Six weeks after Mara and Tomm were brought into Pale Roots, the boy could say fire in the Old Tongue.
He could say stone, water, hand, knife, goat, mother, father, son. He could say no badly and yes worse. He could say hunger well enough that Savar laughed the first time and Morna told him laughter did not fill bowls. He still spoke mostly in the common tongue when fear took him, which was often, but less often than before.
The mountains were teaching him whether he wanted them to or not.
Eight and a half months had passed since Lysa first knew there was a child in her. Her belly sat low now, heavy beneath her furs, and even those foolish enough to pretend not to see could no longer pretend well. She moved with one hand under the weight of it and anger in every step. Some mornings the pains came before she rose. Some nights they woke her from sleep and left her sitting upright in the dark, breathing through her nose while Torren counted silently beside her and pretended he was not counting.
"Not yet," she said each time.
The speaker's woman said the same, though her eyes had begun to say other things.
Torren trusted eyes more than words.
The forge had changed too.
It had been alive before Mara and Tomm came. Hot, mean, smoky, full of work that looked like failure until Gerrik named it otherwise. Now it had become something more dangerous than alive. It had memory. It had grievance. It had a village below it, a house taken by another man, a sign torn down, a wife slandered, and a boy who still touched his bruised mouth when he thought no one watched.
Gerrik worked as if each piece of iron owed him blood.
He had not become brave. Torren did not mistake him for that. The smith still flinched when a man came too near behind him. He still woke at small sounds in the night. He still looked toward Mara and Tomm before looking toward any exit, which meant he had learned that love could be made into a wall as easily as a door.
But in the forge, he no longer moved like a man waiting to be struck.
There, he struck first.
"Again," Gerrik said.
Tarek's arms shook from the hammer work. "It is straight."
"It is weak."
"It looks straight."
"So do cowards standing far from fire."
Tarek's jaw tightened. Once, he might have answered with anger. Now he lifted the hammer again and waited for Gerrik's hand to show him where to place it. Dalla stood beside the coals with the tongs, watching the color rather than the flame, as Gerrik had beaten into all of them with words sharp enough to draw blood without touching skin. Marn worked the bellows with a steady rhythm. Ryk and Harl broke ore by the entrance, one punished for stupidity, the other useful because patience and dullness sometimes wore the same face.
Torren stood outside the forge with Lady Forlorn at his side.
He did not interrupt.
A chief could command men. He could not command iron. He had learned that much. The fire obeyed Gerrik first. That was why Gerrik would never be left as the only man who understood it.
Lysa came down from the upper sleeping caves near midday. She walked alone, which meant someone had failed to stop her or had chosen survival over obedience. A strip of dark hair clung to her cheek with sweat despite the cold. One hand rested low beneath her belly.
Torren turned.
She saw the movement and narrowed her eyes. "No."
"I said nothing."
"You stood louder than most men shout."
He looked at her belly. "The pains?"
"Still pains."
"How close?"
Lysa gave him the look she used for boys who asked whether snow was cold. "Close enough that everyone has begun walking softly near me. Not close enough that I have a child in my hands."
Inside the forge, Gerrik cursed. A thin test piece had cracked near the point. He held it up, stared at the flaw, and looked as if he wanted to bite it out with his teeth.
Lysa watched him. "He is worse."
"Better," Torren said.
"Worse men often work better."
"He has taught more in six weeks than he did before."
"He has hated more in six weeks than he did before."
Torren did not deny it.
Lysa's hand tightened under her belly. Her face changed before she could stop it. The pain bent her slightly, not enough to fold her, enough to steal the next breath. Torren took one step. She lifted two fingers without looking at him.
He stopped.
The pain lasted longer than the others.
Savar and Morna were near the water stones with Tomm when it came. The twins had him seated on a flat rock between them, a pile of small things at his feet: stone, bone, stick, cup, dull knife, strip of hide. It had become their game, though none of them called it that. Savar called it teaching. Morna called it making him less useless. Tomm did not call it anything.
Savar held up the dull knife.
He said the Old Tongue word.
Tomm repeated it.
Wrong.
Savar groaned. "No. You say it like you are afraid of your own teeth."
"I am trying," Tomm said in the common tongue.
Morna looked at him. "Say that in the Old Tongue."
Tomm frowned.
She had taught him the words two days earlier. He searched for them now, lips moving silently first. "I… try."
Savar laughed. "You said I try like a goat with a stone in its mouth."
Morna picked up a pebble and threw it at his chest.
He caught it. "That was weak."
"It was not for hurting."
"What was it for?"
"For making you quieter."
Tomm watched them with the careful confusion of a boy learning that not all sharpness meant danger. The twins cut at each other with words all day and did not always bleed. That was strange to him. In Longmere, the boys who mocked him had smiled before they hit. In Pale Roots, Savar scowled and corrected his words, but when another child called him lower pup three weeks ago, Savar had shoved that child into mud and told him the smith's son belonged to the forge and the forge belonged to Pale Roots.
Tomm had not known whether to feel protected or owned.
Morna seemed to understand both were true.
She pointed at the cup. "Again."
Tomm said the Old Tongue word.
"Better," Morna said.
Savar looked annoyed that it was better. He picked up the strip of hide. "This."
Tomm said it before Savar could.
Savar stared at him.
Morna nodded. "He knew that."
"I heard it yesterday," Tomm said.
"In the Old Tongue," Morna said.
He swallowed, then tried. "I heard yesterday."
The words were crooked, but they stood.
Morna looked satisfied. Savar looked betrayed by learning.
Then Savar pointed toward the forge smoke. "Fire."
Tomm said the word at once.
That one had come easiest. Too easy.
Savar noticed. "You like fire."
"My father knows fire."
"Your father hates it," Morna said.
Tomm looked toward the forge. Gerrik stood half in smoke, hammer in hand, face hollowed by heat and sleeplessness. "He knows it."
"That is not the same," Morna said.
Tomm had no answer.
Savar picked up the bone. "Bone."
Tomm repeated it.
"Stone."
Tomm repeated.
"Water."
Tomm repeated.
"Enemy."
Morna's head turned. "No."
Savar frowned. "He should know it."
"Not from you."
"I know the word."
"You know how to point it. That is not the same."
Savar looked down toward the hidden path, toward the world below. "Enemy," he said again in the Old Tongue, and then in the common tongue for Tomm's sake.
Tomm went still.
Morna saw it. "Sometimes," she said.
Savar made a disgusted sound. "Lower men are enemies."
"My father is a lower man," Tomm said.
"Your father is forge."
Tomm looked at him. "That is not a man."
"It is here."
Morna picked up the stone and placed it in Tomm's palm. "Stone first. Water. Fire. Father. Son. Brother. Sister. Enemy later."
"I have no brother," Tomm said.
"You can still learn the word."
Savar grinned. "I have a sister."
Morna looked at him. "And I have a burden."
"We are twins," Savar told Tomm in the common tongue, pleased with the word. "Born together."
"I came first," Morna said.
Savar turned on her. "You did not."
"Mother says she heard me before she saw you."
"That means I was already out."
"That means you were already loud."
Tomm looked between them. For the first time in days, he smiled without noticing he had done it.
Then Lysa made a sound.
Small.
Almost nothing.
The children heard it anyway.
Savar turned first. Morna stood. Tomm froze with the stone still in his palm. Lysa had one hand braced on the rock wall and the other beneath her belly. Her head was bowed. Her breath came slow and hard.
Torren had already moved.
This time Lysa did not tell him to stop until he was close enough to touch her.
"Do not carry me," she said through her teeth.
"I was not going to."
"You thought it."
"I think many things."
"Think less."
The pain passed, but it left her pale. The speaker's woman, called by Morna without a word from anyone, came down from the upper path faster than her old knees liked. She put one hand on Lysa's back, another under her belly, and said nothing for several breaths.
Torren hated that.
"Well?" he asked.
The speaker's woman looked at him as if chiefs were a kind of weather she had grown tired of surviving. "Soon."
"How soon?"
"Soon is soon."
Lysa gave a short laugh that became a grimace. "See? She is wiser than you."
Torren said nothing. His eyes moved to the forge, then to the twins, then to Tomm still holding the stone. The boy lowered his gaze at once.
Lysa saw it.
"Finish the lesson," she told Morna.
Morna looked at her belly. "Now?"
"Now."
"What word?"
Lysa breathed out slowly. "Home."
The twins went quiet.
Tomm looked up.
Savar shifted, suddenly uncomfortable. Morna picked up the strip of hide, then put it down. She pointed at the ground beneath their feet and said the Old Tongue word.
Tomm stared at her.
Morna said it again.
He tried.
It came out wrong.
Savar did not laugh this time.
By evening, the pain had passed into waiting again.
That was worse in its way.
Waiting put thoughts in men's heads. It made them watch doors, count breaths, listen for sounds that had not come yet. It made Torren walk between the forge and the upper caves more than once, though he told himself each time that he had gone to check the lower path, the stores, the smoke cut, anything but Lysa.
In the forge, Gerrik worked through dusk.
A scout came as the sky darkened, bringing news from Longmere.
Torren let Gerrik hear.
That was deliberate.
"Harrold still sleeps in your house," Harl said. His hands had healed badly and split again from ore work. He no longer rubbed his neck when nervous. That habit had been beaten out by labor. "Not every night, but enough. He took the dry wood from your shed. The old sign is gone."
Gerrik's hand closed around the hammer.
Mara stood near the water skins, mending a torn hide. Her needle stopped.
Harl swallowed. "He tells them your woman ran willingly. Says you were dead or worse, and she chose the mountains after."
Mara made no sound.
That was worse than crying.
Tomm, who had been repeating Old Tongue words under Morna's eye, heard his mother's name and went to her at once. Mara pulled him close without looking away from the forge.
Gerrik set the hammer down very carefully.
Too carefully.
"He speaks of my wife?"
Harl looked at Torren.
Torren said, "Answer."
"Yes."
Gerrik smiled.
No one liked it.
Not even Brak.
"Dalla," Gerrik said.
She stepped forward.
"Watch the color. Not the flame. The iron."
"I am watching."
"Tarek."
The boy lifted the hammer.
"Not hard. True. If you strike angry, I will make you start again."
Tarek looked at Gerrik's face. "You are angry."
"Yes," Gerrik said. "That is why I am not striking."
The work went on past nightfall.
They packed the iron, sealed it, heated it, waited, cursed, listened, and waited more. Gerrik gave little explanation. Enough to guide. Not enough to teach everything. Torren noticed. So did Dalla. Six weeks of hatred had not made Gerrik careless with all his secrets.
Near midnight, Torren returned from the upper caves and found the first test blade ready.
It was not a sword. It was not even a proper knife. Only a short, ugly blade, narrow and dark, with a plain tang and a back too thick. A test piece. The edge had taken better than the last attempt. Gerrik saw that at once. He also saw the faint line near the point.
He cursed.
Tarek leaned closer. "It looks good."
"Then your eyes are worse than your arms."
Dalla said, "The edge held."
"The point may crack."
"So it failed?"
Gerrik did not answer.
Torren took down the old strip of Andal mail from the wall. It had come from Grey Throat, cut from a dead man who had once trusted it. He hung it over the post.
Gerrik looked at him. "It is not ready."
"Test it."
"It may break."
"Then we learn where."
Gerrik's lips thinned. He took the blade, adjusted his grip, and drew the edge across the mail.
It did not glide.
It bit.
One ring split. Another bent open. A third caught the edge near the flaw. The point chipped with a sharp little sound that made Gerrik hiss through his teeth as if struck.
Tarek exhaled.
Marn whispered something in the Old Tongue.
Dalla stared at the split ring.
Gerrik looked sick with fury. "It failed."
Torren picked up the broken ring between two fingers. "It bit mail."
"It failed."
"It bit mail."
"It chipped."
"So make the next one crueler."
Gerrik looked at him then.
The forge light turned Torren's eyes redder than they were. Or perhaps only made them honest.
Outside, the hollow slept badly. Mara lay awake with Tomm curled against her. Savar whispered Old Tongue words into the dark until Morna told him he was teaching the stones more than the boy. Above them, in the birthing cave, Lysa breathed through another pain and did not call out.
Gerrik took the blade back.
For a long moment he stared at the broken point.
Then he turned toward the coals.
"Again," he said.
Dalla reached for the tongs.
"No."
She stopped.
He took the best remaining piece himself.
"For my son," Gerrik said, placing it into the heat, "I will make it strong."
The coals swallowed the iron.
Gerrik watched until the first color came.
His voice dropped so low that only Torren and the apprentices heard.
"And for Longmere, I will make it cruel."
A shout came from the upper path.
Not alarm.
Worse.
A girl ran into the forge light, breathless, eyes wide, one hand pressed to the stitch in her side.
"Torren," she said in the Old Tongue. "Lysa's waters have broken."
The forge went still.
Even Gerrik stopped moving.
The girl swallowed. "The speaker says the child is coming now."
For one breath, Torren stood between the half-made blade and the dark path to the birthing cave.
Then he turned from the fire.