the apex of success, and so he screamed. His fury was broken, but when the third member of the Farmyard Friends scrambled to his feet and ran, so were his enemies. Only brother four remained. Rooted.
“I AM NOT JOSSIE.” His brother ran, and he smiled again. He spoke only to himself, but he didn’t whisper the words. Beef still had his sense of hearing, after all. “From now on, I am only Kantal.” He was the smith.
As the chief bully lay whining on the floor, he went to get his book and dusted it down. He was the guardian, and Delfin’s words would now offer him a purpose. That was warming.
Purpose. It was something he’d never thought about because he’d never considered that he had it, but it turned out that he did. His purpose was to fight back. But now that he had succeeded, he had to aim higher. He had to find a new purpose. And in that he was lost.
He opened the first page, to Delfin’s preliminary, and there, scrawled at the bottom, were five words that he’d somehow never noticed. And they were not by Delfin’s hand. It took a moment to decipher them, but once he’d identified the faint leaded letters, he spoke the words to himself.
“Even you couldn’t beat a mandahoi.”
It was an attack on Delfin, and so it was also an attack on him. He was her guardian, and he walked to the smithy with a tangible purpose flourishing in his mind.
Three | 15yrs ago
It was fair to say that a reputation as a bitch-kicking juvenile didn’t win him the affections of his family. Quite the opposite in fact. He was treated like a rabid dog. The smithy seemed such a small space.
At the age of fifteen, he was still technically the least educated in the household. But despite that, he was definitely the most learned. Conversation with his family was like counting sand. It was just an impossible waste of time, and when he wasn’t reading his book, his thumbs twitched. He hated this place.
“Oi, Joss.” They had taken to calling him that. It was marginally less insulting than Jossie, but it was hardly the rough title he deserved. He refused to respond to any name other than his surname. It was that or nothing, so he ignored the call. He would only respond to ‘Kantal’.
But he did really need a forename, didn’t he? His father had a point.
No! It was a girl’s name. He would not wear it.
He continued to stare at the words on the ageing paper, but he was not truly reading. He had absorbed the book over the years. He could recite every page. It was that same book as it ever was, the work of Queen Delfin, mother of Delfinia. It was her story, by her hand, and it was a rare piece of prose. No, it was more than that. It was the priceless original. Bulge had let him keep it. The fact that the other librarians had not even noticed its absence spoke more than enough. But their loss was his gain. Delfin was his guide, and he worshipped her.
And fortunately, his family didn’t recognise its value either. They would surely sell it if they did. But it was saved by that age-old adage: ‘ignorance is blinding’. There was certainly a truth to that.
So much written about Delfin painted her as a traitorous bitch or a magnanimous monarch, but the reality was so stark, so different. She was confused and she was scared. But she was also curious, and that’s what drove her to greatness. She was not content with the answers she was given, even when her father blocked her. She had to find out for herself. She was always scratching; always searching; always probing. It was her strength and it defined her.
And it was this strength of character that splintered the two-thousand-year-old Empire of Mikaeta. She broke the very lineage of written history just by being curious, and that was impossibly inspiring. He liked to think he had that same quality bubbling inside him too. He could change things, do things, and he was sure of it. Now he just needed to prove it.
“Joss!”
No. He would not recognise that name. He would not. He focussed his attention back on the page. The book was called ‘The Dark Side of the Stone’, and he had read it hundreds of times. Yet he never tired of its inspiration. If anything, the shapes of the words on the page were comfort enough. He smiled.
“Bellowing Brother, Kantal, will you listen to me?”
He turned, but made sure to look amused with it. He loved winding his thick old father up. “Ah, father. I didn’t notice you there.”
“I was calling yer bloody name.”
He was exercising his linguistic skills more and more, though he hated the common twang of his accent. Nonetheless, he sounded fresher than the rest of this household combined.
“Apologies, father. All I heard was the whispering shadow of my past.” Perhaps that was too much?
“You are a girl after all.”
Yes, that was definitely too much. “Care to say that to my face?”
His father was huge. He was fifty times the proposition of Beef, who was in reality a sallow and flabby excuse of a juvenile. Yes indeed, his smith of a father was still in remarkable shape for his age. His arms were like fence posts and he had legs to match. He could also swing a right-hook with the best of them. He was not a man to prod lightly.
They had come to blows twice. The first time, when he was thirteen, he had been humbled into submission by the sheer weight of his father. Last time, a year ago, he’d left with a black eye and two broken ribs. But he’d also left with his pride, because his father was sprawled on the floor without his wits. Since then, he had insisted on Kantal.
“You cannot call yourself by your surname. It’s dumb! We are all Kantal.”
“But I am the Kantal.”
“No, Joss, I am the Kantal. I am senior, and I also live the name. You’re a cocky li’l prick.”
Unfortunately, he could hardly argue with that. His father and his brothers did in fact live the name, and he didn’t. To be Kantal was to be the smith, and he was no smith. He should have used a different name, a forename perhaps, but the moment had taken him, and he was now too far down the road. He needed to persist, just to float his pride. He could not back down now.
And he therefore needed to change the subject. “What do you want?”
“I want you to learn the meaning of your name. I want you to help me.”
That was surely a double-edged request? His father hated him, and he hated his father. It was really that simple, and it was only because of the smithy roof that they shared any proximity whatsoever. He scowled.
“What do you mean?”
“Come and be a smith you precious little bitch. Come. Now!”
There was the tiniest appeal in that suggestion, but even greater loathing. He was an outcast in the family, so why taunt him with this suggestion? Usually his father laid into what he called the ‘scrawny shard’ of his frame, although it was this scrawny shard that had toppled the huge man just last year. But though that earned some distance, it didn’t earn respect. The bastard. Why was he saying this?
“Why, father?”
“It’s because the others are out, and I have a real important job. I only need yer help this morning. You can return to yer sulking this afternoon.”
“It is not―”
“I don’t have time for yer bollocks, Joss. Get out here.”
Almost every fibre told him to sod the bastard, but one chord pulled in the other direction. It was the part of him that wanted to learn. What would Delfin do? He may not crave a career in metal, but he was intrigued to see the trade in action. To be a part of it, even. It could hardly do harm to learn. And that’s what his queen would do, wasn’t it? He would learn the meaning of his name, but he would do it for himself. His father was just an unfortunate accessory.
He followed.
He’d expected to walk right into the forge room, where the real work takes place, but instead he was led into a storeroom out back. He laughed to himself and earned a scowl from his father. The man dwarfed him in so many ways.
They stopped next to a mess of bitter and scorched iron compound,
twisted and deformed where the heat had contorted the material. It was huge, double the size of his father, and it was entirely underwhelming, whatever it was. He looked over the mess and his shoulders sagged.
“What is it?”
His father was gazing at the thing as if it were offspring. It was a look he’d never experienced. It seemed utterly absurd to idolise such scrap. He almost spat on it and left the room. But something kept him rooted.
“It is a Mahani steel bloom. This is the raw material for the finest swordsmithery the world has ever known. This is Mandari steel, my son.”
You couldn’t beat a mandahoi, and this was one of the reasons.
His father smiled, a broad thing that stung his pride. He looked over the metallic mess – all black stains and flashes of light – and noticed his jaw had dropped. He shut it quickly, not wanting to betray his amazement. He couldn’t see how it would become fine steel, but he had to trust his father in this. And he hated him for it. His father couldn’t know what lay in his heart, but this was profound. That scrawled phrase still haunted him. He hadn’t known where to start with his new purpose, but this seemed as good a place as any. Three years of waiting, and it seemed the day had come.
“How did you get it?”
“I didn’t. The customer did. This bloom is more valuable than everything I own.”
Damn. “Who is the client?”
“It is the King himself who has ordered this work.”
His breath caught. He could still see the