” Rin let that sink in a moment. “There were quite a few of us living here, back then.”
“Here?”
“You pick through. Sometimes you find something you can eat. Sometimes you find something you can sell. Winters.” Rin hunched her shoulders and gave a shiver. “Winters were hard.”
Thorn could only stand there and blink, feeling cold all over even if summer was well on the way. She’d always supposed she’d had quite the tough time growing up. Now she learned that while she raged in her fine house because her mother didn’t call her by the name she liked, there had been children picking through the dung for bones to chew. “Why are you telling me this?”
“Cause Brand didn’t say and you didn’t ask. We begged. I stole.” Rin gave a bitter little smile. “But Brand said he had to do good. So he worked. He worked at the docks and the forges. He worked anywhere folk would give him work. He worked like a dog and more than once he was beaten like one. I got sick and he got me through it and I got sick again and he got me through it again. He kept on dreaming of being a warrior, and having a place on a crew, a family always around him. So he went to the training square. He had to beg and borrow the gear, but he went. He’d work before he trained and he’d work after, and even after that if anyone needed help he’d be there to help. Do good, Brand always said, and folk’ll do good for you. He was a good boy. He’s become a good man.”
“I know that,” growled Thorn, feeling the hurt all well up fresh, sharper than ever for the guilt that welled up with it, now. “He’s the best man I know. This isn’t bloody news to me!”
Rin stared at her. “Then how could you treat him this way? If it wasn’t for him I’d be gone through the Last Door, and so would you, and this is the thanks—”
Thorn might have been wrong about a few things, and she might not have known a few others she should have, and she might have been way too wrapped up in herself to see what was right under her nose, but there was a limit on what she’d take.
“Hold on, there, Brand’s secret sister. No doubt you’ve opened my eyes wider than ever to my being a selfish arse. But me and him were oarmates. On a crew you stand with the men beside you. Yes, he was there for me, but I was there for him, and—”
> “Not that! Before. When you killed that boy. Edwal.”
“What?” Thorn felt queasier still. “I remember that day well enough and all Brand did was bloody stand there.”
Rin gaped at her. “Did you two talk at all that year away?”
“Not about Edwal, I can tell you that!”
“Course you didn’t.” Rin closed her eyes and smiled as though she understood it all. “He’d never take the thanks he deserves, the stubborn fool. He didn’t tell you.”
Thorn understood nothing. “Tell me what, damn it?”
“He went to Father Yarvi.” And Rin took Thorn gently but firmly by the shoulder and let the words fall one by one. “He told him what happened on the beach. Even though he knew it’d cost him. Master Hunnan found out. So it cost him his place on the king’s raid, and his place as a warrior, and everything he’d hoped for.”
Thorn made a strange sound then. A choked-off cluck. The sound a chicken makes when its neck gets wrung.
“Brand went to Father Yarvi,” she croaked.
“Yes.”
“Brand saved my life. And lost his place for it.”
“Yes.”
“Then I mocked him over it, and treated him like a fool the whole way down the Divine and the Denied and the whole way back up again.”
“Yes.”
“Why didn’t he just bloody say—” And that was when Thorn saw something gleaming just inside the collar of Rin’s vest. She reached out, hooked it with a trembling finger, and eased it into the light.
Beads. Glass beads, blue and green.
The ones Brand bought that day in the First of Cities. The ones she’d thought were for her, then for some other lover back in Thorlby. The ones she now saw were for the sister she’d never bothered to ask if he had.
Thorn made that squawking sound again, but louder.
Rin stared at her as if she’d gone mad. “What?”
“I’m such a stupid shit.”
“Eh?”
“Where is he?”
“Brand? At my house. Our house—”